A very very heartfelt wish for a great 2015 for all the people in Dewey, Washington County, Oklahoma. I grew up with many of you, knew your parents, neighbors, and we enjoyed the beauty and the uniqueness that only a little town like ours can have. We all shopped at the same stores, filled up at the same gas stations, whispered about the goings on in the pool hall, or Dobies, Marys or going to Caney. Our parents stopped and carried on conversations when they passed on the street, or met at the Lander Bros Grocery or Bowersocks or the new grocery in town, Carters Diamond Food Store, shopped at Peters Dry Goods, or Bairds Bakery, Lanes Florist Shop, Jack Millers Auto Parts or the Peters Hardware store. Our families paid their utility bills in cash, brought gasoline for 11ç a gallon and hung the family laundry on the clothes line in the back yard to dry twelve months out of the year. We escaped the heat of summer by hiding in the old library among the musty fragrance of ancient books, all the while looking for a copy of Playboy or THE Carpet Baggers. Some of us rode our bicycles up and down every street in Dewey just so we could say that we did it and others fished from every pond in the area with a No Fishing sign welcoming us. If I had the chance to go back and relive my past I would change nothing of my childhood. From riding the school bus, buying school lunches for 25ç which was a home cooked lunch complete with a pint of milk and a cookie the size of a saucer; eating in the other side of the lunch room when I packed my lunch bucket or sack, playing on the playground, groups of us girls huddling together as the cold Oklahoma north wind whipped and bit the naked legs of us girls in cotton dresses, short socks and a lucky few had wool coats ( few of us wore slack or jeans to school ) talking about what we watched the night before on television or whatever the moment prompted us to air out. Those memories are still with us even if we cannot pull them out of our recall compartment. We grew up, we learned in spite of some less than stellar and less than caring teachers, while dedicated teachers of which Miss Ida Allen and Mrs. Nichols will forever be the shining examples of perfection in teachers brought us to amazing heights of understanding the outside world which would beckon some of us to explore, never to return for any great length of time to the place we grew up and made a million happy memories. We did it however, and we did it together. I have some sad memories of friends that were taken from us way to early; they are still with us in memories of our individual childhoods growing up in a cement coated town named Dewey, Oklahoma... Thru it all we became who we are, we were set in a foundation that would support our life accomplishments, we learned about fair play, honesty, caring for one another, community, taking care of business, integrity in friendship, experienced our first loves, mended our first broken hearts, launched to explore the world unfolded before us by the teachers, the mentors, the encouragers that were Mr.& Mrs. Campbell, Mr. Trent, Mrs. Case, Mr. Due, Mrs. Cearley, Mr. Finch, Mrs. Taylor, Mr. & Mrs. Moody, Mrs. Bird, Mr. Williams, Mrs. Easley, Mrs. Kelly, Mr. Peters, Mr. & Mrs. Riddle, Mr. James, Mrs. Langford as well as Reverend Franklin, Pastor Kelly, Reverend Patterson, Reverend Templeton. Do you know who we are today? WE ARE STILL DEWEY, OKLAHOMA...black dirt, concrete coated, bare footed, dragging down main kids... Happy 2015 to all.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 04:29:11 +0000
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