The Way it Was

We had a well with a pump just outside the back door. We had a bucket that sat on a separate small table. A wash basin sat on the table also. Our drinking water was in the bucket and a dipper which everybody used. Nobody was afraid of a little germ. We had a cupboard that was not built in. It was a piece of furniture. We had two of those in our kitchen. I have no idea how we were able to keep all our dishes in those two cupboards. A large family meant a lot of dishes and they were all dirty after each meal. To do the dishes, you had to heat the water on a stove that had to be fed wood constantly. The water was heated in a large tea kettle. The dish pan and another one for rinsing was set on the other cupboard. There was no place to set a draining rack. I don’t think anyone had ever heard of a draining rack in the 1930’s. Well, nobody in my house anyway. Female’s washed dishes, men only did outside jobs. Women also did outside jobs, such as washing clothes and hanging them up on a clothes line to dry. Tending to a garden in the summer months. Gathering eggs and bringing in kindling and wood for the stoves was done by both female and male. That is just the way it was. I don’t believe anyone thought they were being treated unfairly. On a farm there was plenty of work for everybody. Men usually milked the cows, but many women also helped with the milking.  I often heard my mother say, “I never milked a cow in my life, and I ain’t going to either‘.  I thought that was a good rule so I never milked a cow in my life either and I ain’t going to.
In the winter months, the clothes washing procedure was moved to the back porch, which was screened in. It was just about as cold there as it was under the tree. It didn’t take nearly as long to do the laundry in the winter months as in the summer. At least you didn’t have to stand in the snow to wash the clothes. Everything was hung on the line to dry, freezing or not. They were frozen dry, and when you brought them in from the line it would be like bringing in the wood. Everything was frozen stiff. When they thawed out, they would dry rather quickly. Stuff was draped over everything in the house. It’s no wonder everybody was sick most of the time. Colds, and stomach ailments is what I remember the most. Of course if one person caught something, everybody would end up with it as well.
That is just some of the way it was.  Remember this, the next time the Pizza delivery man is running a little slow.

My Roots

This old house was built  in about 1889 and my father was born here in 1900.  His father and brothers built it so they could move out of the dug-out they had been living in.  Grandpa had homesteaded the property.  My parents moved into it when I was about 4 years old.  We lived there until I was 14, except for a couple years we lived in Colorado.  This house was an oven in the summer months of Oklahoma. We did not have that air conditioner shown in the photo. It was a freezer in the winter months.  One of the trees in the front  is a mulberry tree and the other is a walnut tree.  I remember because we enjoyed the walnuts and mulberries. The back room was a screened in porch. The cedar tree in back was there, but it also grew up. The lower limb was just the right height to use for a bar to chin ourselves. We climbed all the trees. I had two older brothers, and what they did, I did. My mothers protests didn't deter me.  I had to wear a dress because I was a girl and I was constantly tearing my dress.  Once in a great while Mom would let me wear a pair of my brothers overalls, but I think it was a sin for a girl to wear boy clothes so it didn't happen very often.  

Time moves on and so did we.  We moved to Stillwater, Ok into a house with a  real  bathroom  inside and  running water. I was in high school by now and made new friends.  This picture is me on the left and my friend, Ruth Ann.  We were the best friends and found all the fun things to do. She came from a very poor family and I loaned her clothes because she didn't have hardly any clothes. I remember the clothes she has on in this picture were mine.  Her Dad was an alcoholic and it seems her poor mother was always sick in bed, and having another baby. When my oldest brother came home from the war the two of them met and married soon after and they moved to California. I missed her so much I thought I would die. It was the last time I ever saw her. A couple years later they divorced and we lost all contact with each other. Just two or three years ago my daughter  found her name in some records on the computer. She sent the link to me and It was definitely her, she had just passed away a couple years before. She had married again and had three boys and a girl. She named her daughter after me. The tears came when I read that. She must have missed me as I had missed her. I told Karen I wished I had named her Ruth Ann. She said, "That's okay, Mom."  

The Tea Party

A Hen Party

where they serve wine

As a young one, and newly married, I found life somewhat boring. My neighbor invited me to go with her to an afternoon party. It was called a tea party, she said.  It’s just a bunch of friends and neighbors getting together for card games and monopoly. I asked if she was sure it would be okay because I had not received an invitation. She assured me that it was fine because her sister was having the party and she could take anyone she wanted to.  So we went to the party.  They had card tables set up and cards and games and women were already playing cards when we arrived. It seems the drink of choice that afternoon was wine and not tea. I don’t recall even seeing a teapot.  I wasn’t too keen on drinking wine, but I didn’t want to come across looking like a geek, so they served me a drink of wine. It was horrible, but I kept sipping on it.  The music came on and the laughing kept getting louder and louder. Someone refilled my empty glass, so I sipped on it. The card games did not seem very serious to me. Someone refilled my glass. As time wore on, I also began to see the humor in everything. Someone had refilled my glass. We had so much fun that day. I finally realized it was time to go home. My husband would be coming home from work and I had to get there before he did. I didn’t think he needed to know what I had been doing. The party was breaking up and she took me home. My husband came home on schedule that day.  I’m trying hard to act and look as normal as I could, but the wine had turned me into a cackling hyena.  When he told me there had been a traffic jam at First street and Lincoln Ave, I went into hysterics. He said, “that isn’t funny, what’s the matter with you?” I told him it was the way he said it that made it funny.  Now, I thought I had said something extremely funny, so I laughed real hard again. It was at this point, he gave me the breathalyzer test, meaning he took a sniff of my breath.  “What the hell have you been drinking?” he asked.  I told him that I had gone to a tea party, and had been drinking a little tea.  This was followed with more peals of laughter.  He said he suspected someone had spiked the tea. So I cracked up again, I thought he was hilarious. He then got into police-mode and began to grill me. Where was this party? Who drove you to the party? Who drove you home from the party? Who was at this party? I answered all the questions between spasms of laughter. I fell asleep on the couch. I have this old diary, a journal of my memoirs.    

Back in our Ruffing it Days

My Grandpa Lockwood lived with us when we were growing up. Or I think I should say we lived with him, since he is the one that owned the house. He must have been permanently depressed. I don’t remember ever hearing him laugh. Or maybe there was nothing to laugh about. It was his house and his wife had passed on and sometime after that we moved in. There was my Dad and Mom and three brothers and myself.  That was no laughing matter. He was extremely deaf and if somebody did happen to say something funny he wouldn’t hear it.  He kept the fire going. He sat in his rocker, which sat as near to the stove as possible. The stove was a pot bellied wood stove. He fed the stove wood almost constantly. He would bring wood in from the woodpile each day and he would split the wood and stack it and whatever else you do with wood. That was his job. I think he assigned it to himself. When it rained he would get up and go to the front door and open it and turn around and say, “It’s raining”, and go sit down again. Ten minutes later he would get up and go open the door and turn around and say, “It’s still raining”. Out side of giving us a weather report on a regular basis and taking care of the stove, he didn’t have much else to do. In decent weather he would take a long walk each day. He walked with his fingers locked together behind his back. He walked all over the farm and when he returned he would lie down under a shade tree on the hard ground and take a long nap. He lived to be 89 and that was a very long life in 1941. He never went to the doctor that I knew of. Except one time when he was chopping wood the ax head flew off of the handle and hit him in the head. It caused a large gash and much bleeding. Dad took him to the doctor and he came home with a large bandage wrapped around his head. I hope he got pain medicine from the doctor. Nobody went to the doctor unless you were seriously ill. For one thing doctors didn’t have the medicine or tests for everything then as they do now. We gripe a lot about our medical care and those things, but we still are much better off now than back then. In those days if you were ill a family member would go to the doctor and explain the ailment and if there were a medicine for it, the doctor would give it to you. I am not positive about this, but I think the doctor kept medicine in his office instead of writing prescriptions. I guess I could have researched that, but I don’t have time. I’m busy writing this for the blog. This is all for now. 

Early Era of Oklahoma

A long time ago in a far away place from where I now live, life was so different than it is today. It’s hard to compare the two. It was quiet in the old farm house. Daddy reading his bible by the coal oil lamp. Mom was taking out the bun in her long dark hair and braiding it in a long braid as she prepared for bed. Grandpa rocking in his rocker by the wood burning pot bellied stove. 
He could no longer hear so he was very quiet as nobody could communicate with him. His life consisted of rocking, reading the newspaper, taking long walks each day. He lived to be 89 and that was a very long life in the early 40’s. There was no noise outside unless a thunder storm came up.
Grandpa may have been reminiscing about his younger years and what life was like in those days in the state of Oklahoma. 

My father, Dennis Lockwood, was born in the family farmhouse in 1900. His Dad, Jasper Newton Lockwood, had homesteaded  160 acres of land near a town that was barely in existence in 1889. It was called Still Water Valley before it was known as Stillwater.  It  was listed in a map as a town with no name for a long time. 
It didn’t attract much interest because it was hard to get to without roads.  Indians began to move into the area because of the white people taking over everything else. It became known as Indian Territory. 

President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Homestead Act of 1862 so legal settlers could claim lots up to 160 acres in size. Provided a settler lived on the land and improved it, he could then receive the title to the land. 
They had what they called a Land Rush.  This is what my Grandpa entered into. They lived in Illinois or Indiana at the time. I know that my Grandpa was born in Indiana and Grandma was born in Illinois, so I am not sure where they were living.

 Some of the individuals who participated in the run entered early and hid out until the legal time of entry to lay quick claim to some of the most choice homesteads. These people came to be identified as "sooners". This led to hundreds of legal contests that arose and were decided first at local land offices and eventually by the U.S. Department of the Interior. 
Arguments included what constituted the "legal time of entry.” While some people think that the settlers who entered the territory at the legally appointed time were known as "boomers", the term actually refers to those who campaigned for the opening of the lands, led by David L. Payne. The county was named after this man.
 Several rivers flowed across Oklahoma, including the Cimarron, which received the flow of numerous small streams that flooded with the seasons. One of these persisted through frequent droughts. 

Cattlemen began to take an interest in the area because of the water from the river. It was named Still Water Creek. It was a nice stopping over place for the travelers….From there a colony of Boomers, whose presence there in 1885 forced open the Indian land to white settlement.

Grandpa came to the area alone on horseback to get involved in the Land Rush and staking a claim. Some traveled in a wagon train with many wagons and families.  They took household items and food to last for several days. There had been so much rain that the trails were soaked and muddy. Grandpa staked a claim of farmland Northeast of Stillwater. He owned the property the rest of his life and was able to attain more acres. 
They lived in a dugout while they built the house. My father was born in the new house in 1900. He was the youngest of the children. There were seven boys and one girl.  The house is still standing today, Many of the people lived in dugouts. His older sons and Grandpa built the house. It is two stories, but not very large. He had three brother that died at a very young ages. Late teens and 20's. Dad told me they died from kidney problems.  I'm not sure if that was just a guess or if anybody knew for sure.

 This story was passed down and this is the way I remember the story, my grandmother was alone in her kitchen one day when three very large Indian men came through the door. She felt they were there to kill her because that was all she had ever heard about Indians. She was frightened beyond belief. They grunted some words and she wasn’t sure what they were saying at first, but they made her understand that they would not hurt her, and they just wanted something to eat. She gave them food and they went on their way.

Grandmother was 73 when she passed away. She predicted her own death to the day, and she was not sick. She just knew what day she was going to die. I don’t know what caused her death. Maybe it’s like having faith, if you believe something strong enough it will happen. It has stuck in my head all these years. I was 4 years old and was outside playing when it happened. I don’t know why we were at their house, but I remember all the hustling and running around. People coming and going.
So I found a quiet place behind the cellar under some bushes and I sat down and fell asleep. I woke up and heard everybody calling my name.
I am in including a Utube of the a depiction of the land rush.

http://youtu.be/yxaJY8UZxn4

Stuff Happens......Even in Church

When you reach your golden years, you have a lot of idle time to sit and reflect on some of the things that happened to you.  Here is one of the things that is constantly on my mind. Some of the players in this drama have now passed on and if anybody recognizes himself or herself so be it. I was a member and attended a church for over 25 years and loved the folks that I met there and enjoyed the services. After all those years a bizarre thing happened.

It was like a hem that starts to unravel. At first it’s a small rip so you kind of ignore it and finally it has come completely out. That is the way I describe what happened to me. A Sunday school teacher told the class that he had the gift of discernment. It was evident that he thought the gift of discernment meant that he knew whether a person was truly born again and saved. One day in class he asked us to bow our heads so he could pray for somebody in the class that wasn’t truly born again. I guess his ‘Gift’ had kicked in. I instantly knew I was the poor lost soul he was praying for.

Now this is the point that you probably think I must have been living a terrible life of sin to feel that guilty, but I just couldn’t help but think I was the target. I was 72 years old and widowed and lived alone and never went any place except the church, doctor and grocery store. Maybe not in that order, but I really was not into any sin that I was aware of. Or maybe everybody in the class felt the exact same way I felt. It sure had its aftermath on me.

This was the first rip in the hem, I was not positive I was the poor lost soul, so I couldn’t ask him why he thought I was lost.  His wife was the teacher of the weekly bible study that I faithfully attended, and it was soon apparent to me that he had shared his, pearls of wisdom, with her. She was always calling on me to pray the beginning prayer or the ending prayer, and other questions about the lesson. She had never done that before. It was so obvious that she was testing me to determine if she agreed with him. (I think) Still I ignored the rip in the hem. What if I’m wrong. I better just let it go.

One Sunday morning when I went to church, I was so obviously ignored by everybody I just sat in the pew with my mouth hanging open during the entire service. What is going on? I kept asking myself. The minister always came by before the service started and shook hands and greeted everybody. This time he shook my hand while talking to the person next to me. Did his wife and secretary and that click stopped coming by my area so they wouldn’t have to speak to me? The elderly lady that sat in front of me turned her head when I spoke to her. I always loved that old lady. How had I offended her.

The weeks went by and I kept going. Church was getting fascinating now and I had to go to see what the next chapter would bring.
Call me paranoid or whatever you think is suitable, but I honestly think the Sunday school teacher took the issue of my salvation to the Pastor. He didn’t know how to deal with it himself so he decided it was a problem for the Pastor. The Pastor thought it would be an awkward thing to bring up with me, so he tells the Sunday school teacher his pathetic excuse for not speaking to me about my lost state of affairs.  He told the Sunday school teacher that I was beyond saving and they should not even attempt to get me saved.

 He was so pleased with his version of what was wrong with me, he decided it would make a good, message for one of the services.  
Maybe it went something like this and I could be wrong so maybe I should just drop it.
I don’t believe he used my name but described me well enough that everybody in the place had no doubt who he was referring to. Of course this happened in one of those Wednesday night services that I never attend.  Could this be what he said? The lady that sits on the end of the fourth row is one of those the bible speaks of as having a reprobate mind and we should not even give her the time of day.
She never volunteers for anything, she only keeps a seat warm on Sunday morning.
She doesn’t attend Sunday night or Wednesday night services. She doesn’t pay her tithe. She is the one the bible refers to in Titus 1:16. “For we shall know them by their works”.

What the chapter refers to is mainly false teachers, and not some old lady that sits in a pew on Sunday morning. “For we shall know them by their works”. I don't know if he used this verse, but I have heard others on TV that seem to think this means you have to show, by a certain manner, proof of your salvation such as if you donate more money to their cause God will be more pleased with you and bless you more.

Jesus dying for your sins is enough already. By their ‘works’ means you still living by the old law (trying to earn your way) and not trusting in  Jesus crucifixion.  It most certainly does not mean, by their works, you can tell if a person is truly born again and saved.

In some ways he was right. I only attended the Sunday morning service and I did not volunteer for everything that came down the pike. In my younger years I helped in the kitchen and many other things, but I am 72 and my back hurts. I am now 82 and not a single day goes by that I do not remember and think about it.
It continued and the Sunday school teacher and his wife left the church shortly after. I started going to a new Sunday school class with a new teacher, and he cut me down every time I opened my mouth so I soon learned to not open it. The pastor was still shaking my hand while talking to the next person.
 Almost everybody in the Sunday School Class ignored me, like I was invisible. It was not my imagination. This went on for a couple more weeks.  One time a man behind me during the greeting session told me that he only sees me on Sunday morning. I guess if he wants to see me more often, he needs to find out where I live and visit me.

For the first time since I had been attending the church I was being asked every week if I would volunteer for something. Were they testing me? Even the Sunday school class decided we would clean up the parking area and pull up the weeds around the flowerbeds and etc. I decided I wouldn’t miss that weed-pulling affair if it killed me. Sure enough we are pulling the weeds one Saturday morning and here comes the Pastor cruising in and jumps out of his car and looks around to see who is there. He didn’t pull a single weed and left after a few minutes.

I was asked if I would volunteer with the money counting on Monday mornings. Sure, I can sit down while I count money. Then I got an earful about who tithes and who doesn’t and they will need to account to God for that some day.  I had stopped paying a tithe because of my puny little income. I gave to the church what I felt I could afford.  It was either pay the tithe or let one of the bills get behind. I know some will say that I need to have enough faith that God will take care of my expenses if I pay the tithe. I say we also need to use some common sense.

The pastor left the church rather abruptly and I have never learned the reason for his rapid departure. Many people changed churches or moved out of the area. Some of the folks remained friendly to me and especially one man who was also a minister and his wife were always very friendly and never treated me any differently than they ever had. Nobody will ever know how much I appreciated that.

They got a new Pastor and he was very cordial to me and looked at me while shaking my hand. The church began to go down hill and they finally sold it and built a new one farther away and it took four or five years to get the new church built, in the meantime they held the service in a funeral home. To me it was like the church died and they were holding a funeral service for it.
When they moved to the funeral home for the service I stopped attending. One of my friends said I should refer to it as a Chapel.
I cannot bring myself to attend a church of any kind since that event. I even have problems listening to TV ministers. I read my bible and pray every day. I have no doubts about my salvation and I have no doubts about yours. 

Another Day Down the Tube

The Olive trees are in bloom

by Michael Gartner


This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and
small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for
editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are
guaranteed.

"My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I
never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years
old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.


"In those days," he told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had
to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every
which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive
through life and miss it."


At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: "Oh,
bull----!" she said. "He hit a horse."


"Well," my father said, "there was that, too."


So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all
had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the Van
Laninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors
down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.


My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines , would take the streetcar to work
and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my
mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop,
meet him and walk home together.


My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes,
at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. "No
one in the family drives," my mother would explain, and that was that.


But, sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you boys
Turns 16, we'll get one." It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would
Turn 16 first.


But, sure enough, my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents
bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a
Chevy dealership downtown.


It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with
everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my
brother's car.


Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it
didn't make sense to my mother.


So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to
drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive
the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to
practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. "Who can your
mother hurt in the cemetery?" I remember him saying more than once.


For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in
the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he
loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits – and appointed
himself navigator. It seemed to work.


Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic,
and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to
bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage.


(Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)


He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or
so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church. She would walk
down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw
which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the
pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my
mother at the end of the service and walking her home.


If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head
back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow."


After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she
drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to
the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if
it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the
Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd
explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad
throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third
base scored."


If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags
out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he was always
the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he
said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?"


"I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.


"No left turns," he said.


"What?" I asked.


"No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an
article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they
turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight
worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and
I decided never again to make a left turn."


"What?" I said again.


"No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a
left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make three rights."


"You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support. "No," she
said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works." But then she
added: "Except when your father loses count."


I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started
laughing.


"Loses count?" I asked.


"Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem.
You just make seven rights, and you're okay again."


I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked.


"No," he said. "If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad
day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another
day or another week."


My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car
keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she
was 90.


She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102.


They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few
years later for $3,000. Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to
have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My
father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly
three times what he paid for the house.)


He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was101
because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep
exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he
died.


One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to
give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that
he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about
politics and newspapers and things in the news.


A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred
years are a lot easier than the second hundred."


At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably
not going to live much longer."


"You're probably right," I said.


"Why would you say that?" He countered, somewhat irritated.


"Because you're 102 years old," I said.


"Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day. That
night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through
the night. He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently
seeing us look gloomy, he said:” I would like to make an announcement. No
one in this room is dead yet"


An hour or so later, he spoke his last words:


"I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I
am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth
could ever have."


A short time later, he died. I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot.
I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky
that he lived so long. I can't figure out if it was because he walked
through life, Or because he quit taking left turns. "


Life is too short to wake up with regrets. So love the people who treat you
right. Forget about the one's who don't. Believe everything happens for a
reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it.
Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be
worth it."

Back on the Farm

The colonoscopy is in my past.  Now I can get on with my life.

Back in the early days it took a lot of planning to do anything. You had to set aside many hours to accomplish anything. We had no modern shortcut tools to do anything with. Even making a cake. Now you can pull a cake mix out of the cupboard and make a cake. Back then you had to mix the thing up from scratch. That means you had to scratch around in the cupboard and find a cup of this and a spoonful of that and finally you had all the ingredients together,you had no mixer, they had not been invited yet. So you had to beat the cake by hand with a large spoon for five minutes or so as hard as you could.

It was not a lot of fun so we only had it on very special occasions. On Sunday we sometimes enjoyed a fantastic treat of fried chicken and let me tell you, here and now, fried chicken was much tastier in those days then it is now or we certainly would not have gone to so much trouble to have it. First we had to catch the poor defenseless chicken and that part was easy because they trusted us, we were the ones that fed them. Excuse me, I think I am going to shed a tear now as I think of it. Poor old chickens. 

I am not going to go into detail on how the slaying was accomplished because it was gross. The thought of that procedure brings back such traumatizing memories that I may need to see a therapist if I dwell on it. I seemed to be the only one that was disturbed about it. Let me tell you what they did after the chicken was dead. They had a bucket of scalding hot water and they dipped the chicken up and down in the water as causally as if they were dipping apples in hot chocolate. People were so heartless then. Now some people even let chickens and pigs live in their house.

The next ritual was plucking all the feathers out of the chicken. There was one more torturous step. The chicken had its limbs cut off, its heart cut out and finally was dipped in flour and put in a frying hot pan of lard. Shortening had not been born yet.  Life was tough back then.  You probably are dying to know how they killed pigs for food. I will spare you of that one because I was at school while it went on, but I heard stories about how it was done. Life was tough back then, but it had its good side. People didn’t have to have colonoscopies. 

My Early Days

When I was a young thing, I decided to supplement our income by taking a job. I found one by looking in the newspaper ads. It was part of a nightclub. One side was very plushy with carpet on the floor and tables with white tablecloths. A bandstand in one corner and it had a small dance floor. Next to it was a coffee shop. I worked in the coffee shop as a waitress. The coffee shop was called ‘The Turf’. It was a very popular place to have lunch or nice meal. There was four horseshoe shaped coffee stands with stools. Those were on one side and the other side had booths.

It was a very popular place, and was open 24 hours a day. I was on the night shift. I was fidgety as a cat on a hot tin roof the first few shifts because I had no training in this field.
It was not a hard job to learn at that time. If you knew how to pour water into a glass and write, you qualified. They furnished uniforms. They were khaki colored and trimmed in dark brown.
We got the drunks from the nightclub when it closed as well as the people from the street.

One night I had one of those half-drunk customers and he ordered a burned grilled cheese sandwich. He made it very clear that it was to be burned black. I turned the order in and when the cook read it, he called me into the kitchen and informed me that we do not serve burned food. I argued with him, and asked him what difference does it make, if he wants it burned just burn it. “Do you not know how to burn a sandwich?” I finally won the argument and he said he would do it. When the order was ready he sent for me. I went back into the kitchen and he had the order ready with a white cloth napkin covering it. I asked, “Why the napkin?” He said, “I don’t want any of our other customers seeing it, just set it in front of him and remove the napkin”. The customer was delighted. Now the customer is happy and I’m happy and the cook is still grumbling about it.
Another customer once asked for an Iced coffee. I went to the head honcho and asked, “How do you make an iced coffee?” She said, “I don’t know, I guess you just put ice in it.” I hope you understand this was before anybody had ever heard of Starbucks. So I poured the man a mug of coffee and added some crushed ice. When I set it in front of him he began to laugh and he kept laughing until I wanted to melt into the floor. I was so embarrassed. He said, “It’s usually served in a tall glass”. “All our tall glasses are dirty”. I said. But he laughed even harder. I was glad when he left. I was such a greenhorn.
Two couples sat in one of my sections and when I gave them their menu’s one of the men begin to speak to me in a foreign language. His friends just sat there and said nothing. When he finished I said, “Well, if you do you’ll have to clean it up”. Everybody in the booth began to laugh so hard, I would still like to know what he actually said. Because what I said wasn’t that funny.

One night I had two ‘feeling no pain’ clientele sit in one of my booths. The lady ordered a filet mignon steak, and excused herself to make a potty run. I asked the man if he was ready to order and he said. “Don’t turn that order in, she thinks I’m paying for it and I just met her 10 minutes ago.” I said, “Oh, she must be a gold digger.” He said, “Yeah, and she ain’t got nothing to dig with”. He made a hasty departure and when the lady returned she looked around and didn’t see him so she left. I was glad I had not turned in her order.


Another time a customer asked if we had Scallops. I said, “Do you mean scallop potatoes?” I was raised in Oklahoma and it’s a little distance from the ocean so I honestly had never heard of the seafood called Scallops. I’m sure everybody in the state of Oklahoma knows what scallops are, but I was a little naïve. Maybe stupid would be a better word.
I only worked there for a couple months. I had a three-year-old at home and there was no way that I could get enough sleep. My husband worked the day shift. I never worked in that field again. Even though I was now experienced and knew what a scallop and an iced coffee was.

                                                        This is a picture of the experienced waitress

The Wild Ride

During my years as a newly wed teenager and living in a place without friends or family, I would be thrilled over anything. One day my ancient landlady (she was probably in her 70’s, but ancient to me) asked me if I would like to go on a little jaunt with her. Her brother and his wife lived in a neighboring town by the name of Tieton.

She was going to spend the day visiting with them. I jumped at the opportunity. She had an old one seated car with a rumble seat and it must have been 40 years old. One of the first cars ever made I am thinking.

When we reached the highway she put the pedal to the metal. It felt like we were going 90 miles an hour, but in that old car it was probably only going 50. I white knuckled it all the way because I thought we would go flying off the road any minute. She could hardly keep in on the road. I literally held my breath when we met another car. Will we ever reach Tieton I kept thinking.
I chewed my nails and prayed as I watched the fence post flying by.

I was a timid soul back then and would never have asked her to slow it down. There is an old song with a line in the lyrics being, ‘Coming in on a wing and a prayer’.

We were coming in on one wheel and a prayer. Or so it felt. We finally landed in Tieton without landing instructions.  Her brother came out to greet her and looked at me  and says, “My dear, you are a brave soul to ride in a car with Mae driving.” I said (under my breath), “yes, I know and I didn’t bring a change of underwear.

We visited with her brother and wife. It’s been so long ago I have forgotten their names. I don’t remember much about the visit except worrying about the ride home. The return trip was exactly the same. I felt so blessed to be able to climb out of that car and I never climbed in it again.

Mae lived to be 100 years old. She lived her last few years in a nursing home, just a stones  throw from our home so my husband and I walked up to visit her.

I asked if she remembered me and told her we used to rent from her and she lifted her head and blinks her eyes a couple times and said, “Yes, I remember you. You're the one that left your husband and ran away with that truck driver”. My mouth fell open and I looked at my husband and said, “I didn’t run away with a truck driver.” I could tell he was about to crack up so we said our good-byes and left. She had already fallen back to sleep.

Books and Babies

Just when I was thinking nothing exciting ever happens to me. I had two nice things happen. Number one nice thing is my Great Grand daughter that is being adopted by Cora and Jim is really going to happen. Very soon!!!
They have approval to go get her and now need to set up a date. They have named her Chloe and we will soon be seeing many pictures of her I am sure.

The second thing to happen is a long story. At least a year ago I received an email requesting permission to use one of my blog stories in a book they were writing. You know how that goes. Is this for real?
So I wasn’t positive it was on the up and up, but I did respond and wrote a few more lines in the story. They said I would receive a copy. I put it on the back burner of my mind, but I thought of it a few days ago and was thinking, “ I knew there wouldn’t be a book, I guess their pipe dream didn’t work out”.
Imagine my surprise when I went to the mailbox a day or two later and there was the book. This is not just any old book, this is a real book. The forward is by Baroness Margaret Thatcher.

It is filled with short stories of folks that are 80 or older. It’s about what their life was like as they grew up. It is so interesting because the stories are from England, Germany, France and the USA. Many of the stories are how it was with them during World War11. And my story is among them, I can’t believe it. Oh how I would love to sit down and have a chat with each of them. They played the same games I did and some games I have never heard of. Most were much closer to the war than I was. How lucky I was to be and American during the war. They had some serious scary events happen to them.

The book is called “8000 Years of Wisdom”

http://www.amazon.co.uk/8000-Years-Wisdom-Octogenarians-Lessons/dp/1907016538/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1287069168&sr=1-1

Not to be Published...Oh what the heck...

My blog reminds me of my life in prison. When I was 17 years old I fell madly in love with the first guy that ever noticed me. We immediately got married, and he packed me up and took me 2000 miles away from my family. I was stuck in a little tiny house on the back of the landlady’s property. It soon became a prison cell to me.
My man in the shining armor went off to his job before daybreak and usually didn’t return until 12:20 AM. His job ended at 5 PM, but he nearly always made a stop over at the Pastime Tavern to play poker until the tavern closed at 12 AM. During these hours I looked out the window, cleaned up the house, opened a can of soup for lunch, wrote my family a letter, went to the mail box., took a nap, listened to the radio, walked up to the landlady’s house and visited with her. She was an old lady and knew how to knit. She said she would teach me how. She was not patience with me so the knitting lessons soon ended at my request. I’ll just have to find something else to pass the time of day.
I didn’t have a clue when my sentence would be over or if I would ever be able to get a pardon. I didn’t have 15 cents to my name. Not one single friend to talk to and no mode of transportation or communication with my family. I had made a friend, but she and her master moved back to Arizona. To pass the time, I would write letters to my family. I very seldom received a letter from them. When I did receive one, I would read it over and over until it was threadbare. I thought if I made my letters more interesting or funny it would induce an answer. So I wrote and wrote and wrote. At least we had money for postage. We didn’t have a phone. All the letter writing didn’t encourage anybody to write back or when I finally received a letter, no one ever answered any of the million questions I had been asking about everybody.

One time when we went back for a visit, I found that they had a fire on the property that they fought like crazy to keep it from getting to their house. That event didn’t even provoke a letter. They had never mentioned anything about the fire. My family included my mother, dad, four brothers and one sister. One brother had left home for a hitch in the military. My sister was only three years old when I left home so she was too small to write and so were the little brothers.

I built up such a momentum writing those letters that I still find myself with a pen in my hand constantly writing in a journal or just writing about stuff that irritates me, and then I shred it so nobody can ever read it. You should read one of those tirades.

I told my oldest son the other day that I sometimes think his Dad and I should not have been married. He looked at me like I had just cut off his lifeline or something. I felt really bad so I said, "Well, I mean we didn’t have to get married that very minute". We could have waited a week or two or a month or so.
Then I discovered blogging and I have written about everything under the sun. Writing in this blog is just like writing into thin air. Or writing to my family.

My Long Sad Tale

I have a sad tale to tell. When I was a small child my parents decided the grass would be much greener in Colorado, than it was in Oklahoma. We were living on our granddaddy’s farm when the Great Depression began. I think it was blamed on the president. That’s why we elect a president, so if something goes wrong we’ll have somebody to blame it on.


My parents sold most of our belongings and loaded up the car with the five kids and headed for Colorado. When we got to Colorado, there was not an abundance of jobs. My Dad found some lettuce picking jobs and worked as a farm hand on a couple different ranches. A ranch was called a farm in Oklahoma. I don’t know why, unless they have more cows on a ranch. Anyway it became quite a challenge to find a job to support this family.

We set up a tent and lived on the Rio Grand River bank for one entire summer. My memories of that event are very pleasant. It was fun camping out all summer, but one day our Dad had a brilliant idea, at least he thought so. He decided we needed to move into a house and get the kids enrolled in school. We moved into a huge white two-story house, two bedrooms up and two down. Winter set in and we didn’t get warmed up again until the spring thaw. That was the coldest winter I have ever experienced. The entire family slept in one of the downstairs bedrooms.

Everybody in the family got sick. All of us kids came down with mumps and whooping cough. Dad could not find any work. We finally had to ask for public assistance. In that era you didn’t get food stamps or cash. The welfare folks would deliver a box of groceries to your home, and it didn’t seem to happen very often.

Clothes were made for welfare families. When you saw a boy with maroon-colored corduroy pants and jacket, you knew the family was on welfare. Being on Welfare in that day was a horrible disgrace. Nobody would ask for help unless they were desperate. Girls wore the same maroon colored outfit, only with a skirt instead of pants. I also had two print dresses, which was another trademark that you were needy and begging for help. This is the clothing the kids had to wear to school. We had no gloves, boots or anything to help keep us warm.

Even the stray animals were looking for warm shelter. A beautiful big fluffy white cat came to our door repeatedly begging for a hand out or a place to get warm. Mom felt sorry for the cat so she finally let in live in our house. I don’t think it got too much to eat, but at least it didn’t freeze to death. I don’t think we ever gave the cat a name, we just called it The Cat. The Cat was somewhat feral and you couldn’t pet it, but my baby sister (age 22 months) managed to get close enough to grab the Cat. The Cat retaliated by clawing her face. Eulabell received a long deep claw gash across her face. It became infected and swollen and about the same time she came down with whooping cough and pneumonia.

I remember the following scene with vivid detail because I think it’s etched in my memory forever. She was lying on the kitchen table in her blankets and her stomach was swollen so big it looked as though it would burst open. All of us kids and Mom were just standing around the table looking at her. Dad had gone to get Grandma, who lived, in the same town. She would stay with us kids while they took Eulabell to the hospital, which was a special facility for the needy. They left with Eulabell and we went to bed. Much later that night, I was awaken when I heard Dad telling Grandma, that they lost her. I pretended I was asleep and didn’t say anything. The next morning it was explained to us kids that Eulabell had passed away.

I was eight years old. I watched my Mom and Dad cry and saw the big tears coming out of their eyes. I didn’t get over it, ever. To this day, I cannot tell anybody about Eulabell without tears coming to the surface. Grief counseling was unheard of, and especially for kids. It was a natural assumption that kids would soon forget about it.

The picture of the doll that I have included sort of represents my baby sister in a way.
Anyway it does to me. One week after my sister died was Christmas day. My Mom’s family lived in the area, and that is partly why we chose to move to Colorado in the first place. This Christmas the relatives came to our house to celebrate Christmas. I am sure they brought all the food. My cousin, who is my age, received a Shirley Temple doll. I had seen a Shirley Temple movie and was enamored with her and I envied my cousin so much because she got a doll and I didn’t. Her mother said, “Yuba, let Lorrene play with your doll. “ Yuba said, “No, it’s my doll.” Aunt Murl said, “ If you don’t want me to blister your butt, you better give her that doll, now. “ So she finally handed me the doll, and I said, “No, I don’t want your crazy old doll, I want my own doll”.

Many long years later I decided to buy myself a Shirley Temple doll. It is not the doll of that day, but sort of makes me think of Eulabell.

Midnight

A few years ago when I took my walks at Randall park, I would always take my camera along. This time I took a picture of this dog. His owner said his name was Midnight. She told me about the nightmare that had happened to them and Midnight. A couple years before her husband and friends and Midnight went up to Mt Rainier to do some hiking. They decided it would be safe to take the leash off of Midnight so he would be able to run and have a little fun. It was a mistake because a squirrel came scurrying by and Midnight went into hot pursuit. He chased the squirrel to the top of the next ridge and the squirrel disappeared and so did Midnight.

They hurried up the hill and looked down far below. Midnight had caught himself on a small ledge and kept from falling on to the bottom of the hill and certain death. It was a very steep wall, but had some slope to it. Midnight began to claw his way up literally lying on his stomach and inching his way up a few inches at a time.

They were at the top urging him on and holding their breath because they knew any minute he could fall. She said it was the longest time of her life.

Midnight finally made it to the top and her husband grabbed him in his arms and they hurried to the nearest water they could find, so he could get a drink. Midnight dived into the water to do his drinking and didn’t want to get out. It's amazing what you can do when you have a rooting team behind you.

I never learned the fate of the squirrel.

Pearl Harbor Day

My oldest brother, Cecil, joined the US Air Corp in the summer of 1941. He was sent to the Hawaiian Islands shortly after he enlisted. He absolutely loved it. He would write long rambling letters on a regular basis. He told us all the latest news and in one letter he told how he was working in the bakery dept of the Mess hall and learning so many things about cooking and baking.

He was stationed at Pearl Harbor. He always mentioned how perfect the weather was and the beauty of the flowers and ocean. He was a 19-year-old boy that had never been off our Oklahoma farm, other than a few ‘running away episodes’, and a little jaunt to Colorado when our parents were seeking their fortune. He was in heaven as far as he was concerned. He already had his entire future laid out, when he retired from the US Air Corp, he would retire there. He never wanted to leave the place. We thought he was so highly dazzled with it, he may never return and visit with us again.
Meanwhile back on the farm, we were living our lives and getting along the best we could. It was a mild December day, we had returned from church and had already eaten our dinner. Mom and I were cleaning up the dishes when Mom said, "Look outside, I see your boyfriend rode his horse over to see you". Everybody in the family thought I had a crush on James. I looked out and said, "He didn’t come to see me, he came to see Ray." I thought my crush was a deep dark secret. I guess when you’re 13 years old, you can’t keep your mouth shut about such things. In a few minutes we found out he was delivering some news that his family had heard over their radio, and they thought we would be interested. The Japanese had bombed the Hawaiian Islands. In fact most of the bombs had struck Pearl Harbor and most of the ships in the harbor. It was a very dire message. We immediately turned on our radio and my parents kept their ears glued to it the next few days. We heard all the casualty reports and were praying Cecil wouldn’t be among them.
Wednesday night we had a knock on our door about 8 o’clock. It was our neighbors that lived a half mile North of us. They had a telephone and had received a message from the telegraph office in Stillwater. Since we didn’t have a telephone, and the Welch’s were the nearest neighbor’s with a phone, they were called. The Telegraph office relayed the message to them and asked if they could deliver it. They would follow up with it in the mail. Somehow I knew when I opened the door, they were bringing bad news about Cecil.
They told us that the news was from the war department, and Cecil had been reported as missing in action. The telegram would arrive in a few days in the mail.
Needless to say, we were deeply saddened and spent the next few days praying that he would not be among the causalities. We talked about it constantly and felt that he must have been killed, or they would know where he was. The grief was unbearable.
Three days later, on Wednesday evening, my brother Ray was visiting the Welch family because their son and Ray were friends.
Ray was standing at the door ready to leave when their phone rang. The Grandma said, "Ray, don’t leave, this call might be for your family". And it was.
The message was another telegram, this time it was from Cecil, and it said, "I understand I have been reported missing. I am absolutely okay".
Ray took out the door and ran as fast as he could the half mile to our house and came bursting through the door and was so out of breath, he couldn’t say anything. He just stood there bent over and breathing as hard as he could. We were all wondering what in the world is the matter with him. Finally he was able to blurt it all out. We couldn’t hardly understand what he was saying, but understood the part about ‘absolutely okay’.
At that exact same moment our uncle Vincent and Aunt Mary drove into our yard. They came from another city to offer their condolences and found us all sky high with joy. It didn’t take long to explain our good news to them.
I wrote a letter to Cecil shortly after the news, and in the letter I asked him, "What exactly did you do while the bombs were being dropped, did you run?" He wrote back and said, "In answer to your question as to whether I ran or not; I don’t know if you could call it running or not, but I passed some that were running".
He ended up making a career of the US Air Force, and passed away in 2000, he never returned to Hawaii after the war ended.

Happy Birthday to my little sister, Carol, and many more.

The Big Secret

I once had a friend that was so friendly that going with her to a public place was a nightmare. She would stop and talk to everybody she came in contact with, especially if they had a baby or a small child. She would ooh and aah over the little person, like they were the most adorable little creature on the face of the earth. It used to bug me to no end. I would ask her, "Why do you find it necessary to talk to everybody in the universe"? She never gave me a straight answer. She didn’t know why, she just liked people, she guessed. Going with her to a place like the County Fair was like going out with a celebrity. Not only did she know everybody, but everybody knew her as well.

Alice was the most popular person I ever knew in my life. We were very good friends and were neighbors to begin with. I became widowed and moved to another part of town, but we remained friends and since she didn’t drive anything, but a golf cart, I would take her anyplace she wanted to go. We laughed a lot and that was why I enjoyed her company so much. She could make something funny out of almost anything. Sometimes I could make her laugh. One time as we were driving down a street and a group of people were standing on the sidewalk and after we passed them, I said, "Oh my gosh! I forgot to stop so you could talk to those people". She answered, "Smart Aleck". It was that sort of thing that went on between us constantly.

One time we drove to a small nearby town on a whim. We both said later, that we enjoyed that little outing more than anything in our lives. We were in our seventies at the time, and had nothing, but time on our hands. She passed away a few years ago, and I cannot tell you how much I miss her. We had many serious conversations about our past lives. She had a grown son and daughter. We had no secrets between us, or so I thought.

About a year after she passed away, I was invited to the 90th Birthday party of Jo, who was a sister of my friend. Jo had called me and told me there would be a special guest at the party. It seems that years and years ago Alice had a baby that she gave up for adoption at birth. She was divorced from her husband and had her two children to support. The EX was not helping with the support at all and lived in another state so she felt she had no choice, but to give up the baby.

He was the special guest that would be at the party. In all those years that we had discussed everything in the world, she had never shared that little incident with me. Nobody in her family knew about the adoption except her sister. So I met her long lost son at the party. He said his adopted father had passed away and he was at his adopted mothers bedside just before she passed away, when she told him that he had been adopted. He was totally shocked. He did not have a clue that he had been adopted. He was an only child.

His mother told him the name of his biological mother and the city she was living in when he was adopted. It took him about a year to digest the whole thing, but finally decided to see if he could find her. He didn’t have any trouble tracking her down and found that she had just passed away a few months before. His biological father had also passed away. He was invited to the party and we all got to meet him and he was very friendly, just like his mother, and was also very happy to find that he had a brother and sister. Brother and sister were just as surprised, as he was to find out about him. He lives in another state, but is keeping in touch and visits with his new family.
Now, I understand why she was so enamored with babies and small children, I think she was always searching for the baby she had given away.

The new brother is Chris (the one in the pink shirt) Mike to his left. Sister is in front of him and Aunt Jo. The other lady is Mike's wife, sorry I can't remember her name.

Remember the Five and Dime

Back on the farm in the 1940’s life was a little different than it is today. Nobody complained about the high cost of anything. Because it didn’t matter if you didn’t have any money anyway. In my youth we had stores called Dime Stores. They sold just about everything you can think of. A little something like a Dollar Store, only much nicer.

They had a candy counter with all kinds of candy behind a glass case. They had a counter with a soda fountain that served five and ten-cent hamburger’s. The deluxe burger was ten cents. The stores had names such as Newberrys , Ben Franklin’s or Woolworth’s. There was always a rack with comic books, and a kid or two sitting on the floor reading them. They sold jewelry and trinkets of all kinds. You could buy anything for your house or your car with the one store shopping.
I remember buying my mother a Mother’s day gift. It was a dainty white handkerchief with the word "Mother" embroidered in pink in one corner. It cost fifteen cents, but it was for my mother so it was worth it. Everything in the store was neat and clean. Clerks worked constantly trying to keep things in order.
Now we have the Dollar Store with everything from soup to nut’s, but nothing seems to be in order. However, some seem to be better organized than others. I have also observed that people are not as careful to put things back where they found it. I think sometimes if they decide they don't want it, they just drop it on the floor. You soon learn to watch where you're stepping in a dollar store. I guess dime stores have been around for many years. I'm sure many of you will remember them as well.

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