My Astrological Sign & My Cousin, Waurika, the Fortuneteller

Growing up as a child and teen, I observed my Northeastern Oklahoma Grandparents, Alta and Robert, planted the ever important yearly garden based on the correct phases of the moon. This was accomplished with the annual Farmer‘s Almanac. Now some way or another planting a garden based on planet alignment seems related to astrology and the alignment of planets at one’s birth. With this in mind, astrology had a family sanction from the get go for me.

My Grandmother Alta’s family including my Mom was very into anything to do with fortune telling, from reading tea leaves to you name it. My second cousin, Grandmother Alta’s niece, Waurika Shreve Porter (1921-1999) “a crusty tough Arkansan” was devoted to astrology, when not reading tarot cards for paying clients. In the 1980s and 1990s while in her sixties and seventies, Waurika could be found in Mexico doing paid readings for vacationing North Slope Oil workers during the winter and spring. Once she did a Tarot card reading for Joe and me in the early 1990s during our visit to her sister’s home Catherine Foster in Farmington, Arkansas. Waurika predicted from the reading, that Joe and I would soon be coming into some unexpected money. Within the year we discovered unbeknownst to us that we were to receive a sizeable federal tax refund in 1993, $2,717, a first and last occurrence. Waurika always said the cards didn’t lie nor do the planets.

The name Waurika is a Choctaw word that means “camp of clear water” however she was not Choctaw, but part Cherokee. She divorced her husband Wilson Ernest Porter in the 1980s. Waurika worked at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas with Vietnam immigrants in the 1970s and then with Cubans until she was laid off in 1981. Wilson worked as the County Agent in Logan County Arkansas. Waurika wanted to travel extensively and evidently he didn’t. Her sister told me that Waurika would call him regularly after the divorce to make sure Wilson was taking his medicine. Wilson lived to be 94 passing in January 2009 in an assisted living home in Booneville, Arkansas. Outliving Waurika 10 years he must have taken her advice about taking his medicine to heart. After their divorce Waurika traveled not only to Mexico, but places as remote as Tonga and as far away as China and Thailand while in her seventies. According to her sister Waurika wasn’t afraid of anything. In the summer of 1999 Waurika died while being treated for brain cancer in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. She felt most at home there because it was the Cherokee Nation capital. She was cremated and “buried” in Farmington, Arkansas where she grew up and her sister Catherine still resides.

Catherine also told me in the 1930s when Waurika was a teen, that she and their Mom, Janie Belle once went to consult an Indian seer. Waurika noticed the seer had a book on astrology. She asked to borrow it. She was allowed to take it overnight but needed to bring the book back the next day. Waurika stayed up all night reading that book on astrology and thus the seeds for her love of astrology were sown.

As to whether I personally believe in astrology or not, it definitely played a part in my life, especially coming of age in the sixties. No matter where you turned in my day, one heard repeatedly the innocuous question, “What’s your sign?” It was an ice breaker, seen as a quick way to get to know a person, if you were compatible and would click.

In a nutshell the characteristics of a my astrological sign Sagittarius, November 23 to December 21, The Archer, a fire sign, are freedom-loving, jovial, straight-forward, intellectual, philosophical and on the dark side careless, tactless and restless. My birth year, 1948, according to the Chinese Zodiac is the year of the Rat that include the traits of being generous, imaginative, critical and somewhat of an opportunist. All in all these traits do fit me for better or worse. In a nutshell the characteristics of a my astrological sign Sagittarius, November 23 to December 21, The Archer, a fire sign, are freedom-loving, jovial, straight-forward, intellectual, philosophical and on the dark side careless, tactless and restless. My birth year, 1948, according to the Chinese Zodiac is the year of the Rat that include the traits of being generous, imaginative, critical and somewhat of an opportunist. All in all these traits do fit me for better or worse.

When I first moved to Alaska in 1978, I sent off and for a paid New Age astrological survey to help me determine “scientifically” the best place for one to live with my birth planet alignment and astrological sign, Sagittarius, born Dec, 14, 1948, at 9:30 p.m. in Chicago, Illinois. I mailed my information with a check of some $25 to the New Age scientists in San Francisco, (where I should have been) and waited for the results. After my check was cashed, I received the “valuable” report. It informed me that the best place for my birth sign to live was somewhere in Siberia. Well Alaska was close enough and I’m still here so maybe they were right and there is something to astrology after all.
Memoirs - Mary Buckingham - January 26, 2009; revised 1/23/2012