Mr. Clifton Key

Olney was incorporated in 1909.^[1]Texas State Historical Association In 1928, Clifton Key was born in Megargel, just a few miles west on SH114, and moved to Olney as a teenager. So if you do the math, Mr. Key has been in and around Olney for 93 years of the town’s 112-year history. I think it’d be safe to call him an authority, and perhaps the leading authority on this place. In fact, as I learned during my meeting with Mr. Key last summer (July, 2021), the actions and contributions of his family, and particularly his Grandfather, can be credited with the formation and early establishment of the town, as well as important contributions to its growth and development later on, and right up to today.

A cattleman’s paradise

While Olney was incorporated in 1909, the settlement of the area happened several years earlier, around 1880. Mr. Key described that early period this way:

“When this area was first even thought about for white settlement, it was really the cattleman’s paradise. In other words it was open range.  The grass was–if you’ve seen pictures they’ve made in recent years that show the cowboys on the horseback, and they’re riding through just the open range, and all you see is really their hat and head, ’cause they’re on the horseback, and the grass is that high.”

“So it was a cattleman’s paradise, and right just east of town was a natural lake. And so every spring, after most of the calves had been born, like in February, March, April, and so forth, they had a big round up. And all the cowboys and the owners of the cattle, their cows had been branded of course, so they had to get the nursing calf that belonged to that cow, and they could brand it. So this took probably a week or 10 days, with all these cowboys havin’ to camp around this lake. But I guess the open prairie had a…an aura to it, you know that, oh this is heaven, and we can just go anywhere with our livestock.”

Wanna sound like a local? Say: “all knee” not “ol’ knee,” and with the emphasis on the “all”

The town was originally going to be named after John Groves, a relative of Mr. Key through marriage, who in 1899 had donated two acres for the initial town site. Although it’s still not exactly clear how it was decided, Mr. Key explains how the name Olney–pronounced like ‘all-knee’ by the locals, emphasis on the ‘all’–was settled on:

[Q] Where did the name Olney come from?

[A]”Well supposedly, when we had a mail carrier, he had to carry the mail from Decatur to Olney.  Well, the postal service wanted Olney to have a name that was short.  And they had submitted Mr. Groves’ name, who was a distant relative of my first wife.  And he was really founder of the town, and so they wanted it named some way with Groves.  There was already…the postal service says ‘Nope! The name’s already taken in Texas.’  Well, there’s a Groveton, and I’ve forgotten what the other is but there’s two names that are very similar [Too close, they said?]  Yep, too close.  So, he brought a paper in that day, so there was an Olney, Illinois mentioned, or, it could have been the Secretary of State [Richard Olney, appointed by President Grover Cleveland].  In other words, they saw that name, and it had to be short, and they thought, ‘Well, that’s good’ and so, they named it Olney.”

Trains

In the early 1900s, the survival of newly formed towns like Olney was anything but certain. And the arrival of a rail stop and depot were important factors in ensuring their viability. The Wichita Falls and Southern Railway (WF&S) was extending their track southward from Wichita Falls to the coal mines of Newcastle.^[2]More on Newcastle, Texas The originally planned route lie east of the newly settled Olney, near Jean.^[3]Jean, Texas But here as well, Mr. Key’s ancestor’s played a pivotal role in the town’s establishment and growth. Mr. Key explains:

“The next thing they thought about was railroad.  So, Mr. Groves, and my Grandfather, each donated 50 acres of land, to get the railroad to come here, instead of Jean.  They [the WF&S] were headed to the Newcastle coal mine.  Anyway, if you had a railroad, you thought well, you’d surely have a good town.  So everybody worked to get railroads and so, like I say, Grandpa and Johnny Groves, gave 50 acres a piece, here on the east side of what is town today.  And the railroad came this way instead of going 10 miles east of us.”

Doodle Bugs

A second railroad, the Gulf, Texas and Western (GT&W) arrived in 1910, and the “Doodle Bug”^[6]The Portal to Texas History. More here. single-car passenger service not long after that, in 1913.

“People got around in those days, and you’d be surprised how much traveling they did. Well, like I say, we had two railroads.  The Gulf, Texas and Western…well it came, really, I guess, from Bridgeport.  The Rock Island was the big line over there.  So, it was built from Bridgeport all the way to Seymour.  And I think they’d intended to go all the way to Lubbock.  But if you know anything about the topography, that’s too high; the Cap Rock’s too steep there.  And they didn’t realize when that…when they first started out. [Laughs] So, see the main railroad to climb the Cap Rock today goes through Snyder and that way.  Because they had to cut though there some way. And o’course, out in Wichita Falls & Denver, when they climb up goin’ to Childress, it’s not all that bad gettin’ to Cap Rock. The GT&W–‘get a ticket and walk’ is what we called it [Laughs].

And we had a Doodle Bug that ran for passenger service from Jacksboro to Seymour. [Q: Was that an electric?] No, I think they were coal fired. [Q: Single car?] Yeah.  When I was born, my Grandmother, of course, lived here in Olney, and we were in Megargel.  And so, of course, they had telephones, and my Mother could tell her when she thought she’d be due, you know.  And so, my Gramdmother rode the train up, spend about two weeks with us, and rode the train back.”

Grandparents traveling in to visit from out of town, via train; calling to let you know their time of arrival–sounds like a nice, modern life, not so different from today. That’s one of the themes running through many of these stories–how much some things have changed, and how other aspects of our lives remain the same.

Connectedness

Another recurring theme is the surprising connectedness of it all. Like when you’re suddenly made aware of your knowledge of, or connection to people and places you thought you knew nothing about. Like when, in an attempt to better understand how the locals themselves felt about living in a small Texas town, I asked Mr. Key if he’d ever seen the movie ‘The Last Picture Show’? and he responded: “Well sure, part of it was made here in Olney.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

Days earlier, I’d driven through Archer City, about 18 miles north of Olney on SH79, completely unaware of it being the actual location where much of the movie was filmed, and also the birthplace of author Larry McMurtry. What I did notice, however, was a truly massive book store (“Booked Up”^[7]Booked Up) with storefronts on both sides of South Center Street. What in the world, I wondered at the time, is a place like that, doing in a tiny town like this? Later, I came to know, McMurty had a life-long interest in collecting and selling books, with the store in Archer City once housing 450,000 volumes. Who knew? Well, now I know, and so do you. I’ve yet to visit a single place, in my travels and conversations between Dallas and Lubbock, that doesn’t produce at least one such surprising revelation or connection.

“Larry McMurtry always came down here to our doctors and hospital.  It’s mentioned, see, in the book at least, and well in the picture show it shows ’em too, coming down here to Olney….And o’ course Larry grew up in…well he started life in the southeast part of Archer County, on a ranch.  And his mother was the daughter of a Methodist minister.  But you’d never guess it by the way she carried on. [Laughs]  But they moved into a nice two-story home in Archer City by the time he entered high school.  And so The Last Picture Show, is based on this little girl that was in high school, that was just across the street from him.  And this was before the days of air conditioning.  And so he…was very…he had big ears.  He knew everything that was goin’ on over there with the little girl.  And all of this is really part of a…it’s a real story of kids learning what goes on in the world.  And they’re gonna learn all these things eventually.  And Larry was a great person to record it all.

Trains, planes and automobiles…though not in that order

“Well, after railroads, what came next?  Highways.  Well ever’body fought over ‘which way is the highway gonna go?’  And I guess they still fight over ’em, especially interstates. [Laughs]  We have a decent highway system through Olney…. So, after highways, airplanes came next.  So during World War II, we had a chamber of commerce manager that was a retired manager from Gainesville.  And so he insisted that Olney get one of the airports that they were building to train the flyers.  So ours was supposed to have been naval flyers.  So o’ course it took 640 acres…my wife always complains about it, because her Grandparents’ farm got taken [in that] 640 they took. 

And then on top of that, she was a little girl, and she lived over in Elbert^[8]Elbert, TX, which is across the Brazos river that way, in Throckmorton County.  And she got off the school bus–she’d been in Throckmorton–she got off the school bus, and you know kids look, but there were some gravel trucks that were bringing the base material for the airport here.  And so the truck came by, well she took off.  She didn’t realize there was one right behind it.  And sure enough she got hit by that truck.  And the guy slowed down enough, she fell right under the middle.  And she survived that and was in the hospital quite a while because it hit her head on the pavement and whatever. [That’s a miracle.]  Yeah, it was, and course we’ve had wonderful doctors here in Olney.  And the doctor we all loved most was Dr. Meredith.  And he sat with her most of the time, for about a month, at the hospital here.

In other words we’ve gone through all this transition–horseback, cars and airplanes…and of course, you know we manufacture airplanes here.  [Q: That’s the Air Tractor?] Yep.^[9]Air Tractor  We had an industrial foundation.  And so we looked, the Community did, for you know, some kind of manufacturing thing.  And I’m not sure who got ’em on to Leland Snow, but he was a Texas Aggie, and he grew up in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.  His father was a surveyor, and his mother was a piano teacher….  He [Leland] started crop dusting in Central America.  And so he realized he wanted to build a crop dusting plane.  And he went to A&M, did everything he could.  And he’d crop dust in the summer, and go to A&M, and whatever.  Anyway, he finished in ’52.  Once he finished college and all, he was ready to establish what he wanted to do.  And he did.  And he built I think two prototypes.  And he put everything he had–we sent these two cattle trucks down, with the sideboards off I think, and they just tied everything on these two cattle trucks, and brought everything he had up here, and they took it out to the airport.”

Today, Air Tractor, the organization founded by Leland Snow, now employee-owned, is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of purpose-built aircraft for agriculture, firefighting and other utility applications. Who knew?

Late Bloomer

“I really stared off slow.  I’m very small, don’t know if you noticed that or not.  I was in about the third grade before I really took off.  The first two school years, I guess I just, you know, hadn’t matured enough at all.  And uh…I just barely squeaked by, in first and second grade.  But going into third grade, and from thereon, why, it was a breeze.

Mr. Key went on to become the second-highest academically ranked member (“Salutatorian”) of the Olney High School graduating class of 1945. The Olney Enterprise published on that day informs us that Commencement Ceremonies were held on Friday, May 25th, beginning at “8:30 o’clock p.m.” in the school auditorium. As Salutatorian–whose duties including giving the salutatory or welcoming address–Mr. Key gave a talk entitled “The Craft.” Next time I speak with him, I’ll be sure to ask him if by chance he has a copy of it, or at least, to fill me in on the main message.

As one of four who had received a scholarship, he was off to A&M.

I entered A&M at sixteen…straight outta high school…class of ’49.  I was five feet tall, weighed a hundred pounds; ninety nine actually. [There’s no fat on those bones. All muscle. Muscle and gristle!]  So they lined us all up, you know, and we were military, strictly, no women, girls or anything.  And it was quite a rude shock, except I’d known something about what was gonna happen.  So they lined us up, and in the outfit I was in, there was one other little old boy, from Kilgore, that was redheaded, and we were even-sized.  When I finished four years later, I could see over his head.  He didn’t grow anymore.  [You got a growth spurt.]  And he didn’t.  Yeah, I achieved five and a half at one time…I’ve been goin’ the other way again. [Laughs]

Small Stature; Outsized Impact

When Mr. Key asked me if I’d noticed that he was “small” (his words, not mine), the truth is that no, I hadn’t noticed it at all. And I think that’s because the positive impact of him and his family on the town, from its inception to today, have been outsized. But yet he remains modest–a rare combination. In fact, when I meet with people like Mr. Key, I’ll sometimes tell them that while the history is interesting, their retelling of it is even more so. I’m not sure they’re fully accustomed to that idea–the idea of the focus being on them, and not just the historical events. Having lived it and created it, they are the history. They are, in the truest sense of that phrase: living history. And when they’re generous enough to share–and believe me, many are not–then we get to live a little bit of that history together with them. So thank you, Mr. Key, for taking us along.