It was a romance worth remembering.  It was a wedding that was unbelievable.  Nobody in Pryor had ever seen a military wedding.  I certainly hadn't.  Nine Navy and Marine Corps pilots flew in to Tulsa the day before the wedding in a Beechcraft in time for the rehearsal, and dinner.

One of my friend's mom had the dinner on the lawn at their farm.  She was an antique collector, and the tables looked like something out of a magazine.  When the dinner was over, the guys grabbed Ken  who was yelling and kicking, and carried him to the cow pond and threw him in.   My husband-to-be ruined his suit, his shoes and everything else.  And smelled like cow poop.  What can I say, It was a rehearsal dinner to be remembered as well.

I had spent the week preparing all the flowers, (I worked for a florist).  I made most of the bridesmaid's and maid of honor's dresses.  Nine of them.  In pastels.  And pretty much decorated the church as well.  I bought my dress in Tulsa--on sale of course.  It was gorgeous, with dozens of french buttons up the back.  My family was not well-heeled, but everything was spectacular.  The groomsmen, complete with white uniforms, swords, medals and wings simply added the final touch.

There was no air conditioning in the church and it was an August 104 degree day.  I don't remember coming down the aisle, I don't remember the vows.  I do remember Ken's dad--who was bald--having sweat running between his eyes and dripping off the end of his nose as he preformed our ceremony.  And I remember returning down the aisle after we were officially married, and the groomsmen's clanking swords as they made an arch--which we went underneath.  They swatted me on the butt with a sword as we came out from under the arch--no one had warned me of this tradition.  Everyone got a kick out of my reaction.

People talked about our wedding for years after that.  The church was packed--no empty seats.  In Pryor, if you wanted to come to a wedding, you came--and everyone knew me.  Everyone knew Ken.   Ken's dad had baptized and married half the town when he had been the pastor there.  If it hadn't been for the tornado, which blew down the church and caused the elders to call Ken's dad to come to Pryor to rebuild it, none of this would have happened.  He brought his family, my family came to that church and they became friends.  And I married the brick laying preacher's son.

Every week it was the same.  He would fly in on Friday, spend Friday night to Sunday night trying to convince me to marry him--go back to work in Pensacola and repeat the procedure the next week.  It must have been exhausting.  But he was right.  Resisting was getting harder and harder.  There is nothing quite as appealing as being pursued.  He wasn't giving up.

One night after we had gone to eat, we came back to the house and he asked, "Okay, exactly what is it going to take?"  Obviously he hadn't thought it was going to be this hard.  Was he conceited?  I don't think so.  He just had never met someone who said they weren't interested.  Obviously he was good looking.  Obviously he had money to spend.  Obviously he had an over the top car.  Why wouldn't you want to marry him.

So, I answered his question flippantly--I definitely wasn't serious.  "Well, at least 3/4 of a karat set in platinum with four prongs."  He left on Sunday and Tuesday in the mail a 3/4 karat diamond ring set in platinum, with four prongs, arrived in the mail.  He called, "Does it fit?  Did you try it on?"  Of course I had tried it on.  Yes, it fit.  I was shocked.   "Are you going to wear it," he asked?"  Truth was, I had a date with another guy that night--so no, I wasn't going to wear it.  I figured it was a zircon, so the next day I took it to my jeweler to see if it was real.  It was, and the jeweler said, "I've never seen a diamond this perfect.  This was getting serious.

So, I talked with my mom.  "I'm too young to get married.  How would I know if he was the right person even if I considered it?  How  do you know when you are  really in love--enough to get married?   She said four things.  He obviously loves you.  He is a Christian.  Everyone in the town of Pryor adores him.  (Which was true.)  And, he will make you a good living.  Typical requirement for moms that had gone through the depression.

Was I attracted to him.  Mercy.  He was so good looking.  He was so smart.  He was so sincere.  He had declared his love in hundreds of ways.  So the next weekend I told him, "You were right, I can't resist you any longer.  I think what I feel is love, but whatever it is, it's enough.  I'll marry you.   And on August 18, I did.  Best decision I ever made.  And for fifty-seven years, I loved him with all my heart.  I love him still.  I'm so glad he knew what he wanted--and didn't give up until he got it.

The pursuit began.  He had made up his mind.  I, on the other hand, had not.  I already had a room at OSU reserved.  A corner room--and you know how hard those are to come by.  I had applied early.  I had a plan.  But he had thought the entire thing out.  In his mind it was a done deal.  I guess he thought I was going to jump at the opportunity to date an officer.  He certainly had no shortage of women who would.  (Pensacola.  An Officer and a Gentleman.)

So the next week after the letter he wrote me, a bottle of Chanel #5 came in the mail.  (A teenager--expensive perfume?  What was he thinking.)  Followed by a well worn copy of Cyrano de Bergerac:  And then a copy of Elizabeth Browning's poems.  The gifts kept coming, and by the time I graduated from high school, I didn't know what to think about him.  This was a whole new experience for me.

And then, in May, he took leave and came back to Pryor.  He had bought a new car.  A baby blue Jag XK convertible.  Cool.  We went to dinner, and on the way home from Tulsa, I fell asleep.  He stopped in Claremore at the train station, woke me up, and said, "I want you to marry me.  My mom and dad (Baptist preacher) are here from Oregon and he can perform the ceremony.  If you don't marry me this week, I will have to fly them back when you do."  I was completely dumbfounded.

Ken's dad had baptized me.  I knew them very well.  I didn't know Ken at all.  I thought he was nuts.  "I'm not getting married.  To you or anyone else.  No."  That seemed easy enough for him to understand.  He replied, "You won't be able to resist me for the summer.  I want to marry you."  Cocky.  But he was sincere.  He had thought about it for 8 months.  I, on the other hand, hadn't.

He left a week later, and every weekend after that, he would get in whatever military plane was available in Pensacola, and fly to Pryor, buzzing the town at low altitude.  He would land in Tulsa and rent a car or have someone pick him up and spend the weekend trying to convince me to marry him.  People were stopping me downtown, (Pryor is a little town) and telling me to marry him so the town could have some peace. Once, he buzzed my house at 50 feet, but didn't know about the new water tower behind us--he grew up in Pryor--and missed it by rotating at the last second.  This was getting serious.  Everyone knew it was him, but getting the number on the plane was impossible.  Illegal.  But he was determined.  I was confused.

Ken had spent a year at the front in the Korean war.  Two distinguished flying crosses, 10 air medals, hit by antiaircraft fire 7 times and brought back planes so damaged that they pushed them over the side.  He was not your average pilot.  All of his so called youth was far behind him at the age of 25.  He was a Captain in the Marine Corps.  He was not a kid anymore.

Unbeknownst to anyone, he had been looking for the right woman since he returned from the war.  He was ready to settle down.  But he was certainly not looking for someone 8 years younger than himself.   He had a mental check list of what he wanted:  Someone from a similar background.  A Christian.  Preferable someone from the same denomination.  Smart.  Pretty.  Confident.  Independent.  Able to stand on her own two feet.  He hadn't written anything down, but he knew what he was looking for and I missed on two points.  I was way too young, and I had never had to live on my own.  But after he returned to Pensacola, he thought about me.

And the day I turned 18--in March of the next year---he called my dad.  "I know she is too young, and I wouldn't pursue it unless you approved.  But what would you think if I said I wanted to get to know your daughter better?  I'm thinking about seriously better."  My dad answered, "What does she think about that?"

"Well, she doesn't have a clue.  I haven't spoken to her since I was there last September.  She was so young that I didn't think it feasible, but I can't stop thinking about her." Ken would never have spoken to me without my dad's approval.

"I'd say, go for it--if you can catch her.   She's dated a lot of different fellows, but she doesn't stick with one very long.  She's particular.  And you are a long way off.  But you certainly have my approval."

And so, the next week, I got a letter in the mail.  "I'm coming back to Oklahoma next month and would like to see you.  Is that a possibility?"  Shock.  My plan had been to never to see him again.  Ever.  I couldn't help but wonder if it had been the kiss?  Maybe I could explain it to him?  That I wasn't the kind of girl that had ever done such a thing before.  I admit, I was curious.      

Last week I ended in the middle of a story.  My friend Jerry borrowed Ken's convertible to take his girlfriend to the ball game.  He dropped Ken off at our house and said he would pick him up at 10:00. Of course, he was late coming back.  My folks eventually went to bed, Ken laid down on the floor to watch TV, and I curled up on the sofa to wait for Jerry.  This story is very embarrassing to me but I'm going to share it with you anyway--but you have to think like a 17 year old teenage girl.

It's humiliating to tell you how silly I was, but the only thing I could think about was what my girlfriends were going to ask me when I got to school on Monday.  Ken and Mom and Dad and I had gone to the ball game.  My friends would probably think I had a "date?"  Which of course I didn't.  But I knew they would ask me a zillion questions.  The first one would be, "Did he kiss you?"

I would then have to admit that he spent the evening talking to my folks, and that he not only didn't kiss me, but he didn't hold my hand, look at me with any particular interest, or anything else.  It wasn't a date, it wasn't much of anything.  But.....since he was leaving the next morning to go back to Pensacola to the flight command, and  I would never see him again, the wheels in my head began to turn.  The stupid wheels.  So....

When Jerry drove up, I got up off the sofa, (remember--I would never see this guy again) I leaned over where he was lying on the floor with his hands under his head and kissed him.  All I was thinking was what I could tell my girlfriends--"Yes, he kissed me"--which wasn't true at all.  (I'm really embarrassed to tell this story--but I was stupid, I was 17.)  Well, Ken didn't move his hands from under his head, or respond.  Nada.  He stood up, got his coat and walked to the front door, stepped outside, stood there a moment and then turned around and said:  "Young lady, you don't ever wake a sleeping tiger."

Abashed--but I would never have to face him again.  Where I got the nerve to do something so stupid I'll never know.  He was 25 years old.  A Korean war veteran.  A grown man.  The only good thing was that when I got to school on Monday, everyone was buzzing about him and his car and the fact that I had gone to the football game with him.  And of course all my 16-17 year old girl friends asked me what he was like, etc., and...did he kiss me?!!!  I just smiled, and said, "Yes."  (Continued.)

Merry Christmas.  May God bless you on this holy day when he wrapped himself in flesh and came to earth.  God's purpose was to put his Spirit back in us through Jesus sacrificial death--so that we too can be a holy people.  Christ is born.  We have a redeemer in the manger...


                                                            Janie

I've told this story before.  I was in the third grade when Ken graduated from high school.  I don't remember anything about him one way or another.  He had been in the Marine Corps for eight years when he returned to Pryor on military leave, and came to visit his high school football coach and my dad.  It was September of my senior year, and I had a date with someone for Saturday night that I wanted to get out of.  People didn't have cell phones, (not invented yet), so I decided not to be home when the guy came to pick me up.  I'd let my mom explain.  (Actually, my date had done something stupid that was a deal breaker for me.  I figured he wouldn't be surprised at all that I canceled.)

All my friends had come over to my house that morning, to help me decide where I could go that evening to get out of the house.  (We weren't very mature to say the least.)  We were all in the kitchen talking it over when I heard my mom answer the front door and greet someone.  "Janie," she said, "Come here.  I want you to meet a friend of our family.  Ken Jacks." I looked past the kitchen door, through the dining room window, and saw a yellow Hudson Hornet convertible parked in front of our house.  All of my friends and I were in awe.  We asked the guy my mom had introduced us to if we could drive his car.  (Looking back, we were not only immature, but we didn't have good manners either.  The car was more important than the visitor.)

He handed me the keys, and the five of us took off to drag main with the top down.  No seat belts back then.  Three of my friends sat on top of the back seat, and two of us in front.  Our hair blowing in the wind.  We did main (which was only five blocks) three or four times making sure that everyone in town saw us.  When we got back, Ken said he was going to Tulsa that evening to visit family, and if I was going to stand my boyfriend up, I could go with him if I wanted to.  "Put something fancy on, and we'll make sure everyone knows you are out on the town."  Fabulous.  It wasn't a "date."  He was too way too old for me to date--and my mom, the strictest mom in town, said it would be okay.

We went to dinner.  I thought nothing of it.  But a week later, Friday, my friend Jerry (the football coach's son) called and asked a favor--he wanted to take this girl out, and Ken, who was staying with his folks for the week, was going to let him have the convertible.  "Can I bring him over to your house?  You and your folks can take him to the game, and I'll come back and pick him up later."  So that's what we did.  Me, mom, dad and Ken went to the game, came home and waited for Jerry.  Who didn't come back on time...    (Continued)

You really can't blame the 200 or so members of the Pryor Baptist Church for not wanting the hundreds of newcomers to be permanent members.  They knew that as soon as the war was over, most of the new people would leave town to go find jobs elsewhere.  They didn't want these new members to vote to build a church big enough to contain everybody, incur a huge debt on the property, and then leave the original members to figure out a way to pay it off.  They were trying to be responsible.

You have to understand something about Baptists.  They are democratic.  Everyone who is a member has a vote on everything the church does.  Each individual church decides what they want do and how they are going to do it.  There is no national governing board to oversee their decisions.  They have business meetings to make these decisions, and everyone has a chance to give their opinion.  And then they vote.

So, after all the newcomers started trying to join, the problem came to a vote on the floor of the church on a Wednesday night.  Do the newcomers become permanent voting members--who might decide to incur a huge debt--that would cause the church to go bankrupt once the war was over and the membership declined?  Or not?  The pastor, E.R. Jacks, said that anyone who asked to join, who had been baptized, should automatically become a member.  A number of deacons disagreed.

I remember that night.  Enough members who wanted to honor the pastor's decision to include the new people, voted to accept them.  The vote was taken.  It was decided.  The church grew, membership jumped, and the building was paid for with the new infusion of tithes and offerings.  I grew up in that church.  I became a Christian, was baptized, and later married there.

The pastor and my dad became close friends--going to football games together to watch the preacher's son, Ken play.  Ken was an all-state fullback, and my dad adored him.   Years later, Ken came back to Pryor after the war in Korea to see my dad.  He was 26 years old.  I was 18.

I began this yesterday by saying that unexpected events have momentous, life altering consequences. There was a tornado.  The church was blown away.  They called a brick laying pastor.  And I married his son.   God has a plan for our lives.   Sometimes He has to blow down a church.

Unexpected events have momentous, life altering consequences--and such was the case of the town of Pryor getting blown away by the tornado in late April of 1942.  We were still living in Tulsa, and my dad was commuting with five other men to the powder plant, because there was nowhere in Pryor for us to live.  We were waiting on housing when the tornado took out the entire main street of the town.  Dupont, who ran the powder plant, had my dad organize a crew with Dupont equipment to clear the streets.  Which were a mess.  Bricks, metal girders, cars, telephone poles, injured, and bodies blocked highway 20 from the West end of town to the East--death and destruction everywhere.

Pryor had been such a small town, that almost every business and family was devastated.  Almost every thing that keeps a town running was blown away.  Food, medical facilities, gas stations and every other necessity were crippled for months.  In addition, the First Baptist Church was blown to pieces, left without a pastor.  It was a small congregation, not much money, and had to find a way to rebuild.  They needed a particular kind of pastor.  One that knew about constructing large buildings.

His name was E. R. Jacks.  He had been a brickmason by trade, working alongside his father from the time he was 12 years old, laying brick in the town of Carnigee, where he married the daughter of a local lawyer, Mary Jane Amis, straightened up his life and became a Christian.  He had never finished high-school, but feeling that God wanted something more from him, he got his high school degree and headed to the seminary.  He had pastored a number of churches when Pryor called him, asking him to come and help them rebuild the church.  A brick laying preacher.  God's man for the job.

The people who would help him do that were the powder plant workers.  The newcomers to town.  Men who knew how to work with their hands.  Within the next year, he taught them construction, built a church with beautiful stained glass windows, led them to Christ and baptized them.  He promised them that if they could get 700 people to be there on a certain Sunday, that he would roll an orange down main street with his nose.  Which he did.  I have a picture of him on his knees pushing that orange down main street.  I was five years old, and my mom and dad were attending the church along with hundreds of other people looking for a place to call home.   But there was a problem.  The town folk didn't want these newcomers to become permanent members of the congregation....            (Continued tomorrow.)

When I was in the first grade, I had no friends.  We had moved to Pryor the year before, and nobody who was in my class had any friends.  Nobody knew anybody else, because we were a bunch of "migrants" that had moved into Pryor when our fathers had gotten a job at the powder plant.  We came from all over the United States, were shy, and didn't know how to make the first move to say "Hello." Our class room at school was so crowded with children that we were forbidden to speak out loud anyway.  Unless the teacher called on us.  Which you silently prayed she wouldn't.

The "Townies," those kids who had grown up in Pryor, were very few in number.  The town was really small--until all of us "Outsiders" moved in.  The townie's mothers had asked that their children be put in Mrs. Quinn's class--I guess she was the best teacher.  (You could ask for special treatment if you had lived there all your life.)  The rest of us were trundled off into the other two first grade classes.  Two classes crammed chuck full of strangers.  My teacher was frightening.  She was an old maid in her 60's.  I'm sure we were not what she had signed up for.

Our parents, and those of us who hadn't grown up in Pryor, were ostracized for the most part by the rest of the town.  People figured that we were temporary.   But over the next three years, we "powder plant kids" started getting to know each other, and found out that we were all in the same boat.

 I made my first "townie" friend in the fifth grade.  It seems impossible that it took so long, but it's the truth.  I made a friend only because her dad went to prison--and all the moms wouldn't let their children play with her any more.  Her dad was sent to the pen for embezzling from the bank, and she was heart broken, lost and lonely.  She discovered how painful it was not to have friends.  Life can sometimes be cruel.  I felt sorry for her, and invited her home to play with me.  She came.  Good things sometimes come from bad.  We remained best friends our whole lives.   I held her hand and told her how much I loved her as she was dying of Parkinsons a few years ago.  She held my hand and wept and left to be with God.  I miss her.  Who can know the power of friendship unless you have been rejected.

Maybe my friends mean so much to me because they were so hard to come by when I was young.  I don't know, I just know I treasure my friends.  They mean the world to me.

I write about this every Christmas, but it is such a vivid memory for me that I have to do it again.

When I was six years old, my mom wanted me to be able to stand  up and speak in front of an audience, so she enrolled me in elocution.  (She probably thought I was going to be the next Shirley Temple.)  Once a week, I would go to a speech and drama teacher and learn poetry, songs, topical stories and such.  If I did well, I got a sticker.  I could have cared less about speaking in public, but I was a sucker for the stickers.  Bluebirds, fairies, fluffy dogs, sunbeams, ice-cream cones and such.  By Christmas, when I was in the first grade, I had learned a number of Christmas songs and poems: "Twas the Night Before Christmas," and "Santa Clause is Coming to Town," among others.

The principal in our building was an old maid named Miss Stanford.  She wore combat boots.  True fact.  And when she came down the hall, you could hear her every step.  It was scary.  One day, she started coming toward my room which was in the Southeast corner of the building.  Everyone got really quiet, because she only came to the class rooms when someone was in bad trouble.  Sure enough, she opened the door to our room and said, "I want Janie Swan." My heart stopped. Terrified.
She took my hand and led me to the other end of the building without saying a word to me.  When we reached the sixth grade rooms, she opened the door, picked me up and stood me on the teacher's desk and said, "Sing.  And quote a poem.  About Christmas."  I sang.  I quoted.  I shook.  But I got it done.  And when I finished, she proceeded to take me to all 18 rooms in the building and gave me the same instructions.  When we finally got back to my room and I finished singing to my own class, she took me down from the teacher's desk and said, "That was good."  That was it.  She left the room without another word.

A few years ago I was asked to speak at the North East Oklahoma Teacher's Association.  I told them that the most important thing they had to give to a child was validation.  Then I told the story about Miss Stanford marching me through 18 rooms and telling me to sing.  Then I said, "When I came in here to speak to you today, someone asked me if I was nervous about speaking to a group of educators and I answered them, "No, I'm never nervous when I speak.  I was validated at the age of six by a teacher who said, 'That was good.'"  Things like that stick with you and change your life.  It changed mine.

Recess was the highlight of the day.  Fresh air.  A room full of 63 children was miserable.  The atmosphere was laden with every kind of germ in existence.  Stuffy and smelly in the winter.  Hot and unbearable in the summer--when the heat was over one-hundred, with no air conditioners.  We were like packed sardines in a can.  Someone was always sick--they came anyway, and slept at their desks.

I don't think the government thought through what would happen to the school system when they built the powder (ammunition) plant for the war effort.  People from all over the nation flocked to Pryor that year for the jobs.  Bringing hundreds and hundreds of children.  It was a mess.  The town was overrun with people who had nowhere to live.  And children who needed a school.

By the second year, the city had figured out where to put some of us that wasn't so crowded.  They set up quonset huts in the park for the high-school, and farmed the junior-high kids to church buildings.  Then the government built another school building--and sold it to the town for a dollar.

The federal government constructed "court-houses" for people to rent and have a place to live.  Hundreds and hundreds of four room houses in courts of seven.  Three facing each other with one more at the end to block off the court.  Until they built those houses, people were living with multiple families to a house--if they could find one.  Three bedroom houses--three families.  Or they pitched tents in the park.  Times were so hard that people would put up with anything to get a job.

After the war was over and the powder plant closed, people drifted away and Pryor was never the same.  The plant closed, but the dam that the government built on Grand river to provide electricity for the plant was an attraction to industry--and the hundreds of acres surrounding the old powder plant were given to the state to develop into an industrial complex.  It is huge.  Google just closed their California site and moved to Pryor.  They say that the industrial park is the largest in the midwest.  All because of a war and the people who stayed.  Tulsa runs on Pryor electricity.

Right in the middle of all of that, April of 1942, a tornado hit Pryor, wiped out main street, and killed over fifty people.  Many of the children I started first grade with had lost parents.   When I hear people complain today about hard times, I can't help but wonder if they know what that means.

You kept your brown-bag lunch inside your desk, and when the noon bell rang, everyone pulled their sack out and plopped it on their desk.   By noon, your bologna was greasy and the lettuce wilted.  So we started with the cookies and ate our sandwiches last.  Some of the kids didn't have lunch.  We knew who they were.  They knew who we were.  Nobody said anything about it.  We shared--we broke our cookie in half.   But for the grace of God it could have been us.  "Lunch" was a new word for all of us.  We all had dinner and supper at home.

Nobody was overweight.  We didn't have snacks.  Potato chips.  Fritos.  Junk food.  All that kind of stuff came later.  We ate three meals a day.  If you didn't like what was on the table, dinner was over.  We ate what our parents fixed.  We didn't eat high on the hog.  Brown beans, cornbread--and glad to get it.  Everyone was broke during the war.  Leftover cornbread and milk was breakfast.

There were 63 kids in my first grade class.  Three first grade classes--all of them that size.   You had two opportunities to get a drink or use the bathroom during the day.  The bathrooms were so nasty you held it if you could.   Two bathrooms.  Eighteen rooms, grades 1-6.  You had to do your business on schedule.  Or not.  I ran home every day about to burst rather than use those bathrooms.

Our desks were all the same size.  First grade desks were small.  If it didn't fit you, too bad.  The top of the dest was hinged, so it lifted up.  You put everything under the desk-top and every time you needed something, you had to clear the desk-top to get into it.  Eventually they came out with a design that had a slide-in nook and no hinged top.

I started school with an inkwell in the desk.  You dipped your pen in the ink to write a few words and then repeated the process.  Your fingers were permanently ink-stained.  Ball-point pens were an invention of the future.  If you sat in front of a boy, he would eventually succeed in dipping your braids in the ink.  Having black-tipped hair was common.  And you were at the mercy of the desk behind you.  Their desk was bolted to your seat.  If they moved up or back, so did you.  Eventually they bolted the desks to the floor so they wouldn't scoot around.   And that's when the noise level went down.  It was amazing that the teachers came back the next year.

Gran was a piece of work.  Everyday in the summer, I would go to her house and listen to "Ma Perkins" or "How the World Turns."  She would do her work, get dinner on and then turn the radio on.  The radio was our solo, entire, total connection to the outside world--other than the movies on Saturday--where everything was in black and white.  And I don't know that all the communication paraphernalia we have today has made the world a better place to live.

I'll make an exception for the GPS on my I-phone.  I would be lost without it.  We used to use maps.  Every car had a car-pocket full of all the maps of surrounding states.  And an atlas, at home, was always nearby.  Of course there were no instant reports of wrecks on the road and the roads were all two lane.    So if someone had a wreck and blocked the road, you were stuck.  We never traveled without a gallon thermos of ice water.  It wasn't until Eisenhower was elected that we got interstate highways.  I was fourteen when that happened so I have traveled on a lot of dirt and two lane roads.

Telephones were on the wall.  You had an operator who answered when you picked it up.  She connected you to the person you wanted to talk to.  Actually, you ended up talking to a crowd.  Everyone had party lines.  When the phone rang, you knew if it was for you by the number of rings.  And anyone on that line could pick up and listen--which they did.  No secrets in a small town.

Eventually we got our own number and a phone that sat on a table.  Three digit numbers.  No prefix.  Everyone who talked on a phone knew everyone else's number--nobody could afford to call out of state.  And if you did, you had to call the operator.   Zero.  She would look up your number and dial it for you.  The phone book for your area was your right hand friend.  I saved ours from 1956.  Once again, technology eliminated an entire era.

I said that Gran cooked dinner.  And the evening meal was supper.  I don't know when the word "lunch" emerged.  I think it was when they started serving meals at the school.  Up till then, you took your brown bag to school.  Later, when we were a little older, lunch-pails were invented for kids.  Men's lunch-pails were metal rectangles with a domed lid.  Ours were flat.  Someone made a fortune on comic lunch-pails.  I didn't have one.  Just a brown bag.

When Pops and Gran moved to Pryor, they opened a little grocery store on our block.  You could do that back then--because there weren't laws against it.  Pops got his saw rigged up and turned their garage into a store, on the corner--open to the street.  Bread, milk, flour, oatmeal, sugar, cheese, etc.  Just the basics that everyone needed everyday.  Pops had a big heart and knew how hard people had making ends meet during the war, so he let people who ran out of money keep a running "tab" until payday.  Half the neighborhood owed him money.

But come payday, most of them caught up.  If they didn't, they lost their "tab."  Except for the children.  He doled out penny candy to kids who would never have money to buy anything sweet.  And for Bill, Ann and me, he would put Coca-cola in the freezer and rotate the glass bottles until the cola  turned to slush.  He seemed to know the right moment to take them out before they blew their caps.  Every day when school was out, we would run to the store to see if he had slushed us a cola.

He kept lunch-meat by the roll, with a slicer and scale.  You could buy one slice, or a dozen.  Thick or thin.  And when he got to the end of the roll of lunch meat, he would save the end pieces for us three grand-children.  Bologna and frozen Coca-cola.  It doesn't get any better than that.  The bologna was wrapped in some kind of "skin" which was tied off on each end with a piece of white twine, so that you had to work at chewing the last bits of bologna out of the end pieces.

And banana popsicles.  He usually had those in the freezer as well.  However, our mothers set limits on the sweets we could have.  There was a limit.  But if it wasn't our day to get a slush, Gran would have cookies in the kitchen in the house.  I have no idea how we kept our teeth intact.  Gran and Pops were a regular sweet shop.

Carolyn's folks ran the theater.  If I had known her then, I could have gotten in free.  As it was, we went every Saturday--for a dime--and if we were lucky and hadn't spent our quarter allowance for the week, maybe a bag of popcorn.  Roy Rogers, Hop-along Cassidy, Gene Autry and serials that ran for a few minutes and ended when somebody was ready to fall off a cliff--you had to come back the following Saturday to find out what happened next.  And the news.  We had no TV, so all the war news was on film at the movies.  That's when we got our weekly dose of reality.

My brother is five and a half years younger than me.  Our cousin Ann (who grew up one street over) is seven years younger than me.  The three of us were the children in the family.  I say family because none of us ever questioned the fact that we belonged to everyone.  It didn't matter which parent was speaking, we obeyed.  Gran and Pops, Mother and Dad, or Aunt Ruby and uncle Cleo.  They ruled.  It was pretty much one big family.

When I was born, Ruby, Cleo and Mother and Dad were living on the Arkansas river in Moffett, next to Ft. Smith.  The river flooded every year--not a good place to live.  So my dad got a job in Pryor, and before the year was up, Cleo called my Dad and said, "I can't live with Ruby--because she can't live without Margie (my mom).  So find us a house as close to yours as you can get it."  Which my dad did.  My mom Margie and Ruby were sisters--and inseparable.  If they were happy, daddy and Cleo were, too.  Within months, Gran and Pops--who lived in Wilburton at the time, moved to Pryor and joined all of us on the same block.  That's the kind of family we were.  We kids had six parents.

We were all three expected to be the very best at whatever we did.  It was a given.  Bill and Ann got it.  I didn't.  They were both Valedictorian of their classes.  I remember when I was a Sophomore in High school, the Chemistry teacher said that if we didn't want to learn Chemistry, to "...go to the back of the class, don't cause any problems and I'll give you a C."  Sounded good to me.

So at nine weeks, when my grades came, my Mother and Ruby just about had a fit.  Nobody in the family had ever made a B.  Much less a C.  Just A's.  I can't begin to tell you how hard it was to learn what I was supposed to learn about Chemistry the first nine weeks-coupled with what was going on during the second nine weeks so that my permanent semester grade average was a B.  I was totally grounded until I turned that grade around.  I didn't do that again.

When I was 28 years old, Ken was in Viet Nam; I started college while he was gone.  When I got my grades--all A's--I took them over to make sure Mom and Ruby saw that I could do it if I wanted to.  It was all a matter of motivation.   It took me 10 years to get motivated.  However, it was satisfying to see them smile.  "We knew you could do it.  What took you so long?"

Gran had a Christmas tree with lights on it that were birds.  And also some of those lights that bubble.  They looked like candles, but when you turned them on, tiny bubbles went up in the glass.

We always had popcorn strings and tinsel on the tree.  I can remember stringing the popcorn and hanging the tinsel on the branches.  Of course the tree was real.  Pops cut it down from the back of the farm and dragged it to the house.  I'm sure there were presents, but I don't remember them.  Just the tree, the decorations and the lights.

Gran had an ice box.  Nobody had refrigerators.  In the summer, she was always saying to me, "Janie, close the door to the box or the ice will melt."  Oklahoma summers were brutal and the only cool place any where was standing in front of an open icebox door.  Under the icebox was a drip pan which had to be emptied every so often as the ice melted.

Every town back then had an ice house.  The ice man would load up his truck and make deliveries house to house.  Nothing in the box was very cold because the system was inefficient--especially when grandkids kept opening the icebox door.  When refrigerators came along, the ice houses vanished.  Progress has a way of eliminating an entire era.

My dad had a refrigerator store once.  There were lots of Amish in our county who didn't use electricity.  So my dad got a contract to sell Servel refrigerators--which were powered by natural gas.  Once he sold a gas refrigerator to one of the Amish, he had a hard time getting enough of them in the store.  They all wanted one.  Gas is natural.  Electricity isn't.  At least that's what the Amish believe.

My home town, Pryor, is in the middle of Amish country.  Every now and then you will see them going somewhere in a buggy.  Or on a tractor.  We also have Mennonites.  They cook and serve food at a cafe in the area and the truckers coming down Hy. 69 know where to stop to get a meal.  Real fried chicken.  Real mashed potatoes.  Real cherry, blackberry, peach, pumpkin, pecan pies.  All you can eat.  Mennonites, Amish,  Methodists, Baptists and a bunch of others.

I grew up in heaven on earth.  Smack dab in the middle of America.

Yesterday, I mentioned that my Pops was a master carpenter who kept his saw in the barn--which was covered in sawdust...

My Gran saved a letter that I wrote Pops the year I was seven.  I guess she gave it to my mom, because my mom gave it to me years after I was grown.  I had written, "Pops, I need sawdust.  Please send me some.  I'm making a rag doll and need sawdust to stuff it with."  I don't remember whether or not he sent me a bag of sawdust, but knowing Pops, I'm sure he did.

He made my brother a swing that looked like a horse and hung it from one of the really tall oaks in his front yard.  It had hinges, a mane, and handles that you could pump back and forth to go sky high.  I don't have any idea how he got it so far up in the tree, but remember that the ropes were really high up.  Which meant that the swinging arc was long--and way off the ground.  Not like park swings today.  We thought we were flying.

There was a path from the house down to his grocery store, where he also sold gasoline.  He had two pumps--you'ld have to look at a 40's movie to know what the pumps looked like.  I just remember that when someone pumped gas, you could watch it bubble down in a glass container on the top of the pump.  I can still smell Pops' store when I fill my car with gasoline today.  Amazing how many memories are connected to different smells.

I had a wonderful childhood.  As I have taught classes in the church through the years, I have been saddened by the number of women who had horrific childhoods.

There is a scripture in Luke 12:48 that says: "From everyone who has been given much, much will be required..."   All of my life I have been aware, reminded, conscious, of the fact that God expects something "more" from me because he gave me such a a wonderful childhood with such Godly parents and grandparents.   Things like that are a jump start in life that you can't buy.

I think I will have to answer to God someday for all the things I failed to do with the blessings He gave me--blessings that I didn't do anything to deserve.

I love to go to Pat's house and gather eggs.  It takes me back to my childhood.  My Gran had a farm:  Chickens, cow, shed, and yes, an outhouse.  She lived in Wilburton--down in southeast Oklahoma. Once a month, if mom and dad could rake up the gasoline money and beg, borrow or steal gas coupons, we would make the trip to Gran and Pop's house.  And I would get to go out to the chicken coop and gather the eggs.

The only problem was the coupons.  Even if we had the money saved for gas, you couldn't buy gas without a coupon.  During World War II, all the gas was going to the war effort and gasoline in the states was rationed.  Along with everything else.  People learned to do without.  They learned to wait for what they needed.  Or borrow.  Or swap.

And even if we had the gas money and gas coupons, there was the problem of tires--which were also rationed.  Tires back then had inner tubes, and nobody went anywhere without a patch kit and a pump.  It wasn't unusual to have to stop three or four times on a one hundred mile trip and patch a tire--then pump it back up and hope it would last a few more miles.  I can still close my eyes and see my dad, stooped over, jacking up the car, and patching a tire that was long overdue for the junk yard.

Taking a trip to Gran's house was a huge adventure.  I could hardly wait to get there.  Pops had a barn with a table saw mounted on saw-horses, and sawdust covered the floor.  He was a cabinet maker.  A talented carpenter.  One of the things he made and sold as fast as he finished them was porch swings.  Everybody had porches back then and every porch had a swing.  Sometimes two.  On hot summer evenings, we would all sit on the porch and swing.  Nobody had ever heard of air-conditioning.

And of course, nobody had TV.  Or any other electronic gadget--just radio.  Pops had one of those round top, mesh front radios.  He would tip forward in a wooden chair and press close to the speaker and listen to the news each evening.  It came on once a day and everyone had to be quiet while it was on.  You didn't want to miss it.  The men would gather at Pop's grocery store the next day and discuss the news.  Every day after chores were done.

Gathering eggs at Pat's house floods my mind with memories.

"Now he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth...when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive...He that descended is the same as he that ascended up far above all heavens..."  (arranged from Ephesians 4:8-10)

That scripture is obviously talking about Jesus rising from the dead.  These are the only scriptures I know that indicate that Jesus descended into Paradise--that place with a gulf that separated people into two groups.  Hades being on one side of the gulf, Paradise on the other.

He gathered up those who had waited on Him (captives) and took them with him (captivity-captives) when He rose from the dead.  "And the graves were opened and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves after his resurrection."  (A direct quote by the apostle Matthew.)

I realize that may be far out for some.  That's why I almost skipped this passage in Ecclesiastes.  But it is in the scripture.  Decide for yourself.  I find that the more I read, the more scripture I "put together" with other scripture, the more I understand.  The Bible supports itself.

Don't confuse Paradise with purgatory.  Purgatory is neither a Biblical place nor a Biblical concept.  Purgatory is a made up invention of men.  A real money maker, because of the desire frightened people have who want to get their loved ones out of Hades.  By buying them out--which is impossible.   If you die without Jesus, without His sacrifice for your sin, without giving Him your life, then it's over.  You can never cross that gulf after you die.  You have to choose Christ in this life.

People don't like that.  So they invent alternate truths such as: 1.  I will get another chance.  2.  Someone still alive will give enough money to a church to get me out.  3.  There are many ways to God.  4.  I'm a good person, my good outweighs my bad.  Etc., etc.

But God makes it very clear.  One way: Jesus.  One life:  Surrender and obedience.  You don't get to make up your own plan.

 I don't see why anyone would gamble on eternity.

I couldn't go teach my class Sunday.  Had to get someone to do it for me.   I probably should have gone to the doctor last week, but it took all I had just to get out of bed.  I already take antibiotics every day.  Besides, I know what the doctor would say, "Bed rest and plenty of fluids."  Which I did.  It's a bummer.  My neighbors brought me soup today.  Becky brought me gumbo.   I'll try and eat some of it.  Back to the letter to the Ephesians....

Ephesians 4:8-10 is a passage that I hesitate to include because there is disagreement on it.  So I will just be honest and tell you what I think.  You can form your own opinion.  I have to back up a bit and include other scripture to explain where I'm coming from.

In Luke 16:19-30 we read the story of a rich man who died in sin, who had ignored a beggar named Lazarus--who sat at the rich man's gate and begged.  The rich man went to hell and Lazarus died and went to the place where Abraham was--which I believe was Paradise.  A great gulf was between the evil rich man and Lazarus so that the rich man couldn't cross to escape his torment.  Jesus spoke concerning this place to the thief on the cross and said, "This day will you be with me in Paradise."

I believe Paradise was a "holding place" for those who had trusted God.  Held until Christ rose.  Once the price for sin was paid, those held in Paradise rose from that place as evidenced in Matthew 27:52 "And the graves were opened and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves after his resurrection."  They couldn't go to heaven when they had died (as we now can) because the blood sacrifice of God's Lamb hadn't been paid.  They were "held" in Paradise.

Which brings us to the passage in Ephesians that says, "Now he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth...when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive...He that descended is the same as he that ascended up far above all heavens..."  I think that is exactly what Jesus did.  When He died, He went to Paradise to free those held there who had trusted God to save them--the thief on the cross went with Him.  Three days later all Hell broke loose and those who had given their hearts to God and believed in the coming Messiah were released from the graves.  Paradise is empty.  Hell is still full of the unrepentant waiting on the judgment.

I highly recommend that you don't get sick.  The worst part is the weakness. You are reduced to a mass of quivering jelly. That's pretty much where I am today.   Can't stand up without wooziness.  I'll spend the next couple of days getting back into the running.  One good thing, I lost 6 pounds.  And still haven't been able to eat anything.  Just hot tea.

Sunday, we start the book of Acts.  Luke wrote it.  It is the only history book in the New Testament.  It is Luke's record of everything that happened after  Jesus rose from the dead.  (Luke was a physician.  He always researches and gets things exactly right.)  It's an account of the early church,  their persecutions, how each of the disciples reacted, where they went, etc.  Interesting accounts of the events following the resurrection.  All about what real people did in a very real situation.

I am so glad to get out of the book of Leviticus.  I hope the "Powers that be," who decide what we will teach, will spare us from doing that book again.

I've been stumbling through the letter to the Ephesians for the last few weeks.  Trying to hit the highlights of this letter that Paul wrote.

Ephesians 4:4-6  "There is one body, one Spirit...one hope of your calling.  One Lord, one faith, one baptism.  One God and Father of all..."

You would think that we would have understood that verse by now, but no; we break ourselves up into denominations over minor differences of opinions about what the Bible says.  Each denomination arguing for their interpretation and letting that facet of their belief become center to their purpose.  Instead of working for unity, groups of people take one or two verses from the Bible and build a religious denomination on it.

Probably all of us should get back to the basics.  Jesus was God.  He came as a sacrifice for our sins.  He rose on the third day and makes intercession for us to God.  He is our peace.  We believe that, or we don't.  That's it.  All the rest of it is descriptive.  Praise God for his love for us that he was willing to do that.  Thing is, I don't get it.  Why would He do that?  I'm not worth it.  I bet you aren't either.