Billy Ray Starkey
Billy Ray Starkey, Marquand, Missouri, born 2/18/46.
I was born on, technically, Castor River.
My mother always told me I was born in Med Robbins' field, but what she meant was I was born in a house that was near what they call the Green Hollow, and it was, I think, the last existing house at that time, and that's where I was born, actually, in that house.
And so I was referred that it was not in the field.
So yeah, and anyway, moved off, and now I'm back at Mark 1 again.
And you're here today with your son?
Yes, my son, Rory, my house, Starkey.
And you were born?
April 9th of 1971, in Cape Girardeau.
Were your parents owners of the farm?
No.
No, they just happened to be a couple in that area, lived there for a while, seemed like it was the name of the house, was maybe Doc, I don't think it was Doc Carr, but it seemed like it was somebody's house.
I can't remember whose it was in particular, but anyway, I think it was finally tore down in the mid-70s, 80s, something like that, so, and lived at Mark 1 most of my life, went to school there, first day in school.
The Piney Union was a one-room schoolhouse, just went to visit, scared to death because the big boys and all of them was together.
Did you walk?
Technically, yes.
Yes, we walked, and didn't have no buses running at that time when I first went.
And I went as a visitor with my brother, set you on the front seat and let you color, you know how the kids was having school.
So that was kind of an experience.
And in later years, I went to Mark 1 all my school years from the time that they had the old school with the gym.
My dad also helped the rocks and stuff with the CPA or whatever it was.
WPA.
WPA.
Him and several of the elder men in town, they hauled all rocks with teams and wagons and some laid them, some picked them up, some done that.
My uncle done the floor.
And that's how that gym existed in which we played basketball, volleyball, and it's still sitting there and things happen inside the gym.
They're all dead and gone.
This is many years ago.
Was the gym built during the Depression?
I understand that's why they can't tear it down.
Historic.
Historic and also something to do with special funds from the government that was built at the time, because I think it's probably the historic preservation of the WPA.
I'm assuming that's what they did.
People didn't have jobs, so that's how they made jobs.
Dad, mention names like grandpa's name, your uncle's name.
Oh, okay.
My dad's name was Doff, D-L-O-P-H, Doff Starkey, and he was the younger son of my grandpa, which his dad's name was James Starkey, and they technically was raised just outside of Mark 1 into Bullinger County.
And so, he had several brothers and sisters, and he was the youngest boy, and then another one was my youngest aunt, and she passed away just before he did, I think.
And she married a Braswell, which was a janitor at the same school I went to for several years and filled the furnace and kept everybody warm.
Your father's name sounds Scandinavian.
It does, doesn't it?
Or German?
Yeah, or German.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because he was like a Adolf, right?
Yeah, his name was Doff, which I don't know another one.
Or is Doff Swedish?
I never knew that.
That's what I was thinking.
Yeah, why I don't know, but I do know that he said, I remember his granny used to call him Doffin, you know, instead of Doff, when he was younger, he was Doffin.
He was born in 1909.
1909.
But he was part, he and, you said that your uncle, which uncle was it that helped build that, built that floor of the gymnasium?
Robert.
Robert Starkey.
He was an older brother.
He was born like 1887, and then I had an older one yet, was Clarence Starkey, and he was born, I think, in something like 83 or something.
He was the older one.
And he served in World War I. Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
But my dad was born in 1909, so he was one of the younger ones, so that's kind of how old his brother was, from the, matter of fact, his sister, I can remember his older sister, ain't either.
And she was, Leithy, Leithy, that's it.
And she later came to Frederictown, married a Williams.
He also worked at Miner's Lumber Company, a delivery man, that's where she came and lived her rest of her life here in Frederictown.
Okay.
So.
So she was a Williams.
Were you kind of back and forth from Marquand?
I wasn't.
I stayed down there.
Later years, when he was just a small lad, we would, I moved to, over on Saline Street in college.
So I was there for a few years and made a big circle.
I'm back down there now.
Well, it sounds as if you were close to family members.
Oh, yeah.
Of course.
Yeah.
I think it was interesting too, when you left Marquand, you left when you were a teenager, and then you ended up in Michigan, which I think is kind of historically in the area, a lot of people, dad's generation, left to the urban area for work in like the auto industry.
Dad was in the hype of all that, which my generation, you know, we didn't get that.
No.
They did.
I think that's interesting.
Yeah.
A lot of people from down here went to the auto industry, didn't they?
Oh, yes.
I saw Tennessee, all the southern states went to the northern states for the industrial.
Was that during the Depression?
No.
No?
Mid, early 60s, 60s through the 70s, with big years up there for Michigan, Flint, Pontiac, Cadillac, Detroit, and now it's just the opposite.
We have more industry here than they do in Michigan for what it used to be.
Did people settle there in your family and stay?
Some did, yes.
Out of all of your nine siblings?
Most of the siblings went there.
A lot of them came back, but there were some, the older ones that went, and some of them, that's where they stayed, and some of their families that we never see much of anymore.
Cousins, whatever, you know, still live up there.
I was going to ask how many siblings you had.
Oh, five boys, five girls, total in the family, quite large family.
I was next to the youngest, and the school that we were in, I was a dropout, two weeks in the 11th grade, and all I could hear around that little town of Mark one was a sawmill running and a buzzing while we was in school, and I thought, well, I don't need a high school education for this.
So I got out, and my dad said, well, until you get, if that's what you want, okay, but you work around the farm, you don't just loaf, and you work.
So I was in a hurry, I left home at 16, been on my own ever since.
So yeah, it was a different task, because you tell kids nowadays, when you leave home and you're on your own, it's hard for them to believe that when you're 16, that there's no possible way that you could go to work.
But I did.
I went to work, handshake, don't sue me, and I'll work you at 16, because you should be signed by your parents that you can get the job, you know, or work.
So I handshaked with the owner of the company, which was from Tennessee, Grady Beckett.
He said, okay, young man, he said, you can work for me, he says, if you do fall off the roof or something, he says, you break your leg, I'll pay your hospital bill, but don't sue me.
I said, that's okay.
And this was for the sawmill?
No, this was a construction company when I went to Michigan.
Oh, okay.
So it was in good faith then, huh?
It was in good faith, because I was so young, my parents was here.
And so when I shook his hand, because he was a Southerner from Tennessee, and he had quite a large family, too, but really a nice guy.
And on the handshake is how I got my job, and he trusted me for it, and he probably is the main one that really got me going early in life.
Now, did you send money home, or did you have to use it for rent up there?
Yeah, I ran an apartment, I did live with my sister for a few weeks, I ran an apartment for everything furnished, and I think it was $16 a month.
A month?
Yeah.
Wow.
So I knew I didn't have to pay electric bill on it.
And then I did good enough that I bought my first house at 19.
Wow.
So that's $16 a month, two bedrooms, I'm assuming.
Basically, yeah.
Tell them a little bit about the old lady that you rented with, she was really neat.
Oh, Miss Blaine, yeah.
I rented from a lady in Flint, and she would sit and tell me, and she rented me a place because I reminded her of her grandson, and he moved away and she was alone.
So I had to actually go through her front door, and she gave me the upstairs, kind of like a Barney Fife thing.
You got it right.
And I said, well, okay.
And of course, we'd have to do our little visiting when I'd enter and sometimes when I'd leave.
And she took the lock into me, so she finally got bold one day, went up and checked on my house, see how it was doing, I guess.
She's seen a couple of towels that probably needed to be washed in the dish rags, it needed to be washed, and she took it upon herself to do that.
And I said, you don't have to do that.
She says, no, but I have to wash, and this gives me something to do.
So I had a housekeeper, got my rent, and it was nice.
She probably felt safe having you in there too, don't you?
And you might ask, well, at 16, how did you get, I always told my boys, he probably remembers, at the age of 16, how do you get to Michigan, right?
How did you?
How did you?
Well, okay.
And I always tell them that two pigs got me to Michigan, there's a little story in that.
And it goes that while I was still home, I was one of the dumb ones who wanted to learn how to milk a cow.
The rest didn't.
I didn't really, I thought it was going to be a pleasurable thing to become a job.
So my dad, we had raised our own pork and our butcher, our own meat and everything, had our own milk and all that, had an old cow that had a litter of 12 pigs.
She had one that she kind of stepped on, and it was a little bit on the cripple side, but not to destroy, but it couldn't survive because the other pigs were much stronger.
So he told me, take the pig, put it in the barn, and feed it a little milk and a little bit of corn when it was little, and if you raise it, you can get some money out of it, you know?
Okay.
So I had a brother-in-law, I had a family, and when the pig got up to about 250 pounds, they wanted it to butcher because they needed some meat.
He had two more that was about 40 pounds.
So I got calculating, if I trade that for two and I raise them two up, I get twice as much money, so I did that.
And so when I sold it, sold the two pigs, which they wasn't much, I can't remember really what I got, but I did get enough for a ticket to catch the Greyhound bus here on the Court Square, the old motel, and went to Michigan, bought a ticket for $18, had a little money left, and that's what got me to Michigan.
I hadn't been for them two pigs, I don't know where I ended up at.
So it all goes good.
Your parents probably did not give you the money.
Huh?
Your parents probably did not.
They didn't have the money.
Yeah.
Even if they wanted to, they couldn't, right?
No.
They couldn't give you no money.
To this day, I don't remember ever borrowing any money from my parents, you know?
Now, what year was this where you?
In 1964, probably.
Okay.
1964.
I'm guessing, around 1964.
Well, I know you said you were in, I remember you saying that you were at home in 63, because you remember when JFK was assassinated.
Oh, I remember that one, too.
I know right where I was at.
I was in front of a store at Mark 1, it was no longer there, it was called the Denman Grocery Store, Denman's.
And so, my dad had a 49 Chevy, he wouldn't let us listen to radio because he was afraid he'd run the battery down, it wasn't like it is nowadays.
So he goes in the store to get something.
Well, I turned the key on and listened to the radio, and when he'd come out, I'd turn it off.
Some things don't change, do they?
Nope.
But then, on the radio, when I had it on, a bulletin came on the radio saying that JFK had been assassinated.
And so, with that, I figured my dad was a news person, only on TV, that's all he watched was the news and the weather.
And I knew if I told my dad, went in and tell him, that would probably be okay in his book about turning the radio on.
Now, if he had come out and heard me listening to Elvis Presley, it might have been different.
So anyway, I walked in, a few men sitting around the old chairs and stuff talking, and Mr. Damon sitting on the countertop, nobody in there doing any grocery shopping.
And I walked in and I said, hey, President John F.K. just got shot, he was assassinated.
Everybody stood to their feet and that was the first news, probably with some other parts of the town.
But right there in that particular spot, I broke the news to them gentlemen in the store and they were very, of course, upset about it.
But I can remember the time, the place, and just exactly how it happened.
A lot of things I don't remember, but that I did.
A person could almost write a book about that, like what were you doing when you were, kind of like the 9-11 fire generator.
Yes, it is, you're right.
And as a young person, and I always tell him and my kids, grandkids too, that I was 16, but if you ask me about a president, I remember Eisenhower, but John F.K. was the first one that I really got me into noticing anything about a president.
You know, kids, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, but, and maybe a little different now because we have so much information out through everything, you know.
And I do remember too when he ran, and I'll say this, but Democrats even got a little bit upset, a lot of Democrats got a little bit upset when John F. Kennedy ran for president for one reason.
Why was that?
He was Catholic.
That's right.
Yeah.
Well, a Catholic hurt our country.
See, I'm looking, telling you what it was on the Protestants, those that were Protestant, that were Democrats.
It wasn't an outstanding issue, but it was one they thought about, whether they wanted him for president by him being a Catholic.
I think they were afraid we'd be ruled by Rome.
Yeah.
So, some of them things stick in your mind as a kid, you know, and I mean, I was young and it wasn't a big deal to me, but I always thought he was a pretty good president.
I've got a picture at home that lights up, it's ten frame, it's got light, him and her, side-by-side, beautiful picture, and it was them when they were young, when he first ran for president.
Sounds like you were a fan.
Yeah, kind of was.
Really, really.
It's kind of refreshing in a way when you think about it because so many people today don't really… Of course, you know, of course, I got a head on here that some people just automatically think that I was Republican, or I am a Republican, I said, no, I'm a kind of, for who I think I like the best, you know.
Sometimes I even split my ticket, you know, and sometimes I don't vote for nobody if I don't know them, so why should I vote for them?
Let somebody else handle that department, you know.
So that was kind of my theory on the voting part.
I like them, I vote for them, but I don't just go down through there and check, check, check, check, check.
I don't know them, let somebody else decide.
There's another, there's something that I find interesting that we're losing too, or that might have lost information, is different churches, because churches are such a community.
Like, dad was raised in a little church that no one even knows about anymore.
And it's not, it really wasn't even a little church, but it was a, the former, what did they call it?
They didn't really call it Assembly of God, but it was.
I remember it when it had a dirt floor.
Yeah.
Tell me a little bit, because I think that's an interesting little heritage.
As a matter of fact, if you go back, as we look at it now, women are just now, most people say women are just now getting to be kind of a leader and more into everything where it used to be felt like all men done everything, you know.
But if you look back and see, I mean, from my point of view, there was a lot of women that did things then, also.
And I remember the church that I went to, it, they built it as they went, and the last thing that went in was the floor, you know, they had sawdust on the floor.
The old church is still standing up barely.
But.
What did you call the church?
What did they call the church down there at Markhorn?
Did they call it the Pentecost church?
Most people then call it the Assembly.
The Assembly?
Yeah, you know.
But it was, it was kind of funny because I can remember as a child, my dad walking down a steep hill, because we didn't have a car at that time, with a string of kids, you know, he'd, I'd sat straddled to his shoulders, which I felt like I was gonna bump into the tree limbs and whatever, you know, but we'd go in, and I remember him very well talking about all, I didn't, I didn't even know her name, I just know her last name.
They called, of course, back then everybody was sister so-and-so, or brother so-and-so, even in the, doesn't matter what church, almost all of them, especially children, they would address people with brother or sister, you know.
So I didn't know some of their names, but she was the one that built the church, and her name was Poole, Sister Poole, and I remember it real clear that she was dead and gone.
I don't, and I can't even remember, I think I remember seeing her vaguely, but I remember her name real clear because I'd heard people talk about it, you know.
So she was the head of that particular church.
She was the one that actually.
The founder and the pastor.
The founder of it, yeah, and at one time there was a, supposedly the largest revival in Mark I was at that church.
You couldn't find a parking spot for blogs.
It was, there's another thing, women, I think it was two or three sisters came for this revival and they were good singers, and they drew a big crowd and they didn't have, they have, had an overflowing crowd for weeks.
You know, Bob Mooney remembers their names, I forgot what he said, but he can recall their names.
Who?
Those two old ladies that we were talking about.
Yeah.
I remember my dad and him talking about all this, and I can remember, you know, in my mind, as a kid, the church, and I can remember how people was walking, you'd think is walking to church, but they was walking from a long ways where they parked.
How long did these revivals last?
Some of them would go, in that particular one I couldn't say, but it was one of, I remember my dad talking, it was one of the, it was the longest lasting and one of the best that he said he had ever been in.
So you said weeks.
Weeks, yeah, sometimes five or six weeks.
Well, you know, the great, I think the longest revival was when they had the earthquake.
Actually, yeah.
In New Madrid.
It lasted over a year, yeah, there's actually a book out.
I want to get it.
It's kind of new, a scholarly book, and it's talking about that because it was the greatest fear during the Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening.
Because see, people took things more literally in the Bible, and they thought it was the end of time because of the great earthquake.
And so they say, what little I've read on it is that, what do you call that, the end?
Apocalypse?
Yeah, yeah.
And the tremors lasted for well over a year.
So every time they'd have a tremor, the earthquake could keep going on because people was thinking this is, locally they kept thinking this is the end of time and where can we?
And people was coming to church, getting saved and everything, and it was, I think it was a little over a year.
Now your father would have been too young for the earthquake.
No, no, he's just referring to the history.
No, I'm just referring to, historically you asked me on our church how long the revival lasted, but that was, I think, the longest one that they...
Did you have like a great grandfather during that time who lived through it?
No, actually my...
Yeah, probably.
I would say my...
It happened in the 20s.
I would say he was probably my grandpa.
They probably...
I think that's where all the revivals came from, even in this area, was that it's a second great awakening, if you've heard it historically.
We just, the people here, late people don't really refer to it as an era, but it was actually an era.
That's why most people here in the Madison and Bullinger County are evangelical Protestant because they come from that revival, as opposed to, say, Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, mostly old school Presbyterians.
You go to other countries, too, you didn't even hear anything about a revival, did you, until Billy Graham came along, of course, you know?
Right, right.
That was more of like a crusade of sorts.
Yeah, they did.
He was probably one of the first great known evangelists, you know, and to this day pretty well respected.
So, you talked a little bit about, when you came back to Fredericktown, minor lumber company, or minor...
The families.
Miner's lumber?
Yeah.
Yeah, when I came back to Frederick...
When I came back to...
I came back to Mark I, and then I worked a few years in Jackson, Missouri at a siding company.
And I did come up here, I worked for Rebels, and I worked for...
Didn't work for Giffords, but I worked for miners, and then I went to Jackson, that's what it was.
Okay.
So, yes, I worked over here, and I worked up in top of the courthouse when nobody wanted to get up there because there's so much manure up there with the pigeons.
You don't see pigeons anymore, do you?
Well, I'm sure they got that taken care of there, but I remember Cecil Faircloth...
There used to be tons of pigeons, I just forgot about that until you mentioned it.
Well, they had...
Even in my lifetime, I can remember pigeons being there.
Perhaps closed the openings.
They did, yeah.
Do you remember that too, right?
The pigeons?
Well, we didn't come down...
Oh.
No, they had...
Cecil Faircloth was running the miner's lumber company at the time, and Anne, his wife, she may be still living there.
Now, what year were you working up in the Dove Coat?
That would have been somewhere in 1970, probably 72.
Okay.
That was before...
Were you living on Saline Street or down at Marquand at that time?
On Saline Street.
Yeah.
So, I would have been born at that point, and Aaron must have just been born.
Yeah.
That's where you got your scar at.
On Saline Street.
And then, yeah, I worked over here at Miner's Lumber.
The hospital was in need of a cart to put over here.
Cecil came to me and said, Bill, could you build us a cart?
And he got me a picture.
All the other hospitals had money, they didn't.
And he says, we need this for when they have their little meetings and stuff.
And it was just a little cart.
And he showed me a picture, one stainless steel, it was gonna cost him, I don't know, $2,500 or something like that.
Pretty expensive.
Yeah.
But you could put ice in there and put different things in it, you know, and you could roll it around to wherever room you wanted it with all kinds of stuff in it.
Maybe desserts and a few things.
It was for the staff, kind of.
And he gave it to me, and he said, do you think you could build me one of them?
And I says, yeah, I probably can.
Well, we had the cabinet shopped down underneath.
I think there's a garage in there now.
And so I went down there and I built them one and did it all in for Micah.
It wasn't too many years ago.
I was at the hospital and I seen it still rolling around.
Was that at the Miners?
Yeah.
Where the police station is now?
Yeah.
I'm sorry, City Hall.
No, City Hall's there now.
And one thing I did know about it, on the corner of it now, I think, is it got Huffman on it?
Huffman lumber?
Yeah, I guess when they blasted the brick, the paint off of it, the sign came up.
I think it was Huffman's, but I'm not sure.
Did Huffman precede Miners?
Yes.
It would have had to because it had been painted over, see, instead of cleaned.
And I guess somebody cleaned it, and I seen the sign there.
It might not be Huffman's, but if you get a chance, when you go out of town that way, just look up over the top and you'll see it.
So I thought it was pretty neat, and then, yeah, Fredericktown's changed quite a bit since then.
What's the biggest change?
In Fredericktown?
Well, there's so many I probably couldn't remember.
I do remember I was working for Miners, and I was over at what they call the A&W.
On 67?
Over here by the cattle sale.
Oh.
A&W drive-in.
Now it's called a M&M, maybe, restaurant.
I was working there, and I was building a small barbecue building because they wanted to start barbecuing.
And I worked on that, and I had friends and some, maybe some not real close relatives, but people I knew that lived in Cobalt Village, and they was going to take the Cobalt Tower, smelting tower, whatever you call it, the big old, what was it, 500, 600 feet or up in the air.
It was smokestack.
Really?
Yeah, for the Cobalt mines, and they were getting tired of putting a light up there so it would warn the airplanes and stuff, you know, and the light would go out, and it cost them pretty good to take, and for them to go up and put a new light in it.
So they decided they would tear it down.
What year was that?
That would have been in about 72 or 73.
Oh, I didn't think I'd ever known about that.
Well, you know, and you probably don't, but do you know Kenny Lashley?
No.
I think he owns the property, or he did.
He lives here locally.
Yeah.
And so did they use the, how was this related to the AMW?
To the restaurant.
The barbecue.
The barbecue, I was working in it, and they had agreed to blast the tower because there was so much steel in it for it being so heavy and that big foundation footing under it.
The steel was probably two inches, and they'd have to blast, drill, blast, and then cut the steel.
And by it actually being balanced good and straight, as tall as it was, you had to weaken it in just one place for it to get to start going over, you know.
And so I watched for about three, four days while I was building over there.
I could, every now and then I'd hear them set off a charge to blow it down.
Oh, so you were saying you were building the barbecue area over there.
Yeah, and I was keeping track of them.
No, it was going on over the Cobalt Village.
Yeah.
So you talk about the changes, finally, I was being going, I'd run out, boy, I'd hear it go kaboom, kaboom, kaboom, real charges, boy, and I'd run out and look, stand there, nothing happened.
Got quiet.
So I'd go back in work, and so I just happened to be inside working on about the third or fourth day.
I heard some charges go off that this dude didn't want to quit.
They must have just really loaded it heavy, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom.
I ran outside and I thought, well, this ain't going to do no good because then it ain't going to fall in directly.
I could see it going like that.
And then when it hit the ground, like a big bomb hit it, it probably sunk in the ground 10 or 12 feet because it's so heavy.
Wow.
People in Cobalt Village, I think, could hear it.
And the dirt just rolled up just like they dropped a bomb over there.
I wish I'd had a video camera like you got now because that would really be a scene to show.
Wow.
Were there houses nearby?
No.
They fell out in the...
They was an old part of the old mine buildings or whatever it was there where the people worked in it and everything, but Kenny Lashley ended up buying all of that at one time over there.
I guess he may still have it.
That was one of the changes to me that I've seen that takes place in here, and I'll just kind of go through some as it come to my head.
One of the big changes, probably one of the big things that I miss seeing is when you start coming into town, you could see that smokestack up.
It wasn't in town, but one of the last things, too, that you could see in this area that disappeared was the Cotner Mountain Fire Tower.
And they took it down.
And that was there for years.
And another thing was when...
What time was it?
Mountain Dew Mission Church?
Any highway up on the hill?
That sort of in behind the Walmart used to be the drive-in theater.
What?
Didn't even know we had that in here.
Yes.
Had a drive-in theater.
First time I was ever at a drive-in was there.
Did someone local own it?
I'm assuming they did.
Wait.
Are you talking about the old Walmart or the new Walmart?
The old Walmart.
Yeah.
Okay.
The old Walmart.
There's some trailers.
It's behind Casey's.
Kind of where the senior citizens...
Behind Casey's and Walmart over in that area?
That's where the drive-in was, yeah.
And then you had...
What about the Pig Restaurant?
I know I've heard you talk about the Pig.
The Pig has been there ever since I was a kid.
Because when I think of Nikon, I think of the Pig being the icon.
It survived all these years.
Yeah.
It has.
It has.
And I guess in some ways you could say that about...
You said that the boy...
You guys used to drive up from Mark 1 and go out there to have burgers and shakes.
Load up and go to the movies over here and watch the movies and stuff.
Then you had the theater on the courthouse where it's on the corner there.
Of course, there used to be an old gas station set there.
Yeah.
Mobile station, I think it was.
And this beyond it, which is gone, used to be a real small hamburger joint about this size.
Cheapest hamburger in town.
That was good.
And where was this?
Right here.
Right here on the...
Before you get to the jail, you know where the police station is?
Well, not police.
I guess that would be...
The sheriff's office.
The sheriff's office, yeah.
That's where them cabins are at.
Okay.
That was a hamburger.
Understand?
There used to be one right in behind where that station used to be.
Do you remember the old Womack Hotel?
Was it right?
Oh, yeah.
I remember it.
And then I remember...
Do you know when that closed?
The motel?
The Womack?
No, I can't because like I said, I went and took a Greyhound bus from there.
They still coming in picking people up, you go pop or bluff wherever you want to go.
And they started shutting stuff down and through the years, it just kind of faded, you know?
But yeah, there was a lot of changes took place in this town, you know?
Now when they exploded the cobalt tower, is it still under the ground?
No, I imagine they busted it all up.
Okay.
They will say, you know, if I understand the history right and you're in here, so you can probably look it up.
But they did tell...
I always heard from some of the miners in town, which you guys just probably got pictures of them in different places.
A lot of people here, I got some of the whole crews, you know, with their pictures, like school pictures, and got a lot of the people here in town.
Some people I knew, some from Markwell and worked at the mines, but they had, when they so...
I heard when they built that tower that it was so high up there that, I don't know, no German or something that was doing the concrete work on it, laying the blocks and whatever spent because he did so big a job going all the way down and then going back up to finish his job.
He was getting so near to finish, he spent his last night on the wall up there, sleeping.
That's what I heard now.
Oh, you mean like he fell off the wall sleeping?
No, he didn't fall off.
No, instead of going down and having to go back up to finish, yeah.
He stayed up there.
Now, this is what I've heard from my Uncle Williams over here.
So whether that's true or not, there's a good possibility it probably was.
You heard that from your Uncle George?
Wow.
That would be...
And he was a climber, too.
So he was a little guy.
He was a climber.
And he climbed the trees on 51 when they built 51 Highway.
He was the number one climber.
And what they did, he'd climb up with a heavy rope to the top of the trees and tie it off.
And then the other guys would go to work with axes and picks, dig the dirt around the roots, cut the root on one side, and then take a team of mules and pull it over.
That was his job when they was working on the 51.
That's why it's so crooked.
It takes a special person to be able to do heights, I think.
Yeah.
And he was...
I remember my dad said he's like a little squirrel, so he would let me climb up the trees.
Do you know, if you were to ask me that question about what you think is different, even since the 70s, when I was on a five-year-old perspective, I would say it was that there was distinct villages, like Cobalt Village was a village, Mill Creek was a village, Frederick Town was the main resource, but I can remember going over at Cobalt Village where Reggie Starkey had his furniture, that was a great grocery store.
And I think there was one across from there, too.
I mean, they had two grocery stores over there, and at Mill Creek, well, you had the Spain's grocery was still going on even up until the late 80s, wasn't it, right down here in South Maine?
Yes.
But there was a lot of like little stores like that.
Well, you remember the little meat market you said over here, where now...
West.
Yeah, West.
Everybody had to go get their meat there, didn't they?
I know when I was over here on Saline Street, when you...
They had the best meat in town, I think, at that time.
Of course, we were IGA, you know, or no, it was Progerwood.
I remember IGA.
Maybe IGA, yeah.
Yeah, IGA.
But then it was worse, and then it was back to IGA.
There were so many changes, including the school that got burned.
You know, if you come down Main Street, you always see the school there.
Yeah.
Wasn't it?
Teentown up there.
Yeah, that's still there.
It's still there.
Yeah, but I mean, that was kind of gathering place, wasn't it?
Yes.
And that's the WPA project, too.
Oh.
Yes.
Those are the stones.
Yes.
And that rock wall.
But I was just thinking, like, now it's like it's Fredericktown.
But back in the day, Cobalt Village, Northtown, Minelmont, and— Catherines Place.
Catherines Place.
Yeah, I remember going over to Jim Darnell's house when we were little kids.
That was a place.
I mean, it was a community over there, whereas now it's like— Well, they had their own little schools.
Yeah.
Minelmont had their school.
Mill Creek had their school.
You know, everybody kind of had their own schools, and then they all consolidated it and just kind of put the town back in one instead of— Because Fredericktown R1 is the only school district in the county.
And you tell somebody.
And Cobalt Village was a nice little town even in the 70s.
It was a cute little village, like— What's the name of the little town over here next to us here?
Junction City.
Huh?
Junction City.
You can tell people sometimes—you talk to kids and ask them if they know where Junction City is.
They can't tell you.
You know, a lot of people just don't know that Junction City—they've never heard of it.
And Northtown.
And it's right at your back door.
It is.
And I think Todd mentioned the other day, which I thought was real interesting, I was asking him about a certain—I told you about that earlier.
The Pierce Grape—you know, the Catholic Cemetery at Village Creek, there's those two mausoleum—well, the one family we know of— Schulte.
Schulte Lane.
You know, the Schultes have one.
But then the other one, Pierce, who are they?
And he says, oh, I think they were here because of the mines.
I think it was one of the miner—you know, because of the mines.
He says, Roy, Brother Town, today, you think of it as a poorer community, but he says it wasn't poor in the 20s.
It was a prosperous place with the mines.
Yes.
You've got Marvin College and stuff, and I'm thinking, wow.
Yeah.
College.
Oh, wow.
You know?
Colleges seem like—well, they was like the schools.
Instead of going way off at one or two in the state, you had them in locations you could get to without being so expensive.
And Marvin's College was Methodist-based, it was a Methodist private college.
And you can tell that there was money in it because of the—the gem is still there.
Yes.
You can see it's those granite.
Is that granite rock?
I mean, that's expensive.
Yes.
That's probably why they haven't torn it down, because it would be foolish, too.
You know?
At least that place.
But I mean, that's like some—somebody had some old money in there, and it was before the Depression.
The 20s was a lot of money.
Well, it's like when I worked for miners over here, this little—you know the history on Judge Welker, the old Judge Welker that used to be here?
No, I don't.
Did you know?
You know Castle Welker?
Castle Welker, yeah.
His brother.
He was Judge here.
Right, let me see.
You go past the post office, and then there's a gas station that's closed up right here on the corner.
Yes.
That next Bricks House there.
That used to have two big pillars in the front on this end before the gas station was there.
The gas station might have been there, but I think that was put on before it was.
It might have at one time been a vacant lot to the house.
But I think that was— That house is an historic house.
I think that's— The Civil War Museum now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No.
The Civil War Museum house is cutting corner to what Dad said.
Yeah, it's the one you're talking about by the ice cream place, right?
The one that's kind of by where Hansman Funeral used to be?
Yeah.
Yes.
Oh, okay.
There's one there.
And that used to have a porch on it with big columns.
And I remember tearing that down, and I found an old pistol inside of it because they just threw stuff in it to fill up the—you know, they was about this big.
And at that time— Do you still have it?
I never thought of it.
No, I don't.
I sure don't.
Now, that picture up there, I had one like that from Michigan I found in a construction site.
I just took it back all the way to Marquette, Michigan for historic reasons.
See all those people, only they—they was a CCC camp.
And they was set up, and they had ten big tents, and all of the guys was in rotation.
There's four rows of them.
And on the back, if you turned it over, it had all their names, first and last names, that they had signed in rotation.
And so I took it all the way to Marquette, Michigan, and gave it to the museum up there.
I bet they were delighted to have it.
It was in 1933.
What's a CCC camp?
CCC camp, it was a special group that they gave jobs to.
It was one of the New Deals, a New Deal—you know, the Roosevelt New Deal program.
Most of them looked like they were probably in their teams.
Like there's a T—what is it—the TWA—there's WPA, which you mentioned, and then there was the T—one was where they were—you know, you hear a lot about it—where they were hiring the young guys.
They would go out and build like a lot of our lakes, like Lake of the Ozarks was one of those projects.
Some of their power, the power—you can see that in Old Brother We're Out There, right?
And then you—and then the CCC was another kind of a New Deal project.
All they carried when they had a picture taken, they had a chopping axe, a pick, a shovel, and a Kaiser blade.
That was to just clean brush—that's when they was draining the swamps in Michigan.
A Kaiser blade.
Yeah, that's the thing you cut brush with.
It's pretty heavy, but it was wicked on brush.
You didn't have to use an axe.
It's too tough to use a sickle, you know, stuff like that, but it was a blade that was made with a hook on it, and it was sharp, and when you swing it, it just wiped the brush off.
I bet you that'd take your leg right off.
It's called a Kaiser blade, you know, if you're buying antiques, if you know what to look at, it's called a Kaiser blade.
It was—I found that in a construction shop when I was about 20 years old, and I saved it, and I found a few pieces in dumpsters that we know good history has been thrown away.
A lot of good history has been thrown away.
Did you find it in Michigan, or did you find it in Missouri?
No, I found it in Davison, Michigan.
Wow.
No, Lapeer.
Lapeer.
Lapeer, Michigan.
Good picture, just like that one, and you can see their faces.
One guy had a black eye, I guess they got in a fight.
When you—any photograph you got, if it was worth taking a picture, it's worth putting a date in the person's name on it.
Totally, totally.
And a picture is no good if it don't have a person's name on it.
But you know, history is great, and it's had—we've thrown a lot of it away.
We're going to have a problem with our future with pictures, because everything's online.
Or letters.
And letters, too.
No.
You just said that the other day.
You said, when was the last time anybody ever wrote me a letter?
If I was a teacher now, and I'm not very smart, I said, somewhere in there I would be telling these kids, you know what we're going to do, we're going to have any of you ever wrote a letter to someone, and they would all say, of course not, why should we, right?
I'd say, okay, I'm going to bring some paper, and I'm going to get some envelopes and some stamps, and we're going to assign each one of you to write someone that you know that's very dear to you a letter.
And nothing else, just tell them how much you love them, miss them, whatever.
And let them mail that letter to someone, so they can say they wrote a letter.
We talked about this in grade school, because if the pictures are all online, your letters are all email or text or whatever, Facebook, social media, we're going to lose segments of information.
The clock.
Yeah.
Like, right now you've got all this junk, and you're like, oh, I've got all this stuff.
But at least you've got stuff.
But it's kind of getting at you thinking, like, well, where is anything?
Because like, you know, now you can go look, and I was asking at early in the day, that's my other aunt, my other side of the family, like, where is, talking about recipes, I lost my grandma's recipe.
She says, oh, I found it in a bunch of stuff.
So see, that's how you can find things.
But yeah, well, before we end this, I would like to talk about what courage it took for you to leave Marquand, and well, you lived on Salim too, and go across the ocean, and that's pretty much your home nine months out of the year.
You want to tell us a little bit about how, what led you to do that?
Well, I tell you what, it all starts when I was sitting in the classroom in Marquand in eighth grade, and I was listening to people like Tracy Tidwell, who used to be Bryson, Doc Bryson's daughter was my social studies teacher.
And anyway, we were, you know, you open up the history book, and you look at all these places, and then world geography with Ms. Shirley Gilmore, you probably know her, and she was also my social studies teacher, and you look, and you go, I'm from this little town, little Missouri, dad probably feels the same way, you know, a little place, and like, man, I could go anywhere in the world, and that's when my decision was way back then, I wanted to go someplace, and travel, and experience, and I liked experiencing different cultures, and I was always attracted to different people, and how they did things.
And I think that the first, you know, I left here first year, we went to North Dakota for my first college experience, dad and mom drove me up there, and then it was from there to college in Springfield, and then from Springfield.
I went to college with a couple that were from Guam, that would be Pastor Ray's brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and he was going to seminary, and she was going to finish her undergrad with me, and they were like non-traditional students, so they were like mom and dad's age, so they were like, all of us kids, I was like, why don't you guys go to Saipan with us, and work?
They had a Christian missionary school, it was teaching the natives of the island, and I was like, why not, I'm like 22, that's like something fun to do, you know, it's like, it's like something to do, they gave us a minimal salary, which was fun, it was a missionary type salary, it was kind of like if you were, you know, if you were a nun or a, you know, back in the Catholic Church, you'd probably get assigned to do stuff, you don't really care about the midwives, they're taking care of you.
And anyway, went out there, I taught third grade for two years, and then I was already finished with that assignment, because I really wanted to go on into a career, and then someone said, Rory, we're going to, the natives, I remember specifically, said, Rory, why don't you stay, and I was like, sure, so they hired me to be a teacher, and I really fell in love with it, it's like, you know, I've lived there now, up and off for 25 years, so I've lived there about as long as I was living here, so half my life has been there, I could pretty much say about half, so when people start talking about, do you miss home, in some ways, my home's over there, it's kind of a weird thought, and dad's been there, and he liked it, dad said he'd go back if it wasn't so much the fire or the flame trip, you know, it gets a little uncomfortable.
Yeah, it is long ways over. 25 hours.
And you know what's really funny, as far as that is, completely halfway across the globe, I still run into people from Missouri and from this town.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
Small, small world is this.
I ran into a person that was raised on the Bloomfield Road, that was, he's a Francis Mullerman, is that right, the Mullerman, with the Francis family, and then I met the former pastor's son from the Methodist Church, Brian Larson, anyway, something like that, Leslie, Leslie, anyway, it was funny because we were at the beach with my friends, they're all natives from the island, these white guys come up, the girls were flirting with them, and you know how it is, and they were, they're military, and I said, where are you guys from, and one guy says, I'm from southeast Missouri, and I said, we're in southeast Missouri, and he says, oh, a little town called Fredericktown, and I'm like, are you kidding me, and we knew, we knew everybody.
Now have you taught all different grades?
Started with grade school, third grade and fourth grade, I've taught sixth grade, dad came out one year, and he helped me, and his ex-wife and their family, they helped me get Christmas set up, remember the, we had a big Christmas performance, they just came over and volunteered, and they put the big Christmas decorations up, and their Christmas decorations over there is not like ours, it's turtles, dolphins, instead of deer and sheep and stuff, it's turtles, like they're big lights out on the road, just for like, for lighting along the highway, they have turtles and dolphins, and most people, they're Catholic, so a lot of their traditional decorations would be much like if you're over at St.
Michael's or something, but as far as like, he's saying like, you know, you put the Santa Claus hat on a shark or something, and decorating, they have traditional Christmas trees, but sometimes they'll just decorate their coconut tree, or their, we'll take banana leaves and make it a greenery, it's actually very pretty, you know, you use what you got.
One thing that I remembered that you had told me, and I don't even remember when I met you, like 2009 or something, but you said the ELLs, children learning English over in Saipan, had to buy their books, and they treasured them more, you know.
Right, and I think probably the story I was talking about was when I was in the Philippines, especially the Philippines, because it's not, at least Saipan is under the United States umbrella, we get federal funding and we get help and stuff, the Philippines is out by itself, and that's probably what I was talking to you about.
I went to this one family's house, up in rural parts of the Philippines, and I remember looking at the boy who was copying his book, his textbook, and he just copied word for word, because they had a book they had to share, and I said, so what are you doing, you're doing homework, it's so early.
It was like four in the afternoon, they had to get their work copied because it gets dark at six, they have no electric, so they don't have any lights after dark, you can't see.
So I felt sorry for him for that, and then I looked at the book, and then there was termites, the termites get in the book and there's little holes in the book because of the termites, because it's paper.
So yeah, you start appreciating a lot what we have when we see surplus of books, like even in this room, you know, surplus, and you know, it's kind of, it's a blessing.
Yeah I'd say when he was in the fourth grade, I'd go to these yard sales, and you know these people get these from McDonald's, these little, all the little trinkets and stuff, but they're brand new, they don't even use them, they're still in the package a lot of the time.
I'd go around to the yard sales and buy all the little stuffed animals and stuff, and put it in a great big box and ship it over there, and then he'd take it and to give them incentive to do good, he'd give them a choice of their toy or whatever, and they'd stick it all in there.
And old encyclopedias, that's it, you could sell for like two dollars at a yard sale, they would put on book rate and they'd send it over, you sent me one.
And then I'd have a resource set for my classroom, you know, of course now we have internet, but still they still need, still like a traditional set there for a resource, you know.
What you like about this?
What I like about oral history coming from my perspective as an international teacher, coming from the Ozarks, my name by the way is Rory Starkey, if that's not on the record, is the oral history is a primary source, and it can never die, whereas if somebody is retelling a story, it is now a secondary source, which is still important but not as priceless as the primary source.
So oral history, even though it's coming from a different perspective and coming from a different time period, it's still, it's fresher, it's coming from the mindset and it could be, it's honest whether if a person is upset, whether if they're talking about their enemy or talking about their best friend, it's still their perspective.
And so what I like about oral history on that level, the other reason why oral history is very important, why I think it's important for the Ozarks, is we have a lot of elders that were not literate, and so they did not write like my grandma, dad's mom, sad to say she was not literate, but she's got all these wonderful stories, but she died with not having little letters laying around, probably like, say my other grandma who was literate, but you know, it's, so sometimes what happens with local history is just like global history is you only hear the perspective from the educated and from the top class.
We have that problem here locally.
You only hear it from certain families, which I'll not say because I don't want to sound like I'm being offensive in any way, but they have, even in our own family, our extended Starkey family, you'll have certain information coming from certain Starkeys.
Well, one reason, because we have cousins that were seminary, they were ministers from the Methodist Church or they were, we have one of our good relatives like Basil Starkey.
He was an educator, you know, so he's got a lot of, you remember Miss Juanita Starkey, the late Juanita Starkey?
Anyway, she was my first kindergarten teacher.
The thing is, so they have, they were able to write, they were able to communicate.
People were willing to listen to them, but then you get somebody that feels a little inadequate, like my grandpa, dad's dad was a very quiet person in the sense that he didn't get out and wasn't smoking.
You can go talk to him, he's a one-on-one, but if he didn't get that story, and he probably felt awkward sharing it, so sometimes what happens is those stories are lost, when actually those stories are probably more valuable.
It's just coming from a different perspective.
He's telling you how he built the building, or the other person's telling you how they paid for the building.
There's two good stories there, but they just have to be on two different perspectives, and so if we're not careful, history can be written down on a social economics standpoint, and we leave it out.
Whoever's writing the book sometimes will put what they want in there, and the people that actually did, it's name is never mentioned.
In some cases, it's in their we.
We did this, we did that, but who is we?
I do get concerned about that, because when you do go and help do that, I worked at Imperial on a lot of those houses up there, in Kimswick, and some of them old houses, we've redone.
Like the Blue Owl, for example.
The Blue Owl.
You've heard of the Blue Owl?
Yeah, okay.
It's an icon.
Me and my brother-in-law did that, and so when you talk about that, then you talk about the ones that actually is involved in that up there, it's we built the Blue Owl, but who was we?
So when you get to this, the person that's writing it may be someone who's never done any kind of carpenter work or anything, and it's we built that.
It's kind of like ancient history.
It's the pharaohs and the Egyptians, or sorry, the pyramids built in the Egyptians.
The Egyptians didn't build those pyramids unless they were the low caste.
It's probably pretty much proven it was the Israelites that were the slaves that probably built those pyramids, but we're not, it is between here and over there, but it wasn't the pharaohs.
They were, that was their pleasurable monument, and so it's kind of what, if we're not careful, we go out in history, and then also we allow, then that becomes the history book is teaching the lesson instead of people teaching the lesson, and that's kind of, as a historian, I get upset with because, okay, here's your history lesson, put a history book down, and then people start building their opinions based on that.
Frederick Town in the Civil War has an interesting history because we were attacked by the North, and a lot of people who were sympathizers to the South were very mistreated, and this town was hit harshly by that.
I don't think that they were necessarily sympathizers as they were victims because they got in the crossfire.
So what I'm saying is sometimes when you hear people talk about, for example, waving the rebel flag, even today, people make that as a racist issue.
It can be, but I also like to tell people what perspective, because it was just dad's grandpa was born during the Civil War, and they were refugees.
They fled over to Illinois.
Not very many people know that.
I found that out through the land grants, because the deal is that later on, that story is being told that it's not that long ago, and people have, while they hated the Union, they didn't hate the Union because they hated the country, they hated that their uncle got killed in a horrible way, or that their cows were all slaughtered and they were starving.
That's why there's hate, so they could be a Southern sympathizer, not in the sense that they're unpatriotic because they were victims.
And this also happened on the other side of it, too, where the Southerners did the same thing to the Northerners.
So it's kind of like, I always try to tell you, oral history is important.
You're getting the insides of what it was like on their perspective.
You can disagree with them, but at least you've got to understand where is their perspective coming from.
And to hear their own story, I'm reminded of a line from Hamilton, who lives, who dies, who tells your story, so get your own story out there.
They say usually the one who wins the war is the one telling the story, not the victims.
And then you wonder why these people are hating these people.
I learned a lot when I was in the Middle East, when I was working in archaeology, because you'll hear on TV, and a lot of Americans will watch TV, it doesn't make sense to them when they watch the news.
And they come up with their own conclusion.
When I'm over there, I'm learning these are all tribes, they're tribes, and they don't get along.
It doesn't have anything to do so much with religion, it doesn't have so much to do with politics or nations, it has to do with tribes.
And you can actually tie it into the biblical tribes, because you can tie it into what happens even here.
You know, different families don't get along sometimes, because they live under the same town in the same state.
So a lot of it has to do with perspectives, and that's kind of what I like about the oral history, because wow, I never learned it from that perspective before.
And if you totally are not even a part of them, you could be a different race, a different culture, a different age.
I try to tell my students, when you listen to your grandparents, you've got to listen to them in the context of where they come from.
You can't, like Dad was saying, I told, you know, you wouldn't think it would be wise for a 16-year-old to go out and get married.
You'd think it's the most foolish thing in the world.
The dumbest thing they could do.
But I bet you you knew a lot of women back in the day that got married at 16 years old, or men, you know.
And you can go now to looking at that, and as a matter of fact, I just told Jackie he's 17.
My little brother.
And I told Jackie, didn't I, today, before I left, I said, Jackie, you are 17, and you're a little boy.
I said, I was already on my own working for some time when I became 17, and I said for me to look back and see where, and I look at it now, and I look back, I can't believe some of the things that's happened to me and where I've been, prior to 16, some places that I've been and done and even married, I wouldn't have never thought I would have done something like that.
But on the other hand, I just told somebody the other day, they said, you know, what would you do over again if you could do it all over?
I said, you know what, I really don't think of very few things I would do over.
Because I've had a good enough life, and everything has, I guess you'd call it, transpired for me that I would not be able to change it much.
For me to say, well, I wish I was rich, or I wish something, I said I can't.
Because I said, I look at some people that's famous, that has got a lot worse life than I got, people that's multi-millionaires is worse than me, I know little kids that's two years old that will never see a life that I've had, because they'll never, never be able to walk or do for themselves.
So to me, age has got nothing to do with it.
It's the quality that you have in life.
That's my opinion.
It's like, speaking apples and understanding as oranges, because unless you've actually tasted one or been around it, because it's like when I teach in Saipan, I could talk about apples, going out and getting apples from an apple tree, they have no clue.
But then at the same time, I could talk to my students down at Marquand or Futterton when I was subbing, and say, they have to find it so interesting to find out what it's like to go out and get a banana from a tree in the backyard.
So it's like you've got your, it's both fruit, two different places, two different ways, it cannot even grow in the two different climates.
But we've all experienced it, if you get one at the grocery store.
But that's kind of what I'm looking at about oral history, and I just think there's a lot of history that is lost.
It really makes me sad when I go through and I see a lot of it being lost.
And even in my lifetime, people will, when I hear somebody in my clan, in my Starkey clan, that'll say to me, oh, well, that's a different Starkey.
You're not related to them.
And I go, oh, yes, we are.
Why at one point?
We are, you know, it goes back about 200 years, but yeah.
And I'll explain it to them.
And I know what I got in my head.
And I've done the research.
And so, but the sad thing is, you've got people that are disowning people, they don't even know what they're saying.
It's like, and I actually closures him.
Yeah.
And I told, I actually told a POG, a person from the POG family last week, which is, oh, we're not related to those people.
I said, can you prove it?
No.
And you can't say you're not related to them until you can prove it to me.
Like if you said your family immigrated from Indiana and their family immigrated from North Carolina.
Tennessee or whatever.
Yeah.
Okay.
Then we can kind of go, but you don't know if you're great, great grandparents or brothers and they moved here together and they married two different wives and they just didn't, again, a lot of people didn't keep written document.
They were too busy.
You can't keep written records and be all chilling a field.
Well, I think we have some good information.
Okay.
Thanks for inviting us over.
Yeah.
Enjoy it.
I knew you'd have a good story.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. you you