***** LATE BREAKING NEWS FLASH*****

BFE, OK (RDW wirestory)--- Contrary to popular beliefs, doctors did confirm today that Helen G., a.k.a. Reddirt Woman, has not had any contact with, or been wallowing around with any swine... at least not the 4 legged kind. Although the Dirty Ole' Woman looks like she's been drug around the pasture a time or 7 and although she still feels like she has been wallowed on, over, under and any ways else she could have been wallowed on... that it is not the fault of any old boar... or swine, period.

When this reporter got as up close and personal as the wind would allow to ask about these findings, after Helen wiped her nose on her sleeve, and croaked... "That's right!!! The doctor said it couldn't be proved that I had been near any swines since I chased piglets last summer on my niece's place. I am vindicated! "


Okay, okay... If I cry about this it makes more snot and that's not good, so I have to laugh. I went to the Doc in a Box today. My throat has been so sore for 2 days I figured I best get checked. I do not have strep. I've had so much drainage that my throat looks kinda like a baboon's backside, but it's not strep. I do have bronchitis, all the drainage is gurgling around in the upper lobes of my lungs, so the doc gave me a RX for antibiotics and said if I wasn't better in ten days, to check back. I didn't tell her I wasn't gonna wait ten days. I've been sicker than I can remember in, oh, 30 - 40 years and I better get to feeling better soon or I'll be ready to be rolled off into the bar ditch.

So I have taken heed of the urgings of all of you (thank you, very much) and gone back to the doctor and re-visited what was going on with me and hopefully I'll start going the other way with this stuff, because it really is a bitch to try to be funny about this crud.

Back to bed now, to sleep, perchance to dream, a dream of being swooped up on a magnificent black stallion by a magnificent, young, handsome gorgeous strong person.....
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who will finish planting my garden for me before fall...


I really don't think that is too much to ask.

Just Thought I Should Tell You...

I'm not dead. I'll have to get better to die. I was almost asleep and had a coughin', peein', fartin' fit. Tears were running down my face and I needed to blo ma node... I did and it was full of blood, so I don' think I'll be taking anymore aspirin to keep the fever knocked down. Tylenol from here til this shit's done.

Got to go to bed. meds are kicking in...

Ah, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you... Guess the movie...

Happy Trails...konk = the sound of my face afalling on myyy kkkkkkkkeeeyyyyyybbbooooaar..

Say It Isn't So...

I just referred to myself as an "old gal" in a comment on a post. I'm either sicker than I thought or the meds have made me somewhat on the crazy side...

An OLD GAL!!!


YYYYYEEEECCCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

You want more??? Okay... Here's more.

Some of you said give us more... and give us book titles. Guess it's interesting to a lot of folks, the old west... "Jim Miller: The Untold Story of a Texas Badman" by Bill C. James; "Shogun For Hire: The Story of 'Deacon' Jim Miller. Killer Of Pat Garrett" By Glenn Shirley; "The Early History Of Ada" by J. Hugh Biles; "Four Men Hanging: The End of the Old West" by Welborn Hope.

You can also google hanging in Ada OK.

After I get past this flu that is going around I relate more of the stories about this time in history and I hope you will enjoy them.

I'm going back to bed now.

A Little Family History...

All my growing up life I'd heard about my great uncle, mom always said, "By marriage.", that was hung "for stealing horses". After I was grown one of my aunts that lived in California found a picture postcard of that hanging that took place down in Ada, Oklahoma. After doing some reading, we found out that great Uncle Jesse West and a couple of other fellows were involved, allegedly, in hiring a gunman to kill another man in Ada, A.A. Bobbitt, that had caused all kinds of problems and grief to quite a number of folks in the area in and around Ada before he got religion.

The hired gun was Jim Miller, a man who had killed any number of people, and the few times he had been arrested for a murder he had managed, with the help of his attorney, to get found "not guilty" by a jury of his peers. Miller had supposedly by his own claim had dispatched 51 souls to their eternal resting places. Among the folks he was suspected of killing were his own grandparents when he was 8 years old. Let's just say that the man, evidently even as a boy, had no moral compass and had no problem with gunning people down.

Bobbitt was a nasty fellow that was known to have stolen cattle from Uncle Jesse, as well as other folks in the territory. He was suspected of the fire that burned down Uncle Jesse's home and ended up killing Uncle Jesse's first wife. It happened when Uncle Jesse was out of town and his wife managed to get their kids out but was burned badly enough in the process that she died shortly thereafter because of the burns she sustained.

Now, this is where the family ties get tied into this story. Jesse married Nettie Venable in 1894, in Indian Territory. Her parents were my great grandfather, Dr. Elihu Venable and my great grandmother, Mary Woolums Venable. Uncle Jesse took his family and left the Ada area and purchased property out in Canadian, Texas and moved his family out there because he was tired of the continued problems with Bobbitt. But the banker in Ada, a Mr. Tom Hope wrote Jesse a letter in 1908 encouraging him to come back to the Ada area as there was money to be made in land and cattle business and other ventures. He told Uncle Jesse that Bobbitt was a changed man, had found religion and Hope thought there would be no more problems for Uncle Jesse from Bobbitt.

Old grudges and hard feelings evidently are hard to let go of however and when Bobbitt was murdered the lawmen arrested Jim Miller, Jesse West, Joe Allen and B.B. Burrell. Whether Mr. Miller was hired by Jesse and Joe Allen we will never know since the trial was never held. About 2 a.m. on April 19th, 1909, the lights and telephone lines to the town of Ada were cut and the 4 jailers guarding the prisoners were overwhelmed, the prisoners were taken from the jail. Jesse West, Jim Miller, Joe Allen and Burrell, who was supposed to have given the money to Miller, had their hands bound behind their backs with baling wire and were walked to the Frisco Livery stable and strung up. A photographer came about 7 a.m. and took photographs of the men still swinging from the rafters in the stable.

A grand jury was order by Gov. Haskell, but no one was ever charged in the lynching and to this day no one was ever identified as having participated in the hanging. This act of vigilanteism spelled the ending of the 'old West' and how matters were settled back in the day. My mom would have been upset that there was an anniversary marking the day and the event of the hanging, but she also would have been glad to know that one of several men who have done research on this event was a retired police officer and said that neither he nor anyone he knew had ever been able to find any evidence that Uncle Jesse or his long time friend and partner Joe Allen or Burrell were involved in the killing or hiring the killer Jim Miller to do the dastardly deed.

There have been a number of books that have been written about the hanging and it has been well documented by any number of authors. If you are interested in reading more about it, let me know and I can give you the titles of several books.

Color Your Life...

I thought this was very interesting, so I lifted it from JoJo's site, who lifted it from Marci's site.

I thought it was very interesting that they got these results in only 5 questions. Shoot, it takes me more questions than that to get myself out of bed in the morning, or occasionally after noon.

1. Am I really still alive?

2. Do I want to be alive today?

3. How long is it going to take me to find something next to my bed to throw on so I won't be running to the bathroom in my mostly nekkididitty... since there are 5 other people in the house, most of whom have no desire to see me in all my glory...?

4. I'm up but am I moving yet?

5. Yessss... I'm ambulating towards the bathroom with only a minor tilt or two into the wall or door facing...

6. Make sure the seat is down. (God I hate that! There are more women than men in the house so they should put the damn seat down.)

7. Lean on the counter at the sink to brush the teeth. About now is when my eyes are unsticking and beginning to open slowly but surely.

8. I don't know if there is hope for what I'm seeing through the narrow openings in my eyes.

9. Turn on the tub. If there is anything to make you feel like a human being again it is a nice warm bath, sometimes with bubbles and sometimes.... alone...

10. Step into the tub, then sit and lean back. If the water isn't quite right, I can adjust it with my toes. I can also pick up pencils with my toes and pinch a plug out of you with my toes if you aggravate me. I lay back in the warm water long enought to get my hair good and wet, sit up and shampoo and it feels so good and miracle of miracles, the brain starts awakening and the brain and the body begin to get in tempo one more time... And I know, just know that I've got another day to look forward to once again. So check out and see what color you might be. Enjoy!

You Color Your Life With Intense Warmthand see

You are a down to earth, stable person. You can be relied on. You enjoy the outdoors. There's something about being in nature that makes you feel really blissful. While you are responsible, you aren't boring. You have a lot of flair and style. You enjoy creative projects of all sorts. You're a very visual person.

How Do You Color Your Life?

Oklahoma Burning...

I had intended to write a new post yesterday, but I made the mistake of turning on the TV to check out the weather as I was planning on driving to Ft. Worth today to spend Easter with my brother and s.i.l. and any other sibs that I might run into while I'm here.

The first thing I saw was a home burning. It was so wind driven that it looked like someone was burning it with a flame-thrower. Then the camera operator in the chopper pulled back from the tight shot and there was fire EVERYWHERE. I was, needless to say, glued to the TV for the rest of the evening.

The first reports started coming in around 1:30 or 2 p.m. All three Okla. City TV stations were broadcasting about the fires continually from about 2:30 in the afternoon. Oklahoma was burning from south to north, from Texas to Kansas, being pushed by southern winds that were blowing from 40-60 m.p.h. The ember fireballs were blowing up to 1/4 of a mile over the firefighters and starting more fires.

The firefighters were trying to get ahead of the fires but the wind was being ferociously aggressive. I wasn't worried at this point about where I live because the closest fires were about ten miles north of where we lived. When I started getting worried about where we lived is when the winds started turning from south to north with the cool front that was coming in from the west and north and the winds were expected to increase and drive the fire back the way it came. That problem with that was the fire had been driven by the wind so fast that while a lot had been burned, there was a lot that hadn't been burned.

Whole small towns were evacuated. In Midwest City and Choctaw, both of which are east of OKC, but still bedroom communities,and Wellston which is north of Choctaw, over 100 homes were destroyed. One home would catch fire and the firefighters would be fighting it and the house next door would catch on fire or maybe the embers would blow over the house next door to the second house down the street. And all of this was happening in front of the viewers eyes.

Got to stop for now, but I will be back later and wrap up this story. I can only deal with getting my brain wrapped around so much and then I have to rest and think a bit. I just wanted to get this started and let you all know that we were okay. I'll get back to you later this evening.

Please bear with me...

Part 2---


I'm back. When disasters happen, and this is a disaster, I have to think things through and try to get my brain wrapped around it. I want to try to tell you as honestly as I can how I see things through my eyes. All of the stuff that I write about is as I see it. And as I watched these fires bursting out all over I was both horrified and fascinated. Horrified at the destruction, all the people who lost their homes, and the firemen who were injured fighting the fires.

Fascinated by the incredible power of mother nature, God or however you want to chalk it up. When I saw those videos being sent into the various stations from their choppers with the fires destroying places I knew, areas I was familiar with, streets I have driven on a good portion of my life, each one that flared up was like a burn on my own skin. I can understand now the effects the California fires had on the people that had to be evacuated, that had everything destroyed that they had worked for all their lives.

I would watch the California wildfires, the Arizona wildfires and the Florida wildfires and it never really touched me because I didn't know these places. These places were not ingrained in the fabric of all my life's experiences, these were not the places that I had grown up around. These were not the street's I had ridden around with my mom and my dad when I was little... going out to what was the country then to my aunt and uncle's home... the streets that I rode with my mom and dad going just out for a Sunday drive.

I watched on until after 11 p.m. when things were brought under control enough that people were no longer being evacuated and the TV stations were no longer streaming video and warnings to folks to stay away so that the firemen could fight the innumerable fires. I will never again see a fire, whether it is a grass fire, forest fire or a house fire that I will not be touched by now. And I now can, truly, understand why people rebuild in the same area or on the same grounds that the homes they lost were on.

Because it is just that... home.

C'mon Now Y'all...

I'm blushing.

To clarify, since several people asked... It was not during any sort of attempt at a strange Kama Sutra pose... It was just one of those 'see if you can do it' sort of things when I was about 9 or 10.

I was long-legged, skinny, flat chested and limber and I'm sure one of my sibs probably issued the challenge to see if I could put both feet behind my head, because I showed them I could put one foot behind my head. It was probably one of those snide comments like, "So what... But can you get both of 'em up there?" Naturally, I had to do it just so I could say, "Naner, naner, poo, poo!" at them because I could do it.

I will say, since we're keeping it real, that when I got older there were times when I dang sure could've put them behind my head if I'd thought about it, since they were back to my shoulders anyhow...

Here She Comes Round The Curve...

Down the backstretch, heading for home.

I figured I better get back and finish my 100 before I hit my 200th post, so get your bets down as to whether I can come up with 100.

66. Me, about 1 year old. I loved my wheels. I still love a good set of wheels.

67. I'd love to be able to sing like I could when I was younger. Seems like the voice is one of those things that goes as you get older and don't practice anymore.

68. I hate grasshoppers and June bugs. Makes me shiver just writing this one.

69. When I was 4 years old, mom and dad decided that they could afford to get a bigger home. Several times I remember going with my folks to look at houses. I remember being upset that we didn't get a house that had a tennis court. I freakin' didn't even know what a tennis court was, but I sure wanted it. I could probably drive to that house even now, 60 years later.

70. I don't deal well with death and/or dying. This has been since I was not quite 13 and my oldest sister died. Mom and Dad had her laid out in our front room. If I had to go to bed I'd head up stairs through the kitchen so I didn't have to go through the living room where my sister was, and then when I'd go back downstairs I'd go out through the kitchen.

71. Obviously, if I don't deal well with death, I also don't go back to visit graves. I will go if I'm with some of my sibs and they want to go to the cemetery to visit, but I do not drive to the graves of my sister, my mom and dad, or any other loved ones. It was probably 15 years after my sister died before I could make myself go to a funeral home to honor a close friend that had died of breast cancer.

72. I'm very competitive, especially in sports. Ask my brothers. They'll tell you.

73. I lettered in 4 sports a year all 4 years of high school.

74. I won 2nd in singles and 2nd in doubles in the Okla. City Tennis Tournament the summer I was 16.

75. I had, and wore, a Nehru Jacket.




75. I also had, and wore, a pea coat and white, Navy issue bell bottom breeches, the kind that you could button down the right or left . Got them at the Army/Navy Surplus Store. I'd starch and iron them crisp and strut my stuff... when I still had stuff to strut.

76. I smoked cigarettes for about 40 years. Quit Jan. 31st, 2000.

77. My great granddaddy on my momma's side was a country doctor. More about him another time.

78. I believe that a person's sexual preferences don't make a person, just like their religion doesn't make them who they are, just like color doesn't make them who they are. I think their heart and soul makes them who they are.

79. I can't even get one foot behind my head anymore... much less both of them. That 40 pounds sure took up folding up room.

80. I really enjoy my own company. I learned as a child that I enjoyed being alone a lot. Not to say I don't like people. I do. But I just need my alone time.

Well, the race ain't quite run yet. I'm tired. I'm going to go to bed. I'll make sure to come up with 20 more when I can think 'em up. Dang, this is hard. But fun and a challenge...

I did tell you I'm competitive, didn't I?

Meanwhile Back At The Ranch...

The Lone Ranger is disguised as a wall... Tonto comes in and plasters his crack.

Do you ever have those days where you have what I call 'Stupididitties" running through your head all day, for no reason other than you are having a brain shrinkage day and they have room to run around?

Now brain shrinkage days are different than brain fart days. Brain fart days are just weird. P.E.R.I.O.D. Someone will ask you something and your mind just goes blank. You know the answer, but your mind goes blank and your face goes blank and whomever you're talking to can't decide whether to rap on your noggin with their knuckles to wake you up or to call 911 thinking you just had a stroke because they think you can't speak.

After about, mmm say, 17 false alarms, they finally get that your hard drive is stuck waiting for your ram to run to the hinterland of your brain to dig up an answer and they no longer have you hold out you arms, smile (to see if both sides of your mouth move) and speak, to see if anything other than drool comes out.

I, of course, am used to all the above because I have lived with me for 64 years. And a good portion of those years I've lived with 3 individuals, me, myself and I... and I like to be entertained, so me and myself have collected enough stupididitties and oddities to entertain the I of my life.

Now you do understand that when you've collected these nonsensical facts, fictions and jokes that there is little room left for much more than native intelligence. So sometimes when a person asks me a 'normal' question such as what did you have for dinner last night I have to stop and wait for the ram to pull the info out of the files and download it to my brain to vocalize it.

BUT (and a big but it is) if you asked me if I knew any Lone Ranger jokes I could pop of the above and more... such as the Lone Ranger was disguised as a pool table... Tonto comes in and racks his balls.

So if we ever meet, you may want to ask me a question about something 'normal', consider this...do you want to have to wait for a minute or two while my brain kicks in, or if you do not want to take that much time, then just ask me if I've heard any good knock-knock jokes, bawdy limericks, or downright tasteless dirty parrot jokes... and I'll pop something back at you...

Instantaneously.