Page 94 - May 2018 Speedhorse

The Man On The Hill
Part III
Carrying On
by Lyn Jank
Parts 1 and 2 brought Ronald S. ‘Ron’ Mason from hoeing corn in Nowata, Oklahoma, in 1909, through dressing tools for an oil company in East Texas, through buying and selling oil leases in Texas and Oklahoma, through establishing the Cross J Ranch in 1929, and through the decade
of the 1930’s when his stallions, Oklahoma Star and Beggar Boy, were bequeathing their ‘Stars’ and ‘Beggars’ to horsemen coast to coast.
Times were good on the Cross J when the decade of the 40’s began. The Masons – Ron, Ann and their daughters, Ruth Ann and Janet, had forgotten what it was like to live without plumbing or electricity, and the well that had once been the only source of water was no more than a sentimental landmark.
Oklahoma Star turned twenty-five January 1, 1940. Time’s advance had made little mark on him. Beggar Boy was sixteen, “still frisky and uppity on occasion.”
Everything, it seemed, had “come up roses.”
In 1942, Ann Mason was killed in an auto collision on the Bartlesville Highway not far from the Cross J.
“It sure didn’t seem fair somehow. She
had gone through all the lean years with me, working like a slave, pumping the water she cooked and cleaned with, then carrying it pail by pail. Then, just when things were getting so much easier – she was gone,” Ron Mason said.
“Every man has his own right to his own views about religion. I’ve never personally felt that the best way to uphold your religion is going to church. Every church has its own set of rules, and I don’t think that’s looking at the whole Pedigree. My church has always been
my land. So, I guess you could say I went to church full time after I lost my wife. If I had to go anywhere on business, I got it over quick as I could and went back to the Cross J.”
Ron Mason’s period of mourning eventually ended, and he became aware that a tall, dark- haired schoolmarm in Nowata was a most comely distaffer.
One day, Monett Corbett was surprised when Ron approached her, hat in hand, and said, “What does a man have to do to get introduced to you?”
The courtship began. Ron was fifty-two; Monett, thirty.
“I never thought about the age difference between Ron and me, and still don’t think
about it,” Monett said. “He’s a man’s man who says what he feels and never minces words; he’s definitely chauvinistic, but he’s also kind and good, and I love him as much today as I did then.
“My parents had sacrificed to send me through school, and I had never wanted to be anything but a schoolteacher until I met Ron. After we married, and I went to Cross J, a whole new world opened up for me.
“Horsemen came in droves. The men were out there talking horse with Ron, the wives were
Ron Mason and Cherokee Dolly. “. . . she’s my baby. The horses in her bottom line go through all the years with me.”
in the kitchen with me. I baked everything from scratch. The idea of serving anywhere from a dozen to forty people at a sit-down just about petrified me until I realized that everybody liked my cooking – a man from Texas once consumed two quarts of my brown gravy.
“Days like the days we had at the Cross J don’t show up in computer banks, so you won’t find them mixed in with other facts about Ron’s horses. But the days happened, and they aren’t forgotten. We know that because so many of the horsemen still keep in touch with us.
“After we had been married awhile, Ron said that if I thought I could have some sons, we might try it. I told him we’d better get started. We had two boys. We named the first Langford, after Ron’s close friend, Langford Shaw, and named the other Corbett.
“I never got to know Oklahoma Star too well. The beautiful bay chose Valentine’s Day
of 1943 to say good-bye to us. Ron put him to rest on the highest summit of the highest hill on the Cross J. When Beggar Boy’s time came, he joined Star on the hill.
“Bill Doolin was foaled not long after Star died, and of course you already know how much Bill meant to Ron. In consideration of Bill Doolin’s
92 SPEEDHORSE, May 2018
LOOKING BACK - AN EXCERPT FROM JULY 1981 ISSUE