Forever Memories

 

Letty, Katy, Jonya September 2021

Over the weekend my sister, Jonya and I, relaxed over lunch with my daughter, Katy at Kitchen 324 in downtown Oklahoma City. Thus began our daughter's fiftieth birthday celebration. Why not celebrate the entire month when you turn 50!

No matter how we start our conversations it seems that we eventually work in a memory of mom and dad. So began stories about our experiences on the farm East of Miami, Oklahoma. Each of us found humor in those moments that happened so many year ago, yet 'seem like yesterday.'   

 

Katy and Jonya, remembered how mom saved table scraps for the dogs and food for the worm bed near the wood pile. The dogs received a can of  “Ol' Roy” dog food and a heaping of scraps. The rest of the foods went to the worms buried under a black mat. I can see my city raised mother with make up on her face and an apron around her waist feeding, digging, and turning the worm bed, so that they had worms for fishing on Mondays. Mondays were dad's day away from work and routines. Mother was never a fisher woman, but truly a dutiful wife there to assist her husband, even with wiggling worms. 

I remembered the hidden toy in the flower garden. Somewhere in those years of six to ten Katy cherished her Incredible Hulk action toy.  He went everywhere with Katy around the farm and then quietly disappeared. Katy hit the teenage years and put the Hulk memories behind her, until one day my mother called explaining that she’d nearly had a heart attack and needed to talk to Katy right away! With both of us ears to the one landline telephone my mother explained:

"Today, I was digging up the flower bed on the North side of the house when suddenly I hit something with the shovel. It wasn't a root, so I kept forcing the shovel down until it gave way. Suddenly, green slime oozed from the hole in the ground. I screamed, my heart raced, and Johnie came running.        

Katy and I could barely breathe and she continued.

 

Available on eBay for $165, Happy Birthday

At last Johnie dug up the green slime and the filthy aged broken and
battered body of the Hulk emerged.  

 

By now mother was laughing so hard she nearly cried, and Katy and I could finally breathe. Then we began laughing out loud and continue to laugh to this very day over the green slime in the garden. 

Incredible stories most certainly take place on farmland. Dad named all of their cows the first year, then after selling some for market learned to stop giving them names. Mom and dad both cried the first time their pet calves were sold.

 

We all remember Charley the Bull, who my father adopted like a pet. Charley had a purpose and he produced healthy calves in the few years that Dad owned him, but Charley also visited the females on the other side of the fences leaving gaping holes in the barbed wire that dad had to fix. 

 

Jonya explained that Charley was best known for his love affair with Rosemary. Charley and Rosemary produced a mean steer named Rosemary's Baby! We weren't safe around the farm with Rosemary's baby in the herd.

 

 

Little Katy and Heidi

Mom and Dad bought the farm in 1970 before Katy was born in 1971. So all of her memories of my folks come from the farm. None of us could recall what kind of red bull Charley was, but Katy's description is best. 

"Charley the Bull was an Auburn colored bull with huge HORNS and was very big and scary. I helped Grandpa Moo feed Charley and Charley always blew bull snot all over us! 

 

I like Mr. Kay, he was the smaller nicer brown and white bull that Grandpa Moo bought after he sold Charley." 

 

 

Mother and dad were both children of the depression and the need to save and store objects never left. Dad was most famous for hiding money, mother just couldn't remember where she put things (rather like her two daughters do to this day).  After they died Jack and spent weekends on the farm cleaning and boxing up memories. One cool fall day we were in the north barn where Dad fed his bulls. We were tired and worn from the heartache and memories but carried on. Somehow we came across a flattened Folgers Coffee can buried under the straw. Our hearts raced, like mother's with the hulk. Jack found two shovels and we began to dig. We knew without a doubt there would be a buried treasure, more than likely coins that dad saved for decades and weren't in the bank vault. 

We nearly dug a hole to China, only to find more dirt. We laughed at ourselves and called it a day.

 

I've often wondered what notes or monies I must have thrown away or given to Goodwill. What did dad hide in the lining of his dress jackets or the heel of his golf shoes?  We can only imagine.  

 

Those treasures and memories are now stored within our hearts, and they may be the reason that I am a storyteller.  

 

Salute! to Bob Hope and Thanks for the Memories

(Click on the blue link to take you to listen to Bob Hope sing this wonderful old song.)