By Earl Goldsmith
Before starting this story, I must correct a negative comment about Tom Liddell that was in the earlier story of Henyetta Chiefs of Police in the Thirties and Forties.
In that story, I said that after he retired, Tom Liddell was one of my customers on my Free-Lance route, that I thought he was hard of hearing because he often didn't hear men when I knocked on his door to collect, and that when he died, he owed me for five weeks that I never collected.
Since I sent the story in, I have given that more thought. I know remember that in the spring of 1944, when I was in the HHS band as a 7th grader, the annual Band Banquet was held in the basement of the First Christian Church that was (still is) located at Fifth and Cuummings.
During the banquet someone came in to get one of the older band members, and after the left, the person in charge told me that the boy's father had died. Maybe I had a moment of greediness instead of compassion, I immediately thought of the fact that the man owed me for five weeks of the newspaper.
While they had similar last names, the boy and the deceased man were not named Liddell, and I apologize to any who are descended from or who knew Tom Liddell for making the mistake.
barney jamesonNow for this story- and I will try my best to not make any harmful mistakes.
Barney Jameson, a projectionist at Henryetta's long ago Blaine and Morgan theaters, was the master of a Henryetta Cub Scout Pack in the 30s, but it died away for some reason and he formed a new one in the summer of 1940.
Its first three members were James Goodman, Carl Steckelberg, and me. Well, James and Carl were the first two and I joined them the next week. James and Carl were 11 and I was 10.
Later, there were 9 near-olds, the age at which boys became eligible then. Tommy Goodman, who was 8, but large for his age, was always along – even the week before I was. Barney's stepson, Jimmie Reynolds, a boy scout, was always with us that first summer, too. Jimmie was Barney's only “son."
At first, Barney came by our houses to pick each of us up at 6:00 a.m. every Wednesday and take us to swim free at a swimming pool in the old City Park, one of three pools located just south of the football field inside a curve formed by Coal Creek - the area is still there, but sort of deserted.
The swimming pools have long since been filled and the area isn't used as a park anymore.
The reason we went on Wednesday mornings is that they used to drain the pools after they closed on Monday nights and spend Tuesday refilling it, so we always had fresh clean water when we were there with Barney.
In the earliest weeks, Barney let us ride on the running boards of his car, but as time went on and there were more Cubs, the unlucky ones had to ride inside. By the end of summer, there were too many Cubs for him to pick up and we had to get to the park on our own.
The park had a lot of cooking sites made of rocks, and picnic tables. I think it had swings, a slide, teeter-totters, and maybe a merry-go-round kids pushed in a circle.
But its most exciting feature, apart from the pools, was a swinging bridge across Coal Creek from a neighborhood in a separated area that was accessible by road only from Corporation Street.
A few Washington grade school kids used that bridge to get to and from school. Jumping and making it swing up and down when girls were on it was among every boy's “funnest" things back then.
Back to the Cubs. We each had to cook our own breakfast after swimming. Mother would give me a small skillet, two slices of bacon, an egg, two slices of bread, a tiny bit of salt wrapped in paper, and two matches so I could make myself an egg sandwich at a cook site. park area
I started a fire using kindling that was around, and Barney let us use matches instead of the boy scout way rubbing sticks together to make them heat up and then cause kindling to burn. (Barney used to say that rubbing two scouts together would start a bigger fire.) Then I put the skillet on the fire and added the bacon.
Mother said I had to cook the bacon first to get grease to cook the egg. (One morning, I forgot to put in the bacon first and the egg didn't cook - I didn't forget again.) When the bacon was done, I cracked and put in the egg and stirred it with a stick to scramble it, usually remembering to add the salt.
When it was done, I drained off the leftover grease, usually trying to drain it into the fire to make a flame. Then I slid the egg from the skillet onto a slice of bread, put the bacon and the other slice of bread on, and ergo: An egg sandwich.
I had no mayo, mustard, catsup, cheese, lettuce, onions, etc. My egg sandwich was just bacon egg and bread, but I thought it was great. I don't recall what I had to drink , but the park had fountains.
By fall, there were many more Cubs and we played football after school on Wednesdays in a vacant lot at Ninth or Tenth and Broadway  getting our clothes muddy seemed to be our biggest objective. Then, when winter set in, we played a chaotic type of gang basketball in the basement gym of the Methodist Church at Sixth and Broadway.
After we started playing basketball at the Methodist Church, Barney's stepson, Jimmie Reynolds, became an Eagle Scout when he was just barely thirteen years old and there was an article in the Free-Lance reporting that he was the youngest Eagle Scout Henryetta had ever had.
Three other boys (Pete Brookshire, James Rogers, and Gordon Silvey) were also to become eagles in the ceremony that was to be held on the Fifth street steps of the old City Hall that stood on the northwest corner of Fifth and Broadway. But shortly before the ceremony, Jimmie Reynolds had be hospitalized and operated on in the old Henryetta Hospital across the street from the City Hall.
The other three boys refused to accept their eagle awards without Jimmie, so the ceremony was moved across the street and the awards were presented to all four of them in Jimmie's hospital room. A couple of days later, Jimmie died. I think he'd been operated on for appendicitis, and that was an operation that sometimes ended in the death of the patient in those days.
Barney was devastated, but he kept up with the Cubs. While I had known of one other child who had died, Jimmie's death vividly brought to me to face to face with the fact that a child could actually die and never grow up, and I recall that for the next few years, I thought of Jimmie every time I passed the old Henryetta Hospital.
In 1941, we resumed the free swimming and cooking at the old City Park, but changed to the great new Nichols Park when it opened, I think the Fourth of July. I joined the Scouts in 1942, but oh, those Cub memories!
CubScout logoLater, I got to know Barney in a different setting when I became an usher at the Blaine and Morgan theaters, where he was a projectionist.
Long after I left Henryetta, I'd sometimes be there at holiday parades and there'd always be a large group of Cubs, with Barney at the rear – and struggling to keep up as he got older and older.
In more recent years, I have had contacts with various people about Barney and Jimmie Reynolds, including with Mary Reynolds Chapman, Jimmie Reynold's, sister in North Carolina. Mike Doak at the Henryetta Territorial Museum also has a lot of information about Barney.
According to Mike, before sound movies came out in the 1920s, Barney used to ride in a car down Main Street and use a megaphone to bally-hoo about what was playing at the movies. He was on the School Board and a sort of an all-around town master of ceremonies.
From other sources, I know Barney performed a comedy act about Henryetta being a safe coal-mining town at the Morgan Theater 1923 talent show that was held to raise money to purchase the Henryetta Doughboy statue. Through some source, probably Mary Reynolds Chapman or Mike Doak, I learned that Barney's Cub Scout pack in Henryetta, had the most members of any cub pack in America.
Barney left Henryetta for California in 1974 and died there when he was 92. Through his stepdaughter, Mary Reynolds Chapman, I learned that Barney, his wife Euna, and Jimmie Reynolds are all buried at Henryetta's Westlawn Cemetery.
It has been many, many, years since I last saw Barney, but he still lives as one of my special memories of growing up in Henryetta.
Editor's note: Barney Jameson was the recipient of the Silver beaver Award in 1950.
The Silver Beaver Award is the council level distinguished service award of the Boy Scouts of America. It is the highest honor a local council can bestow upon a registered adult leader.
The award is intended to acknowledge noteworthy service of exceptional character to youth by registered Cub Scout, Boy Scout, Varsity and Venturing leaders within the territory under the jurisdiction of the local Council.silver beaver award
It is considered the highest award a Boy Scout Council can bestow upon a volunteer Scouter.
The Silver Beaver Award is given to individuals who, through hard work, self sacrifice, dedication and many years of service, have evidenced exceptional service to the BSA, service of exceptional character to non-Scouting youth, and service or standing within the community.