American Legacies Organization, Inc.

This four barrel 22 caliber Derringer was made in Italy. It previously belonged to Lloyd Floyd. Lloyd Floyd was born around 1890. After statehood he was elected Sheriff of Le Flore County, Oklahoma. He carried this Derringer in his boot during the entire 42 years he served as sheriff. He was even reelected as Sheriff after his youngest brother Pretty Boy Floyd was killed for bank robbery.

I also have a cobblestone pill box big enough to hold 60 people., that came from Lincoln County, Oklahoma. It's round and has two floors in it and slots about four inches in diameter all the way around it. If the Indians attacked, the settlers would all run and get into it. They kept enough supplies in it to last them about a month. The pill box was fixed so the settlers could lay on the floor, stick their rifle barrels up to these holes and shoot out of them. They had to be careful not to stick their rifles out of the holes, because the Indians could grab them.

In 1933, when I was a kid, I was out coon hunting one day. I found this tree with a hole in it. I reached down into that hole, and I could feel something soft. I had gloves on and I pulled it up. It was an old leather pouch and I dropped it. Of course, when it hit the ground, it came apart. I took a pouch and gathered it all up and took it home. Then we spread it all out on the table. I found a treasure in that old oak tree. I found 33 gold pieces and thousands of dollars of Confederate money.

My Grandfather, William Coate, was born April 11, 1835, in Bloomingdale, Indiana. My grandfather and two of his brothers were shoemakers. There was something physically wrong with all of them. One of them got hurt in the Civil War. I forgot what was wrong with the other one and my grandfather had club feet. My grandfather moved from Indiana, where he was born, to Eudora, Kansas, just west of Kansas City, where he and his two brothers opened a shoe repair shop called `The Cripple Shoe Shop.'

I was five years old when we moved to Oklahoma back in 1929. We had a Moon Car and my sister used to make Dad so mad because whenever there was any sort of trouble with the car and he would crawl under the car to do something to it, my sister would sing an old song to aggravate him called `Get Out and Get Under the Moon.'

I went into the Air Force and while I was in the service, I went through mechanic school first, then through gunnery training. I was an engineer on a B24. That means that I was a flying mechanic. I took care of checking the flaps, landing gear, generator, etc. I also manned the top turret guns when we were out on combat. Then later, I retrained on B29's.