Durant Weekly News
July 8, 1955
Caddo Rural Postman Retires After 37 Years
Charles C. Semple, rural mail carrier at Caddo, retired Friday upon reaching 70 years of age, having served 37 years and 2 months as rural carrier at the post office. He started to work on May 1, 1918 on route 3, which he carried for eight months and then transferred to route 1 on which he has carried ever since.
Uncle Charles (as he is affectionally known) was born at Caddo, I. T. June 18, 1883 and received his early education at Caddo, high school work at Jones Academy, Hartshorne, one year of college at Washington & Lee University, Va. and two years at Valparaiso university, Valparaiso, Ind. He studied to be a surveyor.
On June 9, 1909 at Durant, he was married to Miss Lena Bowers, of Sherman. They raised four children, three boys and a girl and all graduated from college. For the last 15 years Mrs. Semple has been his substitute on the route and now she knows the route and the people about as well as he does. In fact, she has served the last 15 days of his time, as he had that many days of vacation left, and he used that up before he quit, June 15, although he didn’t officially retire until June 30.
Of the children, twin boys, Frank and Charlie are the eldest. Frank Semple received his college education at Oklahoma A&M college, Stillwater and is now in business at Boston, Mass. as an electronics engineer. He served in World War II as a colonel in the army. Charlie Semple graduated from Murray College, Tishomingo, and is now manager of the Halliburton Cement Co. office at Midland, Texas. Mary Semple graduated from Murray College, Tishomingo and taught school for a few years and is now married to Glen Stafford and lives in Caddo. Bill Semple graduated from Oklahoma A&M college and is now a practicing veterinary in Durant, a partner in the Durant Animal Hospital. He served in World War II as a captain in the Air Corps.
Uncle Charles’s first job was as a surveyor for the Katy Railroad, helping them with the double track that is laid from the Red River to McAlester. That job lasted for about one year. The next eight years he spent as assistant cashier for the Caddo National Bank of Caddo.
Changed Profession
About this time, he thought about becoming a rural mail carrier. In those days the examinations were given on a county basis and when there was an examination called, he took it. As the eligibles were only kept on the rolls for one year, he had to take the examination a second time before he got an appointment. His bank job had played out before this took place, so in the meantime, he had started to farm.
On May 1, 1918 he received his appointment as a rural carrier at Caddo on route 3. In the early days of the rural carrier service, a carrier had to hire someone to take his place when he wasn’t working, so, in the fall, when it came time to harvest his crops, Semple hired L. C. Jordan to carry the mail for him about two months. Jordan liked the service so well that he got to be a carrier and is now a carrier at the Durant office.
In the early days of his long service on the Rural Route, he drove a team of mules to a buggy and rode horse-back. This was in the days before the gravel roads and the roads were black mud, often impassable when the wet weather set in. It would be after dark when he got back to the office on bad days. It was not a good paying job as it is today either. His starting salary was $104.00 per month and he had to feed his own team out of that. His route was 28 miles long in the early days. At that time there were five routes out of Caddo and as the carriers quit or retired, the routes were consolidated and a little mileage added to each, until now there are only three and his route is 39 miles long.
Along in 1921 the carriers were granted permission to use cars on the routes and he has used a care ever since, except on some muddy days when he fell back on the old horse to get through the mud. Often, he had to walk and lead the horse part of the way to keep him from playing out before the route was made.
He talks of the early days when he would get caught in a storm and have to stop somewhere until it let up some and then go on and make the route, often having to light matches to read the names on the mail so he could put it into the proper boxes.
On his route today are five families that were on the route when he started: the E. K. Freeman family, the W. H. Paddock family, the W. R. Reynolds family, and the G. E. Roper family. He has seen many young people grow up and marry and settle on the route.
He has served under five postmasters, R. H. Carroway, A. E. Rickey, G. A. Crossett, U. S. Markham, and the present postmaster, Carl Petty.
One time he remembers well was a near mishap for himself on the route. Thompson Creek south of Caddo was flooded and he picked out a nice wide place to cross on his horse, which he thought was shallow, but the first plunge of …. (line missing) he jumped from the horse and caught a tree. His horse swam on to the other side. He was close enough to the bank to throw his mail out on dry land, but there he was- up in a tree in a flooded creek. So, he sat in the tree and shouted until Sam Marshall heard him and came down with an old trot line with hooks off it, and by tying a rock on the end, was able to throw it out to Semple so that he could catch it and be pulled out. The mail got a little wet, but went through.
Another time on this same creek, he watched a man and his wife and two children with the produce in a wagon drive off into the swollen creek. When they hit the deep water, it floated the wagon box off the running gears and they all floated down the creek. The wagon box caught in a tree and the man tossed his children out to Semple in the edge of the water and he and his wife waded out, but the wagon box floated off. “They had a red hen in a crate and somehow the crate came off the hen and she floated away on the water- looked as if she were setting on the water,” Semple said.
The biggest tragedies on the route that Semple remembers were two airplane crashes, the first in 1950 when a plane plunged into the ground west of Caddo, killing one; and then the other this spring southwest of Kenefic, where one was also killed. He didn’t see either happen, but heard the explosion of both.
Charlie has watched the community develop from a farming center, with a house and family on about every 80 acres into a cattle ranch country, with big land holdings and a few houses. Also, the big improvements in the roads with the graveling and draining, to where an all-day job now takes about four hours.
Uncle Charlie has farmed and raised cattle all the time that he has been carrying mail, and when asked what he intends to do when he no longer has his route to make, he said that he would continue to farm and maybe get himself a boat and motor and catch up on his fishing. Anyway, he intends to keep busy and active.