The Everlasting Catalpa

One night in Oklahoma, several years ago a strong wind came through. Oklahoma’s winds are sometimes memorable and this one was no exception. It wasn’t a twisting, swirling tornado, but a straight, hard wind that blew over a huge catalpa tree that had stood in my parents’ back yard for generations. I believe this flowering […]

Stories Told in Rhyme

Memories by Blanche Day Manos Don’t tell me they are gone, for I can see them still The house, the spring, the burr oak tree, the barn beneath the hill. I smell the sausage sizzling, I hear the rooster crow, The sounds and scents of each new day that woke me long ago. I feel […]

In My Mother’s Bible

In My Mother’s Bible

In uncertain times, we need an anchor, something unchangeable that we can cling to. It helps to have reminders that people have gone through hard times before now and survived. My granddaughter, as well as some nieces and nephews, are interested in genealogy. In trying to answer their questions, I turn to the place where […]

Long Ago Teens

Long Ago Teens

It was a different time. My teenage years were almost unbelievably different when compared to the lives of today’s teens. Were those days better? Do I see them through the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia? Those days, so long ago, were far from perfect; however, there was an innocence and a wide-eyed wonder that seems gone […]

The Joy of Music

The Joy of Music

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent” Victor Hugo.  Music is a universal language, joining people of all nationalities who cannot speak or understand any language but their own. Music, we all understand and respond to.  As the seven junior and high school choirs presented their annual […]

Peggs Tornado

Peggs Tornado

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. In 1920, Walter Neel lived with his parents, brothers and sisters on the Gid Morgan farm, two and a fourth miles southeast of Peggs. The storm went a mile […]