Oklahoma: A Story Through Her People

HUCKABAY
FAMILY
ALL AMERICA
BANK ®
Above: T. C. Huckabay, Mountain Park,
Oklahoma, 1927.
Below: Left to right, William G. Capps,
president; W. W. Runnels, bookkeeper;
T. C. Huckabay, assistant cashier;
and Marvin H. Clark, cashier, 1927.
Thomas Clayton (T. C.) Huckabay, born
on February 28, 1908, in Castor, Louisiana,
was the sixth of seven children raised by
parents with an elementary school education
on a farm. T. C. attended Tyler Commercial
College in Tyler, Texas, from 1925-1926. In
February of 1927, at the age of nineteen,
he landed a job at Planters State Bank in
Mountain Park, Oklahoma, as the assistant
cashier, bookkeeper, stenographer and janitor
paying seventy-five dollars per month. The
bank had three other employees, President
William G. Capps, Cashier M. H. Clark and
Bookeeper W. W. Runnels.
In T. C.’s autobiography he said:
There were two gins in Mountain Park and
between them, by running night and day; they
could gin about 100 bales of cotton per day.
Beginning about October 1st our work load
increased to where I spent the time we were
open (8:00 am to 4:00 pm) at the window
waiting on customers. At that time there were
several cotton buyers in Mountain Park and
the farmers sold their bales of cotton as soon
as they were ginned. After we closed I had to
balance my window, get the day’s remittance
mailed, which required each out-of-town item
to be listed, and get them in the mail. After this
was finished I did the posting of the checks
and deposits. At the height of the season there
was a period of about two week that I was 4
days behind with the posting and I was working
until 10 and 11 o’clock at night and also
Sundays. Cotton was bringing about 26-27
cents per pound and our deposits increased
from $80,000 to $380,000 that fall, thus my
introduction into the banking business.
The cashier resigned on January 1, 1928,
and T. C. was given his position and a raise to
$100 per month. T. C. continues:
The years of 1928 and 1929 were considered
about normal from a business standpoint.
The cotton crops were about the norm,
about ½ bale per acre, and the price had fallen
to around 20 cents per pound. The year
1930 was extremely dry and the beginning of
the Dust Bowl. The cotton yield was very low,
the price had dropped to 12 cents per pound,
and business was beginning to feel the depression.
We made fair cotton yields in 1931 and
1932 but the price had dropped to around
5.75 cents per pound and the depression was
nation-wide. Banks were in bad trouble and
other commodity prices had fallen along with
cotton. Franklin Roosevelt became president
in 1933 and declared a bank holiday, closing
all of the banks. The sound banks, as diagnosed
by the examiners, were allowed to
reopen in a week or ten days, with the Federal
Deposit Insurance coming into existence.
Banks that were in doubt were closed until
an examination by the examiners. Our bank
was in bad trouble and after the examination
we were allowed to re-open under 5 percent
O K L A H O M A : A S t o r y T h r o u g h H e r P e o p l e
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