At almost 94 years old, there are some things J.A. “Jess” Carlton has trouble remembering. But get him started talking and he tells tales of a lifetime of hard work.

His parents were quite old by the time he was in the fifth grade. Being the only child at home, he had to drop out of school to help care for them and support them, he recalls.

So he went to work and has never been out of a job since.

He went to work for Western Union as a telegrapher and later worked for his third-grade teacher’s husband at his service station. He learned how to change tires and do other work on cars, Carlton said.

Carlton later trained to become a specialist in heating and air and electrical wiring and owned and operated his own business here for many years.

Carlton later became the city’s electric inspector and always dabbled in inventions. A story published in a 1981 issue of the Phoenix reported he had rigged up an automatic watering system for his garden and built an electronic depth marker and fish detector.

When he retired from the city, he used his skills in refrigeration to serve as a volunteer on several air conditioning projects and helped maintain the air conditioning unit as his church until a couple of years ago, he said.

First self-help laundry in town

Jess Carlton and W.W. Hamlin established Muskogee’s first self-help laundry at North 37th Street and West Broadway.

“I had moved into a garage apartment at Hamlin’s on West Okmulgee,” Carlton said. “He had a big garden and a little horse pasture. We built a concrete block building and turned it into a laundry.”

It had 20 wringer-type Maytag washing machines, each surrounded by two large galvanized wash tubs on stands. As he recalls, people were charged $1.50 an hour to use the machines.

Carlton had worked for a couple of years for Sears and when they set up the washing machines. There were not enough complete machines available. Carlton bought parts from distributors in several states to put the machines in working order.

Grill was outlet for pheasants