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After our group at the remote Shady Brook Cafe had waited on our food orders for more than an hour, we were becoming more than a little tired of the delay. The small talk among our members had dried up, and we didn’t particularly enjoy the entertainer’s guitar playing. Finally a waiter came to our table and waited to get the attention of all of our group. Then he tilted his head sharply to the left, pressed his hands together in front of his chest, and began his explanation. “Bummer! We don’t have exactly what you folks ordered, but I’ll te...
Some people enjoy the somewhat harmless activity known as “the art of storytelling.” It’s also sometimes known as “getting creative with the facts.” Other persons become suspicious at hearing a differing account, and object strongly to any variation from their individual memories concerning “the absolute truth.” Still others would describe storytelling as “just plain lying.” Broadly speaking, men seem to be more appreciative of storytelling than women – to the extent that comparatively few of the fairer sex can tolerate it at all. (I do reali...
One of the activities that Patti and I enjoy at our two modest homes is feeding “critters.” If you’ve ever read the story of Johnny Appleseed (actual name John Chapman), he was an easterner who traveled throughout Pennsylvania and Ohio planting apple trees in the late 1600s and early 1700s, clad with a tin cooking pot on his head for a hat. By studying odd Johnny’s animal classifications, one might recall that the world is composed of two groups of animals – critters and varmints. Critters are the fuzzy and cuddly friendly creatures that peop...
One of Alva’s most colorful personalities from the past century is the one and only Robert R. Brown. In the past, when mentioning his name, everyone that knew him always said all three components of his cognomen (i,e, “Robert” “R” “Brown”). But today, whenever I mention his name, the most frequent response from younger residents is, “Who is he?” When it comes up, I feel so ancient. I first met Robert R. Brown at Alva’s former premiere nightclub – Vince and Iris Pettit’s VIP Supper Club – you remember Vince don’t you? – and his night place with...
Though the ancient philosopher and teacher Socrates is long gone, variations of the pedagogical technique known as the “Socratic Method of Teaching” might still be encountered in institutions of higher education today, most notably in law schools. Following the dictates of the Socratic method, the discussion leader seldom answers a student’s question directly. Instead he instigates a series of questions and student responses designed to lead the student to a point where the student “discovers” the answer to his own original question. As for th...
Ah, to be back in the old classroom again, listening to old Professor Droning Onanon explaining some of the finer points of western civilization – occasionally referencing an ancient Greek teacher and philosopher named “Socrates” [470 BC - 399 BC.] Such titillating subjects have been putting Western Civ students in American universities to sleep for many generations. For those of you that might have missed these less than vibrantly interesting lectures, ancient Greece was well populated with free thinkers, and they kind of invented the democ...
Oh to be able to say precisely the right thing at just the right time. That is to say, one would be able to reply to an insult with a real zinger that puts the resident smart aleck in his place. And at the same time, the zinger would not be so “over the top” that it gets the person hurt, physically or emotionally. A pretty tall order for your “average Joe,” but some people definitely have the talent to live on the edge. One of the best at this was none other than Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, of whom it can be said, “he weaponize...
My next contact with former inmates from the Alva German POW camp occurred when their 50-year reunion was held in Alva in 1995 at the Sirloin Stockade (now a closed Mexican restaurant.) Stan Almgren was the owner/manager at the time. Roughly thirty-five former POWs were present at the banquet, and German dinner manners were very much on display for local citizens in attendance – especially for the Alva ladies. As an example, if an Alva woman were being introduced to a former POW, the ex-soldier would snap to attention, click his heels l...
In the fall semester of 1944 at Northwestern State College in Alva, Oklahoma, an 18-year-old coed named Phyllis Stout was surprised to see long lines of German prisoners of war marching past Shockley Hall (now Vinson Hall) on the east side of the NWOSU campus. The POWs, composed of captured Afrika Corps soldiers, had been off-loaded from railroad cars on the north side of Alva. From the railroad, they were being moved on foot down Seventh Street, turning east on Highway 64 to the junction of U.S. Highway 281, then south to the POW camp a few bl...
My sister used to be an avid collector of autographs from musical performers. In her teenage years, Sandy (a/k/a “Sis”) used to be very good at being first in line for signatures after a thrilling (to her) operatic performance. (I never did make any claims relative to her sanity as reflected by her musical tastes.) Being children born to a private piano teacher and church organist, my brother, my sister, and I were exposed to musical selections that included primarily classical and Broadway pieces. Not hardly the usual listening practice of...
Some celebrities are very personable and approachable. One of the best at accommodating autograph hounds was “the King” of golf, Arnold Palmer. Unfortunately, he passed from this life a short while ago in 2016. During his playing days, Palmer was famous for staying for hours after a tiring day of tournament golf, making a monumental effort to give his autograph to every fan who wanted one. He did his best to make each signature appear legible, and as close to his other signatures as possible. If you happen to see one of his (alleged) signatures...
Perhaps ten years before his Pinehurst victory, I “met” Payne Stewart while attending one of the Colonial golf tournaments in Fort Worth, Texas. I was in a crowd of several hundred people, watching a foursome of golfers play the ninth hole, when one of the player’s hit a marginal shot, and it wound up in the small lake short of the hole. An unknown person immediately behind me called out to the errant golfer in a voice slightly louder than normal, “Dave, so goes life.” I turned my head slightly to identify the speaker, and found myself fa...
It is human nature to harbor a desire to be around great people, and to keep lasting mementos of the experience. One way of accomplishing that goal is to collect a notable person’s “John Henry” on paper. But the difficulty of doing so tends to vary inversely with that person’s degree of fame and with their willingness to give signatures. Now for example, you take Albert Einstein’s signature. His autograph wasn’t widely available, and memento seekers used to grab every scrap of paper he ever touched that wasn’t nailed down, even table napkins...
In the late ‘60s, mass enrollment at Northwestern Oklahoma State College was done by having all its university professors grouped by discipline in the Student Center Ballroom. Then they were to personally sign students into their classes, ostensibly on a first come basis. Students enrolled according to the first letter of their last name, and the letters were rotated so a person named Adams wouldn’t always get to enroll first. The enrollment process started on a Monday, took three full days, and student classes started on Thursday. Stu...
If the reader will allow for a small digression, while news of World War II in Europe and North Africa was being covered by Walter Cronkite, Northwestern Oklahoma State University had one of its very own covering the war in the Pacific theater. Soft spoken Floyd Sibley, or “Sib” as he became known at NWOSU, had also been a war correspondent. But when I met him in 1966, he was the university’s sports information director. He rapidly became known for two things: his easygoing nature and the smoking of his ever-present pipe. While covering road...
During World War II, Walter Cronkite became a preeminent war correspondent and covered many major military engagements up close and personal. However, he did not always content himself just to be an observer and reporter of the conflicts. At times he would take over the firing of a fifty caliber anti-aircraft machine gun to repel German fighters while on board a B-17 on bombing raids over Germany. After the cessation of hostilities, Cronkite was chosen to cover the trials of top Nazis for war crimes at Nuremberg. For more that a month he sat...
War correspondents of World War II often received minimal military training, both as to martial techniques and military procedure and protocol. They were more or less a kind of “civilian military misfit.” Correspondent personnel wore officers’ uniforms that were not associated with any branch of the military, and had no indication of rank thereon, except for a green brassard marked with a large “C” on the left arm. A bona fide military man might salute a correspondent approaching in the strange officer’s uniform, only to receive the boy sco...
When Walter Cronkite was ten years old, the Cronkite family moved from Kansas City to Houston, Texas. Some of the South’s cultural conventions of the time shocked the former mid-westerner. The mistreatment of African Americans was quite disturbing, and he received a rather shocking introduction to conventional southern manners when addressing teachers. In his first day in fourth grade in a southern classroom, his class was asked to solve a rather complex math problem that, if solved correctly, resulted in a simple answer. Wanting to start o...
Depending on a person’s preferred news source, one might conclude that the other person is one of the well-informed and “right minded” persons. But if he favors the opposite party, he might easily think that he’s dealing with a deranged mental defective, totally devoid of any observable signs of intelligence. Political discussions with such a “deranged person” might easily turn into something of a “hard hat activity.” These circumstances tend to produce an American republic that is both an argumentative and a messy way to run a government – wh...
In the ‘50s and ‘60s, targeted girls in an approaching car would be most impressed when the established honking ritual was accomplished with flair and grace. The feminine description often given for this supreme result was “the living end.” But it was a real downer when a driver might send out a hopeful honk, only to be met with a resounding silence from the on-coming car. This could become a “10” in automotive snobbery, and some mean-spirited teens took an immense delight in not returning honks, and thereby deflating the ego of inexperienced h...
During the ‘50s and ‘60s, our family home was situated on “the main drag” in Hugoton, Kansas, which naturally enough was named “Main Street.” The street was also the principal north/south highway through the town, and intersected another east/west highway a block to the south of our house. Teenagers of the time used a portion this layout of highways as a popular social complex to signify their coming of age. The complex consisted of a mile and a half of roadways that formed an L-shaped grid. Coming from the north, the grid began with an eig...
As was true of the vast majority of pre-teens, my siblings and I spent a great deal of time trying to avoid disciplinary issues with our mother, and naturally we compared notes with fellow classmates. I was particularly impressed with one classmate (I’ll call him “Johnny”) who made the claim that, “I’m mature for my age, and I’ve never been spanked in my entire life.” Given my own experience with parental percussion correction, I simply had to check out the veracity of his assertion. If indeed it were true, maybe he knew something I d...
Where our mother’s wrath over our misbehavior was concerned, it was totally a different matter from the way Dad dealt with it. She would not give warnings, but would merely state in matter of fact terms that we had earned a spanking, and that we were going to get it at bedtime. We kids then could not bargain our way out of a thorough spanking before bed, no matter how much better our interim behavior became. Once our behavior merited percussion correction, we were certainly going to get it dealt out – in spades. But given our wel...
Every new generation has to learn disciplinary basics, such as any time mothers refer to a child with both first and middle names, they are usually in a GREAT deal of trouble. And in our own family’s situation, there would absolutely be no mercy regarding attempts to mitigate the severity of upcoming disciplinary action if my own mother was involved. Further, adding additional volume while crying out in pain during disciplinary action is easily detected by the vast majority of maternal disciplinarians. And of course, either parent may lose h...
There is nothing so appreciated by the general public as a well-behaved child. But things become less than peachy when nearby Junior begins to test appropriate limits. Or more to the point, we have trouble putting up with someone else’s “lovely child” throwing a tantrum in public, and we expect the child’s parents to correct any misbehavior post haste. In analyzing the disciplinary issue, allow me to recount some of my own (admittedly dated) experiences with the subject. During the 100th anniversary all school reunion in Hugoton, Kansas, in 201...
