2008-01-19T12:25:00.000-08:00

This is a selection of stories from "A Privileged Character", based on the childhood memories in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the 1950's, as told to me by Christopher, my husband. There were 22 stories that I wrote down, with notes for many more. Christopher died in 2005 . My life is not the same without him. He was so precious to me, so many people did not know of my deep love for him, now he is gone, it is hard to explain to them...these stories which I painstakingly wrote down..I cherish.

The stories are primarily of Tulsa, Oklahoma and Bartlesville where Christopher grew up. I took some writer's liberties with the stories, but for the most part they are all true. He liked to drive and as we toured around, he would tell me about his childhood. At first I taped the stories, but later I just did a sort of quick shorthand, because I began to know his early life so well and so deeply I only needed a word or two to prompt me to sit and recapture his tales. The sad thing is, I wanted to tell him my stories, but never got much of a chance. I was brought up in Stanmore England. You can read my story at http://www.christysmemoirs.blogspot.om/

Following Elanor and Champ, scroll down and read 'Stay'in with Grace'

"Elanor and Champ" (in Christopher's voice)
My Mom, Elanor Ann, was born in the 1920’s in Watts, California. Elanor was Dutch Irish descent. At that time in history, Watts was a quiet, working man’s town and the residents lived in bungalows on tree lined streets and grew zuchinni and tomatoes in their backyards. Watts became notable for the enigmatic and bizarre wire and cement towers. They were built by some crazy Italian guy. The towers were a landmark for the town of Watts. People traveled from all over to get a look at them. No one would have predicted that the disgrace of race riots would eclipse their fame.
My maternal grandmother, had a bad heart. So it fell to Mom’s “Aunt Nanny” to raise her. When her mother passed on, my Mom was only 10 years old. That’s much too young to lose a parent. It was shortly after that she and my Grandpa moved by themselves to a boarding house. The Depression made their money disappear like a magician’s slight of hand. One day they had savings, the next it had vanished into thin air. Folks stood in front of the brick building that had been their neighborhood bank, and gazed, stunned, at the boarded windows and locked doors, where once they were welcomed to hand over their paychecks.
The comfortable boarding house Elanor and her father moved to was home to 12 people, all welcomed and made to feel like a family. The proprietor was a middle aged woman with wispy grey, thinning hair, and a ruddy face, the result of standing over boiling soup kettles day in day out. Young Elanor made the rooming house feel like home by standing jelly jars of wild flowers on embroidered hankies on her dresser. She plucked them from the front sidewalk, where they stubbornly grew inspite of the oppressive and withering heat of Southern California. She told me, “The rooms was sparse of furniture, but I tried to make them homey. The lady that ran it packed your Grandpa a sack lunch everyday.”
Still in her teens, Elanor was offered a job cleaning a young man’s room in the boarding house to earn some pocket money. She’d dust, make the bed, and clean the wash bowl. Later, to hear my Mom, put it, “Well, Fritz and I got romantic and I guess we started fiddl’in around, you could say.” At that critical point she wrote a letter to her Aunt Nanny for some advice on what to do.
Dear Aunt Nanny, Pop and I like the boarding house. The lady that runs it takes good care of us. A nice man, name of Fritz, asked me to do cleaning for him for money. The pay is good. Fritz says he likes me and I think I kind of like him too! Should I tell Pop? Do you think he would be mad? I’ll write again soon. I miss you. Love, Elanor Anne
By accident, or a quirk of fate, she left the letter on the cook stove. The boarding house landlady found it and handed it to Grandpa. “Haven’t read this, can’t make head nor tail out of the chicken scratch, ‘cept I see its from your daugher Elanor.” When Grandpa realized there was more than cleaning going on, he was fit to be tied.
That evening at the boarding house dinner table, to Mom’s mortification, infront of the lodgers, he laid his cards right on the table, cleared his throat and said gruffly to Fritz - “See here Fritz, what’s your intentions with my girl, Elanor?” My Mom, Elanor, had brown, wavy hair, peachy skin and cornflower blue eyes. If that weren’t enough to drive a fella crazy, her smile was framed by a pair of deep and beguiling dimples. It wasn’t a hard decision for the German gentleman to make! Clearing his throat and speaking firmly to my Grandpa, he replied, “Well, I wish her hand in marriage, sir.” “Well, I darn near had a conniption fit!” Mom confided later to Aunt Nanny. Then, giving it some thought - “Well, being hitched might be a good thing. Sure, why not!” So they got married. “That marriage sure pushed me into adulthood fast.” Mom said.
Wedded bliss disappeared faster than suds on stale beer when Elanor caught Fritz cheating on her just a few months later. “He kept saying he was going to Union meetings.” Mom told me. She got wise and concluded, “There couldn’t be that many meetings.” She was right. There was a scene, Fritz cried and told Elanor he loved her, but he said he loved the other woman too. Mom got a lawyer and went to court for a divorce. To her shock, she found out Fritz’s other woman was a first wife he was still married to. Bigamy. An ugly sounding word. The Judge, sympathetic, granted her an immediate annulment. Happily, Elanor Ann married again, cause otherwise I wouldn’t be here writing about this.
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Mom hooked up with my Dad, Champ, after he had whistled flirtatiously at her. That’s something guys did back in the 40’s. Whistling at a gal was flirtatious, not harrassment back then. It was just a way to let her know she was a "looker". No harm intended. Thinking about how the whistling thing is taken these days makes me wonder how such well-intentioned stuff gets so twisted and misunderstood?
Pop was Black Dutch. The term Black Dutch was a description borrowed by Indians to avoid persecution. It was deemed better to be Black Dutch or Black Irish than to be an American Indian. My Dad was one quarter Cherokee. Grandma Grace was able to get him a money payment cause my grandfather was on the Dawes Rolls in the Indian Territory. The Dawes Rolls was an index of “Names of Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory”, or Oklahoma as it is now know.
Physically Champ was a handsome, muscular man. He was however, missing a body part, an ear. He had lost his left ear, clear to his head, when he was in his teens and he wore a patch. That did not bother my mother. At first, she just invented a good story about the missing ear. She said she “Imagined he was a professional wrestler and the ear got bit off during a match.” Champ, quickly told her the truth about how he came to have just one ear, but I will recount that story later. Well, Elanor was hooked on Champ’s rugged good looks and honesty. She fell like a ton of bricks for him.
Oddly, Dad never cared for his name “Champ” very much. He told me, “It makes me sound conceited.” He was named after is father, Henry Champion Wood, a bootlegger and a rascal that suited a handle like that. Since Dad didn’t like Champ or Champion as a public name, he told folks to call him Woody. When I first heard someone at his work say, “Oh, that’s Woody’s kid,” pointing at me, I didn’t realize they were talking about Dad. I thought maybe I had another Pa and didn’t know it. If you counted the guys named Woody in Oklahoma the list would go from here to China and back. Mom always called Dad Champ, at home though. She liked his name, and I think he liked hearing her say it. Still, I’m glad they didn’t put the name Champion on my birth certificate! That’s a heavy burden to carry around.
Champ was a hard working, skilled, machinist with an 8th grade education. That level of schooling was typical for blue collar people in those times. When the Depression hit, even people with college degrees couldn’t get work. The Depression was the great equalizer. It made the rich poor, it made the poor even poorer, but the poor already had coping mechanisms, the rich did not. It was during the Depression, before Champ met Elanor, that he rode the boxcars. Champ said “Cause of the Depression, one day folks had money and a comfortable lifestyle, the next day they were living in hobo camps and riding the rails. There are no degrees to being poor. If you ain’t got no money you is poor, if you got a little money you are still poor.” Men would hear about a job or work by word of mouth, other times a flyer and they would chase it down. If there was a job in California, picking fruit, you rode the boxcars to get there. If there was WPA government work, digging ditches, building highways, you’d jump a boxcar to get there, and there were plenty of trains leaving the Tulsa Union Depot.
My Dad got a job back in Oklahoma so they could be near his mother, my Grandma Grace. With some money they pulled together, he and Elanor bought a one story house about four miles from downtown Bartlesville, on Seneca. It was a small, boxy house. It had a pitched roof and a one car garage stuck onto the left side. There were windows on each side of the front door giving it a pleasing, symmetrical look. It sat on a good amount of property. That’s the first home I recall. Mom and Dad planned a family carefully, because they had to watch every penny. They were blessed with a boy as the first child. That would be my older brother Steve. After a gap of time, my older sister Judy was born. Now they had a nice set, a boy, a girl - the family complete. I have a photo of them all together on the doily-draped settee in my Grandma’s front room. My Dad and Mom were sitting, Steve was standing, my Dad’s arm around him, Judy on my Mom’s lap. They looked happy, like it was a done deal. They certainly didn’t suspect that I would happen along six years later, inconveniently I understand and just days before Christmas. I was a hefty nine pounds, three ounces at birth. My head measured over 15” around.
“Christopher, your head was darn near as big as a cantaloupe.” Mom laughed. I was her little accident. She joked about that with Dad. Said “that little sperm was finely sieved, a real go-getter. It made its way through a microscopic pore in that condom.” I didn’t know what all of that meant. I did know what accident meant, however. I was the unplanned one. At some point, Mom and Dad, good parents that they were, thought we all should have a religious upbringing. Some close friends encouraged them to go to Kingdom Hall and become Jehovah’s Witnesses. It was there I learned Armageddon would end the world before I would turn 20 years old. So I figured there wasn’t much use to planning a long life. I was awed by that idea – as well as scared by it. So, to feel better about what might be a very short life, sometimes, I did bad things like playing hooky or setting off cherry bombs at the lake.
---end

"Stay'in with Grace"
Grandma Grace was a sturdy pioneer. Her family arrived in Oklahoma Territory from Arkansas in a covered wagon when she was a little girl, but if memory serves me, she said she was actually born in North Carolina. The family, my great grandparents, were looking to line up for the land rush. Harper’s Weekly, May 18, 1889 said, “In 1889 the opening to white settlement of a choice portion of Indian Territory in Oklahoma set off one of the most bizarre and chaotic episodes in world history…” One of the lucky families, they homesteaded their land and commenced building and farming. Bartlesville is where grownup Grace raised her own family, 2 boys and a girl.
Unfortunately, Grandma Grace had to divorce Grandpa in a time before it was socially acceptable for women to do such things. My Dad Champ, my uncle and aunt were just tykes. To Grandma’s consternation, Grandpa Henry Champion was revealed to be “crooked as a dog's hind leg”. Sometime after their second son was born, he started bootlegging to pay bills. He built an illegal still, and began running home brewed whiskey. Bootlegging was dangerous work, akin to growing a crop of marijuana these days. It was a wide spread activity during Prohibition. Sheriffs and their hound dogs sniffed out the secreted stills and bootleggers got took in, or worse, died in a shoot-out with the law. If they were caught they’d get sent to the pen, as bootlegging was a Federal offence during Prohibition. Grandpa was familiar with all the vices, non-payment of taxes, running whiskey, gambling, drinking and smoking. He just plumb liked vices that’s all. Even though Grace was forced to live with Henry in a tent with a dirt floor, for a spell, she still tried not to talk too poorly of him. “He wasn’t all bad, or we wouldn’t a got hitched, that’s for certain. Got hooked up with the wrong crowd. I couldn’t allow my young’uns to grow up with that kinda go’ins on around ‘em.” She told folks. Grace decided she would have no part or parcel of that kind of life.
Grandpa was constantly on the run from the law. We don’t know if the Sheriff ever caught up with him, but Grandma Grace didn’t hang around long enough after that to find out. Many years later, Mom told me she and my Dad met up with Grandpa Henry in California. He was warsh’in dishes for a living and slept in a cardboard box in the alley behind the café that employed him. So, as I said, Grandma Grace was divorced. She supported her young family by working at Phillips Petroleum in Bartlesville. It was the beginning of the oil boom in Bartlesville. Mr. Frank Phillips founded Phillips ‘66 in 1917 and the corporate headquarters were walking distance from Grace’s wood house on South Shawnee. Grace enjoyed her night work there. Daytime she cleaned people’s homes. Grace did what she knew best, she cleaned. Not a fancy-dancey career, but it provided a secure, and honest labor.
She never remarried. She raised her boys and one girl alone…did a darn good job too. She worked, “nose to the grindstone” as they say, for 25 years. Grace got good pay and a life long pension. Why, she drained Phillips Petroleum dry she lived so long! Sure Mr. Phillips never expected to shell out pension money for the next 40 years! She did very well managing her income over her lifetime. Her two jobs allowed her to double up on her house payments and pay off her mortgage. She was able to give both my Dad Champ, and my Uncle Kenneth, a nice wad of cash when they were adults. This was due to her establishing that my Grandpa Henry had Cherokee blood and was on the Indian Territory Rolls, therefore this money was owed to her by the government. It was this hard fought for money that enabled her give the money gifts to my Dad and Uncle.
Grace did have a girl, but my aunt had passed on early, shortly after childbirth, so it was just my Dad and Uncle Ken left. When Grandma gave Dad his money gift, he told us, “I’m go’in into business for myself.” The Jehovah’s Witness church thinks that is probably a good idea, being self-employed. They encourage it, often recommending starting something like a janitorial service, for instance. They believed one should try and be independent. So Dad took Grandma’s money gift and went into the oil business…well, oil, in a manner of speaking. He bought a Standard Oil filling station. The station had 4 pumps, a garage, and a small building that served as an office. The office had a desk, a coca cola cooler and maps for sale. Outside the garage, Dad proudly hung a sign “Mechanic on Duty”, cause that’s what he loved, the mechanics part, not the pumping gas part. The pumps were just secondary to the garage. He was a mechanic, not a grease monkey, a skilled, professional who probably belonged in the pits at the Indy 500.
Unfortunately the station never did much business. It was in a bad location. Dad struggled. He was convinced for a spell that there might be a chance at turning a profit. He believed he could drum up more business somehow, or maybe the corner was gonna get more traffic, get more hustle and bustle, I don’t know. During this period my Mom was working at the Northland bowling alley next door, trying to support his efforts in every way she knew how. Well, there were no profits from the station and the traffic didn’t pick up. To add insult to injury, he told us during the winter, the tiny office “was as cold as a miner’s rear-end in Montana.” Dad was warm blooded and couldn’t stand the bitter, cold Oklahoma winters in that ice box of an office. We even got him a portable heater. But it was “no go”.
The business went bust. Dad probably lost more than money. His pride was hurt cause he had to go back to his regular work. He had to go back to “work’in for the man”. As a side note, my Uncle Kenneth, did pretty darn well with the gift money Grandma gave him. He spent it on home improvements, like new siding for the house. He got my auntie a new kitchen stove and Hoover vacuum cleaner. Now I recall Grandma Grace used to say, “I’m a member of the Church of The Here and Now.” And she’d laugh. She didn’t take religion as seriously as Mom and Dad. She did however, lean towards 7th Day Adventists. Grandma never said anything negative to us kids about being Jehovah’s Witness though. She stated her opinion plainly, “It’s none of my affair”. She never put our family down for going to all those JW meetings. She was good about that. She also made sure us kids went to our Bible study when we stayed with her, cause she knew Mom and Dad wanted us to.
My Dad and my Uncle Kenneth spent many evenings in Grace’s front room, sitting on her sofa in absorbed in heated debates and squabbles over the bible and its writings. Uncle Kenneth didn’t go to church, like my Grandma. I think he had made up his own religion, but Mom told me he was Baptist. Discussing the bible was my Dad’s passion. He and Ken argued points back and forth. The good book has been the most studied book in history, let’s face it. In the Bible belt it is still a best seller. If folks couldn’t afford other books, they at least owned a Bible. It was entertainment, a good, exciting read, full of sex, violence, mysteries, and revenge! I reckon that’s why I got along good with my Grandma, religion being just nonsense to her. At that time I figured it was too.
I loved visiting my Grandma Grace. Just like my own home then in Tulsa, her house holds lots of memories for me. The house on South Shawnee was a small, single story, wood sided, white, bungalow. It had a pitched gabled roof. The gable covered a friendly front porch. A brick chimney jutted up from the dead center of the roof. There had once been a pot belly stove in the house, which had been replace by floor furnaces by the time I was born. The chimney, sticking up from the roof, remained as the only evidence. Lining the front walkway were billowing watermelon-colored crepe myrtle trees. As a kid I detested that name, Myrtle. I thought Myrtle must be the stupidest female’s name of all. Couldn’t figure why they would name a pretty plant like that, such a homely moniker. Grandma’s visitors came up a short sidewalk past the Crepe Myrtle and stepped onto the wood porch where a metal glider-settee sat to the right of the door. We kids spent many evenings on the glider watching the grey storm clouds move over the wide Bartlesville sky. Swinging gently in the humid evenings, we watched the firefly light shows and listened to the music of crickets and frogs. There doesn’t seem to be much “porch life” anymore. Folks these days isolate themselves on the backyard patio, a cold unfriendly cement slab. In the 1950’s sitting on the front porch after supper was the social thing to do. You could say hello to passers by, indulge in a little “porch to sidewalk” gossip. These days people want privacy so they migrate to the backyard. That’s too bad.
There was no formal entry to the home other than the porch. guests stepped smack dab into the frontroom. The frontroom was comfortable and serviceable. Two windows balancing the front door were layered with Venetian blinds and white sheer curtains that blew gently when the windows were open. The walls were covered in a soft, pink wallpaper with thin maroon, vertical stripes. There was a plain, frosted, dish-like light fixture with a single bulb in the center of the ceiling. The frontroom had a heavy living room suite that consisted of two armchairs, a matching hassock and a good sized divan. There were nice quality wood side tables and a couple of lamps with big drum shades. The shades were trimmed with maroon to match the wallpaper. Grace also had a cocktail table, but she would have called it a coffee table. I don’t think she ever had a cocktail in her life. There was a mahogany magazine rack and a console television set. Rounding out the furnishings was a tall sideboard, on which she placed family photographs. White doilies dotted the frontroom like snowflakes, under things, and on things. They were handmade by Grace and always clean and fresh. Grandma put her doilies out to protect the backs of the chairs and the 3-cushion divan. Seems my Dad and Uncle Ken took to wearing a lot of hair tonic in those days and the doilies kept their heads from making greasy impressions on the furnishings.
Grace had two pictures hung on the walls of the living room. They were placed way too high for my taste, but maybe that was the style of the day. To his embarrassment, and to my sister’s and my delight and amusement, one of those livingroom pictures was my brother Steve as a baby, lying on a blanket - buck naked. There was also a painting of a wolf standing on the side of a snow covered hill. The floors throughout the house were gleaming oak. There was an arched doorway that was the transition from the living room to the dining room. In the dining room there was mammoth rectangular, high quality, mahogany dining table, with extra leaves for family gatherings. It had an expensive custom pad Grace bought to be placed under her good linen tablecloth for family suppers. The matching chairs had elaborate carvings and turnings. There was a coordinating side board, on the high side, for serving. It too had a lot of fine carving and detail, like the table and chairs. Inside the side board Grandma kept her good silver, linens and china. Grace didn’t spare any expense when she was buying “company” items for her home. She made sure they were quality and would out last her, and they did.
There were 3 bedrooms in Grandma’s house. The front bedroom had some remodeling, so it had a walk in closet and it’s own door to the main bath. That room was let to a lady boarder for a short time. The other two bedrooms had no closets, but had tall, wood wardrobes. People call them armoires now, but that French word is too uppity and pretentious. They were freestanding closets with doors that often had full length mirrors. You hung your clothes in them. In the 1920’s, when the house on South Shawnee was built, folks didn’t waste square footage costs on items such as closets. Aside from the wardrobes, Grandma had an art deco bedroom suite with a dresser topped with a large round mirror. It was a yellowish blonde colored wood. There was a matching stool. A lady could sit and fix herself up very comfortably and conveniently in front of that big mirror. Grace had lots of creams and perfumes and an ivory handled comb and brush set. The bathroom in the house was newly fitted out with pink tub and pink sink and nice fixtures on each side of the mirror above the basin. It was hospital clean and smelled of pine cleaner all the time.
At the far back of the house, off the kitchen there was a laundry room which was actually a porch that had been enclosed for that purpose. That was where Grace kept her Maytag roll-around wringer-“warsher” combo. She hung laundry on a clothesline strung between two maple trees in the backyard. She ironed and starched everything, including sheets and her flour sack dishtowels. There was nothing comparable to the comfort of slipping into a bed a Grandma’s. The sheets were fresh and cool and smooth as silk. Her laundry smelled as it had been kissed by the sun and hugged by lilac.
Everything at Grace’s house smelled good... the floors of carnauba wax, the bathrooms of pine cleaner, the kitchen of bread, the bedrooms of cedar and lavender and her closets of spicy mothballs. The kitchen was spacious it seemed, looking back now, I can’t be totally sure of its spaciousness, since I was knee high to a grasshopper. It could have been an illusion, but I like to think it was spacious. Grandma had a fancy cooking range. It was a dazzling white enamel, had 2 ovens, a griddle, warming drawers and a huge hood, like a professional cooks. Her shiny white and chrome Frigidaire was always stuffed full of fresh produce and fresh baked goods. There were two tables in the kitchen. One for food preparation, the other for eating. The country size sink was deep and generous. She had a nice spray head installed and us kids all loved it. We enjoyed doing the dishes. We’d do them an assembly line. We fought to see who would get to use the sprayer. Grace would give us stacks of clean, ironed dish cloths to dry with.
Grace’s cooking was renowned. Our family, and my Uncle Ken’s would hit her house on Saturday morning and eat all day. Come evening, my Dad and Ken would plop down in the armchairs, rest their heads on those doilies, pop the top buttons on their pants, and breath a sigh of satisfaction. Our bellies would be so full and round Grace would roll us out to the car like barrels. Her larder was stocked full with roasts, chicken, fresh vegetables, homemade pickles, and big slices of icy cold melons. There were always pies, chocolate cakes, and bread cooling on her kitchen table. She was a one woman Horn and Hardard’s Cafeteria!
The family would make the 60 minute trip from Tulsa to Bartlesville in the Pontiac. Grace would greet us as our car pulled up to the curb on South Shawnee, waving from the front porch. Her long, graying hair would be fastened tightly at the back of her head with hair pins. She would be wearing a freshly ironed cotton print housedress with a matching apron with patch pockets. Humid and hot typically, she’d dab perspiration from her face with an embroidered hanky taken from the big patch pockets. She also kept extra bobby pins in the pockets, and sometimes, when we kids would least would expect it, she would pull out a small yo-yo or a roll of necco wafers.
There would be such a buzz of conversation between us all, but right away she would turn to me and ask, “Christopher, you want I should fix some Green Stuff today?” “Yeah! Please fix it Grandma Grace, please! Thank yoooooou!” So, obviously Green stuff wasn’t spinach. No Siree! It was a Lime Jell-O concoction that had everything but the kitchen sink in it. To start there was crushed pineapple, marshmallows, mayonnaise, cottage cheese, chopped nuts, chopped celery, and on and on ‘til it wasn’t even Jell-O anymore, it was an ambrosia, food for the Gods. She fixed the world’s best fried chicken too. Legendary. Batter coated, melt-in-your-mouth chicken. Served with heaps of fluffy mashed potatoes, thick skillet gravy made with the chicken leavings, a side of green beans and a glass of iced tea. It was all topped off with peach cobbler. Thank you Grace! After Colonel Sanders Chicken was introduced, she proclaimed him king of chicken, but we still thought hers was the world’s best!
Once during the summer she would take all three of us for a good ten days or so. Our days at Grandma’s were carefree. Steve, Judy and I woke and leisured around in our PJ’s, shuffling back and forth from our oatmeal bowls in the kitchen to the TV in the frontroom. It was an unhurried pace. It felt luxurious. Grace had already been up since 5 a.m. starting coffee, laundry, a pot roast for dinner, talking to herself all the time. Later we all might tag along with her to pay her bills or grocery shop, stopping for coca colas at a drug store fountain. A couple times during the summer stay, we would rent a hand crank ice cream maker at the Safeway store and lug it home. We put in salt, cracked ice, and cream, then we’d take turns cranking. We made vanilla. With vanilla as a base, you could dump all kinds of good stuff on, like Bosco, fresh strawberries or peaches.
When we were stay’in with Grace, Judy, Steve, and I got to watch all our favorite TV shows, like Truth or Consequences and Queen for a Day. We’d play endless, on going games of checkers and monopoly. We’d enjoy mowing Grandma’s grass, playing marbles and hopscotch on the front sidewalk. Sometimes Grandma Grace would say to me, “Here, Christopher, here’s some money, now run on down to the corner and fetch us back some coca colas.” I’d run down to a small hotel on the corner of South Shawnee and Cherokee. It had a soda cooler with bottles deep in icy water. To get the bottles out you ran them through a maze, then put your coins in to release them. It was like a game. We didn’t have many toys at South Shawnee. We did not really need ‘em. We enjoyed the simple.
During volatile weather, we sat together on the porch listening to thunder and watching lightening strikes. We caught fireflies in jars, caterpillars, and frogs. One year we collected alien looking cicada skeletons. South Shawnee – it was kid paradise in the summer. Grace never traveled far from home. The longest time she was ever away from her house was when she went to California with us on vacation. That was about two weeks. She just plumb liked being at her house, and so did we. She came to Tulsa once or twice to see us. We took her to see Misty my horse. Grace was a “homebody” person as they say. She kept herself busy with housekeeping, sewing, “warshing”, cooking, and cleaning. Walking distance to just about everything, Grace didn’t own an automobile. Not having an automobile kept her more active and healthier than most folks. She walked to town to pay bills and shop. She would walk every couple days to Safeway for food, carrying 2 full bags back home by herself. It was at least 10 blocks through residential neighborhoods. Even when she took me with her, it was never a requirement that I should have to carry anything. She was a self reliant, strong woman.
Grace talked a blue streak. Non stop. If we weren’t around to talk to, I’d hear her talking to herself. Early in the mornings, in the kitchen ‘fore we kids were up, she’d go over her whole day with herself out loud. She’d answer her own questions when called for. One thing I won’t forget is the “Hi, Mabel” telephone at her house. You picked up the receiver and said “Hi, Mabel, kin you get me Seneca 385? How’s you and the kids do’in these days by the way? That so? Well, I surely do understand what your say’in there! Thanks a lot Mabel…” Later Grandma got a dial phone, but it wasn’t fun like the “Hi Mabel” phone. Grace could talk on the phone for hours. Don’t ever remember just who she would talk to, besides my Uncle or my parents. Talked so much there was a time when she lost her voice completely for six months. To a talker that is hell. Grandma near went insane not being able to gab. Got very depressed. You’d think she’d lost her own best friend. Grace out-lived all her children, then died, fulfilled I hope, at the age of 85.
"SLEDGE" ...a Fourth of July Story
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. That, I would say, sums up this whole episode. Anyway, this is about guns, firecrackers, things that go bang…these are a big tradition with Oklahoma kids. All this comes from Oklahoma be'in just a territory for so very long in the history of the United States. It didn’t even get statehood ‘til the early 1900’s. Oklahoma was chock full of Indians and cowboys and plumb full of outlaws and sheriffs. The “Oklahoma Territory” was the wild and wooly west.

My brother Steve had a genuine Wyatt Earp, embossed leather, double holster with a pair of silver, long barreled cap pistols. I inherited them. Steve, being six years older was the recipient of good, shiny, new stuff. I was the receiver of well, used stuff. That’s just the way it works in blue collar families. The older kid got the brand-spanking new stuff, the younger got brand spanking-broke. I was pretty lucky though. I got my brother’s Huffy, I got the holster and pistols, much later I got Steve’s guitar. Can’t really complain. As a Jehovah’s Witness, you didn’t have a Christmas or birthdays like other kids, so these kinds of toys were bought at other times of the year, and often they were given to us by Grandma Grace.

It was Grandma that first gave us kids BB guns. BB guns? Us kids couldn’t believe it! Guns were not the evil things they are now, I remind the reader. People used them for hunting, self defense, and respected them. Grandma Grace let us shoot the BB guns in the house too! Grace always had those fat, hefty Sears and Roebuck catalogs hanging around at her house. The three of us, me, Steve, and Judy, frittered away plenty of hours leafing through the catalogs. The toy pages were damp with drool and dog eared a plenty. We would pick out all the toys we wanted to get. Not the toys we would actually ever get, just the ones we wished we could get. I would memorize the descriptions and specifications for toys like electric trains, fancy bikes, wagons, and cowboy rifles. The very best part of the Sears and Roebuck catalog was the women’s brassier and underwear pages. Whoa! What a boy could learn from the Sears ladies underwear pages. It was as good as Playboy Magazine.

When the Sears and Roebuck catalogs got out of date, Grandma let us prop them up in her big front room. We could take aim with our BB guns, pull the trigger, and fire off BB's right smack dab into the into the thick Sears catalogs. The BB’s would pierce the center of the catalog and get trapped there. We run over, pick up the books and shuffle the pages, then pick out the BB’s, and reload our BB guns. The clatter of those BB’s in the tubes and the odor of gun metal oil sticks in my mind today, it was pure perfume to a 10 year old kid!

Grandma knew how to keep kids entertained, that’s why we loved visiting her in Bartlesville at her house. She wasn’t a church goer. “I don’t do that religious nonsense, but I’m not aginst a body go’in ta church from time to time. I'm from the church of here and now.” she would say. I think she knew, then, that church was choking the very life out of us kids.

Yes, Grandma introduced us to the excitement of BB guns. We also had ourselves some fine looking cap guns. I loved caps a lot cuz you could buy a roll and didn’t even need the gun to ‘fire’ 'em off. I just took what was handy, usually a rock, maybe an old hammer, and hit the caps hard to fire them off. I loved that Pop! and the addictive, heady smell of the spent caps. It filled all your senses.

My friend Jimmy Frye and I decided to fire off a couple rolls of caps one afternoon. My best buddy Jim Frye was pretty wild for a grammar school kid. His wild side never showed up at his house though, cause his Mom, Helen, was a paranoid schizophrenic. Helen was a darn good Mom and a darn good neighbor and friend too, but sick, very sick.

The illness, Schizophrenia, didn’t show early in her life, it got bad as she grew older. It manifested itself in paranoia and delusions. Most of the time she seemed normal, to me. I liked going over to Jim’s house and talking to Helen, since my mother was usually at work, and Helen was a stay-at-home Mom. Helen said to me, “Christopher, you’re my window on the world.” She could talk a blue streak. Helen had tongue enough for 10 rows of teeth, like they say. She usually wanted to hear the gossip from me, since she never hardly left the house.

I talked to her while she was ironing. Ironing soothed me and was medicine to Helen too. I liked the sound of the steam, the fragrant smell of warm starch. Helen took her laundry and rolled it tight while it was still damp. Later in the ironing ritual, Helen would unroll it, smooth it some, and sprinkle it with water from an empty soda bottle. She was the ironing priestess, sprinkling and anointing shirts with holy water. Clouds of fragrant steam would rise up from the clothes like incense as the iron glided over them.

Ironing was like smoothing the wrinkles out of your life. One afternoon she asked, “Christopher, do you want to learn how to iron good?” “Yes, ma’am!” So I got taught ironing. Know’in my family didn’t have too much, she offered to pay me to help her iron. She paid by the piece. So I ironed everything, sheets, underwear, socks, there was plenty of the Frye’s ironing to go around. I still iron my own clothes. I iron better than any woman, except maybe Helen.

From time to time Jimmy would tell me that they were taking his mom to the sanatarium for treatments. She would stay there for months. It would break him up so bad you couldn’t talk to him for days after she left. Electroconvulsive therapy is what they gave people that had schizophrenia. That’s electric shocks. Just the sound of it sent chills through us. Sounded like it would cure the ill, but kill the patient, and often did.

When Helen returned from her treatments we all used to have a big welcome home party and everyone was happy again for a time. I recall one time we heard she needed to go back to the assylum and she got wind of it somehow. The hospital people came and couldn’t find her. They searched everywhere. We found her in a closet in our house. She she was hiding, all balled up in a corner under some jackets. We had to turn her in, but we really didn’t want to.

Eventually, the paranoia consumed her. Helen told us people were trying to kill her. She heard voices. She believed her husband was a criminal wanted by the law. So, cause Jimmy’s Mom was sick, Jimmy Frye didn’t act up at his house. He would save up his bad behaviors and act up with me. Jim was Huck Finn, to my Tom Sawyer.

It was around 2 p.m. on an afternoon, near July 4th. I know that for sure, since whenever the Independence Day holiday started to creep up, we started dream’in about firecrackers and things that go Bang! in the night. Long before the 4th, jerry-built fireworks stands got erected all over the state…and burned down all over state. See, kids would buy their explosives and before they even got outa sight of the stand, they’d set them off. That’s how come the stands would explode. Hazardous, business, fireworks. In the 1950’s there was so much open land in Oklahoma, the laws on fireworks weren’t strict like now. So we knew when the 4th was upon us, we could smell the gunpowder and smoke in the air.

It was hot at that hour. Jim and I were just sitting around on the curb. Jimmy was a genius savant. With that kind of genius, comes a handicap. His was dyslexia. Jim’s looks belied his intelligence though. Jimmy had brown, stick straight hair that resembled monkey fur and a receding forhead which seemed to contradict his genius. If you can’t be handsome, be smart my Grandma would say.

Jim and I were watching the cars to pass time. We both liked fine automobiles. As we assessed each passing vehicle, we discussed our yearnings to drive race cars. We would argue about which models had the best grilles, the best fins. After we tired of that we started spitting. I enjoyed spitting whenever I could. For a guy it was a statement more than a rude act. Sometimes it was just entertainment, rarely was it a necessity. Jimmy Frye was the Grand Poobah of spitters. So we sat on the curb and had a spit-off, each vying for the coveted championship. We measured the distance carefully with a ball of string if there was any dispute.

The Tulsa heat finally got to us that afternoon. The spitting dried up our mouths and the only cure was ice cream. “Listen, ya hear that music, well, do ya hear that?” “Hear what?” Jim said. “The Frostie truck! The ice cream truck!” “Nah, that wasn’t the truck. That’s someone’s record player.” I answered glumly. We stuck out our ears to make certain. There was silence, the music was there, but it was eerily floating in a parallel universe.

The music from the truck was unique. The trucks had electronic magic boxes that sent canned jingles out through a loud speaker. Ice Cream Truck music was different from “normal” music. The cheerful music is universally recognized by all children and attracts them like the Pied Piper drew mice.

Kids have devised unconventional ways of eating ice cream. With a drumstick in a sugar cone, you bite off the bottom of the cone and suck the ice cream out. With a sandwich, you mush down so the ice cream oozes from the sides. You lick it ‘til you have the 2 chocolate cookies left. There wasn’t a lot of ice cream in a Dixie Cup, but you got a tradable photograph of a TV star on the underside of the lid. Lucille Ball was my favorite. The bonus was the wooden paddle spoon. After polishing off the ice cream, you could chew on the wood spoon until supper.

When the truck finally stopped, we only had money enough a Popsicle, which we broke in half and shared. Popsicle’s were a nickel. We bought Lime and and licked hard until we got our tongues bright green like they were coated with algae. If we got lucky, we could stick them out at unsuspecting girls. We saved the sticks to chew. That’s about all that was going on around two or three p.m. in the afternoon, sometime close to July 4th. Until Jimmy and I decided to fire off some caps and things got somewhat more exciting.

Jimmy looked over at me, and said nonchalantly, “Got any caps? We could fire off some caps?” He spit for emphasis. Jim could spit 30 miles. He was a world class spitter. My spit was too heavy. It usually landed on me. “May have. Reckon I stashed some under my bed bout 2 days ago, fore my Mom got home. Ya want for me to go and look?” I answered, brightening at the idea we may actually have something to do. “Sure, go get em, we’ll fire em off with a hammer, right here. I went into the house, checked under my bed and found two brand new unopened tightly rolled packs of exploding caps. I brought them out, holding them in the palm of my hand, straight out in front of me, offering them up to Jimmy like a gift. Well, it was his idea, he could be captain. I was bored. “Here.” I said nonplussed. “What do you want to do?”

“Let’s get one of your old man’s hammers and we kin fire ‘em off in your garage.” Jimmy had made his decision. I complied, “Yeah, if we do it in there should sound like we’re in an echo chamber, come on, let’s go.” I trusted Jim’s idea to be a good one cause Jim Frye was a savant genius as I said. With Jim, his strange affliction of dyslexia was just a quirk, nothing that would ever hold him back. He worked with it. Look at it this way, Albert Einstein had dyslexia, so did General Patton, Leonardo DiVinci and Winston Churchill. Some, just made it work for them, not against them.

Dad had a slew of tools cause he was a machinist. Jim and I plodded into the garage through the side door. I looked over at Dad’s work bench and could see a hammer laying on top, but next to it, leaning up aside the bench, was a big womping sledge hammer. I had seen Dad bust up concrete with it. It was an awesome tool.

“Go on Chris, get the hammer,” Jimmy commanded. I hesitated and squinted my eyes tight, cause I was hatching a plan. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “I got something better than a dinky ball head hammer. Jesus H! I got something much better!” I said excitedly. Now, I had a conceived of a plan that made the hair stand up on my forearms. “What, what idea?” Jim said. “See that big sledge hammer by the side there? Let’s use it instead.” “Yeah! Let’s use that! Wow! That’ll be neato.” Jimmy walked to the bench and grabbed a hold of a big handled hammer. “Not that one!!” I said excitedly. “Jesus H. that’s the one that has a head that flies right off when you swing it. Seen my Dad try to wallop a piece of board. When he brought it down, I saw he flung the head clear across the garage! Boy did he cuss. Get the other one, the one leaning ‘ginst the wall behind it.”

I have to stop, and say here I was a good kid. I didn’t mean harm. Jim went over and heaved up the sledge hammer. It was a steel headed hammer with a nice hickory handle. It weighed roughly 10 pounds. “Watch out, don’t drop it on your foot.” I cautioned Jim. “Yeah.” Not a problem. He dragged it over. I started to tear open the rolls of caps. “Hey! Use the both those darn packs! It’ll be awesome!” Jim said. I agreed, “Yeah, both! It’ll be awesome, like a firecracker!” It took the two of us to haul it upward towards to my shoulders. We scrunched our eyes closed and I let it fall with full force on the tightly rolled caps. “Jesus H!”

The explosion was ear splitting. Like an M80. The noise reverberated off the cement floor of the garage like an echo chamber, as you could imagine. It sent out a dangerous shower of sparks that flew everywhere willy nilly. The pungent smell of gun powder mingled with the smell of gasoline and machine oil, and lingered acrid in the air. It was an ear splitting explosion. We stood shell-shocked. After coming to from our stupor or shell shock, we swept up the evidence of the “blast” from the cement floor and examined the floor for cracks.

It took the both of us to drag the sledge hammer back by the bench. We were lucky we didn’t set the whole dang garage on fire. Outside of the garage, Jimmy looked at me with wide eyes. “My ears are hurting. That was louder ‘n gun powder.” “Whaat??” I said, “My ears are ringing. I can’t hear. I can’t hear myself talk’in neither.” “Yeah, me too.” Said Jim. “You gonna tell anyone?” he added. “Nah. I’m not Catholic. I don’t have to confess to nobody.” I said. “That’s not what I meant stupid. Ya know sometimes you’re as dumb as a bucket of rocks. Well, Sledge, I’m going home now.” Jim walked on over to his house and disappeared for the rest of the day. I went to into my house and lay down on my bed. I prayed I didn’t smell of gunpowder.

My ears were rung for 3 days. I didn’t tell no one for fear I would get lectured. It had been a good summer so far and we were all going to New York City soon on vacation. I wanted to go with a clean slate.
.

"The Ironing Priestess"
Jimmy's mom Ada was a good neighbor, but she was very sick. Ada Brown's sickness wasn't evident earlier in her life. That person closest, her husband, did not see it, or maybe he just wanted to pretend it was not there. The sickness grew larger, and more pronounced over time, just as a tumor does. The symptoms, forgetfulness, a strange stubbornness, and obsessive compulsive behavior worsened with each passing year. After a time, it loomed, magnified, and you couldn't ignore the changes in poor Ada anymore.

Some family members were in denial that anything at all could be wrong with pretty Ada. By the time they realized the seriousness, it was too late. Blame went around in the family, each person tossing it like a hot potato, but the family gene that caused her mental illness, schizophrenia, was never mentioned. For the most part, early on, she seemed normal and we got along very well from day to day. I liked visiting with Ada my neighbor, and my best friend's mom. My own mother was usually at work waitressing at the bowling alley. Ada was my surrogate.

Ada would say to me, “Christopher, you’re a joy and a window on the world for me.” She could talk a blue streak. She had tongue enough for 10 rows of teeth, as okies say. She usually wanted to hear the neighborhood gossip as she hardly left the house. The agoraphobia was yet another clue. After school I'd run next door and find her doing her laundry, ironing, and chain smoking in front of the television, watching Queen for a Day. That's when we gossiped and talked.

Her ironing soothed me and was therapy for her too. The process was much like smoothing out the wrinkles in your life. I sat on the divan in her front room, and leaned comfortably on the sweet smelling pile of laundry, fresh from the clothesline. As Ada ironed, I listened to the soft sound of hot steam hissing out from the holes in the bottom of the iron. The wood frame ironing board creaked rhythmically under the tremendous pressure Ada put on it. Sometimes I feared it would just crack in half. The fragrant aroma of warm starch on damp shirts filled the room. As she ironed, the smoke from her burning cigarette curled up and mingled with the steam like a wafting incense and circled her head like a silver veil. She would ceremoniously sprinkle each new piece with water from an empty pop bottle, as you would anoint a baby with holy water at baptism... Ada was the ironing priestess.

One day Ada asked me, “Christopher, do you want to learn how to iron?” “Yes ma’am!” I replied. I thought back to when I had tried my hand at laundry, one night when my mom was waitressing at the bowling alley. I had put bleach in the tub right onto my Hawaiian shirt and the red Hibiscus flowers disappeared...a laundry mystery. I surmised I might be better at ironing, having watched Ada so much. Knowing my family was always short of money, she offered to pay me. She paid me two cents an ironed, folded piece. So I ironed everything, sheets, shirts, socks, and even her white brassieres. At first she lowered the ironing board for me, and the old GE iron felt like an anvil. I burned my fingers on the steam, but gradually the muscles in my arm got stronger and my fingers agile, as I deftly tugged at the shirt collars to get them tight and smooth as I pressed.

As Ada's sickness worsened, Jimmy, her son, would tell me not to go over to his house, because they were taking Ada to the sanitarium for treatments. He and I weren't sure what the treatments were, but we knew they were not beauty treatments. Jimmy cringed and his eyes teared if he heard kids call it an insane asylum. She would be there, in the gloomy brick building for a month or so. It would break him up so bad you couldn’t talk to him for days after she left. Electro-convulsive therapy is what they administered to her there. That’s electric shocks. The idea sent chills through me. It sounded like it would cure the ill, but kill the patient. It often did.

When Ada returned from her treatments our family and hers had a welcome home party and everyone was happy again, for a time. I would go over and talk, and help her iron. Things would seem normal. Eventually, though, the paranoia just consumed her. Ada told us people were trying to kill her. She heard voices, hallucinated strange images none of us could see. She firmly believed her husband was a criminal and felon wanted by the FBI.

We heard she needed to go back again to the sanitarium. Typically Ada's husband would not tell her in advance of taking her there, just spring it on her, so she did not have time to fret or flee. This time she got wind of it and bolted. The Brown's had to call the hospital people. They came out to the house in a white van, but couldn’t find her. They searched everywhere. After a time my Mom found her in a closet at our house. She was hiding, in a fetal position under some jackets. She gave out a cry like a cornered animal when the closet door opened. This distressed my mom greatly. We had to turn her in, but we really didn’t want to. After that we did not see Ada again.

I had little understanding of the workings of the mind at the age of ten. Sometimes mental illness can sneak up on a person in subtle ways, sometimes it can be like a rampaging elephant in the room. It's a curious disease they are still not sure how to cure, or if there is even a fix for it. It's the wiring in the brain. Somehow it gets short circuited.

I grew up, left Tulsa, and moved to California. I lost track of what happened to Ada and Jimmy. I got married. My wife told me, as a newlywed, that I ironed better than a woman. I told her I owed that skill to Ada, the Ironing Priestess.

---end

"Bowery Blues"

Excitement was peaking when our family finally reached New York City in our old Pontiac. It had been a long and eventful trip from Oklahoma. We were ready for the convention. The Jehovah's Witnesses held one every year, but because people came from all over the world to hear the preaching, the hotels we could afford were all full. It was hard for attendees with limited funds to find a place to stay. Our family finally got rooms in a large brownstone near the Bowery in lower Manhattan. They were offered to us by the owners who were also Jehovah's Witnesses. Church members are obliged to open their homes to other JW’s if asked, but our rooms were not great digs, and we had a shared bathroom, shared with just about everyone in the building! The place was a tenement, but we were grateful to have somewhere to hang our hats.

The brownstone was dingy, old, and rundown. The interior smelled stale, the rooms were narrow and deprived of all sunlight. Street side there was a wide set of cement stairs, called a stoop. It ran up the front of the building then veered off to another rundown, dingy, brownstone apartment that mirrored ours. The whole thing was pure ugly to me. I came from the land of emerald grass, lakes, and billowy, flowering trees. The land called Oklahoma. The contrast of the brownstone tenement in the Bowery to our Oklahoma homestead seemed surreal, like an episode from the twilight zone. I’m told these days, the brownstones and the Bowery are getting gentrified. Young and prosperous yuppies are moving in fast, but you can’t fix ‘em up enough for my taste, nor erase the memory of what had once been.

Early into the stay, I braved the shared bathroom scheme at the brownstone. We had a shared bathroom at home of course, but I never had to share with a stranger. I ran a tub of water for a bath. I jumped in and settled down in the warm water. There was one hard, quick knock on the bathroom door. I froze and the door opened wide. A fat, colored man walked in. He looked at me and mumbled something. I tried my best to be invisible, sinking downward in to the water until it touched my mouth. Just then he yanked down his huge pants and plunked himself down on the commode seat. The porcelain moaned and creaked under his enormous weight. I thought it might crack and shatter and all the toilet water would come pouring out onto the floor along with everything else. It was a nightmare vision. Now, I realized I was a little, white kid sitting there in the tub, naked, mere inches from this big, colored man, whom I did not know, and did not want to know. What's more, it didn’t look like he was gonna get up and leave anytime soon, because he suddenly reached down and grabbed a newspaper by the toilet and started reading it. I tried to ignore him. I held my breath…a long time. Good thing I was a champ at doing that, because the whole ordeal lasted way longer than I would have wished.

New York City was as exciting as my Dad had predicted. We were curious about everything. My brother, sister, and I really needed some leg stretching so we went to Central Park. We ran around and played tag, enjoying open space and fresh air after the long confining car trip. I got distracted watching several people as they dragged and tugged 6 or more dogs on leashes, struggling as they walked to keep order among that many dogs. This peaked my curiousity. How come people who lived in the city in apartments had so many dogs!

“They aren’t their dogs,stupid.” My brother told me. “Well, if they ain’t their dogs, whose dogs are they?” I replied. “Those people are professional dog walkers, they are walking rich people’s dogs while the owners are at work. They get paid to do it! They just go, collect the dogs up each morning, walk ‘em here at the park, then take ‘em back later.” Well, I never got over that concept. Professional Dog Walkers, It was an amazing world.

Back in Tulsa we had a dog. We didn’t put it on a leash and walk it. Wouldn’t a paid anyone to walk it neither! There weren’t any leash laws where we lived, so we all just let the dogs run wild. If they came home at the end of the day, that was fine, if they didn't, someone else would feed them. We didn’t have fancy dogs either, we had mutts. Our family had a black, three-legged dog we were darn proud of. Mom saved it from the pound. That three-legged dog could out run a deer. Three legs never held him back. For a time, that crazy, dumb, dog only had two legs. One of his three had to get a splint at the vet. “How’s he going to walk now?” Mom asked the vet. The vet smiled, “Don’t worry, he'll figure it out.” He said. Well, that dog surprised everyone. He used his two good legs on opposite sides of his body and spun his tail like a helicopter rotor to chase after his hated arch enemy, the Boxer next door. We had a movie camera and took pictures of it. If there’s enough motivation, a dog can go two-legged, no problem! I decided, after going to Central Park, I might want to be a dog walker when I grew up. Easy money that.

The convention was supposed to be the focus of the trip naturally, so when we weren’t sight seeing, we were at the stadium. There were important and notable keynote speakers. I endured a ton of preaching and religious instruction, but sitting in bleachers, after a while, I would just go numb from it all and turn my brain off.

To my immense satisfaction, I found I could sneak out of the bleachers, by ducking under the seats and lowering myself down carefully onto the walkway behind the stadium. I would head straight for the concession stands. I learned how to make snow cones on the Bliz-Whiz Snow-Kone machine from a concessionaire. He let me help when it was busy. He had a ton of exotic syrup flavors, like Black Cherry, Orange-Pineapple, Tangerine and Lemon-Lime. We became buddies. I decided, after meeting the concessionaire, that selling snow cones would be a more fun choice than dog walking. Anyway, that’s how I passed my convention time. I think it was well spent.

While we were there in New York, the Atlantic Ocean drew us like magnets, offering relief from the humid, stifling, July weather in city. We were from land locked Oklahoma and the ocean, stretching to the horizon and beyond was humbling. My parents braved the water for a dip, but to me the salt water was as cold as a polar bear’s behind. So my brother and sister buried me with sand and after we chased each other and threw seaweed. Regrettably, we did not go to the top of the Empire State Building. I wanted to real bad. We just didn’t have time. That was a major disappointment! Back home the first thing out of Jim Frye’s mouth would likely be, “Well, did ja spit off the Empire State Building?” He was a renowned spitter at school, having broke all records for distance. I would have to let him down easy. He would say, “Christ, what’s the use of going to New York City, if ya don’t spit off the Empire State Building!”

As long as live though, I will never forget The Bowery. It will be etched in my mind forever. Nothing could have prepared me for what I had seen there. The Bowery was once rich farm country and the name was derived from the Dutch word meaning "farm". As time passed the area grew and evolved into an elegant place to live. Then big theaters and clubs got built, but over time, as it declined, it attracted vagrants, sailors, and a seedier group of people.

Eventually the Bowery just turned into a skid row. Unfortunately, that’s the Bowery we saw when we visited. There were derelict, dirty and ragged alcoholic, men, white and colored lying together on the sidewalks and begging for money and handouts. The buildings were in disrepair and falling down. There was filth and garbage in the gutters and alleys. It stunk and what it said about the world scared me.

I thought about the Jehovah's Witness convention and its message I had listened to. The Bowery was an example of the world God wanted to fix. Seeing the slums made me ponder the idea of God destroying the world, and creating a new paradise. I started to hope that would come true. I hoped the sickness and ills would be healed, and the dead would rise up and enjoy paradise along with everyone else. If it did come true, I thought, those old skid row bums would sure be surprised and happy.
---end
"First Day of School"
On my first day of kindergarten, my Mom, Elanor Anne, took me. Life was happy go lucky, warm and wonderful, for this five year old, but school would change that.

At 7:00 a.m. there were kids all over Tulsa rising out of their rumpled bed-sheet cocoons complaining. Their mothers and fathers had tried to break them of their nocturnal summer habits, but failed. Kids had become accustomed to staying up late to watch Gunsmoke and Jack Parr. Today, with tangled hair and bleary, sleep filled eyes, they stood whining about the first day of school having jumped up and bitten them and taking them totally by surprise – but not me, my whole life had been building to this very day, and I seized it with relish, like a junk yard dog being thrown a piece of sirloin.

That beautiful morning, Mom said in a breezy manner, “Christopher, I’m gonna drop you off at your new school on my way to the diner.” Mom worked on the corner of South Yale in Tulsa, at a hamburger joint called Whataburger. It was kid heaven having your mom work at a burger joint. Whataburger’s slogan was “Just like you like it.” Their secret wasn’t in the sauce, it was burgers put together on a long, rectangular bun. You could really wrap your lips around them. Whataburger has been in business over 50 years now and they are still rated “best burger in Tulsa”, much to the angst of their competition, Lotaburger. Lotaburger had tried a sound-alike name, without the same success, because they didn’t engineer their burgers like Whataburger's. My mom did a stint at Lotaburger too, before she went to work at the bowling alley..

Clothes for school were laid out the night before by Mom. I had no sense of color or fashion at five, show me a kid who does. If she had let me make the decision about my duds, I would have worn my Aloha shirt with the hibiscus flowers. It had been a gift from the Fryes, who lived next door. Jimmy Frye was my best bud and his family had money and could visit exotic places like Hawaii. They brought me the shirt and a piece of coral, which was dyed a fluorescent pink. I knocked the coral off my bookcase one night and it shattered on our cement slab floor like a piece of glass. A year or so later, I tried washing the Aloha shirt by myself one night when my Mom was working. I added bleach and all the Hibiscus flowers magically disappeared. When I was five, the Aloha shirt was the best I had ever owned though.

Predictably, Mom put out a conservative brown striped polo shirt and my corduroys. I called them musical pants because they made an annoying sound like a grasshopper when your legs rubbed together.

When I came out of the bathroom that morning, Mom gave me the once over and rhymed, “Well, Chrissy don’t you look spiffy!” “Aw, Mom.” “You look pretty like a nurse.” That’s what her waitress outfit and white shoes made her look like. In my mind, any uniform garnered respect and admiration.

In the kitchen, I sat down in front of a bowl of Wheaties, just like thousands of other kids were doing almost at that very same moment. Like them, I studied the box in a sleepy stupor. I couldn’t read it of course, just looked it all over quite thoroughly. I loved the cereal and virtually survived on it - since my mother worked. It was frequently supper too. It was my hands-down favorite and it also made a great carp bait. You just mushed the Wheaties in a paper cup with cherry coca cola to make a dough. You placed the resulting ball of dough on your hook and the carp practically begged to be dinner. I don’t know if it was the Wheaties or the cherry coke flavor the fish hankered for, but it worked.

My empty Melmac bowl bounced on the bottom of our sink when I tossed it in, then Mom and I left the house. I bent to check my shoe laces, before I exited the screen door, since I had just learned to tie a bow. My shoes were Buster Browns and Grandma Grace had bought them for me. Then I gave a last check to my head with my hand. Yup, my cowlick was lay’n down flat. Mom said, “You smell good Christopher.” That was the green Palmolive. My Dad used the orange Dial soap, but said that was too strong for me.

Mom deftly backed our Pontiac, a huge boat of a car, from under the carport, and a few blocks later we arrived at Lilah Lindsey Grammar School. We parked and Mom grabbed me by the hand as I got out of the car. She squeezed it hard to give me confidence and my first day jitters must have gone through her like an electric current. “Don’t be scared Christopher!” She said, sensing that dread that was now overtaking me.

Mom held the double door open and I entered an abyss. The hallway was cavernous and dim, our footsteps echoed as my mother pulled me along. Foreign odors suddenly flew up my nostrils. It smelled different from home. Our house smelled comfortable like dogs, socks, and meatloaf. This place smelled uneasy and institutional. I heard eerie voices and piano music floating down the hall towards us.

Abruptly Mom stopped in front of the lobby display case. I saw a carefully laid out arrangement of Indian relics consisting of a beaded deerskin pouch, a foot long steer horn, some feathers that looked like turkey, and a buffalo rib rattle. There was also an old tintype photograph of the school’s namesake in the center of the display. “Lilah Denton Lindsey” Mom read out loud from the engraved brass plate beneath it. Then she read to me from the yellowed sheet of paper, neatly typed, lying next to the photograph.

Apparently, Lilah Lindsey, the school’s namesake, was a Creek and Cherokee Indian woman. She married a white fella, a civil war officer. She was the first Creek woman to get a college degree, an activist before it was fashionable, and Tulsa’s first teacher. She was also known for her long, hip-length hair, the typed paper said.

The photo showed an unsmiling lady with a full face and dark hair piled up into a tiny donut shape on top of her head. It was once a fashionable hairdo I guess, but pretty odd looking to me, and she appeared to have just sucked a lemon. People’s expressions were solemn in photographs of that time period. Not cause they were mad at having their picture made, but because they had to hold their pose so long. If you’d had been smiling your face would have cracked, teeth would have dried out and your lips would have stuck to them. So they didn’t smile. You couldn’t blink neither, or you would have your eyes closed in the resulting photo and end up looking like a corpse being propped up. The photographs of that time were more record keeping than entertainment. In the old photograph, Lilah was wearing a somber black dress with a locket. I suddenly, and illogically thought my teacher might be Indian and look just like her. I was worried.

There were lots of Indian kids at school. At least thirty percent of the student body was either black or red. Segregation had just ended in Oklahoma. Things were integrated now, and everyone mixed together. They did not mix with me though, because I belonged to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and most kids were told by their parents to stay away from me.

We finished looking at the lobby display case and Mom continued to pull me farther and father down the dim hallway. We arrived at the kindergarten door and pushed it open. Across the polished tiled floor we walked towards my new teacher. My teacher stood back lit by the windows. At that moment she looked a lot like the photo of Lilah Lindsey, dark and gloomy. The children were sitting pow-wow style in a circle on the floor. Around the walls I saw shelves full of blocks, jars of colorful finger paints, fat crayons, and picture books. There were some rag rugs rolled up in the corner for our nap times and there was a metal crate filled with glass bottles of milk.

My teacher’s name, Mrs. Garrett, was written in cursive on the chalkboard, whatever good that would do, since we kids could not read. I gave silent thanks to the Almighty, when, in contrast to the grim photo of Lilah Lindsey, Mrs. Garrett stepped forward towards us and into the light. Turned out she was a pretty woman with a bubble hairdo. She was wearing a gray pleated skirt and a soft pink sweater, not a black dress and locket.

Mom smiled at her and said, “Hello there, I’m Elanor and this here’s my youngest, Christopher.” “How do you do, Mrs. Wood, I’m Mrs. Garrett. I’m glad you were able to come with Christopher today.” She smiled politely back at Mom and looked down at me. Her lipstick was matched to her sweater and when she extended her hand, and I saw she was wearing two shiny silver charm bracelets on her wrist. This was the kind of expensive jewelry my Mom would never own. Mom tried to extricate her right hand from my vise-like grip, so she could shake politely. This was impossible and seeing the dilemma, Mrs. Garrett said, “That’s alright.” As she retracted her hand her bracelets jingled as if to bring more attention to themselves.

“There is something I must tell you, Mrs. Garrett,” my Mom said. She said that fast and loud, with her Oklahoma twang bringing even more notice to the statement. She sounded like a child about to blurt out a confession. I looked around anxiously. The children, still in a circle on the floor, were busy talking.

I stiffened at the words I heard next. Oh, lord, here it comes, I knew it was going to be this way. For pete’s sake, why can’t I just be like other kids. Why can’t I, why, why for pete’s sake? Time stood still. Seconds passed like eternity. The grown up voices droned in my ears and I closed my eyes. Maybe I would pass out? Nope, I did not.

Mom continued the speech, firmly, each word a bullet of strength and conviction aimed squarely at Mrs. Garrett. “We are Jehovah’s Witnesses. Christopher isn’t allowed to stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance or salute the flag. We respect the flag though. He can’t participate in celebrations like Christmas or Valentine's cause holidays are of mostly of pagan origins. He can’t have club or team affiliations. You probably know of the Witness beliefs and we are hoping none of this is will be a problem.”

Now her grip tightened on my hand as she finished the speech. My palms were slick with sweat. There it was, all that crazy church stuff that would end up dogging me through my school years. Embarrassed I focused downward on my new school shoes. Dang, they ain’t tied right, I thought. I goofed up my shoe laces, just another humiliation. When would this day be over.

Mrs. Garrett said, “Well, Elanor, in response to that, I can only say every child in my class is treated the same. If I make an exception for one, I must make exceptions for all.” I knew this statement meant trouble for me. My concerns about my shoe laces vanished as I mulled over what the deeper meaning of what Mrs. Garrett had just replied.

Mom looked stumped. I’m not sure she really knew what the teacher would say back to her, even though she had recited this speech to other’s on behalf of my sister and my big brother. It was always a guessing game, trying to figure how some teacher would react.

I was still squeezing Mom’s hand when she bent over close to my face and I felt her breath tickle my ear, “Bye now Christopher. You be good and do what Mrs. Garrett tells you.” I nodded. That seemed contradictory Right then I wanted to say religion was malarkey and it was going to cause me a lot of grief at school. Mom pecked my cheek with a dainty kiss, I brushed it off. She turned and left out the door to go to her shift at Whataburger’s.
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."Paradise Regained"
Saturdays we did the door knocking for the church to spread the word and give out the Watchtower. Friday's we picked up our territory maps so we knew where we were headed. Everyone from Kingdom Hall went door knocking, no excuse was acceptable. The territory maps were drawn out by one of the Elders and glued onto individual cardboard index cards for thhe congregation's convenience.

During these Saturday door to doors, I traveled with my father. I wished door knocking was all just a bad dream, but it wasn't. My Dad said we had to get the "truth" out about how God would destroy earth and create a new paradise for believers. Most people, confronted by this topic were polite, and just closed the door gently. Others cursed at us and slammed the door in our faces. I acquired a very big cursing vocabulary from those door knocking days. One a guy got riled when we knocked at his door with our Watchtower's and bibles, that he pee’d on us through his screen door.

There was a group of people we visited, that actually laid in wait for us to come knocking. Those folks I call the Bible Debaters. They thrilled at debating every piece of scripture we quoted, and tried to trip us up, and dispute our depth of Biblical knowledge. After all, Oklahoma was the Bible belt. Folks spent their lives reading what was typically the only book in the house, the one they got for free. I really disliked the Bible Debaters the most. I loathed them more than the cursers, spitters, and pee’ers, because they kept us captive on their porches while they did their take on what we were say’in. I would fall asleep in a stand up position. The voices of my father and the Bible Debater would drone, words garbled, then my eye balls would role, then my knees would lock, like a horse's when it goes to sleep, and I would be out cold, in a trancelike comma with a death grip on my Dad's trousers.

One year our church group bought a falling down old building to fix up as a Kingdom Hall. Don’t know what its previous life had been, but it had a working dumb waiter and an elevator with iron bars that reminded me of a monkey cage. I think it had been a seedy flop house hotel. Still, we were grateful to have it as our Kingdom Hall, since they were so hard to find.

When we all started working on cleaning up the interior, a church Elder announced, “Listen here! I located some chairs for the hall over at the Brady Theater. The manager said we can have 'em, just have to yank ‘em out and haul ‘em ourselves." Everyone agreed this was a good idea. We piled into pickup trucks and drove to West Brady. The Brady Theater was always well attended since it was built back in the 1920’s. Saturday matinees were packed and Friday date night saw lines around the block. It had gone through several renovations. When we arrived at the Brady, the men went into the theater and started to haul out the seats. The seats were victorian style with hand-painted cast end pieces and maroon velvet upholstery. They were in sets, 2 to a set, and fixed to one another. They looked pretty nice too. They loaded them into the back of the pickups and we drove from Brady to our new Kingdom Hall back in Tulsa.

Arriving like a convoy, the men started to haul out the chairs. The women, upon seeing the seats were besides themselves with glee and happiness! “Look here Elanor, they’re upholstered in velvet! Imagine the comfort we’re gonna have sitting on those!” My Mom and everyone agreed. They were certainly plush and superior to the creaking, unsteady, folding chairs we typically had to endure. The ones that put your butt to sleep.

Suddenly someone who was lifting the chairs out of the truckbeds, flipped a set over to see how sturdy they really might be and everyone's eyes suddenly bugged out of their heads! Under the seats were wads of old chewing gum, not just a few pieces, but enough piles of gum that it looked like cement holding the chairs together, years and layers of old chewing gum, some pinkish like double bubble, some grey like Portland cement!

The women gasped! “That there is just plain disgusting! You fellas are gonna have to take ‘em back, because ladies and children aren’t sitting on anything as unsanitary as that!” One of the Elder's hesitated for a second, then shot back slightly irritated, “Well, you sat on ‘em when they were in the theater, didn’t you!” He was clearly balking at the idea of parting with them, after they had tore them out and lugged them all the way here on the truck convoy. “We didn’t know what we was all sett'in on, that’s why! Now we do know and we have seen! And we ain’t gonna set on them in our Kingdom Hall!”

There was a big conflab and the Elders and finally they decided we should scrape the gum off and clean up the undersides well enough to appease the ladies. We were given pocket knives and screw drivers and were told to try to get as much off as possible. You needed more than a pen knife, you needed dynamite to get that stuff off. We finally cleaned up the chairs good enough to pass inspection from the women. After that incident though, my mind reeled with the thought of nasty old gum stuck under the seats in the movie theater, every single time I went to a picture show.

It was when I was about eight, that our Kingdom Hall moved again to the building in downtown Tulsa. It was directly behind Cain’s Ballroom. Cain’s Ballroom was famous for its springy wood dance floors, flashy bands and nightlife. All regular non-witness people knew about it, or had visited Cain’s for some pretty darn good entertainment, but Jehovah’s Witness people frowned on it and frowned hard. To them it was a den of iniquity, just the kind of life Satan was trying to get us poor slobs to join in to and the kind of life Jesus was warning us against.

It was a hot July night at the hall next to Cain's, when the meeting elder called an intermission during his presentation, so as we all could get water and cool off. “Dad, can I go stand in the alley way?” I pleaded. “My legs are go’in ta sleep, and my rear is ache’in from sitting so long.”
“Ok, Christopher, mind you hang by the door there, and don’t go anywhere else.” Dad said.
“OK, Thanks!” I jumped up, gratefully, and ran through the back of the meeting hall and toward the rear door. The older folks went out the front door to the well lit sidewalk.

The door at the back of the hall was big and heavy, but unlocked. I walked out into the warm, black blanket of the night and I suddenly realized that directly across the alleyway the door to the den of iniquity was wide open and I could see and hear Satan’s party a go’in on like there was no tomorrow!

“Geesh! Jiminy Cricket! Get a load of that!” I murmured to myself. I was just eight years old at the time, I’d never seen a live band and singer croon'in, drums, people clumping around loud and hard on a wood dance floor. They were gyrating, swaying, and swinging each other around. They were loud and full of laughter. You could smell the warm beer and hooch. You could see the smoke curling from glowing cigarettes. The air was heavy with the smell of women's perfume.

I watched the band play, mesmerized. Could a fella really grow up and do this kinda thing! Could he play in a band, play a musical instrument for a living? This was wonderous heady stuff to me and from that point forward, I knew there would be no turning back. This Cain's Ballroom would be my paradise, not the one I heard about in Kingdom Hall at the meetings, not the one in the Watchtower picture with ladies in long cotton dresses sitting on the grass with the men pitch’in balls to the kiddies! No siree bob, mine would be perfumed women wearing red lipstick, lots of whiskey, music, laughter and dancing. My paradise was gonna be at a place like Cain’s Ballroom, playing guitar. Just then my Dad pushed the rear door of the assembly hall open and beckoned me back in. My reverie broken. But after that, each time we went to the Kingdom Hall meetings, I asked to go out to stand in the alley, because this was my paradise regained.
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If you like, visit my other sites:http://www.thesunnygarden.blogspot.com/ gardening in Santa Cruz California
http://www.youtube.com/user/sunnygardener video of the deer and my garden
http://www.christysmemoirs.blogspot.com/ story of my childhood http://www.theenglishhome.blogspot.com/ interior decor

Original Short Stories of Tulsa, OK in the 1950's