Frank W. Buckles

You didn’t really have much of an adolescence. It seems like you went from a child to an adult.  

When I was 15, my father bought some land in western Oklahoma near the border of Texas and was sending a man out there with a boxcar load of horses.  He was going to pay the man 20 dollars plus his expenses back to help make sure that they arrived safely. I persuaded him to let me take that job instead.  He gave me the 20 dollars and my mother also gave me 20 dollars, and I was loaded with money. It took me four days in the boxcar with changing from one railway line to another. My instructions were to go to the bank when I arrived in Oakwood, Oklahoma and then I was to report to Mr. Oakwood.  I found him getting a bucket of water from the windmill in the middle of the street.  I went with him into the bank and there he received a letter from a Mr. Grove who was the cashier and bookkeeper. Mr. Grove was one of only two men working in the bank and he had decided to remain in Texas and not return from his vacation. So that left a vacancy in the bank. I convinced them to give me the job at 15 years old. People might ask today about a 15 year old banker, but they said what is the difference? He is going to be a banker someday and he might as well be now.  So in that one trip, I not only made the delivery for my father, but on the day of my arrival I secured a job at the bank.  There was a little hotel there, the type that you might see in frontier movies today. I stayed there and one day the school master came along and entered me into high school. So I worked in the bank, stayed in the hotel, and went to school. At that time I stayed there in the area and did not return home to my farm I remember one night when I was about 15 and staying at the hotel, someone came into town and told us that a man had drowned at a nearby pond where people would often swim. I told the clerk at the front desk that I was going to go out to the pond and help them try to recover the body and he was nice enough to give me a towel from the hotel closet.  I then went out to the pond where some men had gathered with lanterns and long poles and were attempting to recover the young mans body. Unfortunately, they could not reach him. I stripped down to my skivvies, swam out, grabbed the young mans wrist, and pulled him into shore. Several days later the man’s father who had come to retrieve his son’s body came by the bank to thank me. I thought this was rather odd and I wished I had been at the pond earlier when my help was truly needed.