TOMMY R. CRANE

Present day Lake Keystone residents complain of poor rural roads filled with bumps and chugholes, and probably with good reason. But if they had had the daily routine of one Mannford resident during the earlier years of this community, today's roads in contrast might appear in much better light.

Tommy R. Crane, who served Mannford as rural mail carrier for almost 40 years, recalls the days he carried the mail when the roads were nothing but wagon trails. They graduated to gravel roads and later to hard topped roads. The two-lane main highways have evolved into expressways through the country side.

Saturday (Nov. 23) Mr. Crane will be 90 years old. His health is still good and his appearance, that of a much younger man, belies his years. He jokingly infers that healthy habits of not drinking, not smoking and not using coffee may have something to do with his present health. He could easily pass for a man 25 years younger.

His family, including four living children, his widowed daughter-in-law, Shirley Crane, and his host of descendants which include 13 grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren, will honor him on his birthday Saturday. As many as possible will be with him on the occasion. Open house in his honor will be held Saturday afternoon in the Baptist Church.

He was born near Bentonville, Ark., to Frank and Belle Crane November 23, 1895 and moved with his family while still a small child in 1899 to what eight years later was to become the state of Oklahoma. The family first settled on a farm between Stillwater and Perry. In 1906 they moved to an acreage in the East Basin.

At that time Basin was a community of its own, with its own post office, school, cotton gin and a settlement of homes and a few businesses. West Basin was a separate school district.

As a youngster, Tommy Crane attended the East Basin School, located about 1 1/4 miles east of Basin. At that time it was a single room log structure housing students in eight grades. Some of the earlier teachers Mr. Crane can recall are V.M. Flanagan, Toner Adrian and Ella Williams Boyd DaVasher. The latter also taught in Mannford, Praieview, Grand View ('Scrappin' Ridge') and many other rural districts during her teaching career.

She also was the first Mannford postmaster under which Tommy Crane served during his long career as rural postmaster. John Nash was an earlier Mannford postmaster than Mrs. DaVasher, who then was Miss Williams. Crane later served under Mrs. Roy Wheeler, daughter-in-law of "Doc" Wheeler, who was postmaster only a few months; Mrs. Ada Thompson, grandmother of present rural mail carrier John Scovil, who served 27 years; Lester Rhoades, under whom he was working at the time of his retirement November 30, 1955. (His legal retirement began January 1, 1956, but vacation time taken at the end of his career ended his working days a month earlier.)

In between the period Mr. Crane finished his formal education and the time he began to work for the U.S. Post Office Department, he helped his father farm in the East Basin. On March 12, 1917 he got the job of rural mail carrier and continued at it faithfully until retirement.

During the first three years he carried mail to his Mannford and Basin area postal patrons, he drove a team and buggy to deliver the mail. The buggy was especially made in Peoria, Ill., for rural mail delivery and had windows along the side.

By 1920 cars were becoming more common and as a consequence, improvements were being demanded and obtained on the roads. Horses and slips for road work preceded graders. He got his first Model T in that year, which was used for mail delivery.

During the ensuing years, he amassed an estimated 300,000 miles and wore out two buggies and approximately a dozen different vehicles on the job, changing them every two to three years. His daily route amounted to 24 miles. The mail train got to Mannford at 8 a.m. and by 8:30 his mail was loaded and he started his route, returning to the post office about 4:30 p.m.

In his last year of delivery, when plans for Lake Keystone were rapidly going forward, the Keystone rural route was combined with that of Mannford and Crane served both. He would go to the Hayden route, then begin serving Mannford rural patrons, then to go Keystone and finish up the day with Mannford's route.

Those years he knew every rural family who lived along his route. After the lake came in, he gradually lost knowledge of the countryside's inhabitants as new families moved in too rapidly for him to keep track. Some of the early families whose mail he carried included the Jim Hintons, the Caruthers, Weavers, Bellis', Lincolns, Smelzers, Stonemans, Coles, Spesses, Greenwoods and Enlows - to name a few he could think of "off the cuff."

He always carried a box of stamps and envelopes with him. Rural folk in earlier years did much of their shopping through mail order catalogs such as Sears and Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. They would give him the money one day and he would bring them a postal money order the next day. Then they would order their merchandise by mail. Post office money orders went out when transportation became better and lessened the need.

Heavy rains which caused flooding along the lowlands plus ice and snow were the principal bugaboos of rural mail delivery.

"If I woke up in the middle of the night and heard it raining hard, I knew where I was going to get stuck the next day," he remembers. "There were three or four places along the way."

When he did get mired in the mud, he jacked up his car and put rocks under the wheels until he could move off high center. Only one time in his career did he require outside assistance to get his vehicle back on the job. That was during an ice storm while he was out by the Miller Ranch. A farmer helped him move about 20 feet and after that he made it on his own.

Considered a supberb driver, his daughter-in-law, Shirley Crane, says she would still trust his driving over that of anyone else.

Mr. Crane recalls that Mannford's present townsite is built on about 20 acres that used to be part of the Link Ward farm. The present townsite was not located along the highway at that time. The country road he traveled wound down around the school, known then as "Johnny Rogers' Corner", and eventually wound back north to the Pawnee Corner. Rogers, a full-blooded Indian, at that time owned the land on which the Mannford school is located.

"This was mostly farming country then -- and before that, it was cattle country. But even then, everybody did a little farming, with their own gardens, hogs, and chickens. They raised a lot of cotton around here, too, with Mannford having two cotton gins."

Crane admits to being among those not too happy to see the coming of Lake Keystone. It destroyed the Mannford countryside he earlier knew and had come to love. It also destroyed a lot of good rich farming land.

His wife, Golda, died in 1961, changing his plans to move into town. He since has lived in the Lessie Lee subdivision, not far from his daughter-in-law, Shirley Crane, who holds him in high esteem and with as much affection as any daughter could. Grandchildren and other relatives also visit him from time to time.

His son, Gerald, and daughter-in-law, Louise, live in Mannford and a daughter, Geneva Garner, lives in Tulsa. A son, Eugene Crane, and daughter-in-law, Florene Crane, live in Missouri. A daughter, Ladora Smith, lives in Stillwater.