My dad could chew the fat with the best of them.
No one was a stranger to him. He loved to talk and had the uncanny ability to find folks to visit with who grew up in his neck of the woods east of Tulsa. It was the sticks to me near the Verdigris River. I went with my dad several times to visit the good ole folks of his boyhood days. I always found a comfy chair and quickly fell asleep while my dad visited. He’d nudge me from my slumber and off we’d go to another neighbor’s place. It kind of bothered me some when I was younger that he’d talk to anyone. A lot has changed for me since those days. Time has a way of changing one’s perspective in life. Dad and I took some good trips together in the late 1980s and early 1990s to Northeastern Oklahoma, Western Kansas and the Grand Canyon. We also enjoyed going fishing. My dad loved to fish below the dam at Oologah Lake northeast of Tulsa. And once I moved to Iowa, my dad and mom enjoyed traveling here to visit me a couple times a year. In 2003, we took a trip to Rochester, Minn., with stops at the Little Brown Church, the World’s Smallest Church in Festina, the Bily Clock Museum in Spillville and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Park and Museum in Burr Oak. We also stopped at the Mayo Clinic where I took a photo of my mom in front of the hospital sign. In 1948, when my mom was age 12, she fell sick. My grandparents were poor and didn’t have a car. My grandpa made a bed on the plow and carried my mom to see the doctor using his tractor. The doctor told my grandparents that he wanted to try one medicine. If it didn’t cure my mom, he wanted to carry her to the Mayo Clinic. My grandparents said they couldn’t afford that. The doctor said he’d cover the bill. He gave my mom a shot of penicillin and it cured her and there was no need to make the trip to the Mayo. We also visited the Spam Museum in Austin, Minn., before heading south along Highway 169 to Ames and then across Highway 30 toward home. My dad always wore a ball camp, usually advertising Gaso Pump, except on Sunday mornings. He spent nearly 40-years of his life working at Gaso Pump Mfg., a company in west Tulsa that built large pumps used to move crude oil through pipelines after it was out of the well. When not wearing a hat, he’d spread some hair grease on his head and always had a comb nearby. When he wore his Sunday best, he’d wrap his billfold and comb in paper towels to keep the grease from work from getting on his clothes. Nowadays, like my dad, I’ll visit with most anyone. No one is a stranger to me. I’m a firm believer that strangers are only friends yet to be made. I love to visit and I appreciate my beautiful bride, Debbie, tolerating my need to talk to people. And that was the case this past weekend. Debbie and I traveled to the Ankeny Kirkendall Public Library on Saturday afternoon where we joined 60 some other authors at the Ankeny Author’s Fair. This is the first year the library had hosted the event since 2019. I spent a good part of the day going around meeting other authors, catching up with old friends and visiting with folks. People live some of the most interesting lives. I met fellow who had a fictional book based on 9-11. It was a story about the exchange of a large amount of bonds at a business in one of the twin towers. After the planes crashed into the buildings, the bonds and the person handling the transfer disappeared and all was consider lost in the tower’s rubble. That was until one of the bonds was cashed 10 years later in Switzerland. Another author wrote a novel about a person found murdered in the city park. The only identification on them was a bulletin from a local church. I also visited with a couple ladies from the Blue Ribbon Foundation who were there selling Iowa State Fair Cookbooks and another fellow who was a long-time postal employee turned bus driver and author. We enjoyed visiting for a few minutes to catch up. We were also able to book a second author to speak at our writers’ conference, which will be held on Sept. 21 in Montezuma, and were able to tell many others authors about our event. There were so many interesting people in attendance and I’m sure I could pull a few newspaper stories out of the event, if only they were local. I leave you with this. Enjoy life and never forget where you came from. Have a great week and always remember that “Good Things are Happening,” every day.
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