Dub West's First Year as a Teacher

Many area residents know Dub West as a local historian without knowing much about his background. Here is part of the story of his early life before he arrived in Muskogee.

His parents were Adam Clark and Selena West. He was their first child. Though Texans for most of their lives, Dub was born in 1908 while his parents lived briefly in New Mexico.

Dub always went by the initials "C. W." Because his father often went by the name of Clark, the family referred to Dub by his middle initial. The "C." in Dub's name likely stood for Clark, but Dub always denied it. He perpetuated the use of Clark by giving it to his own son.

He spent most of his early life in the Texas panhandle where his father operated a furniture store or worked as a brick contractor in Floydada before the Great Depression wrecked so many careers and lives.

Dub graduated in 1930 from West Texas State Teachers College located in Canyon City. He and his young wife lived in a room on Fifth Avenue their last year in college. The rent was twenty dollars a month. Their room was in the floored attic with exposed rafters in the William Reid residence.

At the end of the summer, Dub began his teaching career in a rural schoolhouse in the Texas panhandle. The school's name and exact location is now lost. All that describes it is that it stood on prairie land along the Canadian River north of Amarillo.

One subject Dub taught was algebra. Yet, he found the school textbook more advanced than the one semester of algebra he studied in college. Therefore, he studied ahead each night in order to be a couple of lessons ahead of his two students, a boy and a girl. Dub was proud that these two told him at the end of the year that he was the best math teacher they ever had.

Kids usually become restive during a school day. Being cooped up in a single classroom was often over whelming. On fair weather days, however, Dub's students had a natural Texas outlet. After wolfing down their lunches, and sometimes during their meals, the children tried to out yell the prairie dogs that lived close by. Of course, the prairie dogs stood on the tops of their mounds and chattered more and more loudly.

Dub settled into the teaching routine well. So, too, did the students for the most part. As April Fool's Day approached, some of the children decided to test Dub one more time. At last, they decided to skip school on April Fool's Day. Being hesitant, one of the pupils approached their teacher and asked him what would he do.

His answer was firm. "I'll expel the student that cuts class," he said. Sensing a revolt near at hand, Dub proposed that if the students came to class and stayed until the noon bell, he would let all of them go on a picnic on the Canadian River during the afternoon. Both teacher and pupil enjoyed the picnic.

At the beginning of summer in 1931, Dub and his wife left the Canadian River school and returned to Floydada, Texas. Dub lived and worked with his parents until the following school year started. That summer, Dub purchased his first automobile, a Chevrolet.

Museum Digitizing Interviews

Alexander Hamilton Mike, Jr. was born in the Creek community surrounding the Union Agency now atop Agency Hill west of Muskogee. His birth occurred, he said, in 1874.

When Dub West interviewed Mr. Mike in September 1973, his voice showed the weakness of advanced age. Despite his low volume, A. H. could recall events and people from the earliest days of Muskogee's history.

Since 1860, man has been interested in recording the human voice. Mr. A. H. Mike was among the first persons Dub West recorded for posterity. Dub recorded nearly two hours of Mr. Mike's recollections.

Mike's interview is among the more than 180 discussions Dub recorded. He began in 1970 and continued recording on audiotape for nearly two full decades. His interviewees were all born before 1924. Mr. Mike, for example, was nearly 100 years old when Dub interviewed him.

Dub West sought out many long-time residents to interview. While most lived in the Muskogee area, he did not limit himself to the immediate area. He also sought out knowledgeable people in McIntosh and Cherokee Counties. Though West conducted interviews year round, he visited informants more between late winter and summer.

Following Dub West's death in 2001, the family donated the collection of interviews to the newly established Three Rivers Museum. The museum duplicated many of the tapes for preservation purposes years ago.

Developments in technological areas, however, mean today's audiocassette tapes are a dying recording media. Realizing this, the staff and volunteers have begun the process of digitizing these audiocassettes for the long-term future.

The process necessitate that each tape be played on a tape player that is connected to a computer. The computer used a recording program to re-record the stories digitally.

After this comes more steps before the interviews will be of much use to historians. Transcriptions of an interview are necessary, too. Such transcriptions point to accounts of an individual, place or event that historians will want to study.

The Three Rivers Museum has an offer for you. If you have a taped recording of an area resident, you may bring the cassette tape to the Three Rivers Museum. Then the museum will create a digital file for you to take home on the flash drive. There will be no charge for this service.

All the museum asks is that you allow it to retain a copy of the recording in order to expand the museum's collection. You get the added benefit of seeing that your relative's voice lives on in an institution dedicated to preservation of area history.