MORNINGS ON MAPLE STREET VOLUME TWO
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Odell McDuffey & Sam Stillman, Page Two

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Odell McDuffey, 1960. Photo provided by family.

Edited interview with Lee Riley Welch (LW), stepson of Odell McDuffey. Interview conducted by Joe Manning (JM) on May 21, 2010.

JM: What did you think of the photo?

LW: There's no doubt it's him. His father died at an early age, so I'm sure he had to work when he was pretty young.

JM: The picture is in the Library of Congress.

LW: That's something he would have liked to have known, I'm sure.

JM: What year were you born?

LW: 1928. He married my mother when I was seven years old. My mother and my real father had divorced when I was three years old.

JM: Was he called Odell, or Collins, his first name?

LW: Odell. It was kind of a funny thing. He had a brother named Othell, a sister named Adelle, and my mother's name was Maedell. That's a bunch of Dells.

 

JM: What was he like as a stepfather?

LW: He was one of the finest fellows I ever met. We fished together; we hunted together. We lived out at my grandmother's for a while. She had a great big home in Wichita Falls. She was by herself. We had a big garden, and he and my mother would come home in the evening from work, and we'd all go out and work in the garden.

JM: What did he do for a living?

LW: When he was younger, he managed the tire department for Sears Roebuck for about 30 years. He owned his own tire store in later life.

JM: How far did he get in school?

LW: He went through high school and one year of business college. He was very sharp, and an awful good salesman. He was a very down-to-earth fellow.

JM: What do you miss about him?

LW: Fishing with him. When I was about 11 or 12, we used to put out trotlines and fish on weekends. We'd run a trotline across the Red River in Wichita Falls, and when the water would get too deep for me, I'd wrap my legs around his waist, and we'd go on across the deep part.

JM: That must have been a little scary.

LW: Well, I was with him, so it wasn't scary to me.

JM: Where did you live when you were growing up?

LW: We lived on 2235 W. Virginia Street. At that time, it was a dirt street, all the way out from town. The WPA came out there once and built a bridge across Holiday Creek. It was four lanes wide and 60 yards across.

JM: I have a record that Odell lived at 3211 Cumberland Avenue.

LW: That was an apartment right across the street from a drugstore. We lived there about 10 years, and then he and my mother finally bought their own home. That was on North 10th Street.

JM: You told me that he played baseball.

LW: He played for the Panhandle Oil Company, in the Texas League. He was a pitcher. He had a catcher named Tank Horton, who went on to play for the St. Louis Cardinals. In later years, I knew Tank Horton, because after he retired from baseball, he came back to Wichita Falls and owned a bar. I was in there with my stepfather on lots of occasions. Tank told me that my stepdad was the best knuckleball pitcher he ever saw in his life. He said he could've competed with anybody. Back in those days, Odell would play ball three or four nights a week, and a pitcher can't do that. So he eventually threw his arm away and had to give up the game. Tank told me he would walk out on the pitcher's mound before a ballgame and wet his finger and hold it up, and if that breeze was coming from the catcher toward the pitcher, he would say, ‘The batters are gonna have a bad night tonight.' When Odell got to throwing that knuckleball into the wind, it was tough to hit.

JM: How big was he?

LW: About 5' 11", and he weighed about 175 pounds. He was very athletic.

JM: After he stopped playing, did he continue to be a baseball fan?

LW: Oh, yes. He was a St. Louis Cardinals fan, because of Tank Horton. They were friends a long time. Tank was at his funeral.

JM: He lived to be 81. Was he in pretty good health most of his life?

LW: He was in pretty good health up to when my mother had a stroke and passed away. After that, he kind of went down pretty fast. Living by himself didn't help. Eventually we had to put him in a nursing home. After we got him in the nursing home, we learned that three checks he had written to a local store couldn't be cashed because the bank wouldn't honor them. They said it was because his signature was so bad.

I told him, "We got a problem, Papa. The bank won't honor your signature, because you don't write worth a damn anymore.' He kind of laughed and said, ‘Well, that's the truth.' I knew him better than most people, and I knew he worshipped my wife, Ruby. So I told him I had a suggestion. ‘Why don't you let me go to the bank and get a bank card and you sign it and let Ruby sign it, and any checks you need to write, she can write them for you.' And he said, ‘That's a great idea.' Now if I had said, ‘You let me sign the checks for you,' that wouldn't have been worth a damn. But he thought the world of my wife, and she wound up writing his checks till he passed away.

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Odell and Maedell McDuffey, 1963. Photo provided by family.

Excerpts from my interview on June 18, 2010, with Kathy Moyers, great-niece of Odell McDuffey.

"The photograph was amazing. I shared it with my grandchildren, and they were all excited. For me personally, it was an enriching experience, because I didn't have much knowledge of his early life. Uncle Odell was my father's uncle. We saw him every time we went to Wichita Falls. He was just a very dear man."

"I had no idea that he was selling newspapers when he was six years old. It's a tragedy we had to put kids to work, but from a philosophical standpoint, it's an example of how, in our American culture, we can persevere, and even bad experiences can strengthen us. He ended up being a very successful businessman, and very self-assured."

"He was one of my favorite relatives. I admired him because of the stories that my father shared about him. My father never really knew his father, who was an oil field worker. He married my grandmother when she was very young, and my father was born when my grandmother was only 16 years old. They lived in sort of a tent city. They separated when my father was very young. So I think that Odell was the closest male role model he had. He used to take my father fishing a lot when he was growing up."

"Uncle Odell was sort of a man's man. He was very self-sufficient. He loved to fish, and he'd take his beer with him. As he aged, I continued to visit him. I think I was in my mid-thirties the last time I went to see him. It was hard for him to walk, and he stayed mostly in his bedroom. He had a small refrigerator, a hydraulic chair and a TV. When he was in pain, he would ask me to go get his whisky, and he would pour himself a shot. I am sure he was not an alcoholic, but he was a drinker."

"My fondest memory was when he took us to his Firestone dealership to show us his inventory of tires, which included those huge tractor tires. Just walking through that store and smelling the new rubber; that still brings back memories. Whenever I smell new tires, I always think of Uncle Odell. He was full of life and full of stories. He would bring out his scrapbooks and picture albums and share them with me. When he was bedridden in his last years, I would call him to see how he was doing, and he would say, ‘I'm just layin' here dying.' He had a great sense of humor, and he was a joy to have in the family."

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Odell McDuffey, date unknown. Photo provided by family.

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Odell McDuffey, 1913. Photo by Lewis Hine.

Continue to story of Sam Stillman, including more photos, and an interview with Sam's son

joe@sevensteeples.com 

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