Happy Mother’s Day

On Mother’s Day, Mom always wore a corsage of white roses to church. Used to be that was the custom–if your mother was no longer with you, you wore white flowers; if she was still here, you wore red flowers. That tradition has probably flown, like so many.  I’m blessed every day to be the […]

A Whistle a Day

A lot of things that used to be commonplace have fallen to the wayside in the rush of a technological age. For example, I never hear anyone whistle a tune any more. Do you? I used to whistle a lot. Now, something has happened to my whistler and I have a pretty limited range. Used […]

Help and Courage

This is the second and final installment of my May 5, 1985 Daily Press article about the tornado which destroyed Peggs, Oklahoma on May 2, 1920. This was 104 years ago but it’s a part of history that shouldn’t be forgotten. In 1920, Walter Neel lived with his parents, brothers and sisters on the Gid […]

A Country Life

Today would have been my mother, Susie Latty Day’s, birthday. She was born in 1906. I’m grateful she told me some stories of her childhood because it was a way of life that is now gone from the American scene and will never return. But,even though this way of life is gone, it’s important to […]

The Easter Egg Tree

The following story is an excerpt from The Heritage of Etta Bend, a story my mother told me about her childhood in northeast Oklahoma. The “I” is my mother, Susie Latty Day. Mom told me this story and I wrote it to be included in The Heritage of Etta Bend in 1989. It was spring, […]

The Bear Hunt

The Bear Hunt

Elizabeth pulled an apple cake from the oven and set it on the table. It was beautiful and it made the whole house smell good. She glanced out her kitchen window at the cloudy spring day and did a double take.  A bear! A bear was waddling quickly into the woods with two small cubs […]