This thought began because my dishwasher wouldn’t start – it’s less than 4 years old. I emptied it and hand washed all the dishes because it was going to take a few days to get the repairman here. Washing dishes takes me back to my childhood and my early married days when I didn’t have a dishwasher. I looked around my kitchen and saw my old friends, the pieces I can always rely on.
First, there is the old wooden spoon that was a wedding gift as part of a kitchen shower package. I’ve been using this spoon for over 58 years and it never lets me down. I have other spoons, but this one just feels right. I have stirred so many things with it and it just keeps going.
In the drawer was the hand mixer that I was also given as a wedding gift. For the first few years of my married life, this is what I used to make cookies, cakes, mashed potatoes, whatever needed mixing. I only use it about once a year now – to beat eggs to add to the German Chocolate Cake mixture for my husband’s birthday, which we celebrate even though he’s been gone a long time. The beaters don’t always stay in as well, but it functions, as it has for over 58 years.
The writing on the front says it all for a 1966 miracle appliance. It has done its job.
When we had been married two or three years, my husband gave me my KitchenAid mixer for Christmas. I was so excited as I had used my mother’s growing up. Unfortunately, my husband took my excitement to mean I liked getting appliances, so he was shocked at my lack of enthusiasm when he gave me an electric floor cleaner for another Christmas. He learned. Anyway, this gem is still working and is my old reliable in the midst of all the newer gadgets around.
The life this mixer has had. The dozens of cookies, the cakes (you can tell I like to bake most), all the recipes we have tried. This is the mixer that my children used as they learned to cook growing up. Here’s my middle daughter. I promise she’s not this messy now, but this is a good representation of her then.
All of my three girls learned to cook, but my son was the one who really took to it. Here is how I found him when he tried to do it without me.
Years later, after he had been treated for cancer and lost his ability to speak clearly, I told him to find something he loved doing. He went to culinary school to learn real baking skills and worked in a wonderful bakery in Seattle. This kid, who hated getting up early, went to work at 4 a.m. every day to bake wonderful cookies, cakes, tarts, pies. I snapped a picture of him when I visited once.
Having my old mixer around is a sure way to unlock more memories of my children and grandchildren waiting to lick the beaters or help make their treats. At this point, it’s a race to see if my mixer lasts longer than I do, but I’m planning to win. No matter what, those memories will last me forever.
I started the 60s as a teenager in 9th-10th grade and ended the decade as a college graduate, married and pregnant with my second child. It was a time of immense change in both me and the world we had known.
Not sure if I was a typical teen, but I was a busy one. I studied hard, learned all the social graces, dated and fell in love, got my driver’s license and cruised with my friends, went to movies and football games and laughed a lot. I was an oldest child, anxious to please adults and do the right things…and I was a girl who was taking in all the things I saw adults doing that I thought were not quite right. I wasn’t as much quiet as observant. And, I read a lot. I’m a month too old to be a legitimate Baby Boomer, which makes me the end of the Silent Generation. My parents and grandparents had lived through the Depression and World War II, which they didn’t talk too much about. I learned through digging through the photos and objects in their houses. In school, we read all the dystopian novels, “1984,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Animal Farm,” “Fahrenheit 451,” and I was absorbed with the “Diary of Anne Frank,” both the book and movie. By my senior year, I was exploring the works of Camus and Kierkegaard and other existentialists while developing my own faith and belief system.
By college, we were listening to folk music along with our beloved rock and roll, which we danced to with great joy. I spent many years rolling my eyes at my parents as they rolled theirs at the music, the slang, the way we dressed. My freshman year had barely started when we were rocked by the assassination of President Kennedy, followed by the Beatles coming to America the following spring. Everything was changing so rapidly and we were watching all the things that had seemed so stable begin to show the cracks in the systems.
I recently watched the Bob Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown,” and actually got teary listening to the music and watching the images of the 60s. In my Freshman dorm room, we only had one or two electrical outlets, which my roommate and I shared. We had a popcorn popper, hair dryers, lamps, and I had an electric typewriter (I think I had an electric one by then), a clock radio and my record player. I played my records all the time, listening to Joan Baez, Peter, Paul & Mary, and so many other folk singers over and over. As the Viet Nam War started to build up, we saw our contemporaries going to college and/or getting married to avoid the draft. Many of my classmates were shipped out after they graduated. One classmate was killed as soon as he arrived. Protest songs were becoming more relevant to what we were living.
The Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, the Anti-War Movement were all around us. In particular, we were seeing the inequalities for women. We had different curfews, campus rules. Once we were out of college, we had to either hope to get married to someone who could support us or get hired. The most touted options for us were Secretary, Nurse, Teacher. I went to hear Gloria Steinem on campus and read the latest feminist works. Even the women’s magazines my mother subscribed to were beginning to have articles on women’s place in society.
My boyfriend was in the Navy and we married when he got out and returned to school. We were poor and happy and welcomed our first child with complete ignorance of what to do. He joined my father’s business and I became the housewife and mother I was supposed to be. But, I found that there was so much more to do. I joined a discussion group of other young mothers, I volunteered in the community, and I kept questioning all of the norms in society. I could write more about all the things women couldn’t do, even as educated white women, but there were so many. We were basically still second class as far as many businesses and laws were concerned. By the time I had three daughters, I was doing all I could to make sure their world had more opportunities for them and their daughters. My last child was a boy and he was the one who really cared about women’s rights by the time he was in college. His mother and three sisters motivated him, as he said.
That decade of the 60s was definitely a major time period in my overly privileged, white life. From my lofty perch as I rapidly approach 80 this year, I wish that I lived in a society that listened to its elders and learned from the wisdom we have acquired, but I also see people my age living greedy, selfish lives and impacting others in negative ways. There are so many times I think we are going backwards – in a bad way.
I guess we all take different ideas from our lives. I like to think that this Child of the 60s came out of that time with a greater appreciation for those who didn’t have my advantages and a greater sense of empathy for the suffering of others. This makes it my responsibility to always do what I can for others, whether it is speaking out or making contributions or taking actions to make changes for the betterment of others. I’ll never get too old for that. Peace and Love!
There is nothing like standing on a beach to remind you of what a minuscule speck each of us is in the scope of the universe. Those are the times you recognize your belief in a greater force of nature than your own limited understanding of your place in all of the beauty and wonder of all you can see and feel.
When I was in college, a friend told me I had a great ability to see all sides of a situation. I like to think so and believe I grew in that ability through reading, meeting people from all ends of society and traveling to other countries and parts of my own country to broaden my perspective. I don’t think I have to have had every experience to try and put myself in someone else’s place when trying to solve a problem.
Through the years, I have had many leadership positions that challenged me to find solutions to problems that affected more people than just my own family or friends. When I was President of the PTA at my children’s elementary school, I spent a lot of time in the office with the Principal and visiting with teachers. Parents who advocated for their own children often overlooked the needs of the entire student body. It was advocacy in motion and sometimes either frustrating or narrow in view. There is nothing wrong with standing up for your child, but sometimes you need to look at other children and the issues that teachers and schools are dealing with to help all children. If your problem is one that many children are facing, there should be ways to find solutions for all.
The same thing happened when I was President of my Neighborhood Association. I get that, too. Our homes are usually our greatest financial investment and what is happening in our own area is important. Once again, maybe your neighbors have the same issues or maybe your grievance is something based on just your own personal beliefs or desires. There are rules and regulations for all of us and we can always come together to find solutions.
Unfortunately, I have watched meetings in many groups become contentious and ugly rather than productive. I’ve seen this in families, churches, businesses, organizations of all sizes. People get defensive when defending their opinions. After all my years of taking classes in conflict resolution and group facilitation, I am still shocked when confronted with people who are going to stand their ground no matter what facts are presented to them.
Believe me, I’m not always right and I can get defensive, too. I’m just always trying to find that way to peace. I think it comes from being the oldest child who had to sit between siblings in the back seat of a car while they reached across me to hit each other.
And so, we come to the world today, where I have never in my almost 79 years seen such division. People I know are afraid of everyone who doesn’t look or believe like them or they are afraid they will lose all their money or power. Others are sure they are right because of their religious views or their own self-righteousness over people who don’t live just like them. And, never have I seen so many people who are only concerned with what happens to them. Those who try to see another point of view are called “woke” in a sarcastic way, while I just see an attempt at empathy.
I’ve obviously got more years behind me than ahead of me, but I still like to look at the Big Picture of what might work for most of us. Not everyone has been as fortunate as I have, nor had the opportunities or health I have. Many things are out of our control and we are trying to do the best we can. Mistakes are made in life and people pay for them in many heartbreaking ways. The best we can do is look at the universe and see how we can make a place for all of us to live in peace and some happiness.
If you don’t have a beach to go stand on, find a sky to watch. Look beyond yourself and try to find a place for peace and love in your heart.
Forgive my eye roll as I listen to discussions in the news on how women are most fulfilled by staying home and raising babies. Everyone knows how much I love my children and how I enjoyed being home with them, but…here’s my story.
When I went to college in 1963, women were beginning to be expected to work really hard through high school to get into college and then…well, the options we were given were ok but really an excuse to stay in school and find a college educated husband. If you had to work after college until you found one, that was ok, but you were still kind of expected to start a family as soon as possible.
I’m not sure I really had a goal of any kind. I was smart, observant, in love, and thought my life would mirror my parents’, which was pretty nice I thought. I was very naive about how the world was going to work for me and my friends. I got married right after I turned 21, finished school, started grad school so I could teach while my husband finished up, and had my first child. Our life progressed as we thought it would and I stayed home and had three more kids before I turned 30. My husband worked with my father, I loved the babies (which I had never even thought about before I had them), and we were happy.
But, there was the fact that I got bored when the kids were asleep or at day care, preschool, school. Housework and playing bridge weren’t really doing it for me. I started doing volunteer work, as was expected of those of us who had it so seemingly easy, and found an unpaid career that filled my time, brought me new friends and taught me more than I ever imagined. I learned new skills and attained new leadership positions. My thought was that I couldn’t be out saving the world, but I could save my own little world, one day at a time, while still doing all the mom things, which I loved.
By the 1980s, I had edited a cookbook, a magazine, planned for city growth, worked with the arts, helped educate people on Historic Preservation, served on Boards of Directors and was feeling pretty good. It was the 80s and women were speaking up more and more. I had heard Gloria Steinem speak when I was in college and read all the women’s and new magazines and current books and was up on Women’s Lib, as it was called, sometimes not in a nice way. I understood and empathized, but I was busy driving a billion carpools and leading committee meetings and selling popcorn after school – all things that were needed. I wasn’t out marching for Women’s Rights. I didn’t have time.
The Equal Rights Amendment was in the news and states were ratifying it and dismissing it. Would it ever get passed? Nope. Women were slowly gaining more rights but were still not considered equal under the law in the United States. That’s the truth and still is to this day. It doesn’t mean that we can’t get more rights, but it means that they can more easily be taken away. Eventually, it was out of the news and women were content with small victories along the way. NOTE: we never should have stopped fighting for it.
I thought of myself as a person who was good at bringing people together to make decisions and finish projects and get things done. I was aware of inequities for women, but I wasn’t much of an advocate – yet. The Junior League of Tulsa was a bastion of educated women who spent their time trying to make the city a better place. It was the epitome of what women, even women who were proud homemakers and mothers, could do to make change. In 1983, two projects were proposed for the coming year. One was to work with domestic violence advocates and organizations to increase awareness. This was a new movement at the time.
The second project was to collaborate with The University of Tulsa to open a resource center for women who needed help as their lives changed due to numerous upheavals and changes of direction. This included women who needed to go to work, women who were widowed or divorced and left to fend for themselves and would help women who didn’t have the opportunities and contacts my friends had at the time. I first heard the term “displaced homemakers.” For some reason, the Catholic community decided that this project would be doing abortion counseling and there was a big uproar with even the Bishop becoming involved, articles in the paper about it all causing much division in the Junior League membership. After all of this, when it came time to vote for new projects to give our time and money to, I wasn’t sure if we should do something that was causing so much friction. I’m not sure how I voted, but both projects passed and were ready to go. Then it was time to choose chairmen for the projects. I was more than shocked when I got a call to chair the women’s resource center project. My first inclination was to say no, because why did I need to have stress like this, but a good friend convinced me that I was the right person precisely because I didn’t have a side in it and could work to bring everyone together. Flattery and a new challenge were appealing and I took off on a year that would be life changing in so many ways.
Our joint committee of volunteers and representatives from TU worked for nine months to set up the policies and hire a professional Director for The Women’s Center, as we decided to call it. We had a converted house donated by the university to furnish and set up, materials to collect, and publicity to generate. By the time we opened in January, 1984, women were pretty much lined up for the services. I’m proud to say that the center, under a different organization, still exists in Tulsa today. I met women who were desperate for job counseling, looking for places to live, needing just anyone to talk to. Nobody was asking about an abortion, by the way.
A couple of years after this project, I was asked to chair the domestic violence project as the new shelter was opened and new programs being developed. After that year, I continued to serve on the Board of Directors for six more years, including a year as Board President. In all those years, I never spoke to a community group without a woman or women coming up to me afterwards to tell me their story. They were beginning to break free with education about the issue.
This was becoming personal because I was the mother of three girls and I felt like I needed to be a role model in the fight for other women. I needed to expose them to the things that happen to women. And, I was the mother of a son who needed to be a man who respected women. My son was the one who worked for women’s rights while he was in college. Hopefully, they all absorbed some of what I was doing.
Another reason this was becoming more personal was because at the same time, my friends were also going through major life shifts. In my parents’ time, there were few divorces, mainly because the women had no recourse. They had no education or skills, no money except through their husbands, and no support from churches, society or even family. You were expected to stay in a marriage, no matter how bad it got. Cheating and abuse and addiction and gambling and men who couldn’t provide for their families are nothing new, but nobody talked about it. It was the age of secrets. By the time I was in my thirties, more marriages were falling apart. We had married young for so many reasons. Birth control was new and only available if you were married. Girls had to either have abortions in secret places, give their babies up for adoption or get married. Guys could get exemptions from Viet Nam if they were married or couples married because the guy was drafted. You were expected to have your children young for health reasons. But now, maybe some of those reasons weren’t good enough for a sustained marriage. Guys who cheated felt free to leave their families for their new love, husbands died, husbands were cruel. I also had friends who realized that they were gay, which was fine with me. They really weren’t any different, just happier. When I wasn’t out saving the world for others, I was on the phone with friends who were facing new realities.
Those who suddenly had to find work learned that those degrees we got were pretty useless if you hadn’t been in the work force building up your resume. Many sucked it up and called people they had worked with as volunteers to see if there was a paid job they could do. Networking was key to survival. Whatever job was found was mostly at entry level and many still had children at home to take care of. Divorces were messy and many a friend became a fierce advocate for their children and themselves in courtrooms where men still had an advantage. Once you were out there, it was just becoming a thing for women to get their own credit and bank accounts. There were those who suggested that women should stay married no matter what and were no support at all.
Through the 80s and into the 90s, I did a lot of writing, speaking and advocating for these women, these “displaced homemakers.” In that time, my own children went to college. The three girls married and had their first babies and my son was in college. I had gone to work part-time, then full time and had my own business. Then, suddenly, I was one of the displaced. My husband died of cancer very quickly and, after almost a year of being immersed in the world of medicine, I was out there on my own. After putting four children through college and having three weddings, selling our family business and watching my husband have to reinvent himself, our resources were at a low. I was a widow at 52. Life happens.
In the 25+ years since, I have reinvented myself so many times, used every skill I ever had, laughed and cried with friends and watched the world changing all the time. There are so many new developments in medicine and technology for my children and grandchildren. My friends are still going through transitions and reinventing ourselves for our later years. I survived because of the experiences I had through the years, the friends and family who gave me love and support, and because of the strength of the women in my family whose stories I tell with such pride. My daughters, and daughter-in-law, mother and grandmothers and all the women I have known have made me stronger and happier than I ever expected. I ride on all their shoulders.
Looking back, I smile at the dream of the “Happy Homemaker” that we believed in so blindly. It is a great part of life, but it is only part of who we will be as women. “Children are the best thing in your life” is an easy thing to say, but they can be a challenge. Some are born with physical or mental disabilities, some become addicted, some just seem to defy everything we give them, some make bad decisions. And some die. Some women cannot have children by birth and may struggle through fertility issues and adoptions. And, some women just don’t want to have children. Children cannot be the only way to happiness.
I am a lucky girl. My children were healthy and sweet and fun and came out ok. I am a lucky, lucky girl. I will always be grateful for my wonderful children. I will also say that I also had wonderful men in my life, including a supportive husband. I will always be grateful for the loving, kind men I have known and been friends with throughout my life. Because I have been so lucky, I will aways fight for the women who haven’t been. I will write and talk and post and march and vote for the homemakers and the “displaced homemakers” and those who chose another direction.
The thing is that we cannot make decisions for other people. We cannot force them to believe as we think they should or live as we think they should. We cannot judge them for their beliefs and decisions. None of us know what is going on in other people’s lives. We need to support and love and listen. We need to live the Golden Rule. Life isn’t always easy and we don’t need to make it harder for anyone. We need to be kind.
Politics has become a way to beat other people down instead of lifting their lives up. We need to be better.
Driving down a familiar street on a hot summer day, I was hit with a wave of memories of summers past. Once they started, it was hard to stop them.
We moved to Tulsa sometime in 1948. I was about 2 1/2 years old and my brother was a baby. We lived in this house until late summer 1955 when we moved to a new custom home where I lived until I was married. But those 7 years in that first house, when I was ages 2 1/2 to 9 1/2, packed in a lot of memories.
In the summer, we played outside before there was air conditioning. We played in the sprinklers, went high on the swings until we pulled the poles from the ground, played work-up and Red Rover in our big side yard. We looked for fossils in the gravel on the street until they paved it. I learned to ride my bike on that street and attempted to roller skate with the skates that you hooked onto your shoes and tightened with the skate key.
In the evenings, we looked at the sky for constellations before there were so many lights to make the skies not so bright. We caught lightning bugs, June bugs, lady bugs, roly polys and put them in jars with a few leaves and holes we punched in the top. Sometimes there were locust shells to collect and crunch. We walked down the street to the school where I went to play in the creek. There was trumpet vine on the back fence to use for cups for my dolls and honeysuckle to drink the nectar from.
i played with my dolls and cut out paper dolls. I loved Betsy McCall in my mother’s monthly McCall’s magazine and kept all the clothes in a box in my room. I played dress up with the other girls in the neighborhood, raiding our mothers’ closets.
My mother worked in the garden, washed the clothes and hung them on the clothesline in the back yard. I loved the clothespins in their little bag that hung on the line.
In this house, my brother and I shared a bedroom with green chenille Hopalong Cassidy bedspreads and welcomed our little sister home. I think we listened to Hoppy on the radio as we didn’t have a television yet. I loved seeing him in person one year at the Tulsa Horse Show.
When I got bigger, I had my own bedroom at the back of the house with a door to the screened in porch. On hot summer nights, I laid spread eagle on top of my covers in my seersucker babydoll pajamas, hoping for a breeze from the fan and the open windows. We drank Kool-Aid (made with lots of sugar) and waited for Jack the Milkman to come so we could run to his truck for ice chips. Sometimes he would let us get in and ride around the corner with him. And the ice cream truck would bring us popsicles and ice cream bars to cool us off.
We had a patio in the back for picnics and Daddy got a grill to cook hamburgers and hot dogs. It was the 50s as you imagine.
In the summers we went to the library and I brought home stacks of books that I read quickly. There were biographies with orange covers, fairy tales, the Oz books, Nancy Drew mysteries. I read anything I could. One time I wrote a play sitting under the big elm in the front yard. It was about kings and princesses, I believe. I still have it somewhere in a spiral notebook, written in my careful printing. We played cards, spending hours with Old Maid, Crazy Eight, Go Fish. We collected comic books and read them, loving Lulu, Donald Duck, Superman and Batman and all the superheroes.
Time went on and my parents converted our garage into a “family room.” There were big couches and my mother had an artist paint a scene of cute barnyard animals on the concrete wall. And, we had a television there and an air conditioner. It was a new world. We watched tv when it came on at 5:00 with the news. If we stayed up late (10:00), you could watch the newscaster sign off and the screen turn to the overnight screen picture. On Saturday mornings, we watched all the shows. Winky Dink was an interactive show where you placed a piece of heavy plastic over the screen and then used the special crayons to finish pictures or images that were part of the show. We watched Sky King, Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, The Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, and cartoons like Popeye.
I learned to cook in this house, making little cakes in tiny pans, first in a toy oven and then in my mother’s big oven. I cooked my first dinner from my first cookbook, proudly serving it to my Daddy, who was always amused by my attempts to be a big girl. That kitchen had a corner booth where we had breakfast and my grandmother would bring us homemade french fries with little cups of ketchup when she visited. We got our first dishwasher, which was pushed across the room where the hoses were connected to the kitchen sink.
School started in the fall and we walked down the street to our school. My parents sent me there because my birthday was past the cutoff for the public schools and, besides, it was down the street.
When the leaves turned, we raked them into piles to jump in and burn in the incinerator in the corner of the back yard. We loved the smell of the burning leaves and watching the embers that escaped and flew into the sky. For obvious reasons, this was banned in the city at a later date. In the fall, Daddy brought his hunting dog home where he lived in his pen in the yard unless Daddy was training him or we were playing with him. Early in the mornings, they would head out in search of quail which Daddy would bring home to eat later.
When school started, so did our Brownie troop meetings. My mother was one of the leaders so we often met at our house where we learned to give tea parties for our mothers, how to sew on a button, how to sell cookies and took fun field trips.
For Halloween, we donned cheap costumes purchased at the dime store or dressed as hoboes or ghosts and grabbed a pillow case and went for blocks and blocks, trick or treating. When our bags were full of caramel apples, popcorn balls, and full size candy bars, tootsie roll pops and bubble gum, we headed home to dump the load and head out again. We kept our piles of candy under our beds where we would bring them out to count or trade or eat.
In the colder weather, we lit the floor furnace, which we quickly learned to step over so we didn’t burn our feet. The bathrooms were heated with little gas furnaces on the walls to keep us warm after our baths.
In the cold weather, we had fires in the fireplace in the living room where we listened to 78 records on the big record player and toasted marshmallows and drank hot chocolate. For Christmas, we hung our stockings and waited for Santa. My favorite gifts, maybe ever, were the Madame Alexander Alice in Wonderland doll in her blue trunk with other clothes and my first puppy, a red dachshund named Mr. Schmidt. We also got sleds for the small hills in our neighborhood and made snowmen in the front yard and had snowball fights with the neighbors behind the forts we built.
With spring, we planted zinnias in the back yard and dyed Easter eggs. We found baby chicks and ducks in our Easter baskets along with eggs to hide and hunt. One baby duck used to follow me everywhere until he died even though I tried to keep him warm and well. I’m sure our back yard had many graves of turtles, parakeets, chameleons and other little creatures we brought home from the dime store or the fair. We didn’t mean to be rough with them.
I had many parties for my friends at this house. There were birthday parties and slumber parties. This must have been my last one there and everyone seems to be happy with our comic book collection. I remember the noise and the giggles and the patience of my parents.
This was the house where I lost my first teeth and the Tooth Fairy left a dime under my pillow. This was where I had chicken pox, the measles and mumps. Those diseases were no fun and I can remember days in bed, the calamine lotion all over me with chicken pox and not scratching so we wouldn’t have scars (I only have one) and staying in the dark with measles so we wouldn’t go blind. Our pediatrician, Dr. Reece, would arrive at our house, driven by his chauffeur, wearing his dark coat and hat and carrying his medical bag. He walked up the steps to check our hearts and lungs and look at our tongues. He was one of the last of that kind of doctor.
In the living room, there was a little room/closet for the phone. In those days, you had to call the operator to make a long distance call. Calls were billed by the minute so they were kept short and you waited until after 7 to make calls when it was cheaper. When I was 8 or 9, I wanted to talk to my grandmother, so I snuck into the little room and called the operator as I had heard my parents do. I can’t remember if I knew her number or just gave the operator her name, but I got to talk to her. I felt very brave and grown up and sneaky. Did I get in trouble? I don’t think so. Daddy probably didn’t realize I made the call, unless my grandmother told my parents. She wasn’t one to tell on me though.
One time I was mad at my mother, so I packed a peanut butter sandwich and an apple in my little suitcase and ran away from home. Was I 6? I made it to the other end of our block and sat down to eat my sandwich. I really didn’t know where to go, so I turned around and went back home. Home wasn’t that bad.
Were those the “good old days” of my life, the years in that house? They were definitely good for us, but they were just a part of my life. I’ve lived long enough to have perspective and to have learned history. Those days were good for us, but they were unrealistic for both my parents. Women had few rights and men had unbelievable expectations. And we were white. Needless to say, the world wasn’t fair then for so many others. I’ve met people from different backgrounds who lived at that time and shake my head at our ignorance and ability to not see what was in front of us. We also didn’t understand the lives of those around us who were dealing with infidelity, substance and alcohol abuse, spousal and child abuse. These things just weren’t talked about, much less dealt with. I was one of the lucky children.
I’ve lived most of my life within about a square mile, so it was easy to drive by the house now and then. It was updated through the years, but it was still the house. A couple of months ago, I happened to turn that way and arrived just as the last piece of the house was demolished before my eyes. I was shocked, but shouldn’t have been surprised. Such is the world.
Here is the house being built there now.
It isn’t the worst it could be, but there is no side yard for playing and I’m sure the back yard is a carefully planned outdoor kitchen/patio. It will be a nice home and I hope that the families who live there make special memories.
For me, I have the memories of my years there that helped to make me who I am today. I’m basically still that little girl with the big imagination and the urge to explore and hoping to be brave enough to jump off that wall.
I’m not sure how old I was when I started to read, maybe 5 or 6 in first grade. All I know is that for the past 72 or so years, I have read everything that I could find. I’ve written about the books, but there were also magazines and newspapers all around me. We didn’t have television until later and we certainly didn’t have computers, smart phones, the internet, and all the other ways to get information these days. I guess my parents didn’t know what I was reading – at the least, they sure weren’t worrying about it.
Magazines started with Highlights for Children and clipping Betsy McCall paper dolls from the monthly McCall’s magazine my mother received. My parents subscribed to Life, Look, Reader’s Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Newsweek for general reading. My mother subscribed to McCall’s and Ladies Home Journal and my father subscribed to Field and Stream and Argosy among others. As I grew older, I subscribed to Seventeen and my brother had Boy’s Life. We had both the morning and evening local papers delivered to our door, which I also did when I went to college and later had my own home.
I started early by looking at the stunning photographs and then reading the articles. I was reading articles about being a homemaker, a hunter and seeing what was going on in the news of the world. I was reading stories by famous authors and combing through the papers, after I read the comics, to see what was going on in my community. Nobody ever said a word.
By the time I reached junior high, I had read most of the books in my house, my grandparents’ homes, and my own bookshelves. My mother subscribed to Reader’s Digest Condensed Books for several years, so I was reading popular novels in that format. Nothing was out of bounds. An article I remember from one of Daddy’s magazines was about Errol Flynn and his raucous lifestyle aboard his boat. It was shocking but definitely interesting. Nobody cared if I read this. It didn’t mean I was going to become one of the wild women on his boat.
When I had my allowance, I bought movie magazines and paperback books. “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was pretty risqué for my age of 14, but it was certainly a peek into something I sure didn’t know anything about. Nobody said a word.
I still read all the time, although I have to admit I read a lot online along with my books and a few magazines. None of the literature I read, from children’s books that featured characters from other cultures to biographies to histories to crazy fiction has ever made me anything more than an educated person who sees the bigger picture in the world around her, empathizes with problems other people encounter in life, relates to things that happen to people that have also happened to me, and is constantly curious to find the truth and the goodness in the world.
Sure, I have lot of prejudices that I absorbed from various sources, but I read enough to help me grow beyond them to be a better person. Reading and watching movies and television shows and news shows help.
Years ago, I taught a class for the American Red Cross called Facing Fear. It was a curriculum developed after 9/11 for students from kindergarten through high school to help them comprehend what had happened. A teacher friend asked me to come to her 6th grade class at the school I had attended and where my children and, later, grandchildren, had been students. We did a unit on the news and I was shocked to hear what came from the 12 year old mouths. They were totally parroting their parents with lots of prejudices, who mainly watched about 10 minutes of the local news a day. Cable wasn’t a big deal and the internet was in its infancy. I encouraged them to go to the library and read from a variety of sources in order to make up their minds about subjects. The words from the great song from “South Pacific” echoed in my head. “You have to be carefully taught…” These little minds were absorbing only one view.
Children and students today have amazing choices in ways to get their information. Librarians and teachers have processes to determine which items are allowed in the libraries and do a great job of being objective. We should be the best educated population in history, but we’re not.
My friends are horrified to see the things happening in our schools and communities today. One person can object to a book and have it banned for all children to read. Why have we given anyone this much power? When I was serving as PTA President many years ago, I told the Principal that I understood advocacy because I saw so many parents who always thought their child was right and didn’t care what was good for all children. It wasn’t quite as frightening because there were parents who stood up for the big picture of what was best for the community. There are ways to protect your child without stomping on the rights of others.
In my case, I have no doubt that, if my parents had chosen to censor what I was reading at any age, I would have found a way to find it for myself. With the internet, bookstores, libraries, there are always sources. I have to shake my head at the books that are being banned that are available in movie form. I would be exhausted trying to shut my children out of everything available to them. And, I would be doing them a disservice.
There are people who don’t even have children in schools who are working to ban books and make the job more difficult for teachers and librarians. Maybe these people should take the time to read some of the books and meet some people who are different from them and widen their own perspective.
The Bible is often quoted in battles, but not banned or censored despite the cruelty, sexiness, and crazy laws in those pages. Everyone should be reading Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” which is the story of a society which outlawed and burned books. Rebellious citizens memorized whole books to preserve them, walking around reciting them to remember. It is a powerful image of how people will find a way to preserve and protect words that stimulate and enrich our lives.
In today’s world, we all need to be involved, write and call our legislators on all levels from local to national and make them take a step back to see what is happening in our schools and libraries. There is nothing good that can come of censorship and banning books. Nothing.
As a child, I often visited my grandparents’ homes and stayed for awhile since they lived in Oklahoma City and Ardmore and we were in Tulsa. There wasn’t a lot to do in the days before there was much television, and I was sometimes the only grandchild, away from my brother and sister and cousins, so I either followed them around or poked around in garages, drawers and closets or read books or played records. I wish I had asked questions as I prowled through their things, but I probably thought I wasn’t supposed to be where I was. Anyway, when I was an adult and they had passed away, I grabbed things like photos and the books I had read as a child, gravitating towards the sentimental things of my childhood.
My paternal grandparents had a built-in bookshelf in their den. In the drawers below were some Classic Comic Books that I read over and over. On the shelves, there was a set of very small books that were the works of Edgar Allen Poe, which now seems like a strange thing for them to have. There were others books, too. Recently, I looked through some of the old books I have and spotted one that I always loved. For one thing, it was a little book (I love miniature and little things) and then there were the illustrations. I re-read it and was amazed at the story and all the lessons in it.
The book is “The Hickory Limb” by Parker H. Fillmore and was originally published in a “Everybody’s Magazine” in 1907. It was published in book form in 1910.
The copy I have is inscribed to my father (born in 1912) from his grandmother. Everything about that tickles me because it is a very cute story, especially for the times and for a little boy. My father was born in his grandparents’ home in Uniontown, KY, a small Ohio River town, and lived there for several years, so he knew first hand about life in small towns.
The story is about a little girl named Margery, the younger sister of a brother and twin sisters. As we meet this little one, her sisters are about to leave with an older girl, Gladys, who is going to take them “calling” on the neighbors and teach them the manners of young ladies of the time. They have their hand-made cards in their purses and are dressed up as young ladies did. Margery is supposed to go with them, but the rather snobby or oh so proper guide decides she is too young and convinces her sisters to leave her behind. As they close the gate, Margery chases after them and throws a fit when she isn’t allowed to go.
The only thing that stops her is her mother’s voice from inside, telling her to behave. I am an older child, but I have truly witnessed what happens when the youngest child is left out from my own little sister and from my younger daughters and this scene is spot on. But, now the story gets really interesting, especially for 1907.
Margery is furious and decides she is going to get revenge on her sisters and the horrible Gladys by ruining the family’s reputation. She learns that some of the little boys in town are at the pond swimming and decides to join them. She gets permission to leave from her mother, who is buried in a book the whole story, totally removed from anything her children are doing. I’m not sure what that tells us about this particular mother, other than that she does what is expected of her and nothing else – as least as far as we are ever told.
When Margery has traipsed over the fields in her pretty dress with the ribbon in her hair, she finds the five boys swimming, naked, of course. They duck in the water up to their chins and tell her to leave, but she persists. Then, as little boys will do, they dare her to come in. And she does, with descriptions of her shedding all the layers of her clothing to the horror of the boys.
When she too is naked, she joins them in the water, hoping that swimming is all she has hoped it will be. After a time of awkwardness as they all sit in the water, the boys begin to ignore her and splash each other. She watches until she get the idea of what this is about and begins to splash them too, driving one of the boys out of the water.
This all continues until they are caught by her older brother who was fishing nearby. He hauls her out of the water and orders her to get dressed, although she is covered in mud and wet and has a hard time getting her stockings and dress on. After he gets her to a presentable stage, he tells the boys to never mention this and drags her back to town. Of course, they arrive home at the same time as her sisters and Gladys, and she can’t wait to tell them that she went swimming with boys, hoping to shock and humiliate them. She also begins to realize that she has not shamed the family as much as she has shamed herself. And, when her mother finds out, she calls the maid to give her a bath and goes back to reading her book. I’m still amazed at this twist with the mother.
Margery is listening to everyone talking about her and hears the boys coming by the house, chanting:
It dawns on the little girl that what she has done is only wrong because she is a girl and she thinks about the double standard for the boys and girls.
Gladys, horrible snob that she is, bemoans the fact that Margery’s father will have to listen to other fathers talk about how she went swimming with boys. She had never wanted to hurt her father and starts to feel badly. He arrives home, listens to the mother (who probably then goes back to her book) and comes up to see Margery. He listens to her tearful story and tells her he knows it will never happen again (I have condensed a few pages here) and the book ends with her in his lap telling him how the mud squished between her toes.
When I first re-read this story, I looked it up and found that it is included in the Library of Congress as an important work. I also found another little book written by Mr. Fillmore titled “A Little Question in Ladies Rights,” which is more of the adventures of Margery and other characters from this book.
Mr. Fillmore collected, translated and edited fairy tales from around the world, making sure to maintain the cultural heritage of the stories. As I read his stories of little Margery, I have to admire his story telling ability to give us precious examples of life after the turn of the century in America while teaching us lessons about women’s place. I haven’t found much more about him, but little Margery reminds me of several strong willed little girls I have known and loved who saw the inequity of the manners of the time and rebelled in ways that make us smile.
I also wonder what this book meant to my father and if he read it as many times as I have in my life. Or, what was his grandmother trying to teach him at a young age. So many questions, as always…
September 1 is, or used to be, the opening of Dove season in Oklahoma, so I always think of the hunters I have known and loved with a twinge as the date approaches. Hunting goes way back in my family. My paternal grandfather grew up in Kentucky and I’ve heard stories of him as a boy going out with the dogs to bring back food for the family. They weren’t poor, but there were a lot of them to feed with the bounty they brought home.
My grandfather had three sons and a daughter and only the oldest, my father, hunted with him as far as I know. I just discovered some old home movies that show them in the fields hunting quail and pheasant. I can’t find any photos, except this one of one of the dogs, from probably back in the 40s. There’s a screen shot of my grandfather from the home movies. I remember his cute hat and watching the men leave and then come home to clean the birds for a fantastic dinner. The pheasant hunting wasn’t common, but they always hunted quail.
I’m not a gun lover in our present climate of assault weapons, but I grew up with all the rituals of hunting. Unfortunately, I never got to go out with the men because I was busy with children and my own activities, but would have if life had been different after the kids were older. My husband didn’t grow up around hunting, but he took to it immediately and he and my father were hunting buddies for years. My son because a hunter because he liked being with his father, not because he loved it. I remember him taking a gun safety class when he turned 12, back when gun organizations were more about safety and hunting rather than just guns as weapons.
The things I know about hunting and hunters are that there are so many things they love about it besides the actual hunting. First, there is just being outside, walking in the fields. They would go out in the weeks before hunting season to check out the fields, run the dogs, get ready for the new year. Whether it was hot or cold, there was always the draw of just being out there, away from their other responsibilities, enjoying the whole experience. They restored their souls.
Second, there were the dogs. We always had dogs. Watching the home movies, I had to smile at the dogs, hunting dogs. My father always taught them to shake hands, besides all the other things they had to know. Hunting dogs are lovable, faithful companions as well as working dogs. Because we lived in the city, our hunting dogs often went to kennels for the summer where they could run in the fields and keep up with their hunting skills rather than baking in the heat of the city. We always had a dog kennel and run in our yards, although the dogs were often inside with us, lounging by their owners. Training the dogs was part of the fun. They had to learn to fetch and bring the birds to their owners without damaging the birds. Pointing the birds was instinct, but they had to learn to back up the other dogs they were hunting with. Training a bird dog involved a lot of work, but it was necessary for them to do their job and be with other hunters and dogs. Here is a photo of my father with two of his dogs, Buddy (pointer) and Grandpa (English Setter). Grandpa had already been named when Daddy got him, named because he acted like an old Grandpa. He was a wonderful dog. Daddy would let him out to run in the neighborhood (this was a long time ago) and we loved calling for him. “Here Grandpa. Come here, Grandpa!” I guess the neighbors learned who we were calling.
Daddy was a life long bird hunter – passed down from his Kentucky family.
My husband learned to train his own dogs and we had Pumpkin (English Setter), Guy (Pointer) and Tim (English Setter). After my husband died, I gave Tim (shown in photo visiting with our cat through the window) to one of my husband’s hunting buddies.
When it was time for Tim to leave, he turned to me and jumped up, putting his paws on my shoulders and looking at me, eye to eye, as if to tell me if was all ok. No wonder we loved these dogs. Here’s my husband hunting with Guy.
The next thing about hunting was the camaraderie with the other hunters. I loved hearing my father and my husband on the phone in the evenings with each other or friends, planning where they would meet for the hunt or the dog running. Usually the hunters left early to drive to the fields (often an hour from the city) for the first hunt of the day. Then there were the hunters’ breakfasts in the cafes in the small towns near where they hunted, where the places would be packed with hunters in for a huge meal before they went out again. My husband always looked pretty sharp and the people he hunted with used to tease him about how pressed his shirts were. He hunted with people from all walks of life and I used to laugh when he would lapse into a county twang sometimes after being with them. Here are some pictures from my grandfather and my husband’s hunts. Granddad’s is from a screenshot, but it’s the same vibe as hunts decades later.
While most people have fancier Thanksgiving days, it was always a hunting day for us. The men got up early to hunt and we ate after they came back later in the day. My cousin married a guy who was from a small town and owned land (always a bonus), so we started going to their house for the meal so the men could hunt there. It was a great time with all the cousins and the men (the ones who hunted) coming back in time for food and football.
Then there were the birds and the actual hunting. All the hunters I knew were great conservationists and worked with the game rangers to make sure the birds weren’t being over hunted so there was plenty for all. Many of the men my guys hunted with depended on hunting for meat for their families, so they didn’t want to deplete the fields. They all appreciated everything about the birds and their activities. Walking in a field with my husband always involved a stop to inspect the poop to see that everything was ok in the bird world. My grandfather and father hunted pheasant, as I said, but mostly quail. My husband hunted quail, once went prairie chicken hunting, tried duck hunting (didn’t like being cold and wet and sitting rather than walking), and discovered dove hunting. Dove hunting didn’t involve the dogs, but was great. He got a great recipe for cooking the meat on the grill and was happy to do so. I miss those meals!
The hunters in my life brought home the game, cleaned it and cooked it for the family. I used to cook the quail, but my husband liked to do it so I happily let him. Here are some pictures of my father (another screen shot from the 1940s) and some game from a hunt.
The changing of the season is always bittersweet for me. I’ve lost all my hunters and I miss all the things about their hunting that are such a part of my life. I love how happy they were as they prepared, cleaning their guns, laying out their gear the night before the early departures. I love how relaxed they were when they returned from a day outside, walking with friends or just the dogs, sharing their stories and their bounty with the family. Even a day without finding a bird was a good one. Just because.
Here are my son and husband after a dove hunt many years ago. The memories are still as clear as can be for me.
The problem with thinking of life in chapters is that there has to be a last one. Who wants to think about that? I’ve just been pondering where I am, following the quiet years of COVID-19 where I was home more than I had been in decades. There were good things about it. I spent more time with my pets, listened to the birds, walked the neighborhood and everybody smiled and waved. Now we’re back to mostly normal, but it’s hard to comfortably move from pandemic life to whatever the new one is.
I’m 76 right now and, pre-COVID, I was going all the time. Now it seems to be moving more slowly and that’s not just due to my age. We’re easing into life at a time when I feel like I need to be hurrying so I don’t miss anything before, frankly, I just can’t do it anymore.
There have been so many chapters in my life so far, starting with childhood in the 40s and 50s. I was fortunate to have a very peaceful, comfortable life.
Then there was junior high and high school, where I changed and grew and learned and questioned.
And then there was college, where I was away for the first time and made new friends and learned more and even got married.
And then I was a wife and mother to four before I turned 30, finding a life for myself through volunteer work and family activities.
And life went on as the kids grew up and went to college and married and I went to work part-time, then full time and then owned my own business. And then the shock of becoming a widow at 52 and starting yet another chapter where I had to close my business and find work that gave me health benefits and supported me and all of that. During that time, I pushed myself into going places by myself or with friends to meet me. The first was Alaska with my high school friend who lived there. It was a big trip to take alone when I’d always had my husband to travel with.
By the time my husband died, we had the first three of our grandkids, who proved to be my next chapter and my salvation.
I could go on about each chapter, but they are all parts of a huge whole life. I had several careers that I had never dreamed of as a young wife with an English degree, but my life experiences and my ability to communicate served me well through the years and I made new friends, accomplished new goals and was amazed at what I had done when I finally retired.
My other love has been travel and I’ve been grateful for special friends who were available to travel with me as I traveled the American West, South, and back to France. I’ve taken my grandchildren on trips and explored my own state of Oklahoma and the states around us. I’m always ready to go visit somewhere.
So, what is this new chapter? I’ve lost friends who were near and dear to me in recent months and spent the last week or two at memorial services. I’m not good at funerals, but two of my favorite people lost their husbands after long illnesses and I needed to be there for them. I also lost a friend at the end of last year who was 95 and another who was 101 in the last few weeks. I also went to a memorial for a friend’s mother who was 101 – two services for 101 year olds in five days!
But those deaths and the lives of these women we were celebrating have inspired me. I have had many men I loved and adored in my life, but it’s the women who are speaking to me at this time of my life. I had strong grandmothers and a strong mother and their lives have taught me so much. These other women I adored who lived so long were as strong as anyone can be. And I look at their lives and try to find the secret of what made them the role models they are for me.
First, all of these women had to face hardships at various times in their lives, whether loss of spouse, loss of child, loss of husband’s job, loss of any support other than themselves. They all lived on and smiled and laughed and loved and didn’t just sit around feeling sorry for themselves. None of them ever considered themselves a victim. There was no drama – just life.
Second, I can remember all of their voices and their laughter so well. The memories make me smile. They all had terrific senses of humor and were able to laugh at life’s little kicks.
Third, they never quit going as long as they could. They were always curious and learning and keeping up with what was going on in the world. They never stopped growing intellectually or emotionally. Several traveled until they had infirmities that made it difficult. The 95 year old and the 101 year old read all the time. The 95 year old was still reading about a book a day until close to the end.
They all loved their families as much as anyone could. They died beloved by their offspring.
So, where do I go from here? I’ll keep traveling until I can’t, reading until I can’t see (and then there are audio books), learning several new things every day, fighting for the things I believe in and doing what I can to leave the world a better place because I’ve been here, even if my contribution is something small. I’ll keep enjoying my children and grandchildren and be here to share their lives with all the ups and downs that there will be. I’m not sad that they’re all growing older because I’m so privileged to be here to watch it all and put it in the perspective of our world and all the family members who have gone before.
So this next chapter is exciting to think about and invites new goals. Basically, I’m just going to keep on keeping on for as long as I’m supposed to. Lucky me.
In Summer 1977, I was a 31 year old mom with four children ages 9, 7, 4 and 1 1/2, three girls and a boy. I read about a movie that was getting big audiences. This was a time when I had to hear about it from a newspaper article because there was no entertainment news, internet, social media. Anyway, we went to see it and fell in love. A “Star Wars” family was born.
Before we got our first VCR, my friend got one and I had her record “Star Wars” when it came out on HBO, the only way you saw movies at home then. I also had her record “Emmit Otter’s Jugband Christmas,” but that’s another story. We soon got a VCR, which cost $1,000 and was a combo VCR/video camera. I can’t even begin to explain how all of that worked, but we were kind of ahead of everyone. The main thing was that the family was able to watch “Star Wars” over and over.
And then came the toys. Oh my. My youngest daughter tells me now that she asked for them and I told her she could play with her brother’s, but I don’t have that memory (selective on my part). Anyway, we had them all, I’m sure. My sister lived a block away and had two boys around the ages of my youngest kiddos, so we were always on the watch for the newest characters. There wasn’t the convenience of online shopping, so we just relied on word of mouth between moms or ads in the paper. However we knew, we knew. I would take the kids to school and drive to a neighboring town with the promise of finding some figure. We collected either the packaging of the characters of cereal boxtops to send off for exclusive figures. Whew.
At Christmas and on birthdays, my son got the toys. I was the one who raced to the stores to get them, then put them together and pasted all the little stickers in place, which included all the instrument boards in the space vehicles. They were tiny and you had to get them on in one try or they tore or went on crooked. There were a few of those.
From then on, I spent a lot of time picking up toys, trying to match tiny guns with the right character, keeping from breaking anything as I stepped through the floor of my son’s room. As my daughter says, these were toys that were played with. They took them outside in the leaves and dirt, built little Star Wars empires all over the yard and house. As each of the three original films was released, there were more things to find. I took it as a Mom Challenge – like it was part of my job description. My oldest daughter’s 12th birthday party was taking her friends to see whichever film came out that year. We were all into it.
We had no clue that all of this would become a huge deal, that those toys would be collectible. We didn’t keep them in their packages stored away with the first ones. As my son grew older, he did have some of the newer ones. The kids grew up and the toys were put away, but they were kept. My daughter-in-law remembers seeing the Millennium Falcon in a place of prominence when she was dating my son. She did stay with him, thank goodness.
Time went on, the kids grew up and married and had their own children, my son died of cancer at 35, and the toys were in bins in my garage. My eight grandchildren (6 boys and 2 girls) are huge fans of everything Star Wars. I remember when the first movies were re-released in the theaters for the first time and sitting with my oldest daughter and her husband while she was pregnant with her oldest son. I’m sure our excitement was absorbed into the womb.
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Parents and kids watch every new variation, as do I. I’m not into all of the offshoots, but I’ve certainly been a fan of The Mandalorian, Boba Fett, and Obi Wan Kenobi.
This summer, my son’s 12 1/2 year old daughter and I were at an antique show in a small town. I asked her if she saw anything and she said she found some Darth Vader things she liked. I looked at them and told her we weren’t going to buy them because we had them at home. A couple of days later, she and I pulled some tubs out of the garage to open for the first time in however long. I spread all of the things on my dining room table and invited the family to come see.
My granddaughter’s favorite was the Darth Vader carrying case with original figures (although their guns are spread around)
My own favorite has always been the Stormtrooper transport that had different sounds. One was a stormtrooper saying, “There’s one! Set for stun!” Another one was R2D2 sounds.
Some of the original pieces, minus a few parts, are the Millennium Falcon and the Jawa transport that moved.
We found various critters and vehicles
There was most of Jabba the Hutt’s scene
I put all the loose characters, accessories and weapons in bowls. The kids knew who a lot of them were and my daughter could even match a few of the weapons.
You have to understand that my grandkids, besides the 12 1/2 year old, range from 20-25 and it was fun to see them and their parents having fun seeing the original toys from the 1970s. After a week or so, I had to pack them back up, trying to keep the parts together as I could. There is another tub from years later that has dozens of characters still in their packaging. We didn’t get into those.
I told my granddaughter I would keep the Darth Vader case and figures out so she could visit them and I personally kept the Stormtrooper transport for myself. One of my grandsons thinks he can help me get the sounds working again. We’ll try because I would love to hear it again.
I’m 76 now and looking back over 45 years of being a Star Wars Mom, as well as a fan. Here’s to the generations of moms (and dads) who have lived in this wondrous world with their families. It’s a fun place to go.
Confetti Thoughts 