We are going to be posting many great items for one time sale on this website, and interspersed with the sale items will be articles written by us or some guest posts that reminisce and take you back to an earlier less hectic day.
We can think of no better source to kick this program off with than this fine article written by our friend Paul Odle. It came to us by email and has never been published anywhere. We think Paul deserves some recognition as a story teller and thank him very much for submitting this story.
If you have any stories like this that you would like to have published please send them on to us for consideration in including in Antique Sale dot biz.
The Jewel Tea Man, by Paul Odle.
This story takes place in a simpler time in our lives. Daily visits with the neighbors on the block you live on and the block next to your block on either side could keep you abreast with the latest news and could prove quite entertaining.
It was always a big event if some one new moved to town and it would usually be more exciting than looking at the Sears & Roebuck Catalog, Montgomery Wards or Jewel tea Catalog. These three catalogs had many uses in the 1930’s and 1940’s? Those catalogs were fun to look at and wish you had the money to purchase every thing you saw.
Another entertaining past time in the years during and after the Great Depression was to get all dressed up and go to town to window shop and wish you had the money to go inside and buy something you saw in the window. When shopping in stores with your parent’s children were instructed to keep their hands behind their backs or in their pockets. Folks did not touch things that did not belong to them.
If you will please go back in time to the years of the 1930’s and 1940’s in a tiny town of Yukon, Oklahoma nestled on old Route 66 between two giant Flour Mills The Dobry Flour Mills and the Yukon’s Best Flour Mill. I recall what an exciting time it was when the “Jewell Tea Man” would pull up in front of my Grandmother Odle’s (Adde Eliza Tice/Odle) house at 601 East Cedar Street. You could order food items everything from Baking soda to cleaning supplies, linens, cookware and china. You got so many premium points according to the total amount your order was and you could pick out apiece of Autumn Leaf China to purchase with your premium points.
That is one way folks of that day and time got their good china that they used on Sundays and Holidays. We did not get too many visitors from out of town back then. That is another reason folks around these parts were so happy to see the Jewell Tea Man. Jewel Tea was sold by salesmen traveling the countryside from 1901 to 1981.
After your order came to your house it was good for many conversations and show and tell with your wonderful neighbors. The Jewel Tea man was usually a big city young man from Oklahoma City that made him that much more interesting.
Most folks were able to get their every day china out of boxes of Quaker Oat Meal. I remember those ever day dishes were a bright red on white. Back in that time period most people polished the tarnish off the good silverware on Saturday to be used on the Sunday dining table or on the day before holidays. Everyday chrome flat ware was used during the rest of the week.
My Grandmother Odle had some California Pottery that her youngest son Raymond Odle brought her from California and she was very proud of him and the California Pottery she received from him.
People living in the 1930’s and 1940’s took pride in every aspect of their lives. Their patriotism for our great country was more visible.
Another welcome caller in that same era was the Fuller Brush man who had a very excellent quality of house whole cleaning tools and cleaning supplies. Although most homes of that time period in our countries history did not have very much you could always find a few Fuller Brush items in most homes.
And how many of you remember RAWLEIGH ANTISEPTIC SALVE a must in any home. Rawleigh Antiseptic Salve would cure anything from a boil, cut, scrape to a sunburn. Rawleigh Antiseptic Salve worked as a polis it would draw swelling out of the body. It would draw a splinter out of a finger and keep it from getting infected.
Maybe some of you folks my age or older can remember the Jewel Tea man and the Fuller Brush man and remember more things about them that may be lost in my fond memories. Sept. 28, 2008 I well be 75 years old and I have noticed this year that I well think of some memory like the Rawleigh Antiseptic Salve, Jewel Tea man or the Fuller Brush door to door salesmen and if I do not write about it right then I may never think of it again.
I hope you enjoyed these memories as much as I did. I have many fond memories of growing up in a small Oklahoma town and of the families of my hometown of Yukon, Oklahoma the home of Yukon’s Best Flour and Yukon’s Best People.
I wish I could bring Charlie Newkirk and his down town café back I would like to mosey on down to his café with Earl Novak, Fenton Ramey, Jim Wheatley, Jim McDaniels, Bill Long, Dean Reid, Bill Florence and the Sokolosky brothers Buck and Francis and enjoy a big bowl of Charlies 75 cent Irish stew and his good nickel coffee.
Or bring Jay Bennett back and the Yukon Grill and have a real chicken fried steak dinner for 75 cents. That was some darn good eating. We could get down right serious about Charlie or Jay’s cooking. Only in Yukon America!
If you can remember these treats you are too darned old to be up reading this at this late hour! I guess I better say good night and don’t let the bedbugs bite!
By Paul L. Odle, Sr.
Popular Yukon Author, Humorous, and Special Veteran Correspondent
Literary Historian and Ardent Promoter of Yukon, Oklahoma and Veterans Centers
2008 Yukon Wall Of Fame Recipient
Proud To Be An American Veteran
Lawton/Fort Sill Veterans Center
P.O. Box 849
Lawton, Oklahoma 73502 1-580-354-3287 Paul_Odlesr@Yahoo.com
