Memories of time spent with Aunt Alice and family

       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.