Lunch time in Claremore, Oklahoma. There are and were several places to grab a bite or make a quick stop, or even sit down and have a meal in Claremore, but there was and is and has been, only one Hammett House restaurant since 1969, which is a full step or three above the quick dine and go places, the pizza buffet’s, and it has carried with it a sense of charm; photographs on the walls of people and places around town, and the sign that said “Life is uncertain, eat dessert first”.
Dessert at the Hammett House includes a few standard things, but they are famous for their pies. Big, massive pies with whipped cream standing at least five inches above the, flavor and having a slice meant you could eat pie for lunch, but you would take the left overs home for dinner.
There are two rooms in the restaurant, on the left, where the kitchen and main wait station works, and the east room on the right, there are about fourteen tables in there. All in all, when you had a good lunch or dinner going, there could easily be a hundred seated and a waiting room for ten to twenty people.
Joe Cox, president of our company, and former president of Baker Hughes/Centralift in Claremore, had asked a co-worker and myself to lunch, and we walked in and were seated three fourths of the way back, in the center of the east room at the one table that was still empty.
As we started to sit down we were greeted by Dave Chessard, who was the director of nursing at the Claremore hospital, and his arm was in a sling from a recent surgery. They had moved a couple of tables together and there were about nine RN’s enjoying lunch.
To the left of us, the table was full of four dynamic personalities, with the President of the Oklahoma Senate, Stratton Taylor, who served a record eight years as president pro tempore, and was a member of the Oklahoma senate for twenty four years, next to him was Sanders Mitchell, director of the Pryor Oklahoma industrial Park, Joe Carter, a former crime reporter with an Oklahoma City newspaper, he and his wife had moved to Claremore where she was the Director of the Will Rogers Museum and Joe was the best non-director director that worked the museum and wrote a book about Will Rogers. Will Rogers Memorial is across the street to the northwest of the Hammett House.
The last gentleman at that table was Senator Gene Stipe, who had managed to get a great deal of McAlester Oklahoma to remember his name by getting a street named after him (Gene Stipe Blvd) and by having served as a member of the State Senate from 1957-2003, the longest sitting senator in Oklahoma history. He did have his share of troubles that would take another two or three writings to cover, so it is just to show you that the company was robust, people were clicking and the place was busy.
We had just placed our order when Joe Carter, who had been leaning on the table, talking, suddenly raised his upper half of body upright, became very stiff, Stratton looked at him and said “Come on Joe!” and at that moment, Carter fell forward onto the table with a crash.
People started moving.
Two of the nurses jumped up and grabbed Carter under his arms, pulled him back, and started looking in his mouth, when Dave Chessard said, “He’s not choking, it looks as though he may be having a heart attack.”
They lifted him from his chair and laid him on the floor, and the room began to empty. Cox, me and the coworker all moved backwards in the room and stood by the back wall, because they were between us and the door.
Bill Biard, owner of the restaurant, called for an ambulance, and within about four minutes four fully dressed out fireman had entered the room, (fire station is literally across the street)took the nurses places, and began opening their equipment and calling the hospital on the radio.
They moved all the tables to the outside of the room to give them a place to work, and someone ripped open Joe’s shirt and they began to lube up the heart paddles to work on Joe.
Senator Stipe had left the room, Sanders Mitchell had soon followed and Stratton Taylor had taken a station at the front of the room near the exit .
“Clear!” the fireman said loudly.
A loud whack came from the electrical shock to Joe’s chest. Joe’s boots raised up in a second, heels clacked together and they crashed to the ground.
Another fireman listened through his sphygmomanometer. He shook his head at the first fireman.
The first one cranked it up, yelled clear again, Whack!, it sounded out, Joe’s legs came off of the floor, boots smacked together, and the fireman started pumping his chest.
The second fireman listened again, shook his head, and the first one spent a few seconds, yelled “Clear!” again, Whack !The noise it made, the boots clacked together, and the second one listened. All of the firemen started making noises and moving, they brought a stretcher in, loaded Joe, four of them grabbed the stretcher, and they walked out the front door of the restaurant.
There was plastic bags, forks, napkins, a plate or two, a couple of chairs turned over, and the room was empty, except for Mr. Cox and us two, who were standing there looking on the entire scene that had just happened, that was now just the debris left in the floor, and no one was in the room but us.
Mr. Cox looked at us, and he said “Come in here, we might as well eat a piece of pie.”
We headed through the side door, sat down at an empty table in the empty restaurant, and had a piece of pie.
The thing to remember is that this all happened in the “time before “ cell phones existed and we could do nothing but re-live what we had just seen, and look at the sign over the office saying “Life is Uncertain, Eat Dessert First”.
We very somberly ate the pie, and went back to work.
About four hours later we had all realized that we had not heard a word about the whole incident from anyone.
Mr. Cox came in my office and mentioned it, and said “You could call the hospital and ask them.”
I dialed the emergency room, got a hold of a very somber nurse and asked to speak with someone that had been with Joe Carter.
She said that everyone had left, so I whispered to my coworkers what I had been told.
I said “Well, ok, it was a heck of a thing that had happened, and we just needed to check.”
She said “You ought to call St Francis Hospital, because we finally talked Mr Carter into going there, they shocked him three more times on the way here and he finally got his act together and all he wanted was to go home!”
I hung up and relayed the message. It had turned out to be a decent day. We had all learned to eat our pie first.
Joe Carter is about to celebrate his 90th Birthday. Several folks in this story are now gone, the balance are in the age of retirement, Bill, Stratton and I all re-lived this scenario again at Bill’s Hammett House yesterday. Come on in, lunch or supper (closed Monday)and hang on to your hat.
Ralph E Peck
Photo by Ralph Peck
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