Adair’s Kinion recalls life before electricity B
ESSIE Kinion will turn 97 years young on May 5, 2013. Few among us of any age can rival her keen memory and razor-sharp wit.
Fewer still can remember the days before the country- side was set free by the blessed arrival of precious electric- ity. For Bessie, those days are impossible to forget. Bessie’s recollection of the past is a resource of immea- surable value. Reminders of days gone by are locked away in her memory like a treasure chest.
Bessie has witnessed many changes in the world during her lifetime. Some good, others not so much. She counts for the good the day in 1940 when the lights came on for her family and others and across northeast Oklahoma. Northeast Oklahoma Electric Cooperative is celebrating 75 years in business this year. Bessie has been here for every one of them. “REC has made a lot of changes in 75 years. They even changed the name,” she said referencing the original “REA” designation. “We were just sitting here in
the dark. You can’t imagine what electricity has done for our rural communities. You can’t fully
96-year-old Adair resident Bessie Kinion holds one of the flat irons she once used.
appreciate electricity until you’ve been without it.” -o0o-
The man considered the father of the cooperative, Howard Freeman, was a neighbor to Bessie and husband Clarence. Freeman lived just across the road from the Kinions in the small Mayes County community known as “Wauhillua.”
Thinking back on that close-knit group of rural families
northwest of Adair brings back a flood of memories for Bessie.
“It was a lively little community we had out here,” she smiled, recalling first the home demonstration club that hosted events such as showers and ice cream socials.
4 Northeast Connection
The club was especially proud of its beautification projects. They helped build a park, complete with tables and benches, just east of the highway. Community events were held at the old Wauhillau School building, which Bessie recalls was quite large for a rural school—much larger than the tiny one-room Lone Elm schoolhouse she attended as a young girl. The Wauhillau schoolhouse had two teachers and even featured a big stage for productions.
-o0o-
Clarence and Bessie Kinion moved to the area in 1934. They rented a place for four years before saving enough to buy some land. They tore down an aging farmhouse and built a smaller, more efficient bungalow-style home in its place.
Electricity wouldn’t arrive until 1940 and wouldn’t have then had it not been for the diligence of Freeman and other area leaders working hard to establish a rural electric cooperative. That effort began in earnest long before the incorporation of the coop- erative back in September of 1938. Bessie is certain that the Freeman house was the first to take power from that first co-op substation. A transmis- sion line from Grand River Dam
Authority traverses an expanse of field just south of the Freeman house and you can still see the concrete pads and exposed footings from the original co-op substation. The substation was relocated years later directly across the road. Progress was slow but steady as powerlines began to branch out from the Adair substation, like veins supplying life-giving blood to a growing body. Bessie remembers the pole at the corner of their yard being dug by hand. She is sure that the very pole that was set in the ground on Decem- ber 20, 1940, still stands today.
A local by the name of Everett Campbell wired those first homes in the Wauhillau community. Clarence helped Campbell wire the Kinion home and could do it himself after that. Clarence later became qualified to inspect home wiring.
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