Americana & the U.S.

In 1957, attending a Bowher reunion in Shawnee, Ohio, at the age of nine, I met Cloyd and his wife Blanche Bowsher. Cloyd told me about working at 16 in the Allen and Mercer county oil fields. Most intriquing was how he’d used keys hanging from 1842 bible as a “doodlebug” for the location of oil. Reading from bible as walked in field, if keys began swinging in circle would indicate oil below!

Cloyd revealed how reading aloud his bible near Celina at oil mate’s funeral, the hanging keys began circling. When Cloyd’s doodlebug keys started circling in cemetery on east side of lake during funeral of killed worker, oil drill boss saw there’s oil under “poor man’s graveyard!” They drilled a slant hole beneath cemetery, and when they had extracted all oil they could by that means, Cloyd showed guilt about drilling in graveyard after pushing markers into the lake!  I later found grave stones in lake where Cloyd said they were.

After oil boom ended in Mercer Co. around 1910, Cloyd’s wife Blanche had used doodlebug to “forsee” a woman’s romantic future by bible and keys method!