Springtime and steamboats
Spring officially arrived in Oklahoma on March 20. R.G. Miller, The Oklahoman’s Smoking Room columnist offered this nostalgic look at springtime in his April 9, 1939, column:
Now that springtime is here we look back over our calendar of memories and recall the days: When most of the boys and some of the girls were barefoot and it was the gayest time of the year . ... When the swimming hole was the bend in the creek or the pond where the stock also wallowed . ... When the cookie jar never was empty of cookies . ... When papa said “no”he meant just that . ... When every boy and man wore galluses; on the dudes wore belts . ... When the blessing was asked at every table we that we knew of . ... When boys longed for the day they could grow whiskers like grandpa’s . ... When we got a sack of store-bought stick candy maybe four times a year . ... When steamboats really came steaming around the bend . ... When hunting turtle eggs on the sandbars was real sport . ... When a fellow wasn’t classified as a hick because he had a patch on his pants . ... When a dime’s worth of fishing tackle was plenty to catch all you needed.
Many of us can remember these activities, whether we participated ourselves or heard our parents and grandparents reminisce of times gone by.
Galluses I’ve heard of, they’re just another name for suspenders, but when did the last steamboat come around the bend?
A search of The Oklahoman
Digital Archives finds an article from May 11, 1985, about the town of Tamaha celebrating its 101st birthday.
Tamaha is a town rich in history, much of it predating statehood. A capsule of that history is found on Oklahoma Historical Society markers beside the highway, two miles east of Stigler.
The twin markers explain: • One of the earliest port towns and trading centers in Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory.
• Choctaws brought from Mississippi up the Arkansas River to Tamaha on steamboats as early as 1831.
• Post Office built 1884 and jail in 1886.
• Last steamboat landed in 1912.
The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture corroborates this in the article entitled “STEAMBOATS AND LANDINGS.”
With the expansion of railroads during the later decades of the 1800, steamboat operations began to dwindle. Offering safe, reliable and inexpensive transportation to and from points far from the limitations imposed by rivers, railroads eventually supplanted the steamboat. Nevertheless, small short-haul steamboats operated on the rivers of Oklahoma into the early decades of the twentieth century.
While our children and grandchildren may never know the excitement of seeing a steamboat come round the bend, there are still plenty of memories to be made when Oklahoma’s variable spring weather allows.