"We used to get milk off the wild cattle. My dad always figured us kids should do some work. We had a cow pen about 100 yards from the house. I used to have to get up when I was about six years old and go down a path through a big cabbage hammock where they had just took an ax and chopped their way through. There would be frost on the ground and me barefooted with pants up to my knees," Recalled the late Ossie Raulerson in 1988. He was relating memories of his childhood growing up along with the City of Okeechobee and Okeechobee County.

"We would use what we called a Drawdy pole. My Grandfather Drawdy rigged this up. It would be a cypress pole and we bore a hole about three inches from the small end of it. And, about twelve inches back we would bore another hole. We put a half-inch rope through the hole and tied a knot so it wouldn’t slip back through. There would be a loop up there and we would lay that lop over a cow’s horns and there would be a man, to hold this cow and twist it while someone would try to milk it. The cow would be jumping, twisting and bucking. I used to have to try and milk like that. You would milk ten cows and get half a gallon of milk, he recalled with a laugh.

Ossie was one of the eight children of Williams Raulerson and Merida Drawdy. Although he was born in For Drum, at the home of his mother’s brother, the family lived at a spot on the Kissimmee River known as the Wood Landing. There his father operated a sawmill and provided fuel for the steamboats which were the main connection with the outside world at the turn of the century. When he was about three or four years old, the family moved to Tantie, (Okeechobee) which was later re-named Okeechobee. He said they moved in 1910 shortly before a severe storm hit the area. There were only five or six houses that made up the community at the time of the move. The house to which hey moved was located on South Parrott Avenue and was what was called a board and batten house. It was constructed on a foundation of logs, and when the storm blew through, the house blew off its log foundation.

Board and batten construction was a method in which 1 inch by 10 inch boards were placed vertically over a frame and 1 inch by 4 inch boards put over the cracks to keep out the wind and rain. The houses were build up on blocks made from old lighter logs cut to a height of two or three feet upon which the frame was erected. This first house in which the family lived was located close to where the first school was built. He said that the family moved from the Wood Landing to Tantie (Okeechobee) on a steamboat.

"Taylors Creek over here was just a crooked as could be. The captains on the steamboats had to be pretty careful going in there that they didn’t hit on any of those snags or something." He said. He recalled that was the method by which inventory for Leis Raulerson’s store arrived.

(Taylor Creek was originally called Taylors Creek. Sometime during the past 70 or 80 years, the letter "s" was dropped, but old timers still used the plural pronunciation.)

"He got his merchandise up Taylors Creek and it was a lot different from what it is like now. Uncle Lewis had a little warehouse about as big as a room and it had tin on the sides and one door. I doubt he ever had a lock on it. He would bring his merchandise in by steamboat and unload it at a place by his warehouse. It was taking too long to bring the merchandise in from Kissimmee. The Kissimmee River was just as crooked as it could be and it would take a pretty good while. Going from Kissimmee up north to Jacksonville was a little narrow gauge railroad and it took a long time for the merchandise," he said.