The Golden Crossroad

Ivan Forrest Halligan grew up in the little farming community around Fristoe, Missouri never dreaming of the ‘golden crossroads’ he was to encounter in his manhood. This Benton countian was born on a bitter, cold December day in 1897. Joseph and Zella Jane (Trippe) Halligan lived with their four children, Ivan, Floyd, John and Henrietta, on a little farm not far from Zella’s parents two miles from Fristoe.

Ivan attended all eight years of grade school and two years of high school, walking that two miles to and from school in town in all kinds of weather. He recalled, “My parents were proud that all their kids were able to go to two years of high school. That was the best education one could get at that time.”

Learning to farm on that tiny acreage with his father and two brothers soon showed Ivan he needed to broaden his horizons. There just wasn’t enough room for three more farmers. So with his farm knowledge and farming connection he joined a ‘threshing crew’ working the wheat in the area and left his family and the farm in 1915.

During the next three years Ivan worked and lived with this roving band of men. They moved slowly in an ever-widening circle through north east Missouri. Then they traveled slowly through the north central area and then west following the ripening grain. Crossing the state border and circling through Kansas before the returning trip home after the harvest was completed.

In Fristoe during the winter and spring months Ivan would find odd jobs around the community to save his harvest pay checks for things his parents needed. He also helped with repairs around his parents and grandparents farm and homes. Wood cutting a never ending chore he tackled with lots of vigor to keep a plentiful supply for the wood stoves used for warmth as well as his Mom’s good cooking. This activity keep him in good physical condition. In those three years Ivan grew in stature and his shoulders broadened out to make him a mighty big man.

The importance of wheat production became more vital as World War I commenced. Then in 1918 Ivan’s threshing crew came to Butler County, Kansas to help thresh the enormous wheat crop planted in and around the booming oil community. The harvest was so important that special care was taken to locate threshers who would sign a pledge card to save every grain of wheat they could. After the harvest the crews were awarded certificates of membership in the United States Food Administration. Ivan was extremely proud to be a recipient on one of those certificates.

A lot of work was done by the local farmers so that the crop was ready for the big threshing machines. In his travels from farm to farm in Butler county Ivan’s crew encountered many oil field workers from the Empire and other companies who were donating their spare time to this war effort of raising wheat in the oil fields. At this time able-bodied manpower was at its lowest ebb because so many were in Europe fighting the war.

The rough and ready oil men appealed to Ivan as he was big and brawny too and they all seemed to have a eager sense of humor. Then came the day that lead Ivan to an important crossroad in Butler County. Empire’s three hundred acres of wheat nestled amongst the oil wells was being harvested. Oil field wages were at an all time high at this time with the on-going war and right in the middle of the oil boom.

Then Butler county experienced triple disasters during one week of August and the forest of tall wooden oil derricks toppled like matchsticks. This catastrophe caused Ivan to desert his farming heritage and overnight he became an oilman. That change led to his life’s vocation and started him on the road to meet his future wife.

Butler County’s tale of woe began on Wednesday August 7th 1918 as a twister cut a narrow swath of ruin just west of El Dorado. Several oil companies lost over forty oil derricks, all their out-buildings and oil tanks. Before they could swing into action and start rebuilding a double storm of heavy winds and driving rain struck close to the near by town of Towanda on Friday August 9th, wiping out the oil industry in a two-mile long stretch, one-mile wide.

Next day’s newspaper headlines shouted the news, “Great Demand for Rig Builders today. 300 rigs were destroyed, oil companies paying premium wages to hire men.” Every company wanted to be the first to rebuild and get the ‘black gold’ flowing again. The opportunity was too great. Ivan Forrest Halligan answered the call and hired out with the army of men that descended on the disaster scene to salvage as much as possible. Meanwhile all available timber was being located within the quickest shipping distance.

Then load after heavy load of pine, hemlock and oak headed for the storm area, requiring many teams of horses and men to get the lumber through the deep mire. Their goal was to get the oil flowing as soon as possible to keep our troops moving to victory overseas. So long, hard days of work was expected of every man. The climbing and lifting of heavy timbers took brawny muscles and steady nerves and Ivan had an abundance of both.

Just as the cleanup was in full swing, another disaster struck the troubled oil patch. On the 15th of August a sixteen hundred barrel wooden stave tank on the Revert oil lease burst throwing oil over a hot boiler that burst the oil into flames. This caused unsalvageable damage to the already ruined area. The fire consumed several oil derricks, two school houses and a multitude of smaller buildings that were in the path of the burning oil. Thank goodness there was no lives lost in any of these tragedies.

The multitude of men including Ivan went on working daylight to dark every day and the repairs finally caught up with the storm damage. The work force went back to building new derricks for the expanding oil field when the grippe, as Ivan called it, arrived in Butler county around the first of October in the form of the Spanish flu.

It soon had a firm hold on the population and city and county officials closed all meeting places. This included schools, theatres and even churches. But the vital oil production had to be kept going. Soon even many of the husky outdoor working men succumbed to this deadly disease. Empire Oil Company turned it’s bunkhouse into a flu hospital. Although there were 85,000 cases of Spanish flu resulting in 2,672 deaths in Kansas, Ivan survived to celebrate the Armistice in November and his 21st birthday in December.

Winter months slowed the work in the oil fields to a crawl then came to a complete halt altogether when a Christmas Day storm dumped nine inches of the heavy, white stuff in a exceptionally Kansas Christmas gift, turning the area into a winter wonderland.

When Ivan made the turning point in his life at the crossroads in Butler County he found that his way home to family and friends had changed. The threshers went back to Missouri without him after the harvest. Ivan was kept busy with his new job at higher pay wages and the long hours paid off with savings enough to buy a automobile. With an automobile he could drive back and forth from the oilfield to town and more important gave him a way to visit home again.

In the beginning of the new year Ivan began looking for ‘his’ car. He wanted a touring car big enough for his many friends or his family when he went home. After ‘window’ shopping around the car dealers in El Dorado, Ivan ended up in the two hundred block of East Central where he saw his dream---an 89 Overland---setting in the show room of Sanford and Buck Motor Company. Ivan described it “Looked like a boxcar and was about that long.” But he was a big man so he needed a big car.

The Overland and Ivan became well acquainted with each other during the winter of 1919. Cranking the heavy Overland engine was child’s play for Ivan, but for the younger generation that never had to start a car by crank during a Kansas winter, I’ll pass on a detailed account of what a truly muscle-straining, nerve-wrecking task this was as Ivan explained it to me years later.

“First you fill the radiator with boiling water to warm up the engine, which had been exposed to the bitter winter weather all night.” Most oil workers barely had housing for themselves let alone shelter for their autos. Ivan continues to reminisce. “After the engine is warmed up you open the brass petcock on each cylinder and pour a few drops of gasoline into the engine, then close the petcocks. Next you pull a lever beside the steering wheel to retard the spark, so the engine won’t kick back and break your arm while you are cranking!”

Remembering brought a sparkle to Ivan’s eye as he rambled on. “Then you set the hand throttle located on the steering column according to each owner’s pet theory. Insert the hand crank thru a hole located in front of the car below the radiator. Next you cranked vigorously clock wise and prayed. If the engine coughed, sputtered and seemed about to start, you ran like mad around to the steering wheel, (two steps for Ivan’s long legs) to advance the spark lever and give it more gas with the gas throttle.”

“At this point,” Ivan added, “the engine invariably spit, sigh and died. So back to square one and do it all over again. After several tries eventually the auto would start and I could roll along twenty to twenty-five miles an hour hoping I would arrive at my destination without a breakdown. It was painfully cold in the open touring car with the winter wind whipping around the sides of the windshield. I had to find rugs and comforters and even heated bricks wrapped in flannel to keep my feet warm. I bought a driving coat, gloves and goggles just like everyone else.”

With transportation under control Ivan moved around more in his newfound employment. When steel rigs began replacing the wooden derricks and the first drilling boom was over the rig-building crews moved on to other boom towns. Ivan’s wandering days with the threshing crews lost it’s luster after he had a taste of a different life in the oil fields. He decided to stay in the area, fortunately getting a job with a repair gang for Skelly Oil Company. Meanwhile the oil industry opened up in the Greenwood County to the east of Butler County. Ivan accepted a transfer to that area to be a wee bit closer to home and family.

Ivan smiled fondly as he confided that in February 1926 he met Anne Faye Martin, who was teaching school in Virgil, “We were married in June. I guess you could say I swept her off her feet.” Ivan advanced to being an oil gauger, who’s job was measuring the amount of oil collected in the holding tanks before being shipped out by pipeline or truck.

As the years passed Uncle Ivan and Aunt Faye reared three sons, Robert Eugene, John Joseph, Forrest Lloyd and one daughter, Marjorie Elaine. Ivan became Skelly’s pipeline pumping engineer. Thirty years later, after a very full and satisfying life, he retired from Skelly Oil.

When I asked, Ivan said he never ever wondered what his life would have been like if he had taken a different direction at the golden crossroads in Butler County, Kansas in 1918?

Story ID:	790
Written by:	Gail Lee Martin (bio, contact, other stories)
Organization:	Kansas Authors Club
Story type:	Period Piece
Location:	El Dorado Kansas USA
Year:	1918
Person:	Ivan Forrest Halligan