I was at the BGM Kiddie Carnival earlier this month to take some photos. I was milling about the large gathering of area youngsters and their parents when I noticed a young boy with a green tractor on his shirt.
“Do you like John Deere tractors,” I asked. “No,” the young lad replied. “Red tractors,” I asked. “No,” he said again. “How about blue tractors,” I asked a third time. “No,” he said. Puzzled, I waited while his mom whispered something to him before I asked what his favorite tractor was for a fourth time. “Orange,” he replied. “Alias Chalmers,” I said. “Yes,” he said. “Do you have an Alias Chalmers tractor,” I asked. “No, but my dad does,” the little fellow said as I smiled. I didn’t have a tractor as a young fellow growing up in the big city, but in junior high, I wanted a motorcycle. Atlas Cycle in Tulsa was a few blocks from my school and home. My friends Brain C. and David B. had motorcycles and I wanted one, too. They had newspaper routes and delivered papers on their motorcycles. Atlas Cycle had a Bridgestone 60cc motorcycle and I loved that bike, especially the dirt bike model for $250. That’s not much money these days, but to an eighth grader making $100 a month on a paper route in 1974, it was a lot money. I stopped at Atlas after school on occasion and would sit on the motorcycle and pretend I was riding the trails. I tried to convince my folks to let me buy it, but it was a no go. I even promised to leave it at my grandparents and only ride it there. My folks knew how much I wanted it, but their concerns regarding me getting hurt outweighed the cost of having the motorcycle. Looking back, it was all good. I may not have had a motorcycle, but I did have a number of bicycles through the years. I took piano lessons starting in second grade and by the fifth grade, I was taking weekly lessons at Mrs. Murry’s Piano School in west Tulsa. There was a resale store on West Edison just outside of downtown Tulsa a few miles from where I took my piano lessons. My mom stopped one day while I was taking my piano lesson and bought me a bicycle. I don’t remember the brand, but it was an ugly bicycle. I added a banana seat and sissy handlebars and it was still ugly. I rode that bicycle for a couple years before trading it in for a refurbished Schwinn Stringray bicycle. Mr. James was a local bicycle repair man who worked out of his garage a few blocks from my boyhood home. Stepping into his garage was like visiting a bicycle museum with bicycle parts hanging from large nails on the garage rafters to a variety of bicycles for sale. Mr. James would scour junkyards looking for Schwinn bicycle parts and he’d build bicycles from the ground up. I traded in the bicycle my parents bought me and even Mr. James said he’d never seen a bicycle so ugly. My first Stingray, a gold color model, cost $35. I added a newspaper basket on front that my aunt Alice bought me. During the spring of my seventh grade year, I didn’t lock my bicycle at school and someone stole it. It was a big school and unlocked bicycles were easy prey for a thief. I bought a second bicycle from Mr. James, a green colored version, and after the frame broke, I got another one, a yellow version. My bicycle had no fenders or a chain guard and I rode it delivering newspapers, going to school and hanging out with my friends. I’m thankful for the all the memories and experiences as a youngster. I’m also thankful for the all the opportunities that life has afforded me. I love talking to kids and I have taken lots of photos of youngsters and their prize-winning animals at the county fair, in school productions and at community events enjoying life. And I’ve been around long enough that I’m now photographing kids of kids who I photographed years ago. What a blessing! Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day.
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I enjoyed being courtside at the Iowa Girls’ Basketball Tournament at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines on Wednesday, Feb. 28 to cover the number 8 Montezuma Bravettes game against the number 1 North Linn Lynx.
Even though the game didn’t turn out in Montezuma’s favor, the experience for those young ladies will last a lifetime and hopefully fuel them to get back to state next year. And for me, it’s a blessing from the Heavens to have the opportunity to be there and share my God given talents with my readers, friends and family. This was the fourth time I have covered the Bravettes at state and the fifth trip for the team in the last seven years. I was in attendance, but not on the sidelines, during the 2018 trip to Des Moines. I also covered the Montezuma Braves courtside in 2019, 2020 and 2021, when they won a Class 1A state championship. Being there capturing the raw emotion and excitement of the game, the fans and the players is something I will never forget. I’ve had the opportunity to cover the Grinnell Lady Tigers at state basketball in 2019 and the Grinnell Tiger boys at state basketball in 2012, 2013 and 2014. In addition, I’ve covered Montezuma, BGM and Grinnell at state football in the UNI-Dome a half dozen times over a period of years. And I’ve covered state track several years. And in 2014, during halftime of the Boys’ Class 1A final at Wells Fargo, I was honored with the Iowa High School Athletic Association’s (IHSAA) News Media Award. Debbie joined me as we walked to halfcourt where the announcer shared a short story about my career followed by the presentation of the award and photos. It’s a coveted and special honor to be named among some of the top news media and journalists in the State of Iowa. And just to think it all started with a camera I won in a weight loss bet in the winter of 1983. I was working as an assistant route manager for newspaper printing corporation in my hometown of Tulsa at the time. A good friend and co-worker of mine, John C., and I decided to go on a diet. We went to a local Mexican restaurant the evening before the diet started and stuffed ourselves with tacos, enchiladas, chips and tasty sopapillas, a fried treat that I poured honey on to eat. I ate so much, I thought staff might have to roll me to the car after the meal. When I got home, I took a short two-block walk through my neighborhood. We started the diet the next morning and two months later, we both stood on the scales. I lost 39 pounds to John’s 26. The secret to my success was exercise and cutting out Pepsi and sugary drinks. The bet was for $50, but instead, John had an older Konica brand 35mm camera that he gave me in lieu of the cash. It was one of the best gifts I could have received, as a few years later in 1987, I enrolled in a black and white photography class at Rogers State College (now University) in Claremore, Okla., the hometown of Will Rogers. It was there that the world of possibilities opened for me. I started believing in myself and thinking about my purpose in life. I attended RSC part-time for four years, two of which I studied photography and the last two years that I took humanities, speech, science, English, history and more. I earned my Associate of Applied Science (AAS) degree in Graphic Technology (photography) in May 1991. One of my favorite courses, outside of photography, was humanities. The professor was excellent and made the class interesting, educational and fun. The final was a 100 slide identification of the various time periods in the world of art. I received an A in Humanities I, missing three slides, and an A, by one point, missing seven slides, in Humanities II the following semester. I attended community college back in the day when film was king. I learned to develop both black and white and color films and make prints in a darkroom. I learned a lot about photography working in a darkroom. From there, I went on to the University of Missouri-Columbia where I worked my way through school, first with the US Postal Service as a part-time casual clerk and later as a custodian on the MU campus. MU is a great school that challenged me and gave me many open doors and opportunities. I believed my way into journalism school, failing the entrance grammar exam twice before passing it with an 82 on the third try, which happened to be my 36th birthday. I needed an 80 to move on. I spent hours in tutoring sessions in both grammar and math and went on to graduate in December 1997 at the age of 38. I then landed in Iowa and for the last 26 years, outside of three years when I took a brief retirement and did freelance work, I have been sharing news and features stories and covering community events, high school sports and county fairs with my readers. I met my wife in this fine state and have spent nearly half my life in Iowa. I wouldn’t trade the experiences for anything in the world. Thank you to the fine folks in the communities I have worked in who have opened their homes, shared their stories and fed me. Everyone has a story to tell and I’ve got time to share them with others. I’m always looking for unique stories to write and share and plan to continue in that role for many more years. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. I do a lot of the cooking in the Parker house.
As hard as I try, I have a limited menu of foods to offer on a daily bases. One of my favorites is anything with taco meat. I’ve been known to serve a taco-based meal several times in one week. If not meat and cheese in taco shells, I sometimes make a taco Frito pie. It’s taco flavored beef with Fritos and cheddar cheese mixed together. Another of my favorites is taco meat, cheddar cheese and sour cream wrapped in a soft wheat tortilla. I roll it over on the plate and eat it with a fork. And then there is our old standby, taco casserole. It consists of crushed nacho cheese or taco flavored chips layered across the bottom of a butter-coated Pyrex dish. I then pour a mixture of taco meat with cream of chicken soup and spread it in the pan. I top that off with a layer of cheddar cheese, more crushed nacho cheese chips and another layer of cheddar cheese. I cook it uncovered in the oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. A few weeks ago, I switched up the menu and made a meatloaf. It turned out much better than my first attempt at cooking a meatloaf when Debbie and I started dating. I invited her to my apartment for supper. I pulled the meatloaf out of the oven only to discover I had burnt the darn thing. We ate it anyway and all was good with the world. Other favorites include sausage casserole and beef goulash, booth cooked in the oven. Another meal I like to cook is placing hamburger patties in a Pyrex baking dish, adding salt and pepper to taste and pouring two cans of mushroom soup over the top. I cover it with tinfoil and cook it at 350 degrees for 45 minutes in the oven. To top it off, I add a vegetable or mashed potatoes. One of my favorite meals is pork chops. I love them grilled or fried. I coat them in milk and egg mixture and add flour. Back in the day I could eat a half dozen pork chops in one setting with mashed potatoes and black-eyed peas, a southern favorite. I enjoyed having friends over and cooking a meal of grilled pork chops, mashed potatoes and all the fixings. It was good food and good company. Tenderized pork loin chops cooked in mushroom sauce is another of my favorites. They also taste good coated in a crunchy coating. Toss in a heaping spoonful of mashed potatoes and it makes for a great meal. I always enjoy grilling out and have cooked on both a gas grill and charcoal grill. Last summer, I purchased a Blackstone Grill. Using the Blackstone has taken some getting used to. I saw a demonstration of someone cooking sausage gravy on a Blackstone. I might have to try that sometime. Hasty Bake charcoal grills are an Oklahoma-based grill company. They are as rugged as a semitruck. My dad had one that he bought in the late 1950s. It included a rotisserie for cooking a chicken. When I was a young lad, we used to enjoy big family cookouts at our Tulsa home. I have lots of good memories of those days. Anyway, I’ve never been a big fan of exotic foods outside of beef, chicken, pork and fish. I once tried goat meat chili and that was okay. Another time, my mom fried a rabbit. It was ok, but it didn’t make it into my weekly menu. And I’m not a big fan of deer meat. My good friend, Rob, in Tulsa and I went rabbit hunting in southeast Oklahoma one Thanksgiving weekend in the late 1980s. I had a single shot 410 shotgun and he had a 16 gauge. We shot a couple rabbits and Rob decided we should gut them. We didn’t have a knife, so I knocked on the fellow’s door that let us hunt in his timber. He gave us a knife and Rob proceeded to gut a rabbit while my stomach was turning from the smell. While all this was going on, I looked into the homeowners window and there he was enjoying a good Nebraska and OU football game. I said never again would I miss a Nebraska and OU football game so I could go rabbit hunting on a wet, dreary and cold day. It didn’t help that the rabbits we shot were filled with buckshot. I froze them and later had my mom boil them and gave them to the dog. I think a 22 rifle would have been a better gun to use. Another time, I was invited to join some newspaper folks and business leaders in the area to a turkey fry at Lake Ponderosa. Those old boys had an oil deep fryer and they were cooking turkey fries by the bucket loads. I bit into one and ended up spitting it out. Yuck! I asked the host if he had something different. He dug into the freezer and found me some brats and graciously fixed me a meal. One of favorite meals is beef chili cooked with no beans or tomatoes. To me, chili is a meat dish and not soup. A fellow once asked me what makes the juice. “Lard,” I told him. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. I have been so blessed in my life to make friends with some of the most amazing people and one of them is Ralph Campbell, a Tennessee born college administrator who I met as a student at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
I don’t remember how I met Ralph, or Mr. C, as he was known by, but he had quite an impact on my life. Mr. C was an assistant registrar at MU and I often stopped to visit with him during the school day in the register’s office located in Jesse Hall, the main administration building on campus. His desk was an extra-large table, similar to a library table. One day, I recall, stopping at his office to visit. “I seem to be scoring just below average on my algebra tests,” I told him. Mr. C jointed down the number 26 on a sticky note and showed it to me. “Do you know what this means,” he asked. “No,” I replied. “This is the average ACT score of students at the University of Missouri-Columbia,” he said. “If you are scoring below average, then you are still in some pretty tall cotton.” Algebra was a struggle for me in college. After dropping the course twice, once at MU and another time at Columbia College, where I took a summer class, I went on to take a non-credit entry level algebra course at MU. After failing the first test, I was talking with some other students when the head of the math department overheard me and suggested that I drop the course, saying that I would fail. I told her that I was going to keep going and if I failed, I would fail trying. I spent hours being tutored by a friend from church and also attending tutoring sessions twice a week offered by the math department. I earned an A on the next test. I went on to pass the non-credit course and then passed the regular algebra course with a C grade. I wouldn’t have accomplished it without the hand of God guiding me to the right people like Mr. C and a few miracles along the way. Another time, I remember needing a new pair of tennis shoes. When Mr. C learned about it, he told his church and they took up an offering and gave me $100 for a new pair of shoes. I remember he called me and woke me up one morning to tell me about the new shoes. I had been up half the night studying and was sleeping in a bit. I met him later that day on campus and he gave me the check. At the end of the 1995 school year, Mr. C took an administrative job with the University of Central Florida in St. Petersburg. That next spring, a friend of mine who I met while living in Ashland, Mo., a small town south of Columbia where I lived while in college, paid to fly us to Tampa to spend a few days with Mr. C in the Sunshine state. While there, we toured a pirate ship used in the “Mutiny on the Bounty” movie, attended a St. Louis Cardinals spring game, I believe with the KC Royals. We also visited an aquarium in Tampa and ate oysters on the half shell at a Florida restaurant named Shells. The place had peanut shells all over the floor. That was the last time I saw Mr. C. As the years passed, I lost touch. I had tried to find him a couple times, but with him not being on Facebook, I ran out of options. The house phone rang late last week and it was Mr. C looking for me. “It this the J.O. Parker who went to the University of Missouri?” he asked. “This is Ralph Campbell.” He rattled off his phone number and asked me to give him a call. Debbie texted me and asked if I knew a Campbell from the University of Missouri-Columbia. I wrote back to say that I knew a Ralph Campbell who worked in the registrar’s office when I was a student there. I was surprised to receive his call. When I got home, I sat down in the comfy chair and called him. I asked him how he found me and he said his son looked me up on the internet and he googled my telephone number. We spent about 30 minutes catching up. He asked about the camper on my old Chevrolet S-10 that I once owned. “I sold that truck in 2010,” I told him. He used to tease me about buying a camper for the truck when I was a student at Missouri. Actually, my mom bought it for me. It was a nice addition to my truck. Mr. C. spent a number of years in college administration at FCU and a Bible college before retiring a few years ago and moving to Lebanon, Tenn., just outside of Nashville. He said Lebanon is about 10 miles from where he was born and raised. And at age 81, he still works part-time at a local car auction where he drives cars during the auctions. “I drive cars all day,” he said. He said it was one of the top four auto auctions in the country. I told him about where life had taken me in the last 30 years in the newspaper business and about meeting my wife, Debbie, at the Iowa State Fair, our books and the work we do to this day. He wanted a copy of my newspaper and I told him I would send it soon. I think I will toss in our books on the Iowa State Fair and the Midwest Old Threshers Reunion. It was so good to reconnect and share our life’s journeys. I am so thankful for all the people in my life and the many blessings that have come my way. Thanks Mr. C for being a part of all of that. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. Iowa has many wonderful and unique attractions and oddities worth checking out.
As Iowans or in my case, a transplanted Iowan, there are many attractions that make great day trips or weekend jaunts. With the warmer weather we are experiencing of late, it’s time to think about a mini vacation or day trip touring our wonderful state and it’s many attractions, even the odd ones. Following are a few suggestions. For instance, Mason City, home of the Music Man, is also home to Rancho Deluxe Z: Junk Art Lot. The attraction features an off-beat sculpture garden, vintage signs, hubcaps, paintings and according to Roadside America, a Vietnam Memorial tucked into one corner. There’s hope for me yet! I am currently halfway through filling my fifth junk jar of goodies. There’s everything from keys to screws, pop bottle caps, bullet casings, buttons, washers, springs, old fuses and much more. My collection might make a unique junk jar art creation someday. Not too far from Mason City on the westside of I-35 is the town of Clear Lake, home of the Surf Ballroom, which is where Buddy Holly played his last gig in early February 1959. And just outside of town is the Buddy Holly plane crash site. Debbie and I visited the crash site 10-years ago while I was in town covering a high school playoff football game. It’s about a half-mile walk along a well-worn trail in a farm field. It’s quite a shrine to the late music icon. And located in western Iowa in the town of Audubon is Albert the Bull, a 45-ton, 28-foot-tall concrete replica of the perfect Hereford bull. Visitors can push a button and Albert will tell you his story. In 2018, Albert the Bull was featured in a Super Bowl commercial for Cenex. And closer to home is the Matchstick Marvels Museum in neighboring Gladbrook in Tama County. The museum features the world’s largest collection of tiny matchstick mega-art creations by Pat Acton. The museum, which is also Acton’s home, features the USS Iowa battleship, the U.S. Capitol, and the Notre Dame Cathedral. Acton orders one million matchsticks at a time for his many creations. And close by in the town of Traer is the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum, which features more than 16,000 salt and pepper shakers. Debbie and I stopped to tour the museum a few years back, but it was closed that day. If you visit the museum, Roadside America recommends taking a peek in the “Slightly Risqué” closet of salt and pepper shakers. In Riverside, south of Iowa City, one can find the Star Trek Voyage Home Museum. The town is also the future Birthplace of James T. Kirk in 2228. The museum, which opened in 2008, features anything and everything Star Trek. There’s even cardboard stand-ups of Captain Kirk, Spock, and Dr. McCoy for photo ops, and other starship models and much more. And don’t forget to mark your calendar for June 27-29 to attend the 2024 Trekfest 39. And I can’t forget about the Villisca Ax Murder House and Museum in Villisca in the southwest part of the state. I’ve been there twice, but never toured the house. The house is where on June 10, 1912, Josiah Moore, his wife, Sarah, and six children, age 5 -12 where murdered with an ax. Today, folks can tour the house for a few dollars and groups can even book the night in the murder house. That costs a lot more and isn’t anything I’m going to be doing in my life. A place I have always wanted to visit is the Museum of Traffic Control in Pella. The museum features more than 1,700 square feet of traffic control sights and sounds. There’s even an HO model railroad display in the center of the exhibit space. Another Iowa delight is the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend. Roadside America calls the Grotto a titanic landmark to religious devotion and dogged labor. It was built by Paul Dobberstein, who as a young seminarian, fell gravely ill with pneumonia, and promised to build a shrine of precious stones to the Virgin Mary if she interceded for him. According to Roadside America, Dobberstein recovered and became a priest, and in 1898 was sent to West Bend from Germany, where he set out to build the shrine. It took him 14-years to complete the project. In Stanton, guests can find the Coffee Pot and Cup Water Towers. In 2015, the towers were taken down, but saved and mounted at ground level so coffee-lovers can pose for photos. And in Waukon, guests can find the Muffler Man and Long Horn Steer and Strawberry Point is home to a large strawberry statue. Burlington is home to Snake Alley and in Council Bluffs, one can visit the Squirrel Cage Jail, the largest revolving jail in the U.S., built in 1885. The three story jail no longer revolves, but I’m sure it is worth seeing. And there is so much more to offer in the Hawkeye State. I will share more in future columns. Enjoy the nice weather and be sure in the hustle and bustle of life to take time to enjoy each and every day. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. I love sunshine and warm weather.
I will take it any day over the cold, snow, high winds and muddy roads of late. Being stuck in one’s driveway is not good, but much better than being stuck in a ditch. I’ve lived in Iowa long enough to understand that when the snow starts flying, it’s time to start flying home. The high winds can quickly shut off a country road with blowing snow. After a rough start to the new year, I’m thanking the weather Gods for the nice weather of late. I hope it lasts right into spring. I like it so much that I might even look at the spring seed catalog and think about ordering some seed and planting a garden. Or, I might just get my garden vegetables at the grocery store like I have done for the last umpteen years. Some family members and I attempted to plant a garden some years ago. My brother-in-law plowed a spot of land and several of us spent a spring Sunday afternoon planting all kinds of vegetables. We even planted a patch of okra, a southern favorite. Fried okra is almost as good a skillet of fried potatoes. Cut it, wash it, slice it, soak it in egg and milk and dip it in 1/3 flour and 2/3 cornmeal mixture and drop it in a skillet of hot grease until brown, and you are in for a treat. Anytime I’m in my native Oklahoma and stop at Ron’s Chili and Hamburgers in Tulsa, I always have a half order of okra with my chili cheeseburger. Top it off with a cold glass of ice tea and all is good in the world. My folks enjoyed planting gardens for years. They had a large garden in east Tulsa that they planted and tended to with family friends in the late 1960s – 70s. Later, after moving to their farm south of Tulsa in the early 1980s, they grew big gardens and my mom canned lots of vegetables and made butter and cream in a churn. When we lived in Tulsa, they always had a small garden plot in the backyard where they grew tomatoes, onions, lettuce and such. My dad always enjoyed a wilted lettuce salad for an afternoon snack. Mom would break up the lettuce, heat up a skillet of bacon grease and pour it over the lettuce. My dad loved it along with some fresh garden onions and a cup of coffee. Our garden venture wasn’t nearly as successful as my parents enjoyed back in the day. Another thing warmer weather brings is college softball. The 2024 season got underway this week on Feb. 8. Debbie and I are big fans of the OU Sooners, who have won seven national championships – 2000, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2021, 2022 and 2023. We have gotten to see them play in Ames several times in recent years and hope to see them play this year at Kansas in Lawrence. We enjoy watching softball on television and someday we hope to attend the college world series of softball in Oklahoma City. Another spring and warm weather sport is fishing. I haven’t been fishing in years. This year would be a good time to try my hand at the sport again. When I was about age 10, my folks and I camped on Grand Lake located between Tulsa and Joplin, Mo. My dad and I went fishing and I caught a big one. I was so excited that I dropped my fishing rod before reeling in the fish. Dad stepped into the edge of the lake and grabbed my pole before the fish took off with it. It was a four plus pound carp. My mom cleaned and fried it and we enjoyed it, even though it was a bit bony. My dad loved to fish and could sit for hours on a river bank and wait for a bite. He and my mom fished most weekends after they got married in the late 1950s. One of their favorite spots was fishing below the dam at Oologah Lake northeast of Tulsa. Some years later, we often spent a week at Greenleaf Lake near Muskogee, Okla. They had a heated fishing dock, as they were called, and I would fish there for hours. Fishing docks are common in Oklahoma and are metal buildings anchored to the shoreline. They feature a large hole in the middle and are baited. It costs a few dollars to fish there and it was always well worth it. Our family enjoyed many fish fries through the years at the lake. Anyway, keep thinking spring and start planning for that fishing trip or vacation. It will be here sooner than you might think. One of my dreams is to fish at the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri on a guided tour. Sure beats the cold and snow! Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. Memories of the good ole days of my youth, as I often remember them, flooded my mind and heart earlier this week after I learned that my Aunt Alice Faye Deese, 83, of Prairie Grove, Ark. had passed away.
Aunt Alice was my mom’s younger sister and the fifth of seven children born to my grandparents, B.D. and Cloa Mae Horton. She was living in a Fayetteville care center at the time of her passing. She would have been 84 on Feb. 3. I last saw my Aunt Alice in June 2018 when Debbie and I enjoyed pizza with all my cousins and family at Jim’s Razorback Pizza, a local favorite in Fayetteville. Debbie and I had made the trip to Tulsa to attend my 40th high school reunion and we drove to Fayetteville on the way home to see everyone. Aunt Alice always talked about making the trip to Iowa, but the miles made it next to impossible. I was quite fond of Aunt Alice and spent a good deal of time around her and my late Uncle Ron, who I called Ronnie. Aunt Alice and Uncle Ron married on Feb. 4, 1972, in Tulsa. I was in sixth grade the year they married and along with my cousin Ray, pulled the carpet down the aisle during the ceremony. They had one son, Ronnie Lee, who lives near Fayetteville and is an insurance salesman in Farmington, Ark., not too far from Fayetteville. He is married and has four children, including a son in the military. Aunt Alice worked for the U.S. Jaycees at the organization’s headquarters in Tulsa for 18 years before her and Uncle Ron bought a 40 plus acre timber and poultry farm near Prairie Grove, Ark. They raised fryer chickens from late 1978 until 1991 in two large chicken houses for a number of different growers, the last being Tysons, on the farmstead. They raised 32,000 chickens at a time, 16,000 in each house. My Uncle Ron, who was paralyzed on his right side from an accident in his teen years, passed away from a lawn mower tractor rollover accident in July 1991. He was in his early 50s. When they lived in Tulsa, I had a key to their house and would go over and visit and stay a couple days. Uncle Ron loved to watch television, especially the Price is Right. He also was quite a bowler. He learned to do everything left handed and bowled on several leagues. My Aunt Alice taught me the sport of bowling at age 12. I bowled for many years in the 70s and 80s and returned to the sport for a couple years in 2015 – 17. Uncle Ron and Aunt Alice had a Tulsa Tribune evening newspaper route for several years in the early 1970s. One year, when my mom and Aunt Alice went to a family funeral in Southeast Missouri in the late 1970s, Uncle Ron and I were charged with throwing my 300 Tulsa World morning newspapers together for several days. We arrived at the newspaper route stop one morning and loaded my Uncle Ron’s AMC Rambler. We got the newspapers loaded in the backseat only to discover the back driver’s side tire was flat. We had to unload all the newspapers to change the tire. We laughed and laughed about it. Somehow we got all the papers delivered. After Uncle Ron and Aunt Alice moved to Arkansas in September 1978, I would travel to their home to visit and stay a couple days about once a month. I enjoyed Aunt Alice’s fried chicken meals and good company. When the chicken catchers would show up to haul the fully-grown chickens to be processed, my aunt would capture a few and process and pluck the feathers by hand for the supper table. She also made a good shrimp pizza, one of my favorites. And she and my Uncle J.W., my mom’s younger brother, made some of the best white gravy. We played hours of cut throat rummy, a game that used three decks of cards. There were runs and sets and the twos and jokers where wild. I know the game rules are written down somewhere in my house. On many of the trips to Arkansas, Uncle Ron and I would drive to Fayetteville the backway on what was called the Hogeye Road and go bowling. On occasion, we’d go fishing. Aunt Alice worked a number of years at the University of Arkansas. She enjoyed quilting and had a longarm quilting machine at her house. I had a quilt made for Debbie our first Christmas together in 2004. The ladies at Three Sisters in Montezuma pieced the quilt together and I sent it to my Aunt Alice, who quilted it for me. She put her name on the backside of the quilt. I will always cherish that. Aunt Alice graduated from Tulsa’s Central High School after my grandparents moved from Missouri to Tulsa. She lived in a mobile home on the same property with my Uncle J.W. and his wife, Lynette, in rural Coweta, Okla. in the 1960s. She later moved in with my grandparents when they lived in north Tulsa before buying a house in south Tulsa in the early 1970s, where she lived when she got married. When I was a little fellow in second grade, we took my Aunt Alice’s 1967 Chevrolet Impala to Southeast Missouri for a funeral. At the time, the Muskogee Turnpike was under construction. It runs southeast out of Tulsa to Muskogee. The road cut through a section of land on my Uncle J.W.’s homeplace. We came back three days later and it was late at night. We took the original detour across where the road was being built, only to find out that the detour had changed and Aunt Alice buried her car to the axles in the mud. We all got out and made our way up the road by foot to my Uncle J.W.’s place. My mom asked Uncle J.W. for a ride to Tulsa and he laughed and laughed and it made her mad. She threated to walk home if he didn’t give us a ride. It was 30 plus miles and that wouldn’t have worked. He took us to Tulsa and all was fine. I have lots of memories of spending time and holidays as a youngster with the family, especially my Aunt Alice. I loved her dearly and I’m going to miss her and the birthday and Christmas calls. She always called me on my birthday and sent Debbie and I a card at Christmas. There are a lot more stories I could share, but I leave you with this - keep the memories alive and take time for family! They are important. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. Outside of Christmases and birthdays, some of my best memories where my high school days in the late 1970s. On Friday nights, my dad and I would take his 1967 Chevrolet S-10 to the Chuckwagon drive in on north Sheridan in Tulsa and order wheel burgers, as they were called, and French fries for the family supper.
We’d all sit around the kitchen table eating, visiting and watching Dukes of Hazard and Dallas on television. We always ate and prayed together at the kitchen table. My mom was a great cook. I enjoyed lots of fried chicken meals, fish fries and home raised fresh foods from the garden at the kitchen table. During the summer months, I sat on a chair at the kitchen table and helped my mom snap and can green beans and use a tomato spaghetti strainer to smash tomatoes for canning. My folks weren’t too tough on me, but they expected me to follow the rules and to behave. When I was in fourth grade and said a cuss word at school, my mom somehow found out. We all gathered in the kitchen and my folks made me say the cuss word, spell the word then I got a spanking. Anytime I got into a scuffle or trouble at school and got swats, I got a double dose at home. I’m thankful for all of it. I’ve always been a talker and friendly sort of person. My mom once told me that the dean of boys at Will Rogers High School in Tulsa called her because I was talking too much in class. It upset my mom and she let him have it. “You have all those students standing outside smoking cigarettes instead of going class and you’re worried about my son talking too much,” she told the dean. I don’t know what came from all that, but I appreciate my mom standing up for me like that. I don’t know what made me think about my family and growing up days and the kitchen table. Maybe it’s because I miss my mom and dad. They were good people who grew up with nothing and took what they had, worked hard, saved and enjoyed a wonderful life together. I remember my mom telling me the story of when she first came to Tulsa in the 1950s after high school in Van Buren, Mo. She had to catch a bus to work and the bus stop was by a local ice cream dairy. “I was so poor that I didn’t have a nickel for an ice cream cone,” she said. My dad, who grew up east of Tulsa in the Verdigris River bottoms, dug ditches and chased golf balls in the drink at one of Tulsa’s country clubs before getting a job in the early 1950s at Gaso Pumps. The company specialized in building oil pumps used to move crude oil across the ground after it was drilled. My dad was in charge of building the pumps. I always enjoyed stopping to visit with my dad at the factory on his lunch hour and he’d show me around and introduce me to his co-workers. He spent nearly 40-years at the company before retiring in March 1993. Dad loved the old way of life and no one was a stranger. One of his favorite pastimes was being outside working in the yard pulling weeds and later at the family farm where he raised cattle and tended to a garden with Mom. When people would ask him how many cattle he had, my dad would always tell them, “Under 100.” He always enjoyed spending an afternoon visiting with the many characters and folks who he grew up around in the river bottoms. When I was a kid, those trips didn’t have the same meaning as they did when I got older. Some of these folks had the most comfy chairs and when we’d visit it didn’t take me long to fall asleep until it was time to go. In the 1970s, my mom and I threw the Tulsa World newspapers together for five years and four of those years we threw the Tulsa Tribune evening newspaper. We delivered more than 400 papers on Sunday mornings. Often times, my dad and brother helped on Sunday mornings. I’ve spent most of my life in the newspaper business from being a carrier to working in circulation and then returning to school and becoming an editor, reporter and photographer. I wouldn’t trade the experiences and the people I have met along the way for anything in the world. I learned a lot about the value of hard work, giving my best, doing good to others, trusting God, following my dreams and doing the right thing in life. I’m so thankful that many of those life lessons and good memories happened around the kitchen table in my boyhood home. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. I strongly dislike winter!
The only good thing about winter is the cold kills the bugs. After this last week’s two rounds of snow and cold snap, I might put up with the bugs. I’m ready for spring. The original forecast was for two to four inches of snow during the early part of last week. That turned into nearly 20-inches of the white stuff. Topped off with upwards to 40 mph winds causing blowing and drifting snow and deep freeze temperatures, it was a storm that I would rather forget. Schools, businesses, restaurants and community activities all across the county and the state were either cancelled or closed due to the snowstorms and cold weather. There were hundreds of wrecks and vehicles in the ditches and overturned semis dotted the Interstates and highways across the state. It may be weeks before officials and others get it all cleaned up. Thankfully, our home heater continued working and we didn’t lose our electricity during last week’s storms. I know that wasn’t the case for others. Thanks to the many volunteer firemen, ambulance drivers, police and sheriff deputies, other emergency personal, electrical linemen, county road’s department employees, home repairmen, good old boys driving snowplows and so many others who stayed the course to keep us all safe. I missed three days of work due to the winter storms. If I can’t get there safely, I’m staying home. I didn’t have much of a choice. I couldn’t even get out of my driveway, let alone go to work. All this nasty snowy weather reminds of a story from back in the day. Seems like it was early December 1975. I had just gotten my driver’s license a couple months earlier. I was in the tenth grade at the time. My folks had gone to visit with my dad’s grandmother in Barnsdall, Okla., a small town 40-miles north of Tulsa. I stayed home to attend choir practice at the First Baptist Church in downtown Tulsa that late Sunday afternoon. While at choir practice, a sleet and snowstorm hit Tulsa. I was driving my dad’s old work car, a 1959 Chevrolet Impala. It was a good car, but the defroster quit working and it was hard to see a foot in front of me. There I was, trying to make a decision about what to do. My parents taught me that if I had troubles to drive a certain route home. I decided to head home, driving with my head stuck out the window to see the road all the while sleet and snow was pelting my face. The windshield wipers were slipping back and forth, but it was doing no good without a defroster. I made it about three miles toward home when all of a sudden my folks came to my rescue. I was never so glad to see them. I moved over and my dad slid under the steering wheel and got us home safely. I remember the time in the late 1990s when I working for the North English Record. It was a cold, icy winter day. A semitruck loaded with hogs had slid off the road east of South English and some of the critters had broken out of their traveling confinement and were roaming about on Highway 22. I’m thinking, “What a great photo opportunity.” I took the company GEO Metro and headed south and then east toward the accident scene. The roads were icy and awful and I’m thankful I didn’t slide into the ditch. I should have stayed home. Well, I got some great photos and one of them won a state newspaper spot photography award. I’ll probably never do that again. If that where today, Debbie (my voice of reason) would have something to say about it if I gave it any thought. I’m thankful for her wisdom, common sense and love. I’m a blessed man. And, the warmer weather will be here sooner than you think. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. Growing up in Tulsa, Okla., we used to get lots of ice storms and some decent sized snowfalls on occasion.
I remember one early March when we got dumped on with 14-inches of snow. It paralyzed the city for three days. That was very unusual for that much snow during that time of the year in the Sooner state. Back in the day there were no plows in Tulsa and I don’t think that has changed. The city didn’t clean off residential side streets and most residents didn’t clean their driveways or sidewalks. The morning commute on my paper route or to school was crunch, crunch and crunch. Most weather fronts didn’t last more than three or four days and the temperatures went above freezing and the snow and ice turned to slush. On occasion, the temperatures could drop to five degrees or so below zero. It typically only lasted a few days. I remember a big snowstorm that hit in January 1977, my junior year in high school. The snow started falling on a Saturday evening just after dark and by early Sunday morning, there were eight or so inches of the white stuff on ground. And the wind, it was blowing hard. That made delivering the big Sunday newspaper on our paper routes quite a chore. With the wind, snow and cold, my dad drove his truck and my mom and I would take turns delivering newspapers one block at a time. I think we delivered our last paper around 10 a.m. We were usually done by 7 a.m. on Sunday mornings. I’ve witnessed a number ice storms and remember as a kid more than once pulling my old metal sled loaded with Tulsa World newspapers down the street as I trudged through front yards to keep from falling on my backside. I’ve also slid down a few driveways on my backside due to ice. And in December 1983, the temperatures hovered around 10-degrees for a high for about a two week period. Then it warmed up and was in the 60s on Christmas Day. I took plenty of tumbles on icy sidewalks as youngster, but thankfully, I never broke any bones in the process. Here in Iowa, the culture around snow is much different. Good ole boys love pushing snow in their four-wheel drives and going ice fishing for supper. What’s a foot or two of snow? A lot in my mind, but to some Iowans, it’s time to get out the snow blower and take a spin with the kids on their snowmobiles. Or maybe firing up the grill and inviting the friends over for a steak or hamburger cookout and some cold brews. When I first moved to Iowa in the late 1990s and was living in North English, I heard about an ice fishing derby on Lake Iowa. I never heard of ice fishing growing up in Oklahoma. I got up early and made my way to the lake. There were ice fishing huts dotted across the lake and people walking on the frozen water like it was Sunday afternoon stroll. “These people are nuts,” I said while shaking my head and wondering what the heck I had gotten myself into living in Iowa. I decided to return home and go back to bed. Some years later, I covered ice fishing derbies twice on Diamond Lake near Montezuma. Going against my better judgement, I actually walked on the frozen water to get a few photos. One fellow said the ice was 14-inches thick. Not enough in my mind! One fellow I was photographing was grilling hamburgers while fishing and he gave me one. At least the fish were frozen and fresh. Seems like it was around 2007. Debbie and I had driven to Tulsa to see my folks for a couple days. We were driving my mother-in-law’s car. I heard reports of a weather front headed our way. Going against conventional wisdom, namely that of my wife, I decided to head home to Iowa. Halfway between Tulsa and Joplin, Mo., we ran into an icy front and the further we got, the worse it got. Debbie wanted me to stop in Joplin, but I wanted to head north. I was thinking Kansas City. We got close to Nevada, Mo. and a truck went flying past us, slide into the ditch and spun around several times in a farm field before coming to a rest. I’m surprised they didn’t flip over. “Are you ready to stop now?” Debbie asked. “Yes,” I replied as we pulled into a motel for the evening. The parking lot was a sheet of ice. I leave you with this – stay safe my friends in this nasty weather. Don’t go out unless you have to and make sure you are stocked up on the essentials – milk, bread, butter and a couple steaks and a few pounds of hamburger meat just in case the boys come over. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day. |
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