The answer to a mystery is revealed...

Running east and west for only about 3.5 miles and to the north of Ninnekah, OK, is a sleepy section line road that bears the name "Old Fred's Road".?ÿ At its west terminus it's got a good double bit' surface.?ÿ But not far east of there it turns to pot-holed gravel as it disappears into a winding tank battery service trail in the Little Washita bottom not far from its confluence with the Washita River.

There's probably not a dozen folks that live on Old Fred's Road.?ÿ And all of them are on the west end.?ÿ The east end is hay fields and bottom pasture complete with a few Angus lazily craning their necks to bite at the Buffalo flies feeding on their rump.?ÿ If it weren't for the little green buried telephone closures sticking up every couple hundred yards, the scenery might be mistaken for the 1930's.?ÿ Just a sleepy little forgotten road that the county motor patrol hardly visits.

I've surveyed down there a lot for the co-op.?ÿ Every chance I get to scrounge through the county's records I look for one of the older property owners named Fred.?ÿ There's not a Fred in the whole township.?ÿ I did find a yellowed 1949 county road map at the courthouse a few years ago and it plainly showed that road as "Old Fred's Road".?ÿ So it's been named so for a while.?ÿ?ÿThere's a lot of Mennonite farms near and here are lots of German names. And Friedrich is German...but not even any Friedrichs even so much as dug a privy within a mile of Old Fred's Road.?ÿ Over the years I've been stumped.

But my training as a surveyor means I have come to understand parol evidence.?ÿ So for the last few years I've been reduced to chatting up any of the old geezers I happen to catch running hay bales to their cattle with the flatbed.?ÿ When I ask them, "who was old Fred and why did they name the road after him"?ÿ I usually get a side-to-side head shake followed by "don't rightly know".?ÿ And some of these folks were born right there almost 80 years ago.?ÿ The origin of the road's name has been lost to antiquity to the point I don't even ask anymore.

I was out there today and ran into a fellow replacing the sucker washers on a wind-cranked well...an oldie, but he had just got it pumping.?ÿ A dozen head of cattle watched patiently as water was filling the stock tank.?ÿ When he told me how old the well was I asked how long he had owned the place.?ÿ I was surprised to find his grand-dad was born on that quarter well before statehood.?ÿ I recognized the "Schnecht" name from all the deeds and wills I've read over the years.?ÿ Just as an afterthought I asked him, "who the heck was Fred and why did they name the road after him?"

He just laughed and shook his head.?ÿ He told me he hasn't heard the story in years and guessed there weren't many folks around anymore that even remembered it. I told him about all the research I'd done in probably ten years but had never found the name "Fred" in any of the records.?ÿ He told me Fred wasn't a human....Old Fred was a mule.

There was some shaky memories about which place on the road Fred lived, but he was a fairly well noted occupant of the road for years during the 1920's.?ÿ As his story went Fred would get out an block the road to the point he would try to fight other mules or horses pulling buggies or buckboards.?ÿ Motor cars being rare someone even told the story of Fred kicking a Model T and wrinkling the fender.?ÿ Folks that were going to have to use that road always carried some oats to offer Fred as payment for safe passage on "his" road.?ÿ Over the years as Fred mellowed he came to expect a handful or two of oats from anyone or anything that tried to pass along the road.

Being too young to have been around back then, the guy I was talking with had heard the story from his father and grandfather.?ÿ He raised his head and looked around for a moment.?ÿ He had to admit there probably wasn't anyone else along that road that was around back then...or had even heard the story.?ÿ I was happy to have heard it...now you all know the rest of the story, too. 😉

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