1908--1994 Their Friendship Endured

Boys will be boys whether it is 1909 or 2025. In this photo the arrow is drawn to a young boy named Roscoe Thompson. Whether he was a close neighbor, a friend who teased the girls (my guess), or an ornery kid, we will never know. What we do know is that in the two photos donated by Nellie Beavers Childs in 1993, either she or Roscoe drew an arrow pointing to him, not to Nellie and not to her lifelong best friend, Metaline. What does this tell you?

I had the opportunity to interview Nellie in 1993 at her apartment on Hal Muldrow Dr. in Norman. Her is a portion of her story.

In second grade class we had Miss Callie Webster who was a beautiful 18-year-old teacher. We loved her.  One day it was snowing and we were standing by Miss Webster's desk when she asked the girl next to me how she kept her hair in curls all day. The girl answered, "My mother puts something sweet on it every day." The teacher felt her curls and sure enough they were stiff. 

1908 Eastside School (Jefferson). Look for arrow in the top right hand corner and then see the photo of a young boy named Roscoe Thompson. Roscoe was a friend of Nellie Beavers Childs, the lady who donated this picture to Jefferson for our 1994 for our Centennial. 

1909-1910 2^nd grade JEFFERSON SCHOOL (Nellie Beavers Child) Pictures

Teacher: Callie Webster

Row 1: boy,  Metaline Cathey, lived on N.E. corner of Finley and Gray. They had a store in one room selling tablets, pencils, etc. boy, girl, girl, Agnes Wolf (McComb)  and Thelma Walker.

Row 2: (did not identify which one) Chester Capshaw, son of one of our first doctors. 7^th person Marion Moffett. Her father ran a bicycle shop in 200 block of Main on North Finley street. Next Robert Durkie; next Otis Sullivant.

Row 3: 1^st girl Martha Lee McComb, 2nd girl Nellie Beavers, 7^th person Aubrey Davis, 12^th Roscoe Thompson, ___, 13^th head of Addie Wilson. 

I enrolled in first grade in 1908 even though I was only five years old. I could already read. The neighbors said I couldn't go because I wasn't six years old. My brother said, "I'll put the number 5 in your shoe and if your teacher asks you, you can say you're over 5 years old." My teacher never did ask. I think Miss Cook knew because she was a friend of our family.

Every morning, at noon and during recess our janitor sat at the top of the stairs, and he would hand sharpen our pencils using his knife. One pencil at a time. We didn't have pencil sharpeners.  In the morning he stood at the top of the stairs to see if any students were still running to school. If he saw any children he waited to ring the tardy bell till the last students were in the room. 

*Look closely at the photo. Roscoe drew an arrow from the chalkboard to the third row of boys. He is looking at the camera and has his elbow on the desk behind on top of books. 

We didn't have programs in the school like we do now. The only thing I remember is the Maypole dance in the school yard. Some students were selected from each class to wind the Maypole on May Day. 

Out of our first-grade class there were at least ten who graduated with me in 1920. I know five of them taught school.  In second grade we had seatmates, but I guess we talked too much, and the teacher moved one of us out of the seat and put a boy in our place. I had to move and sit with a different boy. I thought it was great because the boy she put me with I knew from church, but he didn't like it (I wonder if this was Roscoe?). None of the boys liked having a girl for a seatmate. 

I lived on the corner of Findley and Apache, about four blocks south of Main Street. The house is still there. My mother lived there when she was a widow with two little children. She married again and that's when I was born. 

In second grade I still had the same seatmate, but I guess we talked too much, and the teacher moved one of us out of the seat with a boy and put that boys seat mate with Marie. I thought that was great because the boy she put me with I knew from church, but he didn’t like it. The boys didn’t like having a girl for a seatmate. 

I grew up when Norman just had dirt streets. Then later they paved Main Street and University Street. I can remember my brother putting us both on a bicycle and going over to University street to ride on the paved road. I mostly played boys games because of my brother. He taught me how to play Mumble Peg, a game where you learn to throw a knife. I also played marbles and spin the tops.

When I was in the 4^th grade they commenced a basketball team. I think it was the 8^th grade girls. I never did see the boys play. Of course, the only people they played against was Washington. Washington and Jefferson, well they didn’t get along.

“Now these are girls?” I inquired.

Yes, on a girls team. They had to play outdoors. This would have been seventh and eighth grade girls.

I remember that they played against Washington school. It was terrible the rival between the two schools. It continued in high school so that they hardly mixed in high school. 

My last two years of high school a new course was put in called "teachers training." We had to teach all of the 8th grade teaching and many hours of observation. We had to take notes and come back to our teacher and tell her. If they needed a teacher in Eastside (Jefferson) they would send one of us. Six out of twenty of us went on to teach the next year after we graduated. 

They gave us a fake teaching certificate to begin with. If we taught for three years and went to summer school we earned a LIFE certificate. 

*Note: this is the new Norman High School opened in 1909 when Eastside school had outgrown the classrooms. It is the picture in the background of Nellie Beavers graduation picture. 

*The Moore-Lindsay House Museum has pictures from early year books online and I discovered that Roscoe, Metaline, and Nellie each graduated from Norman High School in 1920.

My first teaching job was to finish out a term in a sixth grade class in Muskogee. I discovered I didn't like that at all. Then I moved to Paden and taught high school English and Spanish. My principal said I had to teach Economics. I told him No and said, "Can't you teach it?"  His reply was a headshaking negative stare. So I had to teach Economics and study the night before each class to stay ahead of them. 

I taught several years before moving to Pittsburg, another coal mining town where I met my husband. We moved around with his job in the mines and I taught at Shawnee, Seminole, Wewoka, and Sayre.

At last we moved back to Norman and I taught at Norman High School where I retired in 1965.  

As with retirement, our story does not end here. No more mention of Roscoe in

her interview, nor does she talk about Metaline.

However, in the spring of 1994 Nellie Beavers Childs was accompanied by her

daughter and attended our 100 year celebration of Jefferson school. During that time she brought an oil painting done by her lifelong friend, Metaline Cathey Lee.

Ten years ago the librarian gave me this picture and said, "I think you know this lady and her story."

**Metaline writes in her own handwriting on the back of this canvas: This painting was done for my friend since first grade, Nellie Beavers Childs. The painting shows hibiscus blooming in Mrs. Cathy's yard in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Mrs. Childs spent winters in the Valley after she retired as a Norman High School teacher in 1965. 

And so, it has taken me from 1994 to 2025 to put all of these pieces together. Rest in peace Nellie, Metaline, and Roscoe. You made our world and better place to live, especially for the children in Norman, Ok. 

We are the Jefferson Dragons. We symbolize "Power, Wisdom, and Chaos." Right now, we are sorting through the chaos and laughing...laughing and loving every moment of the research expedition into our history. 

Mrs. Watt, Librarian and author

From Blue Skies to Blue Seas: Traveling the World in 2025

Isn't life grand when we have opportunities to travel, especially free airfare overseas. This winter I took a three day 4 night excursion to Scotland without my golf clubs, to see the Locks on the western side of Scotland, knowing it was too cold to see Nessie, if she even exists.

One remote island intrigued me because we could only access it at low tide, when the road stretched from this low meandering isle to the mainland. We only had a few days to view the return of the seals and maybe Nessie, but before searching for the seals I heard a story.

A story of a beautiful woman, an artist named Vanessa, who once lived by herself on a remote island sometimes clouded and covered with icy fog. The seas often kept the color blue at bay and the skies remain gray. Access to the island was denied for 12 hours each day. When the tide was low there was a gap of about six hours when we could drive across the channel. 

Several of us hiked the hills and touched the ancient trees, climbing over the fallen debris was heavy and hateful winter storms. There we found the cottage, the barn, and the studio where Vanessa, the artist, once lived. Her paintings showed the seasons changes and the skies turning from blues  to grays to blacks. Her landscapes made her famous with shows from Edinburgh, London and Paris.  

One reviewer wrote: She paints the sunrise over the hill of fiery orange to a rich yolky yellow.  Ahead, the tide is high, the channel molten gold.  Then slowly gradually the color begins to leach away, the clouds mellowing, now pale, orange, now primrose, the sky, finally settling on a clear and hopeful blue.

Those were the lines that drew me to this island, in search of that blue hour. 

It was Vanessa's love life and sexual desires that created the scandal. The greater the scandal, the greater the interest in her paintings, then her ceramics, and sculptures uniquely staring at the public daring one to see the bones of the dead.

 

Lore has it that the early inhabitants of the west coast of Scotland, buried their dead on the island, so the wolves would not dig up the bones and souls of loved ones. 

  

In Scotland, the land, even her island, comes under the law of "right to roam." The public, like me, could cross the channel and hike the woods and trails without permission from the owner. We wanted to see the place, to stand there and image.  

Vanessa's notes read like she had won the lottery when at last she made enough money to buy the island of her dreams, of her retreats, of her distancing from others. Her husband, however, stole from her and sold her paintings and porcelain on the mainland of Europe to give him spending money that allowed him to lure wealthy ladies to his bed. 

Ironically, it was a fall, a broken wrist that changed the course of her life. A woman doctor from Scotland came her rescue. After setting the broken wrist, the doctor realized that her patient could not drive home with the broken wrist. Being a logical and caring devoted doctor to the healing of others, she offered to drive this beautiful woman home, along with a week's supply of food. 

For over twenty-years this doctor became a friend, a protector who tried to shield Vanessa from the public's eye. The island, alone by itself, seemed to be enough to offer protection, but their space had been invaded by a foul intruder, who's only intention was rape.

The artist, caught off guard, had no chance against a predator. The fisherman from the nearby village, who had admired her beauty from a distance forced his way into her studio that day. With Vanessa's arm twisted, in pain, she screamed. Suddenly, the man collapsed to his knees and began to pull at a wire now wrapped around his neck and choking him to death. 

The good doctor had delivered food that day and heard the scream from the studio near the top of the ridge. Not intending to kill, or so the story goes, she skillfully held the hold painfully chocking and terrifying the man.

Fear began to set into the artist's mind. The artist craved for aloneness and at last pushed and shoved the doctor out of her life. Over time the husband returned for sexual pleasures and the need for money to support his lifestyle. 

Another scandal occurred when the husband disappeared after a weekend on the island. His wallet later floated up near shore where a fisherman brought it in with his net. The red race car was never found. He had vanished.

It was the bones, that crept into the story twisting the lives of people who crossed over the line, the tidal .....

Somehow, over time Vanessa had found bones. The same bones that held a story together none the less. These bones now caught the attention of the art world, twisting this story one more time and leaving the listeners and readers one more death to resolve. Sitting at the bar that evening, no one shared the ending. 

My trip was short and fast. It lasted only three days on the island but it was FREE. The entire trip, the hiking, the bones, story with only the sound of seals in the background, no Nessie.  If you'd like to travel the world this winter like I do, for free, the public library offers free travel guides in nearly every book from romance and mystery novels to non-fiction, along with maps, and history.  

This trip was brought to life by Paula Hawkins in her recent novel The Blue Hour.