Natalie Reed

Apple Picking

The past few years I've tried to start my own tradition of going to visit Shelby & co. in September. It's just about the perfect time to be in New England - at the tail-end of summer, starting to get cool and fall-ish, and time for apples in the orchards.

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Diane J. Adams

Pride and Gratitude for a Loving Family

Pride and Gratitude for a Loving Family
  When I was in the prime of trying to raise a family, there were days when I wondered if any of my children were learning the values of honesty, integrity, hard work, service, faith in God and everything else that they would need in order be become good honorable people...
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Millard Don Carriker

Carriker's Jack

The stock from which my family evolved was mostly Southern and most of them had little or no formal schooling.  But imbedded in the gene pool they created were genes that came to the fore in a very pronounced way in my Dad's personality.  Two of those genes could accurately be...
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Annie Payne

Unravelling the Old Ball of Wool

Unravelling the Old Ball of Wool
Mum died just 3 weeks after her 60th birthday in 1979, and like all who preceded her, she took the facts about her life with her. Both of her parents had died before her and she was an only child, making it very difficult to find out more than bare facts...
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Tom Cormier

Johnny Took the Heat for Me

Johnny Took the Heat for Me
Jimmy was the oldest of 10, I was second and then there was a twin girl and boy, Joan and Johnny. Johnny is and always has been the funniest sibling of the family. Everyone looks forward to reunions with Johnny because of the unexpected hilarity that is bound to take place....
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Millard Don Carriker

Just Boil It Down

I was much too young to be personally involved in this escapade but it is a story that was told and re-told many times around the table in later years at family get-togethers. Knowing my older brothers as I did I am convinced it is a true story. *******     ...
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Susan Darbro

Beginnings: Growing Up in Miss Annie's Household

Beginnings: Growing Up in Miss Annie's Household
My father was born February 8, 1913, the same year as future President Richard M. Nixon, French philosopher Albert Camus and English composer Benjamin Britten. Abolitionist Harriet Tubman died that year. Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated President of the United States. War was raging in the Balkans, and in the exotic, far-away...
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Tyler Cormier

Every kid has a dream, mine was to own a dirtbike!

Every kid has a dream, mine was to own a dirtbike!
It's funny how kids grow up.  Some realize their potential and become President, others wind up in Jail.  For some reason or another I fall just short of realizing my potential and thankfully I've never wound up in jail (and maybe sometime I'll divulge a few of my stories of "almost"...
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Janet Holt

My Mother, the "Mouse"

My Mother, the "Mouse"
The question posed was, "If you could visit with a deceased friend or family member, who would it be?  What would you do?"  This was an easy one--it would be my mother. Mother was extremely reserved and very proper. Although she was competent and capable she avoided leadership positions. She was...
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Lillian Cormier

Precious Time Lost

Precious Time Lost
I had the most wonderful mother who always had a smile on her face even though she had a tough life. I wish we could have been friends and she would have shared her unhappy times with me,  but that was during the 1940's and parents were so different. I'm sure she didn't...
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Millard Don Carriker

My Brother - My Friend

My Brother - My Friend
I seem to have always had a more stringent definition of what a "friend" is than most people.  I have had many great "acquaintances" in my life, some fairly meaningful, but I have truly had only two or three friends in my 78 years of living.  One of those - the...
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Millard Don Carriker

Second to None

Second to None
My parents both enjoyed music. Dad was a self-taught, hillbilly, fiddler/singer who, as a teenager had played for many a square dance in Arkansas, took great joy in musically recreating the woes of the Indian girl “Red Wing,” the humorous ballad “Rye Whiskey,” and other old songs. Mother had been raised...
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Millard Don Carriker

Cutting Firewood

Cutting Firewood
I attended a Memorial Service for my last remaining brother last Saturday. He was 84 years old, six years older than I.  Although we were brothers, we grew up in a vastly different world and had strikingly different memories of our childhood and adolescence. We in the family called him “Gene.” ...
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Millard Don Carriker

Can While You Can

Can While You Can
One of Mother’s many household duties during the summer when vegetables and fruits were ripe was to can as many fruits and vegetables as she could. The only canning process available brought with it a tour in the very fires of hell. Vegetables tend to ripen in the hottest part of...
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Millard Don Carriker

Aladdin's Lamp and The Butter Thief

Aladdin's Lamp and The Butter Thief
There was an upside to my finger being crushed by that rod line.  Dad must have contacted the oil company who operated the lease because several months later he, Mother, and I drove to Oklahoma City to visit an official in the oil company's executive offices.   Dad came out with $300.00;...
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Millard Don Carriker

Shaking the Oklahoma Dust Off Our Sandals

We bought our groceries on credit in “Jim Trout’s” store in Drumright.  Dad paid the bill when he came home.  On bill paying days Mr. Trout always filled a paper bag with penny candy and gave itto Mother, to be doled out to the kids.  I am sure he was pleased...
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Millard Don Carriker

Gone With The Wind

Gone With The Wind
Sometime in the late 1930's Dad came up with an improvement that was even more remarkable than his running water.  He brought electricity into our house.  A light bulb replaced the coal oil lamp.  The radio’s battery no longer had to be charged in the car.   All this electricity came from...
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Millard Don Carriker

War and Romance

The 1940's began with hopefulness washing across the land. The "Great Depression,” under the assault of eight years of government welfare programs launched by America’s first socialistic president, while still alive and well was loosening its grip.   More men were working and most children were going to bed with food in...
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Millard Don Carriker

December 7, 1941

We were driving home, having spent the day enjoying a belated Thanksgiving holiday in Tulsa with my oldest brother, Robert, and his family.  The tires on Dad’s 1935 Dodge droned in harmony with its engine as it moved along at the stately, safe, 50 miles an hour Dad always chose.  Other...
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Millard Don Carriker

Unsavory Capitalism in the `40's

Kansas, by law, was a dry state.  The only legal alcoholic beverage was 3.2 beer, so-called because its alcoholic content cannot exceed 3.2% of its total volume.  A person can become intoxicated drinking this beer but they have to work at it.   Oklahoma, which was only one mile south, was just...
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