Ben Mullikin was an excellent mechanic,he could get any car back into
     working condition with a little time and a piece of baling wire. Ben
     came to Barber County in 1936 to work in the Ford Garage in Medicine
     Lodge. This business was owned by his uncles, John Mullikin and John
     Riiso, and was located on the corner of First and Main Streets, where
     the Lincoln Library now stands.
       Edith Lurinda Woodward worked with her sister Ethel Louise at Russell's
     Bakery which was located in the block south of the garage. This was where
     Edith met Ben and Ethel met his brother Bob. Eventually sisters married
     brothers. Edith and Ben were married in the living room of her parents
     home on Medicine Boulevard. That house which once belonged to Darius and
     May Woodward is still in use. The wedding occurred on August 27, 1927.
     They moved into an apartment on North Main and Edith taught school at
     Lasswell.
       The Great Depression was coming and the bad times stayed around for a
     long time. There were several moves back and forth between Medicine Lodge
     and Montezuma, Kansas, where Ben's family lived. Edith and Ben produced
     three children: Benny in 1929 and Phyllis in 1931, both born in that same
     house on Medicine Boulevard; and Virginia, born in 1933 near Montezuma.
       Sometime in 1932 Rye and May Woodward took Edith's grandmother Axtell to
     Montezuma to visit and while they were there one of those horrible dirt
     storms moved in. These had occurred before and they had learned to hang
     wet sheets over the windows and doors and place wet hankerchiefs over their
     faces. Because they could not see very far in the blowing and suffocating
     dirt they almost lost Benny and Roberta (Ethel's and Bob's little girl)
     during this storm.
       The family moved back to Medicine Lodge in 1934 and Ben went to work for
     Lloyd Davis in his garage on Washington Street. Ben was a member of the
     Volunteer Fire Department while living in Medicine Lodge. Their children
     were baptized in the Presbyterian Churchwhile the Reverend and Mrs. Mc
     Cormick were there.
       Ben worked as a farmer, a mechanic, and in the oil fields during his
     lifetime. He and Edith were divorced in the fall of 1947 and he moved to
     California. He worked for awhile in the Aleutian Islands. He died of a
     heart attack in Sacramento, California, int he fall of 1964 and his buried
     near his parents, Cynthia Ann Perkins and Joseph Erastus Mullikin, near
     Montezuma, Kansas.   
                
     Source:Chosen Land - Barber County, Kansas, pg. 339 
     Submitted by: his daughter, Phyllis Mullikin Inslee