BERTHA ALLTON

Caption under the photograph of Mrs. Bertha Allton: "Reading good books is one of the favorite hobbies of Mrs. Bertha Allton, who is pictured here in her living room, near her collection of books. Mrs. Allton has been the subject of conversation in high school home economics classes when students study 'good grooming through the years.'"

Mrs. Bertha Allton is a living example that an accumulation of years need not erase that certain lady-like beauty and charm for which women of an earlier period were noted.

In fact, it was just last spring that Mrs. Allton was cited as a living example of good-grooming in one of Mrs. Power's high school home economics classes.

With her softly curling white hair, fine features, and a pencant for pretty house dresses, Mrs. Allton looks like she might have stepped from between the folds of an old-fashioned, lace-frilled valentine.

But the story of how she looks and the story she tells of her life travel two separate routes entirely.

In 1915, the Sam B. Allton family lived on a farm northwest of Oolagah. Their house was new and well-built with stylish double doors which boasted frosted glasses with two graceful deer etched upon them. The family was very comfortable and happy -- until a flood played havoc with their crops.

Late that fall a neighbor returned from Tulsa county where he had worked on the recently completed bridge spanning the Arkansas at Jenks, which he described in bright blue language as the coldest spot in the whole state of Oklahoma. But the important news he brought was that Jenks was booming. Oil wells were sprouting in the area like toadstools in a rainy September and the wages for working on the pipeline were fabulous -- $1.50 per 10-hour day.

By December the Alltons had decided to turn their backs on the new house for a year or so and brave the cold sweep of the north wind down the Arkansas to try their luck in Jenks.

"Hard to tell whether there were more kids or pigs loaded in the wagon," said Sam Allton her son.

"Now, Sam," she contradicted mildly, "that was another trip you're thinking of. There were only six of you children. The last three were born in Jenks."

Because of the boom, Jenks was bulging at the seams but they located a house west of the railroad tracks next to the old Gypsy water station. Mr. Allton went to work on the pipeline where he soon became an overseer.

The year 1917 found the Alltons happy enough in their new home, but the lure of the farm was still there, too. But "As man proposes, God disposes" -- and no sooner had they decided to go back to the farm then they received word that the house had burned to the ground, fancy doors and all.

"Luckiest break we ever had," said Sam decisively.

Not long after this Mr. Allton was appointed town marshall and if Jenks wasn't quite as evil as Marshal Dillon's bailiwick, it was every bit as lively. The job called for hard work and long hours as well as a full measure of courage. Quite often it was breakfast-time before Marshal Allton came in and fastened his gun belt around baby Ella Mabel's fat middle.

Several little Alltons were in school by this time. ("I think the teacher likes us best," Bertha told her mother proudly. "She calls our names first every single morning.") Eventually, all nine of the children were graduated from Jenks high school.

These were the years of endless toil and scrimping and making magic with hand-me-downs. There were damaging floods to contend with in Jenks, too, and once a tornado popped down among them. And as any parent of even one child knows, a mother of nine weathers many a storm that doesn't pop out of the sky.

Mrs. Allton has earned her role of gentle, soft-spoken matriarch in her neat little domain. Her children and grandchildren and friends of long years' standing crowd out the loneliness that shadows the later years of many people. Through it all she sits serenly, savoring the present and cherishing the memories of eighty rich years of living -- and giving.