Moore Remembers Noel As It Was Decades Ago

Laverne Moore, a longtime Noel resident, remembers the town as it was many years ago.

She moved to Noel in 1950, when she married her husband, Ivan Moore, who has now passed away. He grew up in the town and knew everyone. It wasn’t long before she got to know everyone too, Moore said. They had one daughter and three grandchildren.

Years ago, when the Edward Aaron chicken plant (now Tyson) was built, Moore got a job there.

“I was the first one that walked in the door,” she said. She worked there three years and quit, then went back and worked 22 years. Later, she worked at two mobile home factories on the state line, Winston Industries and Sundancer, for 16 years.

Moore said Noel has an interesting history. She said she loves the people of the town.

“There’s always something good in everyone, and you don’t have to look very far to find it,” she said.

“Noel is still a pretty town, but years and years ago, it was beautiful,” she said. “We used to have a jewelry store, a bakery, three grocery stores and two restaurants. The old theater burned.”

“The thing to do on a Saturday night was sit on Main Street and people watch,” she said. “That was my entertainment.”

Longtime Noel resident Laverne Moore is pictured at her home.

She recalls one summer two gentlemen, Squeak Howerton and Jim Riley, were going to help Noel secede from the state. She never knew why.

She said there were bootleggers in Noel before Oklahoma went wet. The bootleggers would hide their moonshine in a haystack and the cows would get into it, break the bottles and get drunk, she said, laughing.

Moore remembers one church revival that was so big people were standing in the parking lot and sitting on the neighbors’ porches. She misses the tradition of ringing church bells on Sunday, she said.

She said there was a flood in the 1950s when she and her husband waded under the bluff and the water was hip deep. She also remembers the train explosion in 1969.

“On Sulphur Street it demolished I don’t know how many houses that had to be rebuilt,” she said.

“We have, I have heard, 39 different nationalities here in Noel, and as far as I know, they all get along. I’m glad, because if they didn’t,

it would surely be a mess. If someone gets in a pickle around here and has problems, it seems like everyone

is willing to jump in and help out,” she said.

Moore concluded, “I just love my town and I love the

people in this town. I have yet to find somebody that I couldn’t find something good about them.”