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“Servicemen’s Readjustment Act” and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it in 1944, even before the war ended. By that time, we had two small children, Mike and Sandra. We lived kind of like pioneers there for four years. For awhile we carried water up a long hill from a spring in the hollow—until we fixed up an old well where a house had been many years before, about a quarter-mile from our home.


I would go to the laundromat in Salina once a week and do laundry. I would bring the clothes home to dry and what I couldn’t hang on the clothesline I would hang on the fence around our yard. We had an ice box and would buy large blocks of ice when we were in town about twice weekly. That would keep our milk, butter and other foods cool. One very cold, snowy, windy morning— the exact date was February 1, 1951—when Ray was at the barn milking, I noticed the house was burning. We were able to remove only a few things. They had a benefit pie supper for us at the Center Hill School and REC came and showed a movie for entertain- ment. Mr. Bennet Kay was the general manger of the cooperative at that time. There was a big turnout and we appreciated the help.


finally sold our wood cookstove and bought a propane cookstove and refrigerator.


After we were here for two or three years, a few of the neighbors joined us in trying to get electricity. We got it. It was very nice to have lights in every room, an electric pump, radio, a washing machine and an electric cream separator.


Annabelle Cagle in 1943, shortly after graduating high school at Salina.


In April of that same year (1951), we were able to get a


G. I. loan and buy our farm here in the Wickliffe Commu- nity. We didn’t have electricity, but we did have running water in the house. I would go down to the well house and pump the handle of the pump until I was almost “give out” and that would fill the tank. When we used up what was in the tank, we’d have to do it again. We used battery-operated radios, kerosene lamps, gasoline irons. After using an ice box for so many years, we


We built a Grade A dairy barn in 1958 and were named Mayes County Farm Family of the Year later that year. By that time, we had another daughter. Marsha was born in 1956. Another son, Preston, came along in 1968. We were without electricity for more than a week when we had the big snow in March of 1968. Lines were down everywhere. Ray figured out a way to power the electric milkers with an old pickup we had, but we were sure glad to get the electricity turned on again. Thank God for rural electricity. Our kids attended school at Wickliffe rural school in the 1950s and Bennet Kay would come to events now and then and show movies—usually “The Three Stooges.”


My husband Ray passed away in 1991. I remarried in 1993. Bob Downum


had been a high school friend. He was a retired engineer. We lived there on the farm and, with the help of my son Preston, ran a cow and calf operation. Bob passed away in 2008. In April 2013, I will have been here 62 years and Preston and I still have a cattle operation. He takes care of the cattle and I see that they have feed and run the business end of it.


Although I live on the farm, I’ve been involved in a lot of other activities—like serving 28 years on the Mayes County Election Board and as finance clerk for Wickliff School for 14 years. One of the most interesting is when REC started Operation Round-Up. I served several years on that board and then-general manager Mark Brown and I presented the very first checks from the fund at the 1998 annual meeting in Grove.


Hope White was working at the cooperative then and she would pick me up and take me to present the checks to the various recipients. When she left, Craig Hendrickson and I would go. Pictures of me presenting the checks were printed in area newspapers.


Annabelle Downum (right) presents a grant check in 2000 as a member of Northeast Oklahoma Electric Cooperative’s Operation Round-Up Trust Foundation board of directors.


April 2013 9


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