New mural unintentionally, but
closely, resembles Alva farmer
By Jordan Green, Editor-in-Chief
Edmond artist Jason Pawley spent Saturday morning behind the Woods County Health Department painting a mural of a smiling, hat-donning farmer he’d never met. Meanwhile, in the pharmacy next door, 85-year-old Truman Cookson smiled as he sat near the soda fountain.
Cookson, who has farmed and ranched in Kansas and Oklahoma for years, kept his brown sun hat atop his head and his cellphone tucked into a worn pocket on his blue bib overalls as he combed through the morning newspaper. Then, another farmer arrived with a news flash.
“I said, ‘Truman, have you seen the character they’re putting up on the wall?’” Mark Dubben said. “‘It’s you.”
Cookson walked down the alley and took a long look at the mural, inspecting the wide array of colors with his watchful eyes. He let out a hearty laugh.
“Well, there’s a resemblance,” he said with a wry grin.
HOW IT ALL STARTED
Pawley was in town as part of the Alva Mural Society’s 2022 Northwest Mural Fest, an annual event that brings in artists from across the region to create artwork on the sides of local buildings. Most of the murals have a local tie, showing significant aspects of Alva.
“Farm life is probably a huge deal out here,” Pawley said. “I kind of want to showcase that. Farmers are very important to us.”
Pawley wanted to paint a mural featuring the region’s signature rolling fields, covered by the orange and blue hues of the rising sun. Then, he needed to add a person. Pawley logged onto Google and searched for photos using the generalized search term “vintage farmer.”
“I came up with an image that struck me,” Pawley said. “I used it, and I illustrated it, projected it and put it up here.”
The image came to life Saturday morning, as the outlines making up the character’s cheekbones and thick-framed glasses were filled with color. With caution cones blocking the alley, Pawley climbed atop scaffolding to spread color across the brick wall.
Shades of teal, orange and yellow make up the landscape enveloping the farmer, who smokes a pipe as he looks across the horizon.
“‘Without the pipe, it’s you,’” Dubben told Truman. “I’ve never seen him smoke a pipe.”
Around 10 o’clock, after hearing Dubben’s nearly prophetic words, Cookson came to take a look. He talked with Pawley for a while, sharing his life story.
Pawley is confident that the farmer he modeled the mural after was not Cookson. But he didn’t deny the uncanny and unplanned resemblance between the two.
“That guy is as authentic as it gets,” Pawley said of Cookson. “It fits the bill.”
TRIED AND TRUE
The wrinkles on the farmer’s face in the mural reflect years of intense labor and a life of working on the land. So do the grizzled whiskers and wrinkles on Cookson’s.
Cookson has worked around the region as a welder, farmer, rancher and auctioneer.
He worked for Panhandle Eastern Pipeline Co. before he moved to Alva, married his wife and took up ranching. Then he bought a livestock sale barn.
“They said I could never be a success,” Truman said. “I kept it for six or eight years and sold it for twice [the purchase price].”
Being in livestock sales wasn’t easy, though, as persistent market fluctuations made the business stressful and challenging to predict. Nevertheless, Cookson persevered. He built and sold another sale barn, and he held a real estate license for 35 years, among other vocations. He’s planted crops on thousands of acres of land and sold countless farms, too.
Folks like Dubben still respect his work.
“Who knows how many head of cattle that guy has auctioned off. Then, he was a land auctioneer, too,” Dubben said. “He was probably the most fair land auctioneer guy I’ve ever been around. … When he auctioned, you always knew who had the bid.”
With his 86th birthday approaching, Cookson still enjoys meeting acquaintances in the community. And he’ll gladly share some stories from the past – without much embellishment.
“I’ve had a lot of pitfalls,” Cookson said softly in his deep, bass voice. “But through the time, it’s been enjoyable. … I’m not an educated man at all, but in my lifetime, I’ve done about everything that I ever wanted to do, and I have no regrets.”
KEEPING UP
WITH APPEARANCES
Cookson isn’t the farmer in the mural, but he’s been the subject of a few other artistic endeavors. Alva painter Warren Little has sketched and colored drawings of Cookson on notebook paper that hang on a stainless-steel refrigerator at Holder Drug. Those works look like the mural, Cookson said.
“The only thing about it, the face is a little more long in there than it is in here,” Cookson said. “Of course, it’s everybody’s imagination.”
Cookson isn’t too concerned with who the farmer in the mural is. As he stood in the alley talking with Pawley, he kept glancing toward the subject.
“You’re doing a nice job,” Cookson said to Pawley as a grin spread across his face. “It’s going to stay there a long time. And if it does look like me, when the people go up and down the alley, they’ll say, ‘Look at that dumb son of a gun.’”
“That’s the spittin’ image,” Pawley said of the mural. “It’s like it was meant to be.”