Carl Crim: 1958 Oklahoma Driver of the Year and 1959 National Driver of the Year
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Carl Crim: 1958 Oklahoma Driver of the Year and 1959 National Driver of the Year Carl Crim was born on March 11, 1915 in Doniphan, Missouri. When he was just a young boy, his family moved from Missouri to Okmulgee, Oklahoma. While working on the family farm as a teenager, Crim aspired to become a truck driver when he watched trucks go by as he plowed the fields near the highway. After operating a hay carrier during the harvest seasons, Crim graduated from Okmulgee High School and his career ambition began to take shape when he took his first professional driving job in 1933 in Okmulgee. Throughout the next ten years, Crim would work at a variety of trucking firms. He drove for: • John Lewis Truck Company (2 years), • Petroleum Transport (4 years), • Hopkins Truck Co. of Ponca City (3 Years) and • Mid-Continent Petroleum of Okmulgee (1 Carl Crim aspired to be a truck driver from the time he was a young teenager year) And while he always earned high marks and yearly awards for safe driving, Crim soon developed a reputation for often being the first to arrive at scenes of accidents, administering first aid, and sometimes performing heroic acts. In 1938, Crim was filling a 1,000-gallon underground gasoline storage tank from his truck at the MK&O bus terminal in downtown Tulsa. At one step in the process, he had to remove the cap from the underground tank to gauge capacity. With the cap off, fumes from the tank crept across the concrete floor to the opposite wall. At the same moment, a worker began operating an arc-weld torch at the opposite wall. A spark from the arch-weld torch ignited the gas fumes. Flames swept across the concrete floor toward Crim and the 1000 gallons of gasoline. Reacting instantly, without thought of his safety, Crim smothered the area around the opening to the underground storage tank with a tarpaulin, then, with the flames lapping around his legs, quickly screwed the cap back onto the truck. He then extinguished the flames burning about his legs. Crim received only “slight singes” from the fire. However, were it not for Crim’s quick-thinking, the entire bus station with several dozen waiting passengers might have been blown to pieces had the gas tank exploded. Another accident happened in October 1940 when a driver of a Mid-Continent truck had an accident and caught fire. Crim was one of the first on the scene and with the help of another The Breeding’s of Overton County, Tennessee and Carroll County, Arkansas Page 1 passerby, carried Guy Arnold from the burning wreckage and surely kept him from burning to death. As exciting as his professional life had become, his personal life was proving to be just as fast-paced and interesting. In 1937, he met Steffie Skales who was working in a local café, when Crim decided to ask her out. She was originally hesitant to go out with him because she never wanted marry a truck driver. However, she threw caution to the wind and decided “why not go out with him on a date?” Within, two weeks, Crim had totally swept her off her feet and the young couple decided to get married. During their marriage, Crim would often sit out on their porch swing and he would sing songs from Johnny Lee Wills to pass the evenings. On other occasions, he would find a more public setting to display his singing talents. In Okmulgee, there was a park with a gazebo located on 8th Street. Whenever Johnnie Lee Wills and his Boys would come into town, Crim would sometimes go up on stage and play harmonica with them. Later on in his life, he Carl Crim led a very fast-paced and exciting life. developed a personal friendship with Merle It seemed that he was always coming up on Haggard and besides being one of his accidents on the road. favorite singers, they would also become drinking buddies. Because they had no television early in their marriage, the couple often had friends over to the house on weekend to play cards. On Saturday nights, they would sometime visit with their neighbor Earl McClendon’s house where they would watch boxing and then the program featuring Leon McCullough and his string band. Besides being very friendly and outgoing, Crim had a wonderful sense of humor. Crim, who went by the nicknames “Curly” or “Pee Wee,” made one of his favorite targets his own wife, Steffie, who was naturally a very quiet lady. In retrospect, it seems he was always pulling tricks on her. On one occasion, Carl went frog gigging which is where you take a long pole and attach a point of an arrow or something where you can poke the frog and pull him back to your boat. Basically, the men would stick the frogs in the water and bring them back and place them in a sack. When preparing the frogs for cooking, Carl would remove the black leader in the legs after he cut the legs from the frog. After one frog hunt, Carl purposely decided not to do this so that when his wife cooked the frog in a frying pan, the frog (much to her surprise) jumped out of the skillet. Carl’s wife also hated to eat venison and would not eat it. However, after one hunting excursion, Carl tried preparing it in a way so that the meat would not have that wild taste to it. He set out and fixed her a chicken fried steak out of venison and she ate two whole The Breeding’s of Overton County, Tennessee and Carroll County, Arkansas Page 2 pieces and Carl just looked at his daughters and they’d just grin. After finishing her second helping (along with mashed potatoes and gravy), Carl asked Steffie, “did you like that?” When he told her what he had done, she turned all colors…blue, purple and green. Carl just didn’t limit his pranks to his wife. He was always pulling jokes on other people as well. At one time, he owned a mongoose cage. Their neighbors, James and Sadie McClendon, lived right across the alley from the Crim’s and on this occasion, Sadie was about eight and a half months pregnant. Carl’s cage had a little lever in the back – kind of like a trap – with a tail. He then told Sadie “that’s my mongoose.” When she bent down low to look at it and got even with it, Carl hit that trigger in the back and that door came open and the tail came out. Because she was so startled, everyone thought she was going to have the baby right there. World War II affected many families across the country in the early 1940’s and Crim’s was no different. Carl Crim enlisted in the US Army in April 1944 at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Carl Crim and a friend with their “catch of the day.” ARMY SERIAL NUMBER 38695492 Name CARL C CRIM Residence: County, State TULSA, OKLAHOMA Place of Enlistment FT SILL OKLAHOMA Date of Enlistment April 12, 1944 Grade: Code Private Branch: Code No branch assignment Enlistment for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus Term of Enlistment six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law Source of Army Civil Life Personnel Year of Birth 1915; Missouri Race and Citizenship White, citizen Education 4 years of high school Civilian Occupation Semiskilled chauffeurs and drivers, bus, taxi, truck, and tractor Marital Status Married Component of the Army Selectees (Enlisted Men) Source: Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, ca. 1938 - 1946 (Enlistment Records) in the Series: World War II Army Enlistment Records, created 6/1/2002 - 9/30/2002, documenting the period ca. 1938 - 1946. The Breeding’s of Overton County, Tennessee and Carroll County, Arkansas Page 3 Upon joining the military, the Army would run the men through 2-3 week courses on how to be a mechanic in the military. Then they put them in the motor pool and then they started working on them on how to drive the trucks and heavy equipment. For much the duration of World War II, he would drive trucks for the Army in the southwestern Pacific area, where he hauled tanks, trucks and other heavy equipment from the battlefield. When he wasn’t involved in military combat in the Pacific Theater, on occasion he would step in to the boxing ring which was his way “of getting in trouble.” After being discharged from the military, he found time in his busy schedule to work on the Alaskan Highway. Carl Crim in the US Army in 1944 The Alaska Highway (also known as the ALCAN Highway) was constructed during World War II for the purpose of connecting the contiguous U.S. to Alaska through Canada. After working in Alaska and his separation from the service, he returned home to his family in Okmulgee and began work as a driver for two years at H.C. Price of Bartlesville. By June 1947, he switched jobs and started working at Hugh Breeding, Inc., a firm he would serve at for almost the next twenty years. Crim would work for Breeding as a Leased Operator, basically owning his own 46-foot, 5700 gallon tank truck Carl Crim joined Hugh Breeding Inc. in 1947 where he would serve for almost 20 years and leasing it on jobs. He drove out of the company’s Okmulgee terminal and hauled gasoline and other products from the Phillips Petroleum Co.