See Bold Below: the ingenuity of the Vitosky family, communicating by drums, building elaborate dirt trench type boy caves, how to speak moose-talk, our Creek Indian neighbors the Roberts family, Aunt Bonnie & the red ant bites.
The first two years of life at the ‘Hilltop House’ is mainly recalled from secondhand information even though I feel like everything I’m gonna tell you is what I saw and felt between one and three years old as if I was remembering it from living it. From first-hand information.
From the ‘Hilltop House’ you can could see (weather and humidity permitting) Johnny and Maude Scrimshire’s original Oklahoma Homestead. The first of three properties my grandpa and grandma Scrimshire would own and occupy. 1) original homestead 2) top of the hill just a little south of the Ennis home 3) their final home in Okemah. Literally from where I was born I could see where my Dad (his one brother Leland and 3 sisters Zelda, Zora and Bonnie) were raised. My Dad was the only one born in Arkansas. Dad at birth was named James Holland Scrimshire but no one and I mean literally no one ever called him James. Dad lived on the original Scrimshire homestead from 4 years old till he got married.
The original Johnny and Maude Homestead was where my grandpa lost his left eye when an old gray work horse mare kicked it out. (you’ll read that whole story in detail in ‘My Grandparents’ chapter). It was also where I cut off the tip of my cousin’s middle finger with a grub hoe (that story will be included in the Chapter on ‘My Cousins and other So-Called Family’) and it was also where, when I was 4 years old Grandma Scrimshire tried to catch me to allegedly give me a spanking. As I was running as fast as my little legs would carry me I flew over a terrace and fell flat on my belly just as grandma was reaching out to grab me by the shirt collar but instead she missed me and tripped and flew over me hoping she didn’t trample me. When she found out I was ok and I realized I probably wasn’t gonna get a spanking we both laughed so hard we cried. She never spanked me ever.
The Ingenuity of the Vitosky Family
Don’t know who built the four room square hill top house but we do know who mom and dad rented it from. I use the word rent lightly, most likely they were just allowed to live in it as they transitioned into married life – from a freebie to the farmhouse! Joseph (Joe) Vitoskys family owned the property the house was on! They were Polish refugees. The old man Vitosky, Joe’s dad, liked my dad.
Joe had a son named Joie and we spent a lot of time together but we never really became really close friends because he was so smart. He was way above my head in abilities! He was not a showoff yet everybody, after being around him for awhile, just knew “now there’s a smart kid!” He was building bows and arrows, slingshot and rubber band guns when the rest of us kids were still pushing 2×4 wood blocks around in the dirt as trucks.
Joe (the Dad) had a shop full of anvils, pumps and machines with wheels, gears and levers that were mostly manually operated! A few were battery operated! The Vitosky family were the first we knew to get electricity, running water and an indoor toilet.
I thought Joe & his son Joie were mechanical geniuses that could build or fix anything from tin, iron or steel. Joey, because of his mechanical and book learning abilities plus the machines at his disposal, could make arrows better than most of the Indians in the county and he made dozens and dozens of them! He even showed me how to make a bow and arrow with razor sharp arrow heads and sling shots and rubber band pistols and he and his Dad was ok with me using their tools to make them. Before I left the farm life Joie and I secretly made a homemade 22 caliber pistols that shot real bullets. Not knowing how or in which direction it would fire we test shot it from behind an old discarded wood door. Kinda scary when you think about what could’ve went wrong.
Joie helped me build my first straight long bow out of bodark (The name bodark is from the French bois d’arc meaning “bow wood..)” I kept it, played, practiced and hunted with it until I joined the Air Force10 years later. I eventually lost track of it… it was a piece of work.
When we moved from the ‘Hilltop house’ to the farmhouse, as the crow flies, i was still about the same distance from Joie Vitoskys house.
Joie was envious of my Indian friends. Matter fact I think he wanted to be a Creek Indian and that’s why he wanted to be my friend cause except for him almost all my friends were Creek Indians.
Even before I started to grade school Joie and I would communicate with each other by banging on big open ended steel gas drums laid down and pointed in each others direction. We also tried a couple times to communicate by means of smoke signals. I never tried much less used banging on the drums or smoke signals to communicate with Mitchel and Jasper my two best Indian friends! Both were Joie’s idea and they both usually failed miserably as a form of communication. I chuckle now that I look back on how serious Joie took the possibility of communicating by drums and smoke signals.
Joie would write down all the instructions for our attempted native drum beating communication and then when our efforts fell flat, as they often did, it was usually because I didn’t take all his out there ideas serious enough nor did I following his instructions close enough. Therefore my fault.
Even though Joie was so dang (our four letter cus word back then) smart he was a constant source of entertainment. At times I just couldn’t help it and I would break out laughing at what he said or did and those burst of laughter (especially when others were around) really irritated him to no end. Sorry but I just couldn’t help it! So many of Joie’s fancy ideas was so cotton pickin’ funny to me but not to Joie. I even laughed when Joey said he was gonna join the Navy which he did right after I Joined the Air Force. Why was that so funny to me? I loved the water and he so wanted to fly.
Joie should have graduated a year ahead of me in 1963 but he didn’t and i don’t know why?
Joie had a sister named Kay Vitosky. Her and her mom Nila Vitosky were very hospitable but not so much the guys… The old man Joe and Joey worked almost all the time. Ever now and then Joie would sneak off with me to a pond or creek somewhere but even then you could tell Joey was struggling with trying to be a kid like the rest of the kids. Kinda sad now that I look back on it.
Joie and I would ride horses together and even though he had several horses, including a quarter horse he called his own, he openly envied my Indian Pony Rusty. I would always ride up to his place, never him down to my place! I stayed overnight with him a couple times but he never stayed overnight with me. My mom never called him Joie, she always called him by his full name – Joie Vitosky.
Joie love to build these elaborate dirt trench boy caves into the bank of the six shooter Creek. They were almost like small, kid size, dirt cellars. He always wanted me to help him dig the ditches and sculpture a roof and I did because I could go down there and play with my cousins and others even when Joie wasn’t around. Every time the creek flooded they were washed away.
My five best friends up till I started junior high school were my very best friends Mitchel and Jasper Roberts, creek Indians. My three best white friends were Joie Vitosky (1 year older), Phillip Casey (my age), and Kenny Walker (one year younger). Kenny lived north, up the road a bit from the “Hilltop House.’ Phillip lived about the same distance to the south, just across six shooter Creek. Phillip lived 1/2 mile from the farmhouse and the Roberts home.
I plan to have a separate chapter on ‘my best friends in life’ but I just wanted to whet your appetite about my first best friend Mitchel Roberts! Who was always glued at the hip with his younger brother Jasper and I was cool with that.
Mitchel did his best to try and teach me Creek Indian but among the most memorable things I learned while being friends with Mitchel, was how to talk moose talk! Four instance ‘what you talking about’ becomes whil-faut u’ll-foo tall-falking a-boul-fout’ essentially a breakdown of each word with an L and an F in the middle of it! Be careful – don’t try this at home 😅 Many people thought Mitchel and I was talking Creek Indian with each other when actually it was Moose talk and I have no idea where he learned it from…. I had a few white cousins who could speak it also!
The two things I remember most about Phillip Casey and Kenny Walker! Phillips was a tall gangly kid with one of the biggest most deformed testicles I’ve ever seen! Hey part of every day life in the summer was as kids swimming together. Wet underwear doesn’t leave much to the imagination. I noticed and so did everyone else but from the beginning we were used to it. Phillip was special.
Kenny Walker was a bum and a stingy one at that! Went on to make a lot of money but he scammed people to do it and spent some time in prison for manipulating oil supplies and prices! He had to spend a small fortune to stay out of jail! A lot of us kids back them started smoking at a young age, so did he, and he was always bumming cigarettes from us and in high school bummed lunch change from anyone not eating in the cafeteria.
This is probably a good time to tell you a little bit about our Creek Indian neighbors the Roberts family that I grew up with after moving from the “Hilltop House’ to ‘The Farmhouse’!
Mitchel and Jasper lived right on the edge of my dad‘s hundred acres, right at the gate to our property, less than a quarter mile or so from The farmhouse and just a few hundred yards from the best pond in the country, the farmhouse pond! I almost never think of the farmhouse without thinking of the farmhouse pond and Mitchel and Jasper who lived even closer to the pond than I did! In the summer the whole Roberts family used the pond to wash clothes and bathe in and the kids used it to play in just like I did….
We (Mitchel, Jasper, Phillip, Joey and Myself) strung a rope from the top of a tree on the west side of the pond to the bottom of a tree on the east side. We devised a pulley with a handle to glide across the pond, down the rope, and we could with let go halfway across and drop into the water or hang on till we hit the water a running on the opposite side of the pond. It was so fun and kids and families alike would come from all around and visit the pond to watch the kids play and some would fish at the opposite end of the pond for perch, crappie or Bass.
Pharaoh School Photos of Nellie and Mitchel was in 62 (left) and 63 (right). I was 1 year ahead of them.
The mom and dad was Elizabeth and Harley Roberts! If memory serves me right they had several kids! Probably four boys, Mitchel and Jasper and two younger brothers one of which suffered a tragic death which was partially my fault – more on that later. The three or four girls names was Nellie, LaDona (almost blonde very light skin and all of us thought she was adopted), Lucy and a younger sister whose name I can’t remember. So at least eight kids and double that many dogs which also is another story. (see photos of Nellie and Mitchel at end of Chapt)
Harley, when he worked, worked for my dad as a truck and tractor driver, mechanic and all-around handyman. If mom was ever able to get anything done at the farm house (that she or I couldn’t do) it was usually Harley who did it.
Back to the Hilltop House!
The well smelled of sulfur water and had to be boiled to drink.
The barn was falling in and unusable. It was a big pile of old barn house wood which had become a breeding ground for rats. A few years later my buds and I would go there with our pellet guns and sling shots and shoot them for sport.
I can picture even today the old hand dug dried out water well that had become a snake pit! Sides of the well was just stacked river rock which look like someone tried to go in and pack a little mud in between the rocks but who knows! The well wasn’t really that deep anymore cause so much trash (trash not garbage) had been thrown into it. It was probably only eight to ten foot down to the top of the relics.
And now the famous ant bed incident. Famous in my mind manly cause it could’ve turned out a lot worse than it did:
My aunt Bonnie the youngest of my three dad sisters loved to carry me around on her stuck out little bony hip. She was probably in her preteens and she was babysitting me while mom and dad hoe’d corn behind the ‘Hilltop House’. For some reason maybe she needed to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water or get a snack for us but she left me alone playing in the dirt in the front yard just for a few minutes. Somehow I was able to crawl about 30 foot or so to a red ant bed and a big one. The scream Bonnie heard must’ve sent cold chills up her spine because I was scared and in pain. Bonnie said I was covered in red ants. They were in my hair, in the creases in my chubby little legs and arms, in between my toes and fingers and even underneath my arms. There were ants crawling on me everywhere not covered by a diaper! I got stung so many times no one even tried to count how many! Bonnie said when she run up to me it was like a horror show, there were red ants all over me, crawling in and out of my nose and mouth.
They rushed me to the hospital because from so many stings I went into shock. When a red ant stings you they leave their stinger. Mom said I reminded her of a curly headed baby pin cushion full of needles. Ouch!
Photo of me was taken about the time of the ant hill incident. Photo of bonnie was taken probably in her pre-teens.
Bonnie said what made things even worse is that she knew she had to run and quickly find mom and dad and that she didn’t wanna run with me straddling her hip, not only would it slow her down but she might fall and hurt me! So she had to leave me alone (hysterical as I was) to get help. When my mom saw me welts were beginning to form and mom went into her drama queen mode.
Some 60 years later my little granddaughter Coco got stung by a bee at a motel pool in Palm Springs and it woke fear in my heart because somehow I really felt I was living through that event again – through my granddaughter and daughter.
From the fear and concern Bonnie felt each time she related the story, which was about every time she would see me, I’m just glad Bonnie didn’t give up on taking care of me. She sure enjoyed carry my fat little baby butt around. Even when we were going quite a distance, sometimes up to a mile, she insisted she carried me whether I liked it or not. Evidently eventually I would just give in and hang on for dear life!
As she often said over the years retelling the story – it could’ve been worse. Just a few feet further and I could’ve fell into the snake pit.
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