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For many of us the end of this pandemic is at hand. And I say, “Praise the Lord.” Being cooped up and suffering through one of the coldest winters in history has also been hard on us. I am a guy who loves getting out and seeing my fellow man. Going to church and other community events is my wife’s and my life stream. I consider myself fortunate to live in the house I live in. A place where I raised my four children and spent much of my life. But as comfortable as my house is, I sure got tired of being cooped up. But like I say, now it is nice to be able to go to church and even go into a restaurant.
Read moreAre we, at last, in the final days of this great Pandemic? Some sources still run on about fresh outbreaks in scattered places, but the overall picture is good. Cases are declining. Each week hundreds of thousands are receiving their shots. Over. Millions have already had the dread disease while many others think the thing was a hoax. But as the number of those who have had COVID increase and the number of those vaccinated meld we approach something called herd immunity. Soon? Yes.
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While news about wild partying keeps coming in from Miami Beach, Florida and other favorite spring-break places it was fairly calm here at 601 E. Lee Street in Allen last Sunday. Local activities mostly centered on comparing basketball bracket predictions and the awe and/or anguish that went with it.
Read moreDriving around Allen on my golf cart I see some green grass. Testing the waters so speak. Also, Fruitless Pears are about to bloom and light everything up with their colors. And some of our winter birds will be packing up and going back north with stories of a very cold time in Oklahoma. But nearly 50 inches of snow covered some parts of Colorado and Wyoming this past weekend. I-80 closed for a while as did I-25. But while the heavy snow tore down powerlines and made life hard for the folks up in that area, the temperatures stayed well above the dangerous temps we all suffered in February.
Read moreBack in the 1940s I went to a place we called Victor. Like so many places in rural Oklahoma, Victor has completely faded away. Oh, there are still a few people strung up and down Highway 270 just East of the Big Caston bridge but the only place left that I know is my Uncle Herman’s place. Herman was a brother to Dad. He operated a grocery-gas-station there. A pretty nice one, too. Did a good business. Victor had a school nearby and there was a church and Maxie Cemetery just south of the junction. My grandparents lived just north on Goat Ridge Road, and the road to Wolf Mountain.
Read moreWalker Ray (Corky) my wife Pat and I made a drive down to Eastern Oklahoma some years ago. Our destination was Maxie Cemetery, about a mile off US-270 a few miles this side of Wister, Oklahoma. We went there to place some new gravestones — the main one marking our grandfather George Washington Boyd’s grave. He was my mom’s dad and he died young in the great pandemic of 1918. May 17 of 1918 to be exact. There was the grave of my great Uncle there too and his was illegible too. So we replaced his too. His name was Mike Boyd. The old sandstones had faded away so bad you could not read the hand chiseled names and dates on them. Corky believed, as did I that families should see to things like this. Neglected graves can become “lost.”
Read moreMay we always remember the long 17 days we just endured. It may not have been as entertaining as the winter of ’48 but so far it sure has my attention. It has been a time of something just getting worse. And yes it could have been worse. For many others it was. For me it started out on the 5. I took Pat to the doctor up in Tulsa that day. It was rainy and cold and when we arrived it was slick, icy and 23 degrees F. But we made it home okay only to watch our weather just grow colder and colder.
Read moreSitting in my cozy den, safe from the howling winds of this cold spell, Pat and I enjoyed watching the Grand Ole Opry’s celebration of its 95 celebration. It was good TV and to two octogenarians it made for many great memories.
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