How Brave Are You?

I was looking through some photos for a contest for the ‘Oklahoma Living’ magazine.  Bro had seen the story for a new photo contest for the magazine and tore it out and gave it to me.  But I digress…

In going through my files I happened across the dreaded “school photos” section.  I decided that since I’m rather brain dead today that I needed to do a post with some of these photos and ask you all… are you brave enough to publish your school photos?

This, technically, is not a ‘school’ photo but I wanted to share it anyway.  This was my first day of kindergarten.

This photo was taken before the above photo.  I was so anxious to go to school that I was just dancing in the back yard.  I wanted them to hurry up so I could go to school.  Little did I know that sixty years later I would be sitting here fixing to show my dreaded school photos to potentially the world. 

Are you ready for this?

This would have been about first grade.  Silly me, I didn’t think to check dates on these and they are in a box somewhere… but I don’t really think that accuracy matters with school photos.

This photo was my second grade picture and, oddly enough since it is one of the dreaded school photos, is my favorite ever photo of me.  Don’t ask why because I couldn’t tell you.  I think it is the twinkle in my eyes but anyway it’s my favorite of me.

Third grade…  will I ever grow into my teeth?  And whatever happened to the blingy bow tie with the huge rhinestones in it?  Was it my fashion statement or my mom’s or one of my sisters? 

Fourth grade… do you remember pin curls?  That’s what these had to be because the curls don’t start right at my scalp like a perm would have… The hair-do does make me look like I have thick hair, though, which was nice looking back because my hair is and was very fine and very straight.

I decided to throw this one in because this, while not a school photo, was a photo at school.  We were learning to play the violin and while my bow hand is wonderful, my neck hand looks like I have a death grip on my violin.  It also must have been a jeans day because we girls only got to wear breeches on special days.  I thought the other girl was prissy because she was wearing a skirt and blouse and why would you wear a skirt on a jeans day, for crying out loud, unless you were  a prissy girly-girl?

  Fifth grade… no curls here… you can see how straight my hair is in this one.  It must have been taken in the fall because of me having a sweater on over my blouse.

And to wind up this post… sixth grade.  I’m not quite sure how I created this hair style…  Parted on the left side but then my bangs going from right to left.  This is a very good example of how inept I was at doing my hair and I never ever improved.  This is the reason I wear my hair short now and have for many years.

Well I’ve had about all the fun I can stand for tonight with school photos and it’s just after 10 p.m. so I need to get this posted to continue my posting streak.  How about it?  Are you brave enough to post even one ‘school photo’?  After hearing people talk for years about how lousy their school pictures were I just got curious…

See y’all tomorrow!  And since it will be Saturday, game day, GO O.U.!!!   BOOMER SOONER!

How About This Sunset?

This is another evening after working on the bedroom at my Cuz’s out in the country.  I’m T.A.R.E.D.  That’s Okie for really whipped out.  Working on the crown molding means working over my head and I think of all the things I do that action is the one I pay for the most…

So here is a photo I took with my phone evening before last of the sunset I saw as I hit the highway to drive back to Norman after working on the bedroom on Tuesday… and, yes, Oprah, I pulled off to the side of the road before I took this shot.

If you look just above the horizon line almost to the center of the picture there was a cloud that looked like an eagle flying out of the sunset. 

Maybe you can see it better here.  I cropped the photo as best I could before it started falling apart, digitally…  Phone cameras just aren’t as good as my regular digital camera but it was way better than no camera at all. 

I hope you all have a good night and I’ll be back to more of my and my family story tomorrow… I hope.  But I’ll put something on my post.  Don’t want to fall out on my streak now!

The Rest On Daddy’s Side…

When I left off on the last family post I had told you all about the top row and the first person on the left that was seated.  That was my Aunt Sally.  Next to her was her momma… Mammy Gardner.  I don’t know much of anything about Mammy.  She died the summer after I was born.  I do know, after knowing my daddy and  all my daddy’s siblings that Mammy must have had the patience of a saint. 

The young man standing by Mammy is my Uncle Bob.  He was the next to the youngest and the youngest boy.  He and my Aunt Margaret, his second wife lived, in south Okla. City.  The first time that I remember saying I would spend the night at their house, I got to crying and wanting to go home… “I want my daddy!”.  They tried as best they could to calm me and my fears but ended up calling my daddy to come get me.  He drove across town and picked me up.  I was probably asleep before I got home. They got to do a lot of teasing after that about me having a ‘baby’ attack and being afraid to stay the night.  I was probably about four. 

Sitting in front of him, next to Mammy, was my Aunt Mary. She, like all the rest of them, had a pretty good sense of ornery.  You get the bunch together and there would be stories on her brothers and sisters.  She had a hearty laugh and I think her biggest heartbreak was not being able to have a child.  She and her first husband, my Uncle Bruce, were crazy about each other.  They thought they were going to have a baby but it turned out to be a tumor.  A full hysterectomy followed.  Thankfully it was a benign tumor.  My Uncle Bruce kind of made me feel like his favorite, he called me booble dooble, kind of like Double Bubble bubble gum.  He and my Aunt Mary were visiting at our home when I was about 8 or 9 and he had a massive heart attack and died on our side porch.  There was a heart doctor that lived across the street and down a lot from us and someone went and got him but there was not the technology in the early Fifties that there is now and there was nothing that he was able to do for my Uncle Bruce.  The last thing he told Aunt Mary was to take care of their cat, a big old yellow tabby.  Aunt Mary did fall in love again, many years later, and lived the rest of her life in Tennessee.

Papa Bill Gardner is next on the roll call…  He, to me, was a very gentle man.  I remember Aunt Annie shaving him with a straight razor… it fascinated me to watch and she didn’t ever nick him.  He had a mustache and had to use a cane to walk very much.  I was probably only four or maybe five when he passed away. 

Last, but definitely not least was my Aunt Fanny.  Aunt Fan was married to my Uncle Ed West and they lived in Tennessee.  Aunt Fanny was full of fun and a little popcorn fart of a woman and Uncle Ed wasn’t much bigger. Uncle Ed was a perfect match for her.  He was ornery as all get out, loved to tease and would pinch a plug out of you and just laugh.  I loved going to their home for reunions.  They lived in the country and they had a colored man (that’s what they called them back in the day) whose family had worked for Uncle Ed’s family and when the slaves were freed Ed Stone’s family stayed on and worked the farm and both Eds grew up around each other.  Ed Stone smoked the best Tennessee ham I ever ate.  We all looked forward to breakfast more than any other meal, and we had some good meals, because Aunt Fan or Annie or Addie or mom would be in the kitchen frying up ham and making red-eye gravy to go on our biscuits and fried eggs to go along and complete the meal.

You’ve made it through my daddy’s family with quick blurbs about my Aunts and Uncles. Next time we visit my life story we will start on my momma’s side of the family… the Texas side.  The side I loved more than the rest.  The side I identified with as a child and wanted to be like growing up… that ought to give you a bit of a clue. 

A Quickie Tonite…

Unfortunately not the ‘quickie’ I would have been tempted to have back in the day but a quick post.

I went out to my Cuz’s today and worked on painting the bedroom that I had started on before I moved back to Norman.  I finished putting up the ‘country crown molding’ and painted the walls.  I was too whipped out to do the cove molding Cuz and Bro had decided would fancy up the country crown just a tad so I will go back tomorrow or Thursday to cut and trim out the crown. I’ll take the camera so I can post photos for y’all to see.  Anyway I’m so whipped out I’m going to bed early (for me) but I didn’t want to miss putting up a post… So here, for your enjoyment and edification, are some photos I took with my phone of a Harley that was parked at WalMart a couple of days ago.

Cropped up a photo so you could for sure see the pearl handled six-shooter.  Mounted on both sides of the Harley, dressed out with the fringed and studded saddlebags, but what caught my eye were the pearl handled six-shooters almost exactly like the ones I had when I was a kid. Wish I had had the time to wait and get a look at the rider. 

Only in Oklahoma!!!  Or maybe Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, or California… ?

My Grandparents On My Daddy's Side...

These are my grandparents on my daddy’s side… I have a few memories of Papa Bill but Mammy Gardner died the summer after I was born so I have no memories of her. I remember Papa Bill had to use a cane to help him walk and I remember Aunt Annie shaving him with a straight razor. 

This photo was probably taken about the time that daddy left home for John E. Brown College.  Top row left to right… First up is Aunt Annie.  She lived to be 99 and she loved to tat and rode the Greyhound bus back and forth between Okla. City and Tennessee and Jonesboro, Arkansas until she was in her late 80’s and she would get to know everybody on that bus every time she’d go for a trip to visit whichever kin folk she was going to see. 

Next to her was my Uncle George Gardner.  I don’t remember a lot about him.  He was the oldest of the boys and he and his wife, Aunt Gertrude, lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  I remember visiting their home one time. They had a wonderful screened in porch and we got to ride the cog railway up Lookout Mountain.

Of course back in the early 50’s it didn’t look near this fancy. When you got up to the top you could go to here:

Lover’s Leap.  While nobody I know ever leaped I can remember that you were supposed to be able to see Alabama, Georgia and, of course, Tennessee.  I ‘borrowed’ these images from a Chattanooga web site.

Next to Uncle George was my daddy.  I’ll do a post on him later.

Aunt Adderine was on daddy’s left.  She was the oldest of the girls. She and her husband, Newt Kimbro, lived in OKC and ran a gas station.  One of my favorite memories is that they had a Model T Ford that they drove until they retired and went back to Tennessee.  When Aunt Addie and Uncle Newt would come over to the house for a visit my little brother and I would beg to get to ride on the running board up the street to the stop sign when they left to go home… all of three houses up the block but it was so fun for us.

Seated from the left is my Aunt Sally.  I think I loved her more than all the rest of my aunts on daddy’s side because she was one salty lady.  She was more of a rebel because she met, fell in love with and married an Italian man.  Even worse than, please take no offense, marrying a “wop” was she became a Catholic because that was his religion.  Not being prejudiced but that is the first time I ever heard that word in relation to Uncle Tony or anyone else and the only time I heard it was when daddy was upset with something that Uncle Tony had done or something that dad perceived he had done.   Mother would always say, “ Now, Stearns…’’ He’d get a handle on what ever it was and take into consideration that momma was telling him in her gentle way not to talk that way in front of us kids.

When I was 16 and we went to Wartrace, Tennessee, for our family reunion I got to go home with Aunt Sally and Uncle Tony and my two girl cousins, Sally Ann and Linda to Chicago!!! A huge town where trains were on rails up above the roads and all kinds of places that we didn’t go to…  Mostly we just stayed at the house or go to friends of Sally Ann’s or be pestered or pestering Linda since she was younger than we were.  They also had two of the most handsome brothers that were older than we were and pretty much didn’t want to be bothered by punk sisters and cousin.  After visiting for a week I got to ride the train from Chicago to Okla.City all by myself.  Boy was I “grown up”!

This is getting long so I’ll save the rest for tomorrow…  See you then if you can stand it!

Let’s Start An Ongoing Story…

I decided that it would be fun to do a story about me… from the beginning.  A watch me grow story.  I think it will be a fun way for you to get to know me.  You all know that I do better story-telling when I have photos to work off of so let’s start here.

My mom and dad met back shortly after the earth was formed,  back in the olden days, at John E. Brown College in Siloam Springs, Arkansas.  Dad was born and raised in Tennessee and mom was born and raised in Texas.  My granddaddy and grandmother Venable moved to Gentry, Arkansas, when the children were still in school.  Mom was the oldest of  six children, five of whom lived to adulthood.  Dad was the fifth child of nine, one of which died as a child.  Mom used to say that she didn’t stand a chance when it came to dad… he was spoiled by his older sisters before she ever met him.  Dad would just laugh, sort of embarrassedly, but you knew he loved the attention.

   My dad worked in the dairy at the school to help pay for his education.  He got his degree in bookkeeping.

Mom worked in the cafeteria at the college to help pay her way through her last two years of high school and her two years of college.  She got her degree in general education.  Her plan was to teach until she met my dad and did, in fact, teach for a year in a one room school, first through eighth grade before they married.

This photo wasn’t dated but I figure it was around the time or shortly before they were married.  Back in the day most get-togethers were reunions around marryin’ or buryin’ times so this was probably a pretty special date for them.  John E. Brown College was a non-denominational Christian school and in the Twenties it wasn’t proper for a young lady and a young gentleman to do the public displays of affection and at the College they weren’t even allowed to hold hands.  They would sit out on the grounds of the school after class and visit, always in groups, and mom and dad would sit kind of back to back so they could touch.  That was okay, but no hand holding or necking like yard trash that you see on campuses and in the malls nowadays.

This photo, if the number on the license plate is correct, was taken the year I was born… the fifth of their six children.  You will get to meet my sibs along the way and their children and grandchildren.

After all, I have sixty five years to cover… I have to figure out something to write about!  James Michener I’m not.

Just A Snippet...

I thought I'd better get a little something up in case I'm too tired after the game this evening to post. OU's first game is tonight and it's only on pay-per-view. A good friend called and said she was buying it and did I/we want to come watch it with her. My folks didn't raise no fools and since I didn't have to pay for it I said, "You bet!!!" Carol decided she'd like to see it, too, and she even whipped up some tortilla roll-ups for snacking.

Now to the snippet.

A friend dropped by yesterday for a visit and in the conversation said she was going to dinner at her mom and dad's and asked what we were going to do for our dinner. I told her we were going to have scraps... She looked at me oddly and I said, "you know, left-overs." The light then dawned on her and she said she had never heard left-overs called scraps.

How about it? I was raised with both phrases and I just wondered if it would be confusing for anyone else in my world. Some of the best meals we had were scraps and bits of other meals when mom would clean out the refrigerator. You notice I didn't date myself even more by saying ice box.

Scraps or left-overs or either or both?