Did the Warmest January in the Oklahoma During the 20th Century Cause This?

Dealing with frigid weather this January caused me to seek warmth. As a result, I discovered on the NOAA website that Oklahoma's warmest January in the 20th century was recorded in 1923, with 48 degrees Fahrenheit being the average for the month. Both of my grandfathers had stories surrounding a weather event of 1923 that is shared in the following account.

The Big Flood of 1923

Edmund, Jr., my father, remembered “The Big Flood of ‘23.” It took out all bridges (Kaw City, Ponca City, Belford, Ralston, and Blackburn) on the Arkansas River. Cholera washed down the river. This was devastating to swine producers since many hogs took the disease and died. There was no Johnson grass growing in the Bend prior to this flood. During this flood, the Johnson grass seed washed down from the Upper Bend, and farmers have been fighting it ever since.

When the Belford Bridge went out, a ferry provided a way across the river. Dick Wright and his boy, Clyde ran the ferryboat. Two little black mules pulled the ferry off the sand bar. Then the two little black mules stepped on the ferry, and a motor pulled the ferry across the Arkansas River. Mr. Wright used the command “Pete Pete” to get the mules to pull the ferry onto or off the sand bar. The two little black mules made a lasting impression on Dad who was just a small boy of four years old in 1923.

Prior to a later flood, Edmund, Sr., my paternal grandpa, had his alfalfa shocked on the flat land or “2nd bench.” The word bench means “a flat terracelike tract of land above a stream bed or along a coast” according to The American College Dictionary. The river was lapping the bank. Grandpa and Grandma Black came over Sunday afternoon in the hack, a small carriage pulled by a single horse. (For additional information about my father's maternal grandmother and step-grandfather, access the blog post entitled The Marriage of Robert and Nettie Black that published on October 6, 2013.) Grandpa Black told Edmund, Sr., “You’re a fool not to go ahead and haul it out because it’s going to wash it away.” Edmund, Sr. replied, “Bob, no, I think the raise is already here.”  The next morning the shocks of precious alfalfa hay had all floated away. Grandpa Gates wished he had listened to his father-in-law, the voice of experience.

A photograph that my grandfather, Calvin Callcayah Smith had from his
experience in Kaw City during the Flood of 1923.

 My maternal grandpa, Calvin Callcayah Smith came to Osage County, Oklahoma, in 1923, and lived with Jack Miller, his cousin, and his family in the Big Bend community. For a time Grandpa worked in the oil boom of the 1920s, as a carpenter building wooden oil derricks. While employed in the oil fields of the Osage, he lived in a hotel in Kaw City, Oklahoma. Even though Grandpa’s room was on the second floor, he was forced to evacuate when the historic flood of 1923 occurred. The rushing current of the out-of-control Arkansas River had swollen out of its banks, encroaching on areas never before touched by flooding. The above photograph belonging to my grandpa was in Grandma Gladys Vivian Rainey Smith’s picture album. The photograph captures the rushing torrent of the rampaging river in downtown Kaw City.

Sometimes we think disasters and setbacks are unique to our existence in the 21^st century. With so many peripheral difficulties surely no other generation could have had as many challenges as those of us in the second millennium. That’s just erroneous. Grandpa Gates had a young family - a wife, two daughters and two sons. Their subsistence depended solely upon the crops he grew and the livestock he raised. He had no apps for weather notification and not even a government agency to predict when the river would crest. When the alfalfa shocks washed off the second “bench” as the flooded Arkansas River raged past his bottom land, it is hard to fathom how he must have been feeling when he realized what had happened. I once asked my father, Edmund Gates, Jr. what people do when disaster strikes. He simply said, “They put one foot in front of the other.”

Grandpa Smith in his late twenties had come to Osage County to start anew following the death of his beloved father by relocating to a new region and learning a new trade in the wild and wooly oil patches of the burgeoning cutthroat industry. Grandpa was encompassed by the unsavory, as they scratched and clawed to quench their insatiable thirst for the black gold flowing under the rocky Osage terrain. My grandpa’s quiet, introverted personality desired peace and tranquility, yet he found himself facing a natural disaster evicting him from his second story lodging with his meager possessions in hand. Yet somehow, Grandpa rose above the catastrophe of the flood of 1923.

 These men from whom I descend were neither broken or destroyed by the decimating deluge. Dad often quoted with his own twist Neitzsche’s quote That which does not kill us makes us stronger. Both of my grandfathers lived to be 88 years old, proving misfortune and difficulty didn’t shorten their lives but toughened and strengthened them.