The Midway Store

The Midway Store

The leaves are gone from the big elms in back of the old Midway Store. The January days bask in the late warm golden hues absorbed by the green winter wheat fields, and then reflected again by the waving prairie grass. Long blue shadows still hold the chill from the mornings. Five Rhode Island Red chickens scratch up the red dust hopefully, in search of seeds and any bugs that still survive from the fall. A black and white tom cat lies stretched out on the porch napping in the sunlight. Country music plays from a radio in the old shop. “Brownie,” a brown lab, follows Velma around as she works on a half dozen unfinished projects in the yard. She works in her straw hat among trailers and farm equipment, tools and remnants of her Daddy’s long career as a mechanic. The garden is all but dead except for a few onion sprouts that still show green. A northern breeze stirs the big elm trees above, whispering through the branches enough to remind you of the pleasant, profound quiet.

My kids call it “Aunt Velma’s house.” But the old Midway store was named such because it was roughly equal distance between Marshall, Mulhall, Orlando and Lovell, in northern Logan County Oklahoma. Now, in the age of Super Wal-Marts, and four lane hi-ways, it would seem strange to have a gas station and grocery on the intersection of two dirt roads in the middle of no-where. But back in its day it was a pretty lively place. *For the Stewarts, the story started Febuary 1, 1939 when they moved there from Arcadia Oklahoma. Lorne and Alice Stewart started working the Midway Grocery and Skelly Oil station, selling oil, grease, gas and kerosene. Alice sold groceries from the store, and Lorne worked on cars and tractors in the shop. Alice sold seeds, and fresh eggs. Gas was 80 cents for 5 gallons. Kerosene was 5 cents a gallon. There were 48 lb sacks of flour, and 100 lb sacks of corn meal. What eggs they didn’t sell locally, they put in 30 dozen cases and sold at the college in Stillwater, or in Guthrie. Before electricity came Lorne would charge up batteries with his wind charger. Later on, he bought a Delco system which would convert DC to AC making the lights around the Midway Store shine a lot brighter. “After we went to bed at night in the winter we could hear the rats gnawing holes in the floor trying to get in and eat our groceries,” Velma remembers. “After we got the bright lights, Daddy could see them when they popped up out of their holes.” “Daddy would take shot out of his shotgun shells, and load them with rock salt, and when they would pop up their little heads, he would shoot them.” Things were never dull growing up at the Midway Store. Lorne also had a welding truck that he used to drive out into the fields and fix plows, discs and farm equipment the farmers tore up planting wheat, sorghum, and cotton. It was a shady corner of repose for the locals, a place to refuel, restock, and catch up on the latest news. The men laughed and teased each other sitting on the porch; complained about the weather, whittled, and spit. The women gossiped in the kitchen in the back of the store. Chickens roamed the road chasing grasshoppers, while the kids played by the shop under the elm trees. They played with the dogs and cats and their pet skunk “Corky,” who didn’t spew unless you stepped on him. Back then everyone knew where the Midway Store was.

All the Stewart kids were born in the wood house, not much more than a shack, which stood east of the store. First there was Eugene, then Ivan, then a baby girl that died at birth, then Velma. The wood shack is gone now, but the old cinder block store stands now as Velma’s house. Velma learned to work the garden with her momma. They grew peas, green beans, potatoes, corn, okra, watermelon, cantaloupe, squash, garlic, and onions. She learned how to can most everything. The kids would go out and pick sand plums, and elderberry, mulberries and make jelly. Back then kids had chores to do and didn’t have to be asked twice to do them. *Alice Stewart said, “One is nearer God’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth.” Velma learned a lot from her mama. They got all their milk, butter and cream from their one cow year round. They had the cow bred and had a calf to butcher or sell every year. Velma and her brothers fished for perch, bass and catfish in Bridge Creek just east of the store. Like all their neighbors, they bartered for those things they didn’t raise themselves. Every year they made sorghum cane into molasses. They drove to the Great Salt Plains Lake to bag salt to sell in the store. They burned wood for heat in the winter, and tried to find the shade in the summer.

Lorne went to school in Oklahoma City to learn to be a TV repair man. He traded his knowledge of electronics on the long drive to the city for lessons in algebra with his school mate. After graduating, the Stewarts had the first TV in the area. It was an amazing technology to see illuminated pictures broadcast from Enid or Oklahoma City in real time. As the years went by the Midway Store prospered. They had their groceries and gas delivered to the store when the roads weren’t too bad. In those days the produce was most likely grown within fifty miles. All the beef, chicken and pork were local and fresh, having lived their lives within the same zip code.

The school bus would come for the kids about 7:30am to go to Mulhall. Sometimes when the road was muddy, the bus would slip off the road into the ditch. Mr. Harman would just keep on plowing on through the ditch until he could drive back up on the road. Velma remembered some of the kids getting squished on one side of the bus, and squealing and hollering. The yellow school bus would be red with mud dripping of its sides. The kids would get pretty upset and anxious, but Mr. Harman always got them there in one piece. Back then there were a lot more families living in the area and the trip would take an hour to get there and an hour to come back.


As the years went by, the world changed. Oklahoma changed. I-35 was built, and some of the small towns like Mulhall and Orlando stopped growing. The grocery trucks no longer wanted to brave the muddy roads and deliver groceries to the Midway Store. Big grocery stores and department stores in the bigger towns were killing off what was left of the small town family owned business. So the Stewarts had to drive the Guthrie or Enid to buy stock for the store. Slowly over the years, families moved out and business died off until finally Lorne and Alice Stewart stopped selling groceries and gas. But the locals still came by and visited. The county road graders took their lunch under the big elms, and Lorne who was known for speaking his mind, was always considered good conversation. Alice was very sweet to everyone and as old habits were hard to break, all the locals managed to drop by and sit on the porch and gossip just like they had for years. After helping the community for years, the locals didn’t want to let go of the Midway Store and all the memories that still lived under the big elms. The Stewart kids moved away and Alice and Lorne still busied themselves working on cars, and tending the garden. Eugene Stewart died of cancer. Velma and Ivan lived in Oklahoma City, but came and stayed and visited for a few days at a time.

In the fall of 2000, there were a lot of fires being set in the area by kids driving around and looking for trouble. A drought, combined with the dry grass and the pervasive wind made everyone in the area kind of jumpy. Alice and Lorne went up to some of their pasture land where they had quite a few round bales, and tried to mow around the bales to protect them in case of fire. Lorne was in his nineties by then and had trouble with the mower. Alice wanted him to go back to the house with her, but Lorne was determined to get the job done. The mower apparently hit a rock and sparked, causing a grass fire. In trying to put out the fire, Lorne suffered third degree burns on his legs, arms, and face. He got Pneumonia in the hospital and some staff infections. After eight weeks he quit eating. His last request was for a “cud” of tobacco. He never got it. He died in October at the age of 93. Alice lived for four months, and died at the new year. She was 82 years old. Both Lorne and Alice are buried about a quarter mile away from the Midway Store at Victor Cemetery, with many of their friends and neighbors.

As the years go by Velma Stewart keeps the old wood stove burning at the Midway Store. Her brother Ivan still comes by to visit every once in a while. Velma is content to tend her garden and her own business. She doesn’t much care what any one else thinks. “Once I found out that they weren’t going to kill me and eat me, I didn’t give a rip for what they thought of me,” she says. She must have gotten that attitude from her Daddy. Velma hasn’t invested in the global economy or the stock market. She doesn’t have internet yet, or satellite TV. The only thing Velma has invested in is a good pair of work gloves. The chickens are still roaming the dirt road, and the locals still drop by to chew the fat. Maybe like me, they like to see things the way they ought to be. Or maybe they just like to hear the wind blowing in the big elm trees and listen for the laughter and the voices of sixty years of memories.

By Rob Brian

*Taken from Logan County History, Vol. 1, The Families, pg. 631-632, Stewart Family, written by Alice Stewart, Published by the History Committee Logan Co. Extension Homemaking Council, Guthrie OK.





“