Talkeetna Bluegrass Festival Memories

In the 1980s my husband Joe and I traveled around Southcentral Alaska selling food at special summer events. We sold deep fried potato skins and Buffalo NY style hot chicken wings among other eatables. Talkeetna venues included the Moose Dropping Festival, Miner’s and Trapper’s Day and the most memorable, the annual Talkeetna Blue Grass Festival. The first year we worked the Talkeenta Blue Grass Festival was in 1984 at Sheep Creek. We served homemade corndogs out of a make-shift booth. We slept in a tent and were kept awake 24/7 by partiers, so we should have learned our lesson. But the money was good and I wanted more of it. The next year, 1985 we invested in a 20’ food trailer.

Our new food trailer, summer 1985

In August, 1985 we took our spiffy new food trailer, the “Alaskan Renaissance Café” up to Dirty Ernie’s and Rosco’s annual Talkeetna 3 day blues and bluegrass festival at Goose Creek. My brother Matt, a recent AA convert, flew up from Illinois that summer to help us. Besides local musicians such as Ken Terry (RIP), Jerry Jeff Walker was the star attraction performing “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother” among others favorites.

The “Hell’s Angels” were the “official security“ and ironically some of our best customers. They ordered nachos with as many jalapeños that their money allowed.
Our food trailer was the main source of water for everyone and that was before bottled water. We also were the first aid station providing baking soda to treat an abundance of bee stings. There was a unique axe throwing contest that Joe gave a shot at on his meager mini breaks. We have not seen such a contest since. There also were no health inspectors or state troopers anywhere. I always figured the authorities felt any loss of the 400 or 500 partiers there would be a gain to Alaska. 

The way into the festival site was about a quarter mile on an old tractor trail with enough ruts to crack our waste water pipe. We fixed it temporarily. Then the first day, while Joe added grease to the deep fryer, he discovered he had failed to closed the fryer drains after the last cleaning. The trailer floor flooded in cooking oil. The cleanup was difficult since water was such a premium item. Joe stayed and cleaned while I made a 15 mile trip to Sheep Creek, then Trapper Creek to get enough small bottles of oil to refill the restaurant size fryer. What a way to start. The return home to Anchorage was just as perilous. As Joe pulled the food trailer up the hill into Eagle River he heard the clopping of hooves on the pavement. He glanced in the left truck mirror to observe a moose turn away before going between the truck and trailer.

We made money and earned every cent. The first night a customer offered to trade me some marijuana for food saying I looked like an old “hippy chick“ after mentioning he had just got out of prison. I decided at that point we had to figure out a safe place for our cash proceeds. We stored the money in the freezer department of the propane refrigerator. It worked, but when we got home to Anchorage we had to spread it all over our two story house to dry. That was the last time we ventured to do the Talkeetna Bluegrass Event. The money is long gone, but the memories remain.
The rumor is this year (August 5^th-7^th) is the grand finale for the annual Talkeetna Music Festival some 25 plus years since we last attended. If that is true, I’m going to miss knowing that it is there to go to, whether I go or not. And if there ever was a tee-shirt for the event I always felt it should simply state, “I survived” the Talkeetna Bluegrass Festival”.
　

A Postcard from the Edge

One of my favorite possessions is a “Giant Post Card“ from Big Bear Lake, California - June 1958. It was sent by my Dad to his mother in law, my maternal grandmother: “Mrs. Robert DeLozier, 1020 Pine Street, Chelsea, Oklahoma“. It cost 3 cents to send and the stamp still sticks. The color postcard photo by George E. Watson states, “This picturesque lake high in the San Bernardino Mountains (El. 6,750) is an ideal vacation spot and a fisherman’s paradise. The lake, eight miles long and in some place places over a mile wide, is plentifully stocked with trout, bluegill and other varieties of fish.” As a long time Alaskan of 33 years this fishing comment is a bit of a joke, but for a person in the lower 48, probably true.


My Dad wrote, “Dear Mother DeLozier, Mary and I have been camping out in the mountains. Mary is on vacation now and she I are planning on going back for the weekend on the 4th. Our address at present is 12624 Willowbrook Ave., Willowbrook, Calif. Bobbie (my Mom) and Mathew (my brother) did not go with us as Ruth (my sister Angie) was teething. Mary passed (3rd grade) and her report had seven superior marks and her teacher said she was an excellent student. Bob Phillips and Mary”.

After completing first and second grades living with my grandparents in Oklahoma my parents popped in one very sad day in 1957 to take me back to their wandering lifestyle in Southern Cali as it is now called. We lived in a multitude of poverty stricken places and I wonder what teacher Dad was referring to in the postcard. School was always my sanctuary. I estimated once that I changed schools 3 to 4 times a year between 3rd and 6th grade from California to Missouri. My parents were true bohemian gypsy wantabes


Now back to the postcard. Is that really my Dad calling my Okie Grandma, “Mother DeLozier“? It sounds so formal and upstate New Yorky. Is it really 53 years since I got my first bad sunburn at Big Bear Lake camping with my Dad? And then goggling the old address of Willowbrook I discover it is as bad as I remember. The area is part of Compton and Watts where the LA race riots started in the mid 1960s and today is frequently in the top 20 highest crime rates in the U.S. It was where someone tried to steal my sister Ruth (Angie) out of her bassinet from an open window when she was an infant. My Aussie/Irish teenage neighbors were greatly impressed recently to actually meet someone who had lived there. They are Gangster/Rap music followers and the area has a plethora of musicians of that persuasion. It is a great place to be from and only 80 miles to go camping at Big Bear.

We did go camping again with the whole crew. I have a copy of a photo of my brother Matt, Ruth Angie and I on an outing, probably Labor Day 1958 at Crestview in the San Bernardino Mountains. It was always great to escape LA to camp out even then.

Mary, Ruth Angela & Matt "Phillips"  on a camping trip in the San Bernadino Mountains, Ca. Sept. 1958

My First Trip to Jail and the Cardboard House



My first trip to jail was with my Dad, Bob when I was about six years old in 1955. My baby brother, Mathew, Mom, Dad and I were living around the Bluewater Lagoon in Parker, Arizona on the Colorado River in a mini travel trailer parked next to a cardboard house. The cardboard house was our den. It was a big room made from disassembled very sturdy packing boxes. There were two or three open air windows and a door way without a door and a flat roof. Inside the structure was a propane stove, old ice box and a few lawn chairs with a army cot bed. The cardboard shack was our entertainment center back before any poor folks owned a TV. It was where I cooked up my first gourmet mustard and onion sandwich at the tender age of six. (No wonder I prefer to eat out to this day over cooking at home.)

Nearby our home, I learned, after trying to smoke with another young juvenile boy, that I didn’t have the stomach to smoke tobacco. The cigarette we smoked no doubt was one I had rolled for my Dad and Mom with their loose leaf tobacco, rolling papers and cigarette roller. Rolling smokes was something for me to do and as a kid and I enjoyed doing it. My child mind at some point decided to actually try smoking. The neighbor boy down the road and I gave it a try. Afterwards I vomited profusely. Dad found out, laughed, figured I learned my lesson and at the age of six I gave up on smoking tobacco.

It was also there I learned about quick sand. I was warned about the potential threat on the river bank. It was also here that I had my first clue that there was a difference in the male and female anatomy. This discovery came while out swimming in the Colorado River at the Blue Lagoon. That same trouble making boy smoker asked me to show him my “hamburger” and in exchange he would show me his “hot dog“. The “show” never took place, thankfully. Later after asking my Dad what the kid was talking about, Dad advised me it would be best for me to avoid that boy at all costs thereafter.

Some way or another about this time we came by a couple of ducks. They each took to nesting under the back wheels of my Dad’s car and one day when he was backing up, he accidentally ran over them both. I was devastated, my Dad felt horrible and it was my first taste of death.

Many evenings as the huge golden desert sun would set in the west, my parents, baby brother and I would take walks on the banks of the Colorado River. On one such walk we met an older, generous kind couple. They must have felt sorry for me, going barefoot in the hot desert sun because the next day they brought me a new pair of shoes, toys and miscellaneous treats! One evening shortly thereafter as we were taking one of our customary walks, my parents strayed ahead of my brother Matt and I. Matt, was learning to crawl, and suddenly he commenced to crawl like a wild hyena right into the Colorado River and commence to try and drink the river dry. Now having this very rare pair of new shoes, I suffered my first dilemma. Should I get my new shoes wet and dirty, or go get my brother and try to save him from choking to death on the river water and join the dead ducks on the other side of the rainbow? Although I saved my brother from the grasp of the water and drowning, there are times I wonder if I made a mistake. (Chuckle)

Speaking of water, our drinking water during this period was pumped and hauled from a small rural public pump near by and of course, we bathed in the Colorado River. (All good practice for my future life in Alaska). We were poorer than dirt and needless to say there were no jobs in the desert vicinity, which didn‘t help financial matters. Dad’s car tires were wearing thin and with our constant coming and going across country, flat wearing out. One day, while out and about getting water, Dad spotted some tires in a field he thought were abandoned, perhaps a gift from Heaven. Actually they were placed there by the Devil, I decided later. The Devil must have wanted my Dad to get arrested for “stealing tires”. The local police picked my Dad and me up shortly after we retrieved the tires from the field. They took us to the local jail and I fought my first police man as he tried to unlock my hands from around my Dad’s neck. It was my intention to stay with Dad at all costs. Someway they managed to unlock my 5 year old grip and my Dad spent the night there in jail. They took me back to stay with my poor Mom and baby brother alone for one very, very long night.

The next day Dad was released from jail but without getting to keep the tires. Then we headed further south down the road with our crappy mini travel trailer and lousy tires to live in El Centro. There I attended kindergarten and Dad would look for some sort of job. Saying goodbye to the cardboard house and the Colorado River was a piece of cake. It would be fifty-five years (March 2010) before I returned to that exact area with my dog Moonshine and husband. Moon would swim where I had as a five year old. The cardboard house was long gone, as well as the empty desert vistas and in its place were oodles of manufactured homes. Oh the changes time does bring.



My Moonshine in the Bluewater Lagoon March 2010



Bedtime Prayers with Dad by My Side

Robert (Bob) Thomas Phillips circa 1940s

During the times I lived with my parents as a small child, my Dad was without a doubt my favorite biological parent. My poor Mom was someone I tolerated, God Bless her and may she rest in peace. The most memorable bedtime ritual for me was Dad having me repeat the Lord’s Prayer after him. This nightly occurrence started when I was about age five. Eventually I memorized it. Sometimes we would say the other simpler and shorter prayer that went: “Now I lay me down to sleep, if I should die before I wake, pray my Lord, my soul to take“. We would end this mini prayer with “God Bless” any and everybody we could think of blessing.
In retrospect I’m surprised my Dad even knew the Lord‘s prayer much less taught it to me, his first born.

My Dad, Robert Thomas Phillips, was the second baby son and final child of older parents. His father, my grandfather, Thomas was born in 1877 and fought in the Spanish American War in the Phillipines. Dad’s Mom, my first name namesake and paternal grandmother, Mary was born in 1890 in upstate NY. Both grandparents were products of the Victorian Age. Dad was two years younger than his older brother, Howard, a lifelong bachelor and small time mystery writer.

Dad was born September 2, 1922 in East Syracuse, NY. Bob, as Dad was commonly called was raised as a non practicing Catholic and most of his life was actually a wantabe pagan. However from time to time Dad would practice religion to the point of even becoming a licensed minister in the late 1980s in Carbondale, Illinois. This I know to be true as I have a photo of Dad performing a wedding there outdoors. What church licensed Dad, God only knows.

Although Dad was born on Labor Day, he really wasn’t into working. Dad became well educated and respected education to no end, always encouraging me to obtain a college degree no matter what, but my Dad was lazy and messy. He was the baby of his family what can I say? The second child of much wanted children and spoiled. 

After high school Dad went to Wilson’s Teacher’s college in Washington D.C. but dropped out and began his working career as a small time baseball player. He played in Georgia while trying his hand at acting. He got married but his first wife was killed shortly after in a car wreck in Chicago. He eventually joined the army in WWII where he served briefly as a cook. Dad and Mom met after WWII by both writing and exchanging letters to the “Lonely Hearts Club Magazine“. They dazzled one another with fabricated stories on how wealthy they each were.  Mom said she was an aspiring actress living temporarily in Oklahoma and Dad a rancher from Wyoming living temporarily with his parents in upstate New York. Once they married in January 1948, after honeymooning in Niagara Falls, Dad had a heart shape tattoo on his right arm stating “Bob loves Bobbie“. Dad eventually graduated from Southern Illinois University in 1971 with a degree in Social Work. It so happened to be the same year I graduated from Oklahoma State University with a degree in secondary education.

Dad tried his hand at many professions like myself. My all time favorite as a kid was when he drove a Good Humor Ice Cream Truck in Southern Cali. When I was a toddler Dad worked in the Chicago steel mills until Mom and he decided they would be better off in California mainly because it wasn‘t near as cold. In LA Dad worked briefly as a welder. Eventually my folks became dependant on the government for supporting their growing family of five. It all began during President Johnson‘s War on Poverty. So to say my Dad knew the social work and welfare system from the inside out is an understatement, and for him to obtain a degree in it, only seemed fitting. After Dad finished this degree in 1971 he got a job driving cab in Carbondale, something he was doing in the 1940s in Chicago when I was born. He always said driving cab was his primary profession.

Dad was a Liberal with a capital L, even to the point of being accused of being a Communist during the 1950 McCarthy era. When I was five years old in Southern California, before Dad took me back to my grandparents in Oklahoma to live, that there were two grim looking men in black suites that came to our door asking to speak to Mr. Phillips. Although not quite 5, I knew it wasn‘t a good will visit. Fortunately Mom was there and began hollering for Dad and carrying on so much that I think the FBI ended up feeling sorry for him and let the whole thing go. The Lord does work in mysterious ways.

Dad would probably more accurately be described as a socialist, being for the underdog and the oppressed working class. However in 1973, Dad made a historic statement by painting his car with anti-Nixon statements and driving it from Carbondale, Illinois to Tulsa, Oklahoma, a very conservative area. My folks were there to visit my first husband, me and my Grandfather Robert. There is a photo postcard my brother, Matt, made of my Dad’s special Impeach Nixon car while in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. It happens to have my Okie maternal Grandfather Robert looking on with disgust and disbelief.

Now if there were ever two people diametrically opposite it was definitely my Dad and my maternal grandfather Robert Hillary DeLozier.  At my first wedding September 4th, 1971 Grandpa Robert was the one who “gave me away“.  Dad arrived late at the First Christian Church. He said he got lost. I don’t think so. He’d been a cab driver in Chicago and been to the small town of Chelsea, Oklahoma many, many times. I think Dad was hurt and maybe embarrassed because I hadn’t asked him to do the “giving away” bit.  I hope he  understood that since I’d lived with Grandpa, his father in law all through high school and before, spending college summers working while living with Grandpa, as well as other vacations, it seemed like Grandpa was the right person to ask. Plus I married into a big time Republican Oklahoma Oil family and of course Dad did not approve.  In the end the marriage only laste 7 years.  It was a bad fit for me from the beginning and of course an even bigger disappointment for my liberal Dad who conveniently couldn't find the church on time that wedding day.

Robert (Bob) Thomas Phillips circa 1990s

Dad passed April 18, 1999 in Carbondale, Illinois 14 months after Mom's passing.  He died in the VA hospital. Although we didn't always see eye to eye, I sure miss talking with him and repeating those nightly prayers together.

Mary Alta Buckingham - Memoir  of my Dad 2/25/2008, revised 6/6/2012 for Father's Day 6/10/2012

“Cleanliness is next to Godliness” and My Grandpa Robert

The most influential person in my life and still is to some degree was my maternal grandfather, Robert Hillary DeLozier of predominantly French American descent. Grandpa was born June 15, 1902 in Chelsea, Oklahoma and died there leap year February 24, 1988. My Grandpa was the antithesis of my Dad, his son in law, Bob Phillips. Both people very dear to me, but as opposite as night and day. Grandpa Robert loved to work, was not well educated, only completed the second grade, but encouraged me to excel in school and provided me the opportunity to do so. He was clean and tidy to a fault and although never rich, very thrifty. His favorite sayings included “a place for everything, and everything in its place”. I learned early on these wise adages do simplify and enrich life without a doubt.

Robert DeLozier circa 1940s

Upon rising in the morning the first thing my Grandfather expected any household member or guest to do was wash their face, brush their teeth, comb their hair and dress. Absolutely under no circumstances was one allowed into the kitchen or to be seen by others until these items were completed. To this day I still consider this to be the mark of civilized mankind and am appalled at those who do not live by the same code.

Now I would never say my Grandpa Robert was a saint, for he loved to smoke his cigars or a pipe, and he’d have a nip or two or three of whiskey every Saturday night. The whiskey was suppose to be hidden in his bathroom clothes closet. On Saturday nights while watching Lawrence Welk or the Tulsa wrestling matches on TV, Grandpa made several trips to the bathroom and yes he always came out smiling.

When my Grandmother Alta died suddenly of a stroke at 60 and I was 15, Grandpa rose to the occasion and became a surrogate Mom for me until I graduated high school. He fortunately had raised three daughters, so he had experience with girls. Thankfully, I always felt completely at home and at ease with my Grandpa. For example, his tactful way of trying to find out if I was in need of monthly sanitary pads was to ask me before he went to the general store if I had “come sick”.

As far as being a good provider, Grandpa Robert was top of the line. With Grandma gone I became the yearly organizer of Grandpa’s dump truck business tax figures for the local income tax man, Fraley Insurance.  Grandpa and I also changed churches. We began attending the First Christian, leaving the Church of Christ behind. Once again we heard gospel music with supporting musical instruments.  Each Sunday after church, Grandpa bought a Tulsa Daily World and I would read him the parts I thought important. Grandpa didn’t really read with only a 2^nd grade education and he could only write a bit. Numbers were his forte and he lived to the tune of “waste not, want not”.

Robert DeLozier with his dump truck nearby, circa 1967

One of the best things about Grandpa Robert was his great sense of humor. He had all kinds of nick names for me as well as others. My names included Rat-Hole and Whistle-britches. For people he thought weren’t doing what they should, he referred to them as “sorry wads“.

Now my Mom his middle daughter, Bobbie Jean’s lifestyle did aggravate him to no end. The main source of this aggravation, was my folks lack of responsibility in producing kids and their lack of tidiness. He thought three kids was the max and less was more. I remember Grandpa, asking Mom, “why do you keep having more kids, Bobbie, when you aren’t taking care of what you got”? He would go on admonishing her to “get in there and do what needs to be done”, referring to cleaning and cooking. He would remind my Mom that she had not been raised that way, she knew how to do and she just needed to do it. Unfortunately Grandpa was whistling in the wind, trying to talk sense to Mom or Dad. They were free spirits with no common sense or any desire for any. Grandpa and I got to keep it all. And when they would visit, usually unannounced, Grandpa would say upon their departure, “I hate to see them come and I hate to see them go”.

Another endearing quality of Grandpa’s was his thoughtfulness. After I left home, he always remembered my birthday with a birthday card. When I moved to Alaska in 1978 he would continue to send me one yearly and include a silver dollar in it. I still have the birthday cards as well as the silver dollars. Fortunately, I haven’t yet had the need to spend them.

Grandpa Robert was an Oklahoma cowboy and only wore only cowboy boots, owned no shoes except house shoes, loved horses, animals and country music. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys were his favorite musicians. As a young man he called square dances, was involved in rodeos, kept riding horses next to the house until I was in high school. Then the horse property became a trailer rental spot, next to which we always had a huge vegetable garden even after my Grandma passed on. The first year after Grandma Alta passed, I sold the veggies by the bushel for peanuts. We had more than we could process without her.

Grandpa Robert and me, Mary Alta circa 1949

　
Grandpa Robert was never happier than after a hard day‘s work hauling gravel in his dump truck for Rogers county. That is with the possible exception of doing the laundry or washing dishes. I do believe his first love was scalding the dishes after washing them. He couldn’t sit down after dinner, which he usually cooked until things were cleaned and ready for the next meal.

In his younger days Grandpa wanted to be a horse jockey, but his Mom, Addie Mae Wilson DeLozier nixed that idea saying it was too dangerous. So he went into hauling, hay or whatever needed hauled with horse and mule teams including pulling oil rigs, and moving people from east to west and north to south in Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas and Texas but no further. My Granddad did not have much of a wander lust. Grandma once wanted to go North to Montana for a change, but he knew his place, and that was his home in Chelsea, Oklahoma. He was happy with Chelsea and I was truly blessed to share that special time and place with him.
　
March 3, 2008/revised September 27, 2010; June 16th, 2012



The Red Billfold and Its Contents

Subtitle: Life with My Maternal Grandmother, Alta Mae Wilson DeLozier



Grandma Alta & Grandpa Robert circa 1962

To say my Grandmother Alta was like a Mother to me is an understatement. Grandma Alta, an enrolled Cherokee Indian from the Deer Clan on the Dawes Rolls, born January 14^th, 1904 in Rogers County, Cherokee Nation West in Chelsea, Oklahoma. She died May 16, 1964, a mere sixty years later in the same town from complications due to a stroke. The stroke occurred the night of my (Mary Alta Phillips Buckingham) 9^th grade junior high school graduation 3 days earlier. Something just didn’t feel right to me the evening after the graduation ceremony. There was a party to celebrate and I ended up going home early. My grandparents and I had cheese, crackers and green apple slices with hot tea in the kitchen. Afterwards we went to bed and a few hours later Grandma was taken away in an ambulance. She'd had recurrent headaches for days. She was to go the doctor the following Monday but instead she died 3 days later in St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa that May. Had she lived, she would have been completely paralyzed on one side of her body.

This all happened during my third extended stay living with Grandma Alta and Grandpa Robert. I arrived 9 months earlier by Greyhound bus after being released from 2 years of foster care in Los Angeles. Following Grandma Alta’s death, I continued to stay on with my Grandfather to complete high school and eventually study at Oklahoma State University with the financial assistance of National Defense Student Loan program, scholarships, and lots of part-time and summer jobs.


Now back to Grandma Alta. The first time I lived with my Grandparents I was a 2 or 3 month old baby. A neighbor in Chicago phoned my Grandmother Alta and said I needed care. My Grandmother who did not drive, took a train alone to Chicago from Chelsea, Oklahoma in the middle of winter. She brought me back home to Chelsea to live my first three years and it has been my home many times since. My mother was suffering from severe depression and was highly dysfunctional. Mom lost her first child to sudden infant death syndrome a couple of years earlier. After that loss Mom never had a baby without relapsing into overwhelming schizophrenic postpartum  depression complete with hospitalization. However, that did not slow my Mom and Dad from continuing to breed child after child much to my Grandparents dismay. Consequently I believe that one should be licensed to breed.


After my brother Matt was born in 1955 when I was 6 , Dad drove me from El Centro, California to live with Grandma Alta and Grandfather for the second time. This was during my first and second grade. I never bonded with my Mother and we were having a very difficult time then. I have the best of memories living with Grandma Alta upon my return to Chelsea . We would sit at the dining room table for hours on end cutting out paper dolls and having them play all sorts of different roles. She taught me to play checkers and Chinese checkers with marbles, my favorite. She introduced me to sewing and we even made rag dolls with button eyes. Though I’ve had my fair share of friends, Grandma Alta was my first and my very best one.


Alta was the third child of six children, 3 boys and 3 girls and grew up on a farm outside Chelsea. For a time she was the last family member allowed enrollment in the Cherokee nation. Her 3 younger siblings were known as “too lates” or “new horns” in regard to enrollment, because they were born after March 4, 1906. (In 1912 this law was reversed by the US Supreme Court and the “too lates” were allowed full enrollment.) Grandma Alta was also of Irish and English descent. She was slim built, about 5’3” and always hoped to gain weight to the point of having weight gain supplements in the frig. The most she ever weigh was 135 pounds. All her family tended to be thin and that was when thin wasn’t in. Unfortunately I did not inherit that problem.


Grandma Alta had black hair and the first year after she passed, when I was in 10^th grade I dyed my hair black. However, she avoided the sun at all cost, wanting a pale complexion, in spite of the fact she had relatively olive color skin. She said, she did not want to look like she worked in the fields for a living. I, being a child of the sixties, wanted to look like a sun baked twiggy and would sun bathe in the yard for hours on end and refuse to eat anything but watermelon or apples. This sun bathing habit would pain Grandma to no end. She would tell me repeatedly that I was going to ruin my skin. Like all teenagers, I refused to listen and have sun spots today to prove it, despite living half my life in Alaska. However, I did hear the story that she and her sisters had once tried to bleach their skin to look whiter. Seems we all want what we don‘t have, be it skin, hair or fat.


Robert & Alta DeLozier circa 1939

Grandma Alta was known for her lemon meringue pie throughout NE Oklahoma’s Rogers County. There was nothing like it before or since. The legend was that once in the 1930s Pretty Boy Floyd, a gangster of that era, was passing through Chelsea and came on a pie supper auction at a social function in nearby Bushyhead. He is said to have paid $25 for one of Grandma Alta’s lemon meringue pies. My grandfather Robert preferred her vinegar pie to the lemon, something I never understood. I’m quite sure Pretty Boy Floyd would have never given an Indian nickel for a vinegar pie, but then maybe he would as the money he was spending wasn’t his, but stolen from who remembers what.


During the 1950s Grandma Alta, Grandpa Robert and I attended Black gospel spiritual music concerts in the summer in Chelsea’s Black part of town, a couple of blocks from where we lived. One summer night in 1956 my Grandparents and I went to one such event in what was then known as “Colored Town” and I had the time of my young life. Till this day I can still hear those gospel spirituals being sung such as We Shall Overcome, Amazing Grace, Shall We Gather at the River?


In those days the rural town of Chelsea, Oklahoma had a population 2,000 and sported a small movie theater on Main Street, the business district. Grandma Alta and I went to movies there on a regular basis. Movies I remember seeing with Grandma in particular were those staring Elvis Presley, her favorite star who happened to also be part Cherokee. It must have cost no more than 25 to 35 cents each to see and hear Elvis, the pelvis, (as he was fondly nicknamed by those of that generation) perform his tunes that included You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog and Love Me Tender. The expense was worth every cent. Grandpa stayed at home and waited for it to play on TV. Grandma probably would have liked Grandpa to go too, just like she at one time wanted to move to Montana. She talked to Grandpa about giving Montana a try, but that was the one thing my Grandparents differed on and that was living anywhere else or traveling. Grandpa Robert was a stay at home man and Grandma Alta had a bit of wander lust in her. She did travel throughout the Southwest and into the upper Midwest but not with Grandpa, but her daughters.


Grandma Alta went to the one room elementary school house called Sunnyside. The land had been donated by her Dad, my Great Grandfather Claude Wilson. She went on to complete 10^th grade and was the brains of the family, since Grandpa Robert only got to go to school through 3^rd grade. She did all his truck hauling bookkeeping and when she passed I stepped in to do it.


Grandma was fun to be with, whether attending the Church or Christ, a family picnic, playing paper dolls at the dining room table or having a beer out on the tree swing in summer. She crocheted, cooked southern soul food, including fried okra and squaw bread out of fried cornmeal and onions. One of the last things I learned from my Grandmother Alta was how to can fruits and vegetables. It was my first and only canning experience in the fall of 1963. However, she was a worrier and she did worry about my Mom, Bobbie Jean and her endless herd of kids. This worry probably contributed to the stroke.


When Grandma’s youngest daughter, my Aunt Bootsie passed in 1993, my cousin Judy, her daughter inherited much of what was left behind. What she didn’t want she passed on to my sister, Angie. One of those items my sister Angie sent on to me. It was my Grandmother Alta’s red billfold (sent June 1995) 31 years after Grandma’s passing. My sister was so young when Grandma passed Angie felt she hardly knew her and wanted me to have it. Today 46 (2010) years later this is what I found inside in the billfold:

- pictures of her 2 grandkids that lived near by, Judy and Junior, Aunt Bootsie‘s kids;
- her social security card although she only worked at home;
- 3 Vaccine Immunization Record Forms for Sabin Oral Polio vaccine, two dated 1/20/1963 & one 4/28/1963
- Grandma’s Voter’s Identification Card, Political Party: Dem. dating from Nov. 1959;
- 23 Chelsea First National Bank deposit slips from March 27, 1958 to December 1962 with deposits in amounts of $10 to $60, and one big $3,583 deposit, probably from the estate property sale of Grandpa Wilson‘s home. Most of the deposits appear to be from her father Claude Wilson that lived with them prior to my arrival and his death December 18, 1962 at 90.
- “Female” help wanted ads from the Tulsa Tribune in April 1964 requesting “Lady to work in hamburger stand”. I wonder if she was looking for a job for me who turned 15?
- a slip of paper which had written “3rd Chapter, 11 Timothy, 13^th verse: “But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, Avoid such men as these“.
- Last, but not least was her appointment note to see Dr. Day at the Springer Clinic in Tulsa at 2 p.m. Monday, May 16^th,, 1964, the day she died.


Afterthought: While I have many photos of my Grandmother, I have none with just her in it. Most are with my Grandfather Robert, one of their three daughters or other family members. I do have one special one of Grandma and Grandpa (taken circa 1962) in a gold frame sent to me by sister Angie, Christmas of 1994. Angie said in an attached note, “I hope you like this gold wood frame. I chose it because in a sense they (my Grandparents) were your pot of gold as a child.”

 May Alta Mae rest in peace next to my Grandpa Robert high on the hill at Chelsea‘s Dawes Cemetery in Rogers County Oklahoma.

　

My Mom, Bobbie Jean

Who would I least likely trust to pilot a plane I was traveling in? Probably my Mom, Bobbie Jean. Why? To begin with Mom didn’t drive and never had a driver’s license to my knowledge, but she almost had a pilot’s license. When I was about five years old in the early 1950s, Dad landed a job in Southern California as a welder and with some of the big bucks, Mom took flying lessons at the Compton airport. She even flew a small plane solo! I would never believe it unless I saw it myself.

Now this is puzzling because only a few years before in the mid 1940s, Mom was diagnosed as schizophrenic in Vinita, Oklahoma. Actually she was probably just an eccentric individual suffering postpartum depression.  She had lost her first child to sudden infant death syndrome.  After that loss every time she had a child (five living of which I am the oldest) she would also lose her mind.   In Oklahoma, being a woman in the 1940s and wanting to fly a plane was probably grounds for a schizoid diagnosis. During those days schizophrenia was the most popular mental diagnosis, much like bipolar was 25 years ago up to today. Oklahoma is a state that frequently seems to have a low level of tolerance and Mom did march to a different drummer.

Mom dropped out of school during junior high school in Chelsea, Oklahoma when her 8th grade English teacher, Mrs. Franklin, told Mom she had to play the part of a monkey in the school play. Perhaps it was a play based on the Darwin Scopes trial, but whatever it was my Mom refused. Years later when living with my grandparents, I too was appalled at Mrs. Franklin‘s insensitivity and harsh treatment of shy students. Eventually I avoided the same teacher’s classes, not by dropping out of school, but by taking Senior English when a Junior and Speech for Junior English. Mom was right on Ms. Franklin.

Mom so wanted to be special she reinvented her birth date. She told everyone that her birthday was January lst, 1924. She was a New Year’s Eve baby by choice. No one ever contradicted her. Years later when I got involved in doing genealogy to enroll my niece and nephews in the Cherokee Nation, I found out after receiving my Mom’s birth certificate that she was actually born on January 2nd. I never mentioned it to her, nor did anyone else in the family. Mom was the middle of three girls and it is said by psychologists that it is always difficult for the middle child. This theory certainly proved to be true in my Mom’s case.

Mom, although poorer than a church mouse was generous. She frequently sent clothes to me in Alaska that she bought at sales in Southern Illinois. Some of the things she sent I remember taking to the Anchorage Sullivan Area Fleas Markets in the 1980s to resell. Many of the items were sold to strippers at the now defunct PJ’s (Poppa Joe’s) in Spenard, things I would never wear, even if I could. As my middle sister Angie likes to say, Mom was not boring. I still have tucked away a pair of blue denim cowboys boots and a red purse Mom sent me back in the 1980s…mementos.

When we got our third Alaska Permanent Fund dividend from the state in 1985, I decided to fly my folks up from Southern Illinois in the summer of 1986. We had a great time. It wasn’t a typical tourist vacation. Mom wasn’t much into sight seeing, mostly she wanted to play Bingo, saying it “is good for your mind”, although not one’s pocket book, and we haven’t played since then.

For the trip Mom brought a fancy long dress she wanted to have her picture taken in in front of our house with Dad, not in front of Denali or any other famous Alaska tourist attraction, but our house. Mom said I was very fortunate to live in such a place and although I consider our home modest, I guess I am fortunate in that respect.  

We took my folks to Portage Glacier, Indian, Palmer to see the big veggies, to take a look at my land in Rabbit Creek Heights, but we didn’t make it to our other land in Talkeetna or Seldovia. Perhaps the days of living in Chicago, California and in a card board house on the Colorado River in Parker, Arizona had made Mom and Dad into jaded tourists. They didn’t do as much as most normal tourists do, but they weren‘t the norm, especially my Mom.




Bobbie, Mary & Bob - Palmer, Alaska Summer 1986

Before my folks bored the plane back to Southern Illinois, we had our farewell party at Dunkin Donuts after first taking Mom‘s picture next to a small plane at Lake Hood near our house. The plane was similar to the one she had flown years before. Like the Anchorage Dunkin Donuts, my parents have passed on but not the memories. May Mom and Dad rest in peace high on the wind blown hill at the Chelsea, Oklahoma Dawes Cemetery.
2/2/1924  -  2/8/1998


Written  for Memoir Writing Group -
December 29, 2007 in memory of Mom’s birthdayS,
short version May 10, 2011-Anchorage Genealogy Society Mother's Day Remembrance