Miami Memories: A st. stories

Dr. Pepper memory from childhood

I'd like to blame my love of  Dr. Pepper on my college life, carrying a heavy load of college classes and needing a sugar/caffeine boost every so often, but the true story is that I first discovered Dr. Pepper when I was in 2nd grade at Lincoln school. We lived on the corner of A S.W. across from Lincoln.  My upstairs bedroom window overlooked the playground, and best of all the drive through at Doc's BBQ and Gene's Tarry-A-While.


I learned a lot about life from that upstairs window. The family up the street from us, the Cantrells, had six children (later seven), but we called them the sixes.  Many summer days one of the sixes would let me tag along

Courtesy of Ron Wagoner.  

as we'd go over to Doc's or Gene's in the daytime and share an ice cream cone or Dr. Pepper.  We never had much money, so we shared and pooled our resources.  (Later as a teenager I looked at Doc's differently and my memories are more emotional.)

Thanks to  MHS Class '64 & Sammie Ketcher

My storytelling days were also born on A street.  With my tiny upstairs window open in the summer nights I could listen to the music blaring from Doc's speakers, and with Dad's binoculars I could spy on the lovers in the parking lot.  We were never allowed to go over there at night! Sometimes Sherry and Judi and I would sit on my bed and take turns watching people. Kissing was absolutely disgusting, and I could not figure out why anyone would cuddle under a hot sweaty arm of a man on a hot summer night, much less put lips together.  Just the same, we laughed and giggled when we saw the moves coming.  

My favorite song of all was "Davy Crockett King of the Wild Frontier."  Even then I was part feminist because I wore a white Polly Crockett hat, not the brown one made for boys, but poor Polly never had a song named after her.  Fess Parker sings Davy Crocket  Sherry and Judy Cantrell and I ventured off to the Neosho River, and walked up and down the banks of the muddy flowing river. When it flooded it was even more dangerous and more reason to walk to the edges of the swirling river.  Most homes didn't fence off their backyards, so we thought it was safe to tread on their property, even the magnificent homes north of Route 66 along the river banks. Carol Cosby lived very near the river, and we often stood on the bank throwing sticks into the water and searched for snakes. Don't know what we would have done if we'd found one!

My mother had a kind heart and my father was a flamboyant man who loved to tell a good story and drive fast cars, but it was a hobo who spent an afternoon with us on the doorstep that sparked my imagination and opened my eyes to the wide wide world.  We were only a few blocks from the railroad tracks, and it was not uncommon for hobo's to hop on and off the trains passing through.  Mother would always serve them soup or a baloney sandwich, and I would watch from the screen door as they ate alone.

1985 Matt, Michael, Katy, Letty.  

Clouds building in the Grand Canyon

 

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One time a hobo told my mother that he'd once lived in Wichita, Kansas.  That was her home, and she smiled and listened as he told his sad story.  When he sat down on the steps to eat, I asked if I could join him.  Mother watched out the kitchen window, as this seven year old girl sat beside a stranger one afternoon and listened to his stories.  He pointed to the straggly elm trees along the street and said, "Imagine walking into a forest where trees grow so high they touch the sky, and where they are as wide as that garage across the street."  From his stories of giant trees and red golden gorges dug by the hands of God I began to see the world.  He painted a world that I wanted to see, and he was just a hobo, a man, who made a difference in this child's life.  

Hope all of you see these wonders in your lifetime, and toast with a Dr. Pepper to memories.  



This is a link to a great old photo of  Gene's Tarry-A-While in Miami, Oklahoma.  Thanks Fredas Cook.  

An Opening in the Clouds--Everyday's a Miracle

Baby Helen and mother Pearl Weaver in Ardmore Ok.  

Helen Weaver

     My mother's life was full and richly rewarding for seventy-six years, and I've missed her everyday since she died August 26, 1989. With her death our family experienced a miracle, one that could only have been created by the hands of God.  Born in Lansing, Michigan March 25, 1913 to a father who drilled for oil (a Wildcatter and geologist) and a mother who had known heartache early in life when her mother died so very young, my mother grew up to be a slender flirtatious woman with green eyes and blonde hair and a lifting laughter that enticed people around her to smile.
     My mother, Helen Stapp, like her mother Pearl, wasn't afraid to change the course of her life.  Her father, Tobias Weaver drilled for oil near Bartlesville, Ok when our state was Indian Territory.  He then made his way to Indianapolis to marry Pearl Clendening, a young school teacher.  The family moved on to the oil fields around Lansing, Michigan where my mother was born.  
     Their next home was Ardmore, Ok where Tobias moved his

T.B. Weaver and Helen at Turner Falls.

growing family from a tent to a clapboard home, and eventually to a nicer home for his three children and wife who loved the social atmosphere of the boom town of Ardmore in those years. The Kansas oil fields called Tobias and his family to Wichita.  The Weaver Brother's drilling split up with one of his brother's moving to Houston and the other one to Oklahoma City.  
     As a child, I remember driving from Miami, Ok to Wichita to visit grandparents and cousins.  We often drove through the refinery area around Augusta, Ks, and I would hold my nose and say something like "Pew Wee...That stinks."  Mother smiled and turned to me and said, "I grew up loving that smell because my father said it was the smell of money."  
     My mother met dad through his sister Della when both women

Johnie and Helen Stapp, May 1946

worked at Boeing during the War years.  In May 1946 my mother boarded a train by herself for Las Vegas, where she and my father were married at The Little Chapel of the West ( Thirty-seven years later Jack and I married at The Little Chapel of the West).  
     Dad's life as a golf pro in Santa Anita, was glamorous for my mother, but family called them back to Kansas a few years after I was born.  My sister, Jonya, was born in Independence, Ks. We both grew up and call Miami, Oklahoma our true home.  
     I was forty-two when  my mother died suddenly from Septic Shock at St Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Ok.  The story of her death is the moment a miracle happened in our family.  Through her death a life was saved, her granddaughter, my daughter Katy. 

     The full length story of  mother's miracle can be found in the book Everyday's a Miracle.  Author, Paul Robert Walker, listened to my story when he was visiting Norman Public Schools in the early 90's. He asked if he could write and publish it in his book.  With a gracious smile I said, "Please do."   Mother's story "An Opening in the Clouds" can be read on pages 144-148 in Paul Robert Walker's book called Everyday's a Miracle (Avon 1995). I think you will find this true story comforting, along with the other stories in his book.  

Everyday's a Miracle   This book can be purchased for pennies on Amazon. 
Paul Robert Walker's website