Monday, December 03, 2007
Revisiting the Good Old Days
I wandered around through Oklahoma a few days last week, pestering friends and kin. Near Wynnewood I expected to see an old basketball buddy from Flomot, and was surprised to find her two sisters also. What a wonderful slumber party we had that night, two delicious meals of real "farm food", bales of country memories. If her sons are good representatives of their late dad, I'm sorry I never got to meet him. Love at first sight!
Nola, Jewel and Bobbie were about the middle of the big Starkey clan who lived on a farm west of Flomot that was first owned by Uncle Lee Gunn, next to the one my Grandpa Lycurgus Aurelius Gunn homesteaded in the early twentieth century. An unusually close-knit family, they still gather at the home place each Easter for a huge celebration and again in July to can garden produce and just enjoy each other. Their mother was a few months short of 100 when she finally lost the will to live, and her 11 offspring are well up in years now, keeping her legacy intact.
The Starkey kids were some of the best athletes in the Flomot school. Hard work on the farm seems to do that to a kid. We often climbed the rocky, rattlesnake infested hill behind their house, rode horses, shared clothes. After the house had been emptied of kids, about 1970, I knocked on their kitchen door. Charlie, with his usual friendly grin, opened the screen and I asked, "Recognize me?" Nope. "Would you know me if I was riding a bareback mare?" His eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. Good old days indeed!
The Wandering Widow
Cora Gail Trent
www.cgtrent.com
cgtrent@att.net
Nola, Jewel and Bobbie were about the middle of the big Starkey clan who lived on a farm west of Flomot that was first owned by Uncle Lee Gunn, next to the one my Grandpa Lycurgus Aurelius Gunn homesteaded in the early twentieth century. An unusually close-knit family, they still gather at the home place each Easter for a huge celebration and again in July to can garden produce and just enjoy each other. Their mother was a few months short of 100 when she finally lost the will to live, and her 11 offspring are well up in years now, keeping her legacy intact.
The Starkey kids were some of the best athletes in the Flomot school. Hard work on the farm seems to do that to a kid. We often climbed the rocky, rattlesnake infested hill behind their house, rode horses, shared clothes. After the house had been emptied of kids, about 1970, I knocked on their kitchen door. Charlie, with his usual friendly grin, opened the screen and I asked, "Recognize me?" Nope. "Would you know me if I was riding a bareback mare?" His eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. Good old days indeed!
The Wandering Widow
Cora Gail Trent
www.cgtrent.com
cgtrent@att.net
