Harry Noret Evins (1885 - 1960)

Grandad Evins would take me fishing at Wolf Creek. We usually would catch a mess of bluegill perch and some catfish. I loved spending the afternoon with him along the creek bank under the shade of the cottonwood trees listening to the bull frogs sing. Grandad would tell me Indian legends and whittle willow branches into Indian flutes and we would play their music. At the end of the day we would clean the fish and fry them up over a fire and eat fried potatoes and fish. More stories were told around the campfire as the sparks drifted up into the starry night sky.

Grandad Evins was a lay preacher and literally built one church in Perryton (Nazarene I think) and helped found another called The People's Chapel. Both are no longer standing. I rode with he and grandmother to more than one "tent revival" in Oklahoma and Kansas. I found the revivals to be strange and somewhat frightening. The tents were among the trees and at night lit by lanterns. There was always an organ with loud gospel signing. The crowds under the tents were closely packed, the air was cloying and hot. People "witnessed" and spoke in nonsensical words and writhed and danced. If I got too close, someone would try to put their hands on my head. So for the most part the children stayed outside of the tents and chased fireflies.

Grandad Evins was a Texas dryland wheat farmer near the Oklahoma panhandle from about 1920 until the 1950s. We lived in his farmhouse until I was about 5 years old. One year the wheat crop in that part of the country was so extraordinary that the grain elevators were filled and the farmers were making mountainous piles of wheat on the brick streets of Perryton. Every day longer the wheat was in the field, they risked losing the crop to fire, hail, wind or rain, so once the seed ripened and dried, it had to be thrashed and stored.

Grandad Evins said that as a boy he accompanied his father on trading trips with the Kiowas and he knew many Indian folklore stories and legends. They purchased ponies in the villages with silver dollars and sold them in New Orleans. Grandad Evins knew where the villages and encampments had been and where to look for flint arrow points, spear points, scrappers, and grinding stones. I don't recall seeing pottery shards though. I have a tooled silver neckerchief slide that he said he traded for.