Well, I’m proud to be... ‘True’ or ‘transplanted,’ Okies celebrate Muskogee

By D. E. Smoot
Phoenix Staff Writer

April 13, 2008 10:09 pm

— Jim Childress is an Arkansawyer who became an Okie when he was just 12 years. old.
The 72-year-old Muskogee resident moved with his family from Bigelow, Ark., a small town alongside the Arkansas River about 40 miles northwest of Little Rock, to the Choska Bottoms near Porter during the late 1940s.
After Childress graduated from Porter High School, where he played basketball and other sports, he went to work in the aerospace industry. He worked for Douglas Aircraft Co. in Tulsa before joining the armed services, getting out and moving to Muskogee, where he decided to try his hand as a salesman.
After a short stint selling classified advertising for the Muskogee Phoenix, Childress said he ventured into car sales. After getting a feel for the business in Muskogee, Childress went to work in Tulsa.
“I went out to conquer the world,” Childress said of his years as a car salesman. “After I did that, I came back to Muskogee — I’ve always loved it here.”

Better opportunities brought Childress family to Oklahoma
Jim Childress grew up as one of three sons of an Arkansas farming family.
He remembers the clear streams in which he used to fish and the pine trees that towered above the landscape of Ouachita National Forest just east of his childhood home in Bigelow, Ark.
“It’s just small town,” Childress said of his hometown where his grandfather worked as a blacksmith. “But man, those pine trees were big and the streams were clear — fishing and swimming was great.”
At age 12, Childress had to trade in those spring-fed Arkansas streams for muddy Oklahoma farm ponds at age 12, when his parents pulled up roots and moved to Porter. Childress said the move came on the heels of similar moves made by other relatives.
“It was just a bunch of family following family,” Childress said about his parents’ decision to move to Oklahoma. “They were all looking for better opportunities.”
As a son of a farmer, Childress said he did his fair share of picking and chopping cotton on the family farm in the Choska Bottoms, an area where Childress says you can “grow just about anything.”
“Of course, we had a tractor,” Childress said. “That was a real treat to get to drive that — we’d start out on those quarter- or half-mile rows, and when you’d get to the end you’d have to turn around and come back.”

Becoming a sports celebrity by accident
Even with all the work that had to be done on the family farm, Childress found time to play sports in high school, mainly basketball. Childress said he also had time to play some baseball, but basketball was his favorite.
Perhaps the fondest memory Childress has of his years at Porter High School are the last two games he played with his basketball team against Coweta. At that time, Childress said, Porter and Coweta were fierce competitors with a history of rivalry.
“They had a couple of really good players,” Childress said of the Coweta team. “But we were able to beat Coweta the last game of my junior year and the first game of my senior year — that was great to get to beat Coweta the last two times we played them.”
Childress’ interest in basketball didn’t wane after his high school graduation. He joined a team made up of some of his fellow Douglas Aircraft Co. employees.
“Back then they had teams from all the big companies,” Childress said. “I think I was the only one — other than one of those old boys who played for Coweta — who hadn’t played college ball.”
The talent on the Douglas Aircraft team, Childress said, won 67 games in a row, earning it an invitation to play at the national tournament that year in Clinton, Ind. Childress said it was a tremendous opportunity for him and team, but he came back to Oklahoma that year with a little more star power than he had when he left.
Childress said he was ticketed for running a stop sign the first morning of the tournament. He thought all kinds of terrible things would happen, but all he had to do was pay a $5 fine and some court costs. The surprise, Childress said, came the next morning when he read the newspaper
“Here’s what came out in the paper the next morning: ‘Jim Childress, former All American basketball player from Oklahoma University,’” Childress said with a laugh. “I guess they were just trying to get a little publicity for their town, but I carried that article around for years until I wore it out.”

It was just time to come back home
After serving some time in the military, Childress moved to Muskogee, where he stepped into a career as a salesman.
Childress learned rather quickly that he didn’t want to sell classified ads for the newspaper. But the connections he made with a number of local car dealerships while doing that opened a door for his opportunity to sell cars.
“I found out I could do that, so I moved to Tulsa and went to work up there for this outfit that had dealerships all over the country,” Childress said. “They would open up a dealership here or buy another one there, and they would send me different places.”
While working at the company’s Norman dealership, Childress did so well selling cars the company sent him and his wife at the time to Hawaii for an all-expenses-paid, one-week vacation.
Eventually Childress came back to Muskogee, selling cars at a couple of dealerships here before getting out of the automobile industry.
“I got tired of lying about the gas mileage,” Childress said about his decision.
Since then, Childress began working with his brothers, who also contract asphalt paving jobs. In 2001, he started his own business, Black Diamond Asphalt.
While he still does some business-related traveling, his home base here in Muskogee keeps him close to his four children and five grandchildren. Childress said he and his ex-wife, Mary Childress, have maintained a close friendship throughout the years and attend family functions together.
“You know, there’s a time when you just have to come back home.”

Q&A

HOW DID YOU COME TO BE AN OKIE FROM MUSKOGEE?
We bought a home in Muskogee in 1978, when we moved her from Porter and have lived in the same home for 30 years. I had lived in Muskogee in previous years.

WHAT DO YOU DO WITH YOUR FREE TIME?
I read three or more newspapers a day. I like to garden in the springtime, go hunting, fishing and play golf. Since my business depends on the weather, I can do the things I enjoy when I can’t work.

HOW DO YOU MAKE A LIVING IN MUSKOGEE?
Before I retired from car sales, after 33 years, I worked for Dumas Milner, one of the largest car dealerships in the United States, with one in Tulsa. I was the youngest general sales managers at that time for Milner Pontiac. My current occupation is an asphalt contractor. I do it all: seal coating, overlays, patchwork, parking lots, roads, driveways, excavation, dirt work and striping.

NAME AN OKIE FROM MUSKOGEE YOU ADMIRE AND EXPLAIN WHY YOU LOOK UP TO THEM.
I would like to say I’ve worked on a lot of church parking lots in Muskogee, and I admire the ministers of these churches. I’ve had very good experiences with them, and I try to go back and attend church services at each one. I’ve enjoyed visiting those churches and found the congregations were very welcoming and friendly. Just another way to say Muskogee is a good place to live. And I admire Mike Stewart (Muskogee’s Public Works director), his story and the way he worked his way up.

IN YOUR OPINION, WHAT COULD BE DONE TO MAKE MUSKOGEE A BETTER PLACE TO LIVE?
Less concrete and more asphalt — just kidding. The city should continue to promote and recruit new industries of all types in order to provide opportunities for young people to have jobs and establish businesses that will stay in Muskogee.

WHAT IS THE MOST MEMORABLE THING THAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOU SINCE YOU HAVE LIVED IN MUSKOGEE?
The most memorable thing that happened didn’t happen to me, it happened to our entire family. We were blessed by the Lord with twin sons in 1981. We had many wonderful years watching them grow up, but we lost Rush in 2005 when he was 24.

HOW WOULD YOU SUM UP MUSKOGEE IN 25 WORDS OR LESS?
A nice quiet community, friendly people and good neighbors. It’s easy to get across town — shopping, banking and restaurants — and very convenient.

Meet Jim Childress

NAME: Jim Childress.
AGE: 72.
HOMETOWN: Bigelow, Ark.
CAREER: Retired from car sales and began a second career doing asphalt work.
FAMILY: Two brothers, Bill and Weldon Childress; sons Chase Childress, 41, Justin Childress, 27, and the late Rush Childress; daughters Chanin Cutsinger, 39, and Chelbi George, 35; and five grandchildren.
HOBBIES: After playing sports in school, I still love to watch sports in person and on television. I also like to watch politics on television.

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