About two years ago, a couple of our precious ladies began suggesting I write a book. As I argued my case in a lengthy presentation for having no worthy subject, therefore no book to write, one of them remarked, ”Sounds like there’s a book in there somewhere.” So, that’s how it began “Spilt Ink” was devised to accommodate those of us with tales to tell and yarns to spin. For the sake of continuity, my first post will be a  lengthy one. Also, this chronicle has a title which is explained is in the prologue, normally at the front, or inside the dust cover, but since this is not published as a complete book but is serialized, as the Saturday Evening Post used to present some of its stories, I am going to post four installments, then follow with the prologue, preface, and introduction. Weird, huh? But since episode Thirteen is already “out there”, we’ll let the first dozen catch up to it somehow. rgs

( 1 )                                                    
Normal Kids may be Strange
Strange Kids may be Normal

At an early stage in my childhood, it became apparent that I could remember events and details of occurrences that my brother, two years my senior, could not. I was told on many occasions that I really did not remember these things but only remembered these things being discussed after I was “old enough” to remember. The big gaping hole in that theory is that many of the things I remember were not sufficiently significant that adults would be standing around discussing them for me to overhear! A good case in point is the evening my mom brought home a puppy. Now, a new puppy, especially your first one, is not insignificant. But what about the puppy’s supper, or the makeshift lean-to that would be his temporary shelter? After fashioning a discarded piece of corrugated tin roofing against the side of the house and closing the ends, Mom provided dry bedding and a saucer with table scraps for his supper. His main course was creamed peas. He seemed enthusiastic about his plateful, but as he ate, the peas did not go away, just the disappearing cream sauce seemed to indicate any progress. He didn’t like peas any better than I did and approached them in the same way! I can picture it still today, with Mom and my brother and me, standing in the misty late afternoon, watching Pepper have his first meal at the Smith’s house! And how old was I? Very young, I had learned to walk but was still in diapers.

Some events were spectacular and especially memorable, such as the breakfast table fireworks when a silver-plated spoon handle was inserted behind a loosely fitting wall cover of an electrical outlet.  When seated at the table, which was against the wall, a person would find the outlet conveniently located at eye-level, ideal for the toaster and occasionally, the waffle iron. The variety of metals in the spoon, probably brass before plating, provided a rainbow of colors in the sparkly display and was a remarkable sight to behold. My brother, startled though he was, had the presence of mind, or the excellent reflexes to swat the dangling spoon handle to dislodge it from its hazardous position. Being the perpetrator, I was panicked at the sight of the blackened spoon, and quickly “hid” it under the kitchen stove, one of those cream-colored porcelain with green trim models that stood on legs well above the floor, leaving the spoon in plain sight. Nothing was burned but the spoon, no fingers, nor the house! This was during the time I was enduring being “housebroken”.

I was not especially fond of being an only child. Only child? What about the older brother? Well, eventually he got old enough to attend kindergarten at Tulsa’s Sequoyah Elementary. From the time he left in the morning until he returned home after school, I had to devise my own entertainment, invent my own games, and have conversations with myself. I could assign my brother a part to play, a character to round out our team, and I could do both voices and play both parts. It is a good thing my broomstick pony could carry double! When he was at home and we played Batman, I was always Robin, When he was at school, I got to be both!

How many of you can remember being potty-trained? My mom would park me on the  “throne” and there I would remain until all appropriate business was completed. She saw no advantage or benefit to hovering over me but left me and nature to our own devices. The word “lonely” was invented for this type of situation. I was too young to read. There was no such thing as TV, there was only one radio in the house, the big Philco console in the living room, way out of range. A kid that is young enough to be going through potty training is too young to be doing twenty-to-life in solitary! I had a way to beat the system! I had been fishing with my Grandpa, along with Brother and a cousin, who’s age was about halfway between Brother and me. She was a tomboy and fit right in. Grandpa fished with cane poles and had plenty to go around. Having done little but hold the pole the way Grandpa did, I was still smitten with the idea; I was a fisherman! The only thing plainer than an unvarnished cane pole might be a mud fence, and as I waited-out nature and the clock, I mentally devised fancy versions of a cane pole for each of us, taking all the speaking parts and doing all the voices, asking the preferred color of each segment of that jointed piece of cane. Now it is possible that Mom had been teaching me my colors and this was a way I could exhibit my new found intellect. I can still picture in my mind the bright colors and imagined waxy gloss that only Crayola, the only medium my imagination made available to me, could provide, to those imaginary masterpieces. It provided a way to pass the time, usually the only thing being passed.

There would be occasions when the ability to sit quietly and thoughtfully, keeping myself entertained and out of trouble, would serve me well, and improve my acceptability among adults. When we were being transferred, on long trips, I would often be riding in one of the company trucks with someone other than my parents to make for peace and quiet and a little more room in the back seat of the family sedan. And there would be other times as well, as we shall see.

Ol' Pepper, our first puppy, went where the good doggies go with the aid of an oil truck making a gasoline delivery at Adair's Country Store dowm on the corner from our house, RIP, Ol' Pepper

J.B., the youngest of Dad's siblings, got stuck with kid-wrangling duty at his oldest sister, Carmen's house, with (L to R) her son, Jack, Jr. Wes, and me, It was here, in the backyard, that I auditioned my first use of profanity. The house is west of Whittier Square, on so. the side of 3rd Street.

( 2 )
It’s A Small World…Unless you Are Little
Normal Kids Can Be Strange, Part 2

According to what I have read,  tiny little breeds of dogs do not have any concept of size, and will vigorously, even ferociously go after a much larger dog or anything they perceive as a threat. There seems to be a similar trait in small children causing them to believe the world revolves around them, and therefore their wants and needs must be attended to promptly, sufficiently, and without fail! Since this attribute seems to be present without being taught, the extent to which this characteristic is allowed to have sway over the personality and behavior of the child depends upon the discipline or permissiveness of the parents and their parenting skills. In my case, I couldn’t get away with anything! My parents believed and strongly held the principle of “spare the rod…”; you get the picture. This is not to say I didn’t try, deliberately, to see what I could get away with. 

My parents were very careful about their manner of speaking, and if they used profanity or vulgar language, they most certainly did not do it in my presence. Both of my grandfathers were known to curse, mostly at the plow animals, and sometimes while driving in the cows, and almost certainly while milking them! But I learned what I had heard from an uncle, recently returned home after serving his time in the South Pacific with the Seabees. One afternoon, while visiting at the home of my dad’s sister, and her husband, the Seabee, I had been sent to their backyard to play with my new cap pistol. I wonder why? I also remember wondering why I was not to repeat some words; I had been told only that they were bad words and it was wrong for me to say them. Since I was alone in the yard, I picked one word that I was sure I could say correctly, and I said it. It seemed like a powerful word, and there was no immediate retribution, so I said it again. I began to consider ways I could embellish my repertoire without adding more words, so I repeated the word while snapping the pistol. I believe I was making gruff faces at the time. I began to pace in a circle, repeating the word and snapping the cap gun.  I picked up some speed, and with the gun pointed to the ground, there I was, running in a circle, snapping the toy gun furiously, and cursing, as gruffly as I could. Inside the house, my aunt stepped up to her kitchen sink where the window overlooked the backyard, and observed this erratic behavior from her supposedly normal and healthy three-year-old nephew. She called my mom. They called my dad and uncle. My dad called me! I had some explaining to do! I had yet to find out the penalty for cursing, but I knew what would happen if I “storied” to my parents. I dared not lie! I stammered my way through as reasonable an explanation as I could muster, and waited for the world to end. After a short version of the “wait ‘til you get home!” speech, I was left to suffer through all the things a worried man can imagine under a weight of guilt.

I remember sensing a feeling of injustice at the difference in the treatment of small children and adults, and nowhere was this more apparent than at a family gathering for a meal or a picnic. Smaller cups and glasses, smaller slices, especially when apple pie and watermelon were the order of the day. Of course, this was entirely appropriate, but it just shows the bounding ego and feeling of importance that can be present in these diminutive heads.

Also, I recall one occasion when I was too young to have any idea of my age, but I was still being carried in the arms of my mother, not toddling along on my own two feet. We had stopped at the home of an older childless couple for a short visit. The man was my dad’s automobile insurance agent, and a family friend and the lady had a spinster sister that lived with them. This may have been the first time they had seen me because there was considerable attention being paid in my direction as I was passed from one to another to be held and admired. When it came to be the turn of the sister, she reached for me and began making awful baby-talk sounds. My reaction was the impression that she was completely abnormal and did not have the ability to speak in a normal way, which frightened me, and I began to cry and reach for my mother! As soon as I no longer felt threatened, I stopped crying, but I kept my distance from that scary lady! To this day, I do not baby-talk, even to my pets!
                                                                     

(  3 )
The Future of a Farmer
Between a (Flint)Rock and a Hard Place

There’s no telling how long my dad would have stayed on the farm had it not been for an undetected invasion by malignant cells growing inside his chest. A robust youth with a strong work ethic instilled by his upbringing, he had partnered with an older brother to cultivate some land and have an expectation of a good harvest to provide a nest egg to finance future plans. As is common among young men, there was a spirit of adventure that spurred the occasional excursion outside the comfortable circle of family and friends in the foothills of the Ozarks, and would find him, along with a couple of sidekicks, working on the railroad in the Red Desert of Wyoming, but he always returned to family and home.

One such adventure involved a neighboring family that had chosen to join the ones pulling up stakes and heading for California. They had acquired a panel truck and a trailer, but they had no driver. They petitioned the Smiths to allow one of their sons to take on this job, and after coming to terms with the older brother concerning their crops in the field, and perhaps a few smiles and glances from the neighbor’s eligible daughter, it was all arranged. The trip, though an adventure in those days for all involved, was successful, and with the potential young couple agreeing to remain ’just friends’, soon,  everyone was found going their separate ways. Ample employment was available: irrigating orange groves, harvesting prune-plums, and a variety of honest-wage for an honest-day’s-work endeavors. In the leisure hours, there was sight-seeing, Santa Monica Pier, and Catalina Island. Soon the summer was spent and it was time to go home. With earnings having been sent home to parents, just enough cash for the trip home had been kept. A co-worker from ‘back home’ had become a ‘sidekick’ of sorts, and was also ready for the comforts of home and Mama’s cooking. He had made the trip several times and had learned some of the tricks of travel that were coming into vogue. “Save your money, Smitty”, he said, “We’ll ride the rails!” 

Hoboing was a popular, if risky, means of travel among migrant and itinerant workers of that time. In spite of the dangers, it seems everybody was doing it. History reveals a celebrity “Who’s Who” that chose to get around the country this way; Jack Dempsey, Woody Guthrie, Jack London, Louis Dearborn LaMoore, (novelist, Louis L’amour) Robert Mitchum, Carl Sandburg, and George Orwell to name a few. U S Supreme Court Justice, William O Douglas, and Mark Twain rode the rails for a time.) With an assortment of misgivings, and a message to self, “Better not tell Mom“, and plan B, “bail, buy a bus ticket” if circumstances suggested, he agreed. After all, it could be the basis for a book! It worked for Jack London!

Meanwhile, a family friend was dating a young lady who had a cute younger sister. She had been a good student and a standout on the basketball court, but in the family pecking order her dad had been looking for another son, and picked out a boys’ name, “Richard“. 
It was not unusual for him to call her by that name, and she wound up with the nickname, “Dickie” which she used all her life, except for banking and legal documents. Since there were plenty of older sisters to help with the kitchen and household chores, she worked alongside her dad and brothers in the fields. She tanned easily, and fit right in with their Cherokee neighbors.
 
In the natural order of things a double-date was inevitable. She eventually got out of the 
cotton patch and corn and melon fields long enough to learn to cook as well as her mom! Now her dad was a stern old cuss and very particular about his daughters, even if she was expected to have been a boy at birth. He had to be approached with caution, courage, and clarity of purpose when asking for his daughter’s hand! This was going to leave him short a field hand! The rest, as they say, is history. The “date” lasted until the death of my father, forty years after he was supposed to have died of cancer. But that is another story, or chapter.
                           
                                        
(3-b)
How Ya Gonna Keep Him Down on the Farm:
He Can’t Hold the Plow
                 
For my dad to support his family by any other means than farming, would have been a stretch of the imagination. The family, all through their history in America, had been farmers. Beginning in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Sevier County, Tennessee, on the Kings River, Madison and Carroll County, Arkansas, and eventually Mayes County, Oklahoma, they had tilled the land, raised their crops and reared their children in the tradition of their forebears. They had prospered; it had worked for them, until now!

Constantly out of breath, whether following the plow, or splitting an armload of kindling wood for the stove, or even getting out of bed in the morning, something was wrong! The guy who had helped carry steel rails off of flatcars in the hot sun and thin air of the Red Desert in Wyoming, with the upper body strength of a wrestler and the grip and powerful forearms that develop from a regimen of daylight til dark physical labor, was realizing that these assets he had counted upon daily, were dwindling. Help me, Lord; help me Doctor!

At first, the doctors could find nothing; he would get worse; he would go back! Again, they would find nothing. It was time to get on the road, bigger town, better doctors! At least, perhaps they could tell him what it was that was killing him. He finally found the Doctor who found the problem. He had a tumor, a big one. Between the lungs and heart, mingled among the aorta and pulmonary vessels, dangerously restricting circulation, and in 1940, it was declared inoperable. The prognosis; go home, get your affairs in order. 

To this young husband, father of a two-year-old and a babe-in-arms, this news was devastating! His future seemed certain. Short, but certain! But what of his wife and children? Bleak and uncertain! One of the big-city doctors had a possible ray of hope. In communication with a bigger-city doctor, he was informed of an experimental program using x-ray to retard the progress of some kinds of tumors. The risks were the unknowns, the effects of the X-ray upon the normal tissue, critical areas; the heart and lungs, the essential blood vessels that were already severely restricted. The risks were assessed as extremely high, some of them unintentional, and some, unanticipated. It came down to “what do you have to lose?”

Enduring daily doses of x-ray of that magnitude is something that would never be done today. The scar on his chest, and a matching one between his shoulders were about the size of a playing card, and the color of the ace of hearts, blood red! His thick black hair fell out in wads. His pillow, every morning looked like a black dog had crawled there and died! He knew this was his only hope or was it? As a man of faith, he had a better hope! He has told and retold how in Scriptures, the story of  Hezekiah, upon hearing of his impending death, prayed for extended life and was given fifteen years. Dad prayed to live to see his children “grown and settled”.  In September of 1980, he drove from Mayes county to Colorado to attend our wedding. After a week’s visit, he arrived at home with mysterious pains, His doctors found cancer all through his body. He said,”Hezekiah prayed and got fifteen years, I prayed and got forty! I got the better deal” Considering the Scriptural significance of the number “forty”, this is even more amazing.

He was able to leave the hospital and rejoin his family, but his days behind the plow were behind him. He would have to find, and adapt to, a different livelihood. After what he had endured, he was convinced he had a future, and his future had a purpose, and he put his trust for the answer to that prayer, and the need of a livelihood in the same pocket! By the time he had sufficiently convalesced, the job would be there.

I'm looking forward to the next chapter, Ron!

The puppy. Pepper, grew into Man's Best Friend, juvenile version, to two small boys, blonde haired W.C., later called Wes or Dub, and dark-haired Ronnie. Pepper would later have a run-in on the road in front of the house with the truck making a gasoline delivery at Adair's Grocery and Filling Station. down on the corner, a lesson too late for the learnin'.

The next picture is of Dad's youngest brother, J.B., riding herd on the maverick children, Jack, Jr, son of Dad's oldest sister, whose home it was, and in whose back yard the angelic-faced child squating on the far right first experimented with profane language, as detailed in the story. He looks too cute to cuss, doesn't he? J.B.servred in the Army, US Coast Guard, and US Navy, and would later as a NASA employee, have an important role in the development of the manned capsule for the Mercury Project, and research in particle beam weponry. 

Oh what terrific stories, Ron. And the pictures?.....made it all come alive! Pretty

Cute youngins.. I must say!!!! I remember my Grandfather behind a horse and plow on

The old farm place.There were many  years I remember visiting rural Preston, Oklahoma , where there were acres of land to explore ! You have brought back so many Memories! Thank you! Keep writing!