​       My hometown of Tulsa was known as the “Oil Capital of the World” when I was a youngster. It was a designation born from the discovery of oil in November 1905 on the Glenn family farm south of Tulsa, which became known as Glenn Pool. 
         According to American Oil & Gas, the oilfield discovery launched a drilling boom that greatly exceeded the first Oklahoma oil well of 1897 in Bartlesvillle.
           At one time, Bartlesville was home to Phillips 66 Oil Company.
     The discovery of oil made headlines worldwide, attracting established exploration companies, new ventures and a host of service companies.
       “Soon, hundreds of Indian Territory wells produced so much oil the entire region was called the giant Glenn Pool,” noted the AOG.
         Today, that area and town is known as Glenpool.
       The discovery of oil helped develop the careers of men like Harry Sinclair, J. Paul Getty and others.
       One of those oilmen was Robert M. McFarlin (July 27, 1866 – Aug. 11, 1942), an American oilman, cattle rancher, philanthropist and businessman who is best known for amassing a fortune by drilling for oil near Glenpool with his nephew and son-in-law, James A. Chapman, noted Wikipedia.
       McFarlin, who was born in Ovilla, Texas, attended the Waxahachie’s Marvin College for two years before becoming a farmer in Vernon, Texas in 1888.
      He married Ida Barnard two years earlier in 1886.
     The couple had two daughters and one son. Their son, Robert Boger, who was born in 1891, died of typhoid fever at the age one month and 19 days.
     The couple moved from Texas to Norman, Okla., then in Oklahoma Territory, in 1890, where they worked as cattle farmers and operated a feed store.
       Oklahoma did not become a state until 1907.
     They farmed near Norman until a severe drought forced them to move their cattle to a ranch in Hughes County and the city of Holdenville in Oklahoma in 1901. They lived there until 1915, when the couple came to Tulsa.
    McFarlin and Chapman first partnered in 1903 to create the Holdenville Oil and Gas Company, which owned 10 acres in the middle of the Glenn Pool oil field.
       In 1912, the two founded the McMan Oil Company after the discovery of oil in the Cushing Oil Field (about 50-miles west of Tulsa). They duo later sold the business to Magnolia Petroleum Company in 1916 for $39 million.
      In 1918, the St. Louis-based company of Barnett, Hayes & Barnett built a five-story office building for McFarlin at 11 E. 5th St. in downtown Tulsa. The building, which is still in use to this day, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on Dec. 6, 1979.
      That same year, McFarlin and Chapman organized the McMan Oil and Gas Company, which engaged in the production of oil and gas and the manufacturing of casing-head gas products.
The company was sold in 1922 to the Dixie Oil Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil Company of Indiana, for $20 million.
      In 1910, McFarlin, Harry Sinclair and some others organized the Exchange National Bank of Tulsa, which later became the National Bank of Tulsa and is now the Bank of Oklahoma.
    Also in 1918, McFarlin built an 8,500 square foot home at 1610 Carson near downtown Tulsa and the Arkansas river.
     Today, that home is owned by Karen C. and her son, Nathan, and is used as an event center for weddings, corporate and business gatherings, family functions and more.
     The mother and son duo own and manage numerous rental properties throughout the Tulsa metroplex. 
      I attended elementary and junior high school with Karen and have kept in touch with her through the years. In fact, Karen was the realtor that sold my boyhood home in July 2010.
      Debbie and I were in Tulsa, June 5 – 9, for a cousin reunion on my mom’s side of the family and to visit with friends. Karen gave us a tour of the home and showed us the work she and Nathan have done on the mansion since purchasing it three years ago.
      The property features the main house and two carriage houses and a large swimming pool built some years later.
     Constructed in the Prairie Italian Renaissance style, the mansion was built of reinforced concrete column and beam construction with clay block interior walls.
      As we toured the mansion, Karen explained the restoration work that had been completed. It’s an amazing home with a beautiful spiral staircase.
   At one point, the home served as a photography studio with a prominent Tulsa photographer.
     The home is decorated with a mixture of period and modern furniture and artwork. The third floor of the home serves as a bridal suite.
     Among McFarlin’s many philanthropic gifts and charitable endeavors where $600,000 in 1924 for the Methodist Episcopal Church in Norman, $600,000 in 1925 for the McFarlin Auditorium at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, and $300,000 in 1929 to build the McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa.
       McFarlin was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1935.
    There is so much history from my boyhood home and it was such a treat to tour the mansion of one of the founding oilmen in Tulsa.
       Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day.
   Editor’s note: Much of the information for this article came from sources such as American Oil & Gas, Wikipedia, Oklahoma Hall of Fame, Oklahoma Historical Society, information on the McFarlin Mansion and other sources.

         The 2025 College World Series of Softball has come to an end, at least for Debbie and me.
         Our beloved OU Sooners ended their championship run on Monday in a 3-2 loss to Texas Tech in the semi-final round.
       And in an odd twist of fate, before the game was over, Chris Plank, the voice of Sooner softball, announced that the Texas Tech bus had pulled around to load the team.
        At that point, Oklahoma was still down 2-0.
       That quickly changed in the top of the seventh inning with one on base and two strikes and two outs, when Sooner ace Abby Dayton hit a two-run homerun to tie the game up.
         The homerun seemed to breathe new life into the team.
         However, the Sooners couldn’t hold on as Texas Tech scored in the bottom of the seventh  which led to a Texas verses Texas Tech championship series that started on Wednesday, June 5.
        Having lost in the double elimination softball game to Texas, 4-2, a couple days earlier, the Sooner’s backs were against the wall.
     They had previously beat Tennessee in the seventh inning in the first game of the championship series, 4-3, on Ella Parker three-run homerun.
      They needed to beat Texas Tech twice Monday night to advance to the championship series.
        They finished the regular season as SEC champs and made it to the championship game against Texas A&M, only to have the game canceled due to weather.
       Games often get delayed due to weather, but that is the first time I’ve heard of game being completely canceled, especially a championship game.
       “Just extremely proud of this team, who they are, first, and what they do second,” OU Coach Patty Gasso told Sports Illustrated after the game. “One of my favorite years of all time, I must say.”
       No other college softball team, even UCLA, has won four straight championships. The Sooners have won six championships in eight years and eight championships overall – 2000, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. They also finished runners-up in 2019.
         The Sooners were the reigning national champions for 1,453 days.
         The team is young and if they stay together, I predict they will back next year.
       It’s been a bucket-list goal of ours to attend the world series or even watch a game in Norman.
          Tickets are hard to come by of late, and for good reason.
       We saw the Sooners during four different series over several years at Iowa State University a few years back and in March 2024, we traveled to Lawrence, Kan. to watch them take on the Jawhawks.
        We met Iowa’s Paige Lowary, a Dallas Center Grimes alumni, at an ISU game. Lowary started her college career at Missouri before transferring to OU her junior and senior years.
           We got to see her 2017 championship ring and have our photo taken together.
           We’ve met families of several OU Sooner players through the years.
           As part of his announcing duties, Plank has a third-inning shoutout to all the Sooner fans around the nation and even the world.
           Debbie turns our names in before each game through social media and most times, he will say, “J.O. and Debbie in Iowa” or sometimes “J.O. and Debbie in Montezuma.”
       I’ve had friends in Oklahoma send me a message after hearing our names on the broadcast.
            When I was in the hospital in late March, Debbie turned our names during a game only to have Plank pause a moment to recognized me and wish me well.
            “In the hospital in Des Moines,” he said. “I hope he is alright.”
            That was thoughtful and nice to be recognized in that way.
            Of course, I would have preferred to be somewhere else beside the hospital.
            Before long, it will be time for Sooner football and I hope they have a better 2025 than the last few years. In the meantime, Debbie and I will try and watch some of the professional softball games. There are several Sooner alumni on various teams.
           And OU Softball Coach Gasso is the head coach of the USA Olympic Softball team. It will fun to watch that team play and develop.
          Softball on any level is a family and Debbie and I are excited to keep our radar tuned to OU, but also pro players and our local teams.
          Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day.

        Since I learned of my cancer ordeal in early March and now undergoing chemo, I’ve spent a lot of time in the red Lazy Boy chair in our living room taking naps, watching television, talking on the telephone  and spending time on social media.
        It’s really Debbie’s chair as my Lazy Boy, also red, broke more than a year ago.
        It needs a new chair lift mechanism.
        We just need to haul the chair to Homemakers Furniture in Des Moines, where we bought both chairs in 2014, to have it fixed.
       Sometimes when I get up to take a restroom break, grab a bite to eat or fix supper, Debbie will ask to set in the chair. Of course, I’m always willing since it really is her chair. She’s just gracious enough to let me use it.
      Getting my chair fixed has moved up the ladder of important things to do as of last week. That’s because I retired from my day job last week on May 20.
      After I took an early retirement offer from newspaper work in October 2015, I enjoyed more than a year break, outside of covering the Poweshiek County Fair and attending an occasional community event.
        I needed a job and learned that Bayer Crop Science (formerly Monsanto) east of Grinnell was hiring.
        I applied in early June 2017, but opted not to take the job. I had spent years working in an office and covering community events, so the idea of working in a warehouse or walking corn fields was not in my DNA at that time.
       As the summer wore on, so did my bank account and I decided apply again, this time in late August of 2017.
        I was hired and went to work on Aug. 29 that year.
       My first job was spent being trained and then working on the re-bag line. On the second day, I was sent to the green corn dump and it was there that I learned how to unload semitrucks loaded with seed corn.
       Having grown up in the big city, I didn’t know a thing about corn, outside of eating it for supper. 
       I knew nothing about the business, but I quickly learned thanks to a co-worker and now friend, Joe C. and others who worked alongside me.
       And over the course of the next 7.5 plus years, I spent time driving a forklift and hauling corn from the packaging room to warehouse and filling customer orders and much more. I helped with safety checks across the site and even published a newsletter for about five years. 
        I appreciate having the job and the learning opportunity.
        It’s been many moons since I first went to work.
       My first job started on Sept. 1, 1972 throwing Tulsa World newspapers with my mom. All my buddies had newspaper routes and I wanted one, too!
        My mom didn’t want me on the streets of Tulsa in the early morning hours by myself, so she joined me in the business.
       When I gave up my newspaper route in July 1977 (the summer between my junior and senior years in high school), Mom and I were throwing 400 newspaper a day.
         We had 300 morning newspaper and 100 in the evening tossing the Tulsa Tribune.
         My mom kept on throwing newspapers and I got job at Sears, which I’ve mentioned in an earlier column.
      Outside of that, when I was in 10th grade, I landed a Saturday morning job at a commercial refrigeration company on the northside of downtown Tulsa that installed freezers and coolers in grocery stores around Oklahoma and elsewhere. My job was to clean the storefront, the restrooms and the offices. And I also spent my summer that year working at a local eatery, which I mentioned in last week’s column.
        In retirement, the first order of business is getting through my chemo treatments. Once that is done on July 7, I’m going fishing.
         Being 65, I’m eligible to get a lifetime fishing license from the Iowa DNR.
         I’m going to continue doing newspaper work and writing this column.
         I’ve been thinking about writing a book. I have my book of columns and plan to publish a second edition of some of my earlier work.
        I’ve always wanted to write a book about what life would be like working on a threshing crew using steam engine power.
     I don’t really know where to start, but as authors have said in our yearly writer’s conference, write down what you are thinking and go from there.
          I’m looking forward to some great things in life on the horizon and retirement. 
          Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day.

​        I’ve been seeing a lot of ads on Facebook and social media about area youngsters looking for work from cleaning cars to mowing and trimming lawns and cleaning out garages full of old junk. One young fellow is selling and delivering ice and ice cream.
       I did have a lawn business a few years after high school and mowed about 10 yards. It was good work and kept gas in my tank.
     During the summer of my 10th grade year in high school, I worked at a 10-stool eatery a couple blocks from my house.
      There were two such eateries in my neighborhood, both a couple blocks from my boyhood home.
    They served good old-fashioned greasy southern food from cheeseburgers to chili and French fries and onion rings.
      These type of eateries were quite popular back in the day. Folks would often stand two or three deep waiting for a seat.
      I don’t recall the name of the eatery, but I do remember the experience. I was hired that summer to wash dishes and triple-breading chicken fried steaks for about $5 an hour.
       There was no dishwasher, so all the dishes had to be washed by hand.
       Every so often, I would lay a big board across the sink and set up shop. I had a large bowl of milk mixture and large bowl of flour with salt and pepper.
       I dipped the chicken fried steaks (cube steak) one at a time in the milk mixture then dipped it into the flour mixture. I did this three times and then laid the breaded chicken fried steak on a piece of wax paper. I would make a small stack and they would be placed in a large baggie and into the freezer.
       I would have to stop and clean the flour mixture off my hands because it go so thick on my fingers I couldn’t hardly use them.
       When a customer wanted a chicken fried steak, the cook would place the frozen piece of meat in the deep fryer and cook it to golden brown. Then cover it with some homemade gravy.
       I remember my folks visiting the eatery and I got to cook them supper. I really enjoyed that experience cooking on a grill.
       I used some of the money I made that summer to buy a CB radio from my neighbor across the street. Each week on Saturday, I paid him $5 until I got the radio paid for. I believe it was $50.
          I had several CB names from the “Snowman” to “Pork Chop.”
        The CB was stolen out of my car a few years later while I was working nights at a Tulsa grocery/drug store chain. I never did replace it.
         When I was a senior in high school, I got a job at Sears and Roebuck a few miles from my boyhood home.
     My job was to retrieve large-ticket items such as fireplace screens, which were quite popular in the late 1970s, televisions, paint, vacuum cleaners and the such.
      One family came to pick up their new television and I went to the warehouse, only to discover the television was on the third shelf.
         Let me say that getting the television off the third tier of shelving by myself didn’t go well. In fact, my work experience during that brief six weeks in September and October 1978 at Sears didn’t end well as I was fired.
       I’ve been fired from a couple jobs through the years and I just chalked them up as a life experience.
        In high school, I learned to run a printing press through a vocational education program. In the late 1970s, lead type was still in use.
        I worked at a business in Tulsa, which is still there, that made wire line for printing press that was used to cut perforations in checks, forms and such.
        After a month I took a job, which happened to be next door, working for a check printing company. I ran a letterpress called a “Jumping Jack” and printed three-to-a-page business checks using lead type in a printing chase. 
        I’ve held a number of other jobs such as working as custodian at an all-night grocery/drug store. I worked a company in west Tulsa for a brief time in the early 80s that made sheaves for tackle and blocks on cranes. My job was to do stress tests on the welds.
       There have been lots of other jobs from selling and delivering furniture to working on cars through my own business.
       And I’ve thrown a lot of newspapers through the years, first with my mom and later on as a substitute news carrier. I have lots of great memories with many valuable lessons learned.
      My hat goes off to all these young people in the area and across the county who are looking for work and I hope it is the start of good things to come.
        Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day.

        I miss my folks and often think of them and the impact they had on my life.
        That was the case on Mother’s Day.
        I grew up in a two-bedroom one-bath home in the Florence Park neighborhood about five miles from downtown Tulsa.
        We had a wooden white trellis on the northside of our home.
       My mom grew roses on the trellis that often grew on to the metal fencing that surrounded our backyard.
      Every Mother’s and Father’s Days, she’d pick freshly-grown roses and we’d all wear them to church.
      She and my dad wore one color in honor of their folks and by brother, Tom, and I wore a different color.
       Our home featured a fake chimney. 
      My folks built a round raised flower bed in the early 1970s in front of the chimney. They put a large round fencepost in the middle. They got some old hay rake tines and attached them to the top of the post and hung small potted plants on them.
      While they were digging, they found an old spoon in the dirt. I never did like that spoon and would not use it to eat. It was ugly and old. I finally resorted to using it in our kitchen grease container.
      Being from the south, we had a grease container on the stove. It was a small aluminum container not much bigger than a sauce pan. It had a strainer in it and a lid.
      Mom cooked lots bacon, fish, fried chicken, fried okra and potatoes for supper. We used lots of grease and when she was done, she’d pour the used grease into the grease container.
      I used that spoon to dip up bacon grease if I needed a spoonful or two for cooking fried potatoes or some pork chops. I used bacon grease a lot more than cooking oil.
     Some years later, my brother and his wife found the spoon in the kitchen drawer and framed it for me. I still have it and I still don’t use it.
      When the grease container got full, we’d pour it in a used oil container and wash it in the dishwasher.
      I used to house sit for friends. On more than one occasion, I stayed at the apartment of friends, John and Sandy. They were from Southern California and had moved to Tulsa in the early 1980s.
       I met John while throwing The Tulsa World newspaper after losing my job. We hit it off and became friends.
    One evening while staying at their apartment, I cooked a couple bacon sandwiches. I started looking for a grease container and found what I thought was one. It wasn’t
       It happened to be a kitchen utensil container.
       I poured the grease in there and left it on the stove.
      When they got home, I got a call from Sandy about finding grease in her utensil container.
I thought everyone had a grease container.
        My dad spent hours outside pulling weeds and tending to his small garden out back.
       The driveways between our neighbor, Mr. and Mrs. Watson, to the south and our house were quite narrow the closer it got from our detached garages and the street. 
       Mr. Watson drove a big Ford LTD and when he would back down the driveway, he’d inch over in to the grass, making a big mud hole.
        My dad spent hours patching and watering that mud hole.
        I think Mr. Watson was oblivious to driving in the grass and the mud hole.
       I was quite young and my dad warned me about riding my bicycle through his mud hole.   Young Mr. Parker paid no attention and soon found what pushed my dad’s buttons.
        I got a good spanking and I never did that again.
        I had a large club house in the attic of our garage. I had carpet sample pieces that I nailed to the floor. I got them out the dumpster at the neighborhood carpet store. I also had a bean bag chair and a cot in my clubhouse.
       I had lights and a fan and would go up there to take a nap and on occasion, a friend would come over and hang out.
       Lots of great memories.
     Anytime I make the trek to Tulsa, I always enjoy driving by my boyhood home and reflecting on the good old days of grease cans, my clubhouse and mud holes. 
       Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day.

       I received my first of four chemo infusions on Monday, May 5 at the Iowa Clinic in West Des Moines.
        I was in a large room with several other cancer patients.
        The fellow on my right side was born and raised in North Dakota where he played football for the University of ND. He was in his mid-40s, having been born the year after I graduated high school. He was married and had four children.
        We spoke briefly of the cold weather in North Dakota and he said it starts snowing in late August or early September and goes through April.
         He had a similar issue with colon cancer that I had.
         He apparently was an IT guy and spent a good part of the day on the phone in meetings. I didn’t ask what company he worked for.
         The fellow to the left of us was seven months older than me. He looked much older. For him, Monday was his last infusion.
         There was a young lady and her fiancé across from Debbie and me. She was in her early 30s and had stage 2 breast cancer.
        She shared a story of her dad who had colon cancer in 2014 and to this day is cancer free.
        Her fiancé brought a small ice chest of food and sandwiches from Jersey Mikes. I was so hungry as that food smelled great.
       They had a plastic container of guacamole and chips. I’m not a fan of guacamole, but it still smelled good on a hungry stomach.
       There were a couple other patients in the room, but I didn’t get a chance to talk with them.
           It was a rough outing for my first experience at a chemo infusion.
           I had two 20-minute infusions of nausea meds and then a two-hours regimen of chemo.
          I learned that I need to eat more before my appointment as my stomach was upset most of the day. I was quite hungry.
          I even resorted to eating Cheez-it crackers.
         This has been quite a journey and I’m thankful for every prayer, thought, email, Facebook message, card and more.
         My brother, Tom, in Tulsa went as far as to have his church pray for me through him. That was quite touching.
        And the medical professionals that have been a part of this journey are just the best. From the nurses in the hospital to medical staff at every level.
           They are wonderful people who care and want what is best for me.
          A dry mouth and hands can be the result of chemo. It was suggested that I rinse with a mixture of salt water and baking soda. That’s nasty tasting.
           And using hand cream will help keep my hands from chapping.
           I also can’t have cold drinks and ice cream for the first few days after chemo. The fellow next to me said to swish it around in my month and it will be OK.
         As the chemo nurse said, chemo breaks down your immune system and it takes time to build it back up.
        And I’m thankful for my wife being by my side encouraging me and making this journey more tolerable.
         I have three more chemo infusions and three series of chemo pills. I will be done on July 7.
         The end is on the horizon.
         Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day.

          We now have chickens at the Parker household.
         It’s a project spearheaded by our two oldest nephews with the help of Debbie.
       Our nephews and my brother-in-law recently moved a portable shed into our yard and are busy converting it to a chicken house.
         We currently have 15 chickens that will begin producing eggs in a month or so.
        Plans are to install an automatic door on the chicken house so the chickens can access the homemade chicken run.
         I admit, I haven’t been too involved in the chicken house project. It’s a work in progress, is my excuse.
         Debbie told me that I can gather the eggs.
         Having grown up in the big city, I’ve never had chickens.
        When my folks moved to their farm in the early 1980s south of Tulsa and lived in a mobile home, they got some chickens. While they were building a homemade chicken house, they kept the baby chicks in the mobile home bathroom.
        Thankfully my folks got the chicken house finished before the chicks started laying eggs. 
        If not, there would have been chicken eggs rolling around the bathroom floor.
     My folks raised chickens for a number of years, later converting the chicken shed to a storage shed.
        It makes me chuckle when I look back on that time and think about the silliness of having chickens in the bathroom.
       My folks came from poor backgrounds and back in day, they did what they had to do to get through life.
         My mom would use the eggs for breakfast or making a cake and she’d place the shells on the gas stove burner and cook or brown them. She would then feed the shells back to her chickens.
         She burned them to keep the chickens from eating their own eggs.
         Some years ago, Debbie and I and four family members went to a concert at Wells Fargo Arena.
         After the show, we stopped at McDonalds in Altoona and somehow got on the subject of chickens.
          “My folks raised chickens in the bathroom,” I said, making everyone crackup and laugh.
         Anyway, back in the day when I was in fourth grade, I went to stay with my Uncle Leon near Collinsville, Okla. Collinsville is northeast of Tulsa about 25 miles.
          Uncle Leon was a younger brother to my mom.
       He was a Veteran and I only remember him being in a wheelchair. I don’t know what happened that led to him to spending his life in a wheelchair.
        He and my Aunt Berenice raised three children – two girls and a boy.
        He had quite a brew of egg-laying chickens out back of his house in a shed.
        I followed Uncle Leon and his youngest boy, Eddie, to gather the eggs.
       Eddie stuck his hand under a big hen and the old girl pecked at him. That caused Eddie to yell and jump a foot or two off the ground.
        I then tried my hand at it, only to get the same treatment.
      Uncle Leon could be a little gruff on occasion and he didn’t say anything to me another than laugh, but he did get after his son.
      In the fall of 1978, my uncle and aunt, Ron and Alice Deese, bought a chicken farm and a spot of land in Prairie Grove near Fayetteville, Ark. They lived in south Tulsa at the time and were looking for a change.
       I helped them move and my Uncle Ron’s sister lived next door to their house. On moving day, the ladies were cooking lunch and of all things, fried chicken.
       When the food was ready, I got in line and took two chicken breasts.
      That didn’t set well with everyone else as there were only two left, so my Uncle Ron, who loved white chicken meat, drove to a nearby KFC and ordered his lunch.
        My name was mud for a while, but everyone got over it and life went forward.
      In Arkansas, my uncle and aunt raised two large chicken houses of fryer chickens from that fall of 1978 until 1991, when my uncle Ron passed away in an farm accident.
      The chicken houses stretched more than a football field in length and held 16,000 chickens each.
     I spent many days at the Deese chicken farm, making the 100-mile trek from Tulsa about once a month.
     I enjoyed eating fried chicken and my Aunt Alice’s famous shrimp pizza. My Uncle Ron loved to bowl and we’d drive to Fayetteville for a few games.
      And we’d spend hours playing cut-throat rummy, a game using three decks of cards.
      I have lots of good memories that keep me moving forward in life.
    As I have mentioned in the past regarding my colon cancer, your prayers, thoughts and concerns are much appreciated.
     I’m winning this battle because of all my friends, family and God’s healing power.
     Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day.