Angelica's OKC Flat Stanley's Winter Visit to Anchorage, Alaska and the 2013 Fur Rondy

I arrived at Mary and Joe Buckingham’s via mailbox at 12 noon on a sunny Saturday afternoon February 16^th. My plane flight to the Anchorage, Alaska Ted Stevens International Airport landed earlier in the day. The Chugach Mountain Range was superb. I had never seen so much snow in my life!

That first afternoon we took Pogo to Conner’s Bog Dog Park for a run and walk. Afterwards Joe, Mary and I went cross country skiing at Westchester Lagoon. It was cloudy by late afternoon but there were lots of ice skaters, plus free hot chocolate and a wood fire pit to warm up by.

On Sunday afternoon we went to the Captain Cook Athletic Club. It was kid’s time so I got to exercise and swim, inside.

When not out and about sight seeing, I spent time at home with Pogo and Wiley resting up for the next excursion or eating out with my Aunt Mary & Uncle Joe’s friends. My favorite spot was the world famous Bear Tooth Grill in Spenard where one can even watch a movie while they eat pizza.

Friday February 22^nd was the first day of Fur Rondy. On Saturday morning there was a big parade downtown and fireworks that night. It was a snowy day and hard to see anything. By Monday it stopped snowing and cleared up. We went to the  carnival rides and  snow sculptures, my favorite parts of the Fur Rondy.

While in Anchorage I saw many strange things, but one of the strangest was the number of people running around in shorts. Here is an example of one at the ice sculptures. Very strange!

The last day of my visit I took a horse drawn carriage ride around town. One of the lady carriage drivers said she use to live in Enid, Oklahoma which reminded me it was time to go home. A great trip and I hope to return but next time in the summer when it is light almost all night.

******

Hi Angleica, Mom, Dad, Mrs. Morgan & class,

Sure had a great time on my trip but wish everyone of you had been there too. At the end of my visit I even got to see the start of the Iditarod dog race from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska. The sled dog race lasts up to 12 days and is over a 1,049 miles in length with 66 teams of a dozen plus dogs.  I am bringing back information about it plus the Fur Rondy Schedule of events, many that I attended. The winter carnival has been celebrated since 1949 and is almost as old as my Great Aunt Mary (smile).

It was fun to go north to Alaska but as always good to be home.

Angelica's Flat Stanley



Childhood Memories of Growing Up On and Before Welfare from the 1950s to the 1970s and Drug Testing for Public Aid Today

Every time I see a face book posting or hear in the news about a politician advocating testing welfare recipients for drug use, it makes my skin crawl and my hackles get up. The people that propose this crock of crack for the most part are those that oppose abortion. Now if I had my way there would be a license required to breed or reproduce a kid, proof that the parents were both financially and mentally stable to bring up their offspring without governmental assistance or no breeding allowed. But then I don‘t make the rules. I have no kids and get no welfare, but there was a time on occasion as a kid that I was one of the involuntary recipients of public aid.

I am the oldest of 4, originally 5 living kids of parents that were loving but semi irresponsible bohemian individuals. They didn’t do drugs, other than cigarettes and coffee. They, my mother in particular had mental health issues, plus they were free spirits. I was the oldest and 6 years older than my second sibling, a brother, who now lives on a mental health disability in Illinois. He wants to work but would lose all benefits if he did. Now what is right about that? He makes a little money under the table from time to time doing yard work and hauling, but there is not one person that purposes drug testing for benefits that would envy his lifestyle. He is a 30 year member of AA, does drink coffee and been known to smoke a cigar from time. His wife, who is also mentally fragile and challenged, had one child in 1977. Her only vice is sugar. She is a diabetic.

My youngest sister, 13 years my junior, died from a brain tumor at age 49 on Christmas Eve 2010. I never lived with her but she had a tough life. She did not complete high school and worked in a health food store until her brain tumor made it impossible. The tumor robbed her of her sanity at the end of her life. She left behind two teenage children, one autistic. Her husband receives disability from problems stemming from serving in Vietnam. Isn’t war glorious? It is questionable whether he really needs it or just knows how to play the system. Regardless I don’t envy him, nor did I her or know one person who would. Was she a druggie? No. Is he? No, just booze. He doesn’t even own a car or drive!

Then I have another sister and brother. My middle sister, 10 years younger than myself that lived with me and my first Oklahoma oil company descendant husband of 7 years while she was in high school in the 1970s. She married well, got a good job working as an accountant for another small Oklahoma oil company and finished her degree in Accounting after I moved to Alaska in 1978. She and her husband adopted our grandniece at age one out of foster care in Rhode Island in 2005. Within the last 7 years she has struggled with a neurological disease that makes life a challenge for all those she loves, especially for the adopted child who is now 8. Life is not fair! She is well heeled financially, but I sure don’t envy her, plus she lives in a place I consider Hades (at least at times), Oklahoma. She loves it there because it is her home.

Finally there is my brother who is 11 years younger than myself that has made a lifestyle of living off the system. He is married to a Black woman and they live in Washington state. My brother, Abe’s wife had 5 kids before meeting him by two different men and then they had 2 more together. He had 3 kids prior to her with his first wife. So between the two of them they have 11 kids and neither work. So what is wrong with this picture? Why don’t we require people to work for the state in some auspices to draw their government checks if they are physically able? Why do we penalize or make it impossible for those who want to work that are receiving marginal survival living benefits? What I am told is it would take too much over site. What about the 1930s and the TVA, Tennessee Valley Authority, or the CCC, Civilian Conservation Corps, or back in my day, the 1960s with the college work study programs?

The question should be clear and simple to one in need: You want welfare or a government survival lifestyle check? you are required to come into work where you are sent, bottom line. Got kids? Required to send them to school and work cleaning school bathrooms and/or work in a lunch room, clean the play ground, etc. etc.! Or send them to the local dog park to pick up missed dog poop. Did I forget to mention my brother Abe with the 11 kids has mental health issues also, as in Borderline personality and receives a disability check? All his offspring with the exception of one have mental health issues. Dear Abe served time in the prison that is in the town where the God forsaken president Ronald Reagan was from in Illinois. The president who with his staff cut mental health services to the minimum in the early 1980s? We continue to suffer from these cutbacks today. Incidentally my brother Abe is a right wing Republican Bible thumper that does NOT do drugs. I told you he has Borderline Personality disorder, he is brain dead and no doubt lazy. He also refused to send his kids to school for many years saying he was home schooling them when in fact he was staying up all night and sleeping till late afternoon, creating another generation in need.

None of these people I mentioned ever did a drug other than perhaps alcohol, cigarettes or coffee. But if they did and failed a drug test what would happen to their children? Do all the anti Abortionists not really give a crap what happens after a kid is born? I grew up off and on welfare and have never had to turn back to it for help since a child! I didn’t breed, because I was going to help save the planet, by starting with adoption. Plus I knew there are already too many people on earth without me adding to the problem. What a colossal mistake that was. But I can tell you the shame of having to need something to eat or wear and feeling the pangs of hunger before welfare was instituted in ‘64 (I was 16 then) and those memories I will never forget! There by the Grace of the Creator go all of the self righteous wanta be drug testing enforcers. You want drug tests? How about for politicians first and foremost. One congressman’s salary is more than equal to 20 welfare recipients aid. There are required drug tests to work at McDonalds, but none to be president! Instead of drug tests, how about licensing for reproduction? You have to have a license to own a dog, catch a fish, drive a vehicle and isn’t bringing a kid into the world just as important? Repeated government misplaced priorities!

Before the government issued checks and food stamps established during the Johnson administration in 1964 with the questionable “War on Poverty” my parents received commodities (food) in Tulsa . The commodities included stacks of beans, flour and rice, peanut butter and huge blocks of “government cheese“. Unfortunately no one cooked, unless my grandparents came around to do it when they were alive. The cheese and peanut butter always got eaten first, but not much else except maybe the spam. When Grandma was alive she would get the spam from my parents and put brown sugar on it and bake it, then slice and fry it for making sandwiches. It was tasty enough to have been eaten at the late great Anchorage Whitekey’s Fly by Night Club with the spam glorification menu back in the 1980s .

In conclusion, I recently asked my oldest brother Matt and my sister Angie what they remembered about growing up on welfare. Matt said, “the question you asked about growing up on public aid. It is not something I would have preferred, but it was better than what would have been the case if we hadn’t had that going for us. I suspect we may see a lot of people humbled in our society in the future. If that’s the case, we may see a lot of people eat crow for insults they gave people like us.” My well heeled ill sister, Angie, never replied but as I said before she is ill, has lost the ability to talk but still can text. I think she would prefer to forget she ever lived with that shame. She did have a severe case of rickets as a toddler, born in 1957, before welfare and caused by malnutrition. Eventually her situation improved, but today what’s up with her rare neurological disease? One specialist implied that rickets should have been rare growing up in sunny L.A. as she did, perhaps, but not when you consider the early malnutrition.

We are talking incompetence and dysfunction folks and hungry kids. What good will drug testing do for this? Are we assuming the food stamps and public aid are used for heroin and other drugs? How many heroin dealers do you know that accept food stamps? Just another way to humiliate those in need, not to mention the unnecessary cost to institute needless testing because the majority of welfare recipients do Not do drugs, they simply reproduce needlessly!

Mary Alta Buckingham -
 Childhood Memories of Growing Up on and Before Welfare and Drug Testing for Public Aid Today -  Feb. 11, 2013

My/Our Year in Review - 2012

What I liked and didn’t like about 2012, Negatives & Positives, Pros and Cons:

(I did it! I finished my 2012 Year in review on February 4, 2013, slow but sure.)

January and February:
Southcentral Alaska was plummeted with endless record breaking snow and other than shoveling it, my husband Joe and I went skiing at Conner’s Bog with our 2 year old dog Pogo when not taking her on her daily walks and doggie social hour. Granted most people walk faster than I ski, but isn’t it always the thought that counts? One ski outing was on Super Bowl Sunday which insured a quiet day. This year we spent the occasion in the emergency unit of Alaska Regional, also quiet thanks again to the football game no doubt. Fortunately the end results were not as bad as feared. Joe was just full of it and the cancer tumor which surfaced in May has not returned. Hopefully a Vegan diet proves to continue to be worth the effort when his growing lower neck lymph node, the Devil’s Node or Birchow’s Node is checked out with a biopsy in the near future.
The early months of the year were also filled with various University of Alaska Ole’ (Opportunities for Lifelong Education) classes on Friday. Classes such as “senior life” and others that were really not that memorable. There was of course my endless face booking, our trips to the Capt. Cook Gym every other night, Memoirs on Tuesday, Senior Tai Chi on Thursdays, First Friday Art Walk, Anchorage Genealogy Society monthly meetings and meals and movies from the Lucky Wishbone to the Bear Tooth, probably spending more money at the latter than when we made when we had a bookstore in the same location 20 years ago.

March:
A great week long Road Scholar trip to San Diego. Saw my sister Angie and her husband, Steve on their 25^th wedding anniversary as well as our grand niece Angelica a few brief times. Enjoyed not having to do anything but attend daily Road Scholar events.

April & May through August:
Joe’s esophageal stomach cancer diagnosis and dealing with the cancer treatment medical establishment would drive a sane person crazy. Fortunately the chemo didn’t start til August when the Alaska summer really got serious about rain. We were able to get out and about from Homer, to Seward to Palmer in our “new” RV. Looking forward to this summer doing more of the same, camping that is, hopefully not more chemo.
Also we lost our long term neighbor Sheila to her move south to Surprise, Arizona in May. Also due to cancer and discovered she was an art collector unbeknownst to us after 35 years as neighbors.
Garage sales in April and Mother’s Day to celebrate the season and unload stuff.
In May we bought our first new full size bed for the house in 30 years from Coscto and rented a U-haul to move it in with the help of our late teen neighbor boys.  Had roof guards installed in June, so we don't have to worry about falling snow.  Then we replaced the upstairs carpet for the second time in five years.  The berber just didn't work for us.  It unraveled and got dirty easier than we could ever imagine.  We almost didn't have the old carpet removed in time for the new installation until late the night before.  Again we had to ask the young neighbor Aussie/Irish teens for assistance in tearing it out for a small fee of $60. 
Also in the early part of the summer we discovered our estranged former adopted son that hadn't lived with us in 9 years had a fake driver's licensce with our address on it.  The discovery was made when Carrs/Safeway sent a request for payment of a fine for shop lifting at Sears Carrs/Safeway.  We contacted the police and they could care less.  We also contacted Les Gara and it too was a deadend.   At least the authorities are aware he has false identification for what it is worth.

September:
Anthony Rollins, the decorated Black Anchorage police officer convicted of sexually assaulting five women and the $5.5 million dollar municipality settlement lawsuits to the victims who never fully recover. What is wrong with this man? And moreover his supervisors? What were they doing when all this happened? They knew something was amiss but did nothing.
On the personal home front, sickening of all the people and traffic in Anchorage, Joe and I decided to apply for a loan to move a new one level unit with a mountain view in the over 55 community “Mountain Rose Estates” in Palmer. We were approved but after reading the endless rules and regulations and spending a quiet Sunday afternoon there, I knew it wasn’t the place for me. The master bedroom view was of the barbed wired Mat-Su Youth incarceration facility. No thanks, even though it brought back fond memories of working a year as a bilingual tutor at Anchorage’s McLaughlin Youth Center in 1978-79, I didn‘t relish the idea of living out my life‘s end with that view.

October/November:
In the fall we started Ole courses again and signed up for too many, most of which we gave up going to after one or two sessions. One of the best ones was “The Working Poor: Invisible in America”. David Shipler author of the book by the same title was a presenter at one of the sessions. (His blog is http://shiplerreport.blogspot.com/) In the same vein, in August I read about the Anchorage School Board member Don Smith opposing free meals for poor kids. Unbelievable. Bring them into the world and let them go hungry?
Obama and Biden won the election against the Mormon Mick Romney and Catholic Paul Ryan. I was thankfully in many ways even though I was and am not fond of either party or any of the candidates. Recently the Democrats really pushed the bullet starting with sanctioning Gay marriage, accepting Gays in the Boy and Girl Scouts and welcoming women to fight in combat situations. Not a comfort to know Mothers as well as fathers with PTSD will be raising the next generation. Again I don’t really like any of it or anybody, but c‘est la vie, I am old school and not politically correct. Never was and never will be, like to march to my own drummer. But things could always be worse like living in a fundamentalist Moslem country as Pakistan with their religious right wing Taliban that will try and kill any female that wants an education. October 9^th the young 15 year old girl Malala almost lost her life to such scum, but fortunately survived. The same day I read in the UAA Northern Light about Bethany Brunelle, a Muslim Association vice president wearing a hijab and prays to Allah five times daily. According to the news article by Nita Maugioa, “she (Brunelle) is a UAA student studying journalism, public communication and music. She is white, an American and a Republican, raised in a Conservative Christian home”. She goes by the name Suhaila, her chosen Muslim name. Well the gal is fat and not too pretty and guess what she is the only female in the club. One way to get attention. Wonder what she would be studying in the Arabic world? She is obviously brain dead, makes my skin crawl needless to say, just like drug testing for welfare recipients. If I had my way the hijab, would be against the law as in France. Included would be laws against wearing shorts and inappropriate attire in cold weather including sock caps in sixty degree weather in places like Arizona. All this type of crap just goes to show a person, common sense sure isn’t common.
In November rain and wind lashed Northern California. Reminded me of my husband’s, Moonshine’s and my time there in the winter of 2005-06. Was glad to miss it for a nice mild winter at home in Anchorage with our bow-wow Pogo and Wiley the cat.

December:
My 64^th birthday. the 14th was the same unfortunate day of the Newtown, Connecticut elementary school shootings. The big positive December event was finding out that Joe’s tumor was gone. We had a mini birthday party for his 73^rd birthday the 29^th to celebrate. Here’s to 2013.
Mary Alta Buckingham - 2012 Year in Review Memoir - February 4, 2013,
 Joe’s brother Don’s 75^th birthday, RIP, 1938-2002 (age 64)

How I Learn to Drive an Automobile

In my Junior year (1965-66) at Chelsea High School in Oklahoma I enrolled in Driver’s Education. It was an elective. The instructor was Rupert Cross. He was vertically challenged as myself, very short. His wife was my first grade teacher 10 years earlier in 1955. They lived around the corner. She was sweet as the day was long, not that Rupert wasn‘t, but he was a bit more of a curmudgeon. Perhaps this was due to the challenges of being a short man teaching high school.  Rupert also taught drafting among other subjects as all small town high school teachers did and many probably still do.

Part of Driver’s Ed for me was being a member of Youth for Safety. The sponsor was Mr. Cross and in the 1965 Chelsea yearbook the organization description follows: “Safety to humanity dates back to the Stone - Age. The study of safety in schools is a new addition to the school curriculum. In the believe that Safety is a way of life, the Department of Public Safety arranged for Youth for Safety Clubs to be organized in Oklahoma in 1959 at which time a Charter was presented to Chelsea High School. Since this beginning the school has had the organization each year. It chooses not only to study safety, but to demonstrate it through activities as: Drivers Checks, Automobile Checks, Traffic Checks, and Material Distribution through our school and to the public in general.” Wow I am impressed especially when I see that I was a member of such an organization. Furthermore it is hard for me to believe but our school had a car just for driver’s education. Proof of both are on page 74 of the 1966 Chelsea Dragon yearbook.

Other than driving while in class I don’t think I ever practiced other than twice. Once when my Dad and family were down from Illinois visiting my Grandfather Robert and I. It seems Dad let me practice driving his car in preparation for my driver‘s license test. It had an automatic and Grandpa’s didn’t. I did try driving a car once with a clutch that belonged to my boyfriend at the time Carl Bevenue. Carl and his family lived out in the country and the experience was negative.

The testing agents came periodically to Chelsea, a town of circa 1,400, to offer the driving test. After finishing the class in the early part of the summer I asked my second cousin Larry DeLozier if I could borrow his car to take my test. Larry worked at the local grocery store a year before heading off to college to study psychology that in years to come he would use to help survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing. He had a new yellow Mustang and for some mysterious reason Larry agreed. He was a nice guy.

The test results were: I aced the written part and scored the lowest possible by one point in the actually driving section to be able to get my driver’s license. I failed at parallel parking having only done it once in class, maybe, and it cost a bundle of points. Fortunately I got the license which in those days had no picture on it. Also somewhat fortunately I had no interest in driving but I had a license. My transportation modus in high school and college was having my Grandfather or friends haul me around. Once I moved to Tulsa in 1971 to work I used the bus. Not until my first husband and I moved to San Antonio in 1973 was it necessary that I finally actually learn to drive and what a place to learn. It was the eighth largest city in the U.S. at the time with lots of Hispanic population newly arrived from Mexico that really wasn’t into stopping at stop signs or lights. I don‘t know if Mexico is still that way but back in the 1970s, stop signs and red lights were just suggestions. My way of dealing with the challenge of driving in San Antonio while Lindy was away on a week business trip to Atlanta was to go to work before everyone else by at least an hour and leave an hour later to avoid the heavy traffic. I survived and was I glad when he returned to chauffer me around again.

So in a nutshell I really never learn to drive until I was 25 and then I drove predominantly in Oklahoma except briefly while living in Texas for 4 months and for a trip to upstate New York and New Mexico trying to escape Oklahoma in the summer of 1977. That all changed when I moved to Anchorage at the age of 29 in 1978.  Here I had to really learn to drive and on slick streets and in snowy conditions.

My first car was a borrowed Saab with yes a clutch. I drove it alone to visit Earthquake Park (in the area where I now live) that fall and in backing up almost went over the cliff. It was difficult to find someone to pull me back to safety. Finally a Seik had pity on me and my driving skills and gave me a quick tow out.  Then within two years I almost died in my learning experiences in a 1980 car wreck when another driver ran a red light and hit me in my newly paid off Honda Civic. I survived and have been driving just about every since except for the last two months of 2012 healing up from a broken wrist.

I still do not like driving, just the freedom it gives one. I prefer to be taxied around by those who are more skilled at the avocation than myself and leave me the luxury to pursue other activities while riding and they use their precious time driving.

Mary Alta Buckingham - Learning to Drive Memoir - January 7/13, 2013

A Few Thanksgiving Memories Across the Miles

In1968 when I was a college sophomore at Oklahoma State University I decided to go to Southern Illinois to spend Thanksgiving with my biological parents and 4 younger siblings. This was instead of going with my Grandfather Robert for the usual meal at my Aunt Boots’ home in Tulsa. My part-time clerical position at the OSU football office provided me enough spare cash to hop a Greyhound bus and travel there, some 700 miles northeast. My family lived in the remote small town of Ullin, Illinois and I had to go through Saint Louis to get there. When I got to the St. Louis, I asked the male bus station attendant what bus I needed to take next. He answered me so quickly and curtly I didn’t really understood a word he said, but I was way too shy to ask him to repeat it. I figured I could understand what was going on once I heard it on the bus depot speakers. As it turned out that didn’t work and I missed the connecting bus to rural southern Illinois for that day. That night I spent Thanksgiving Eve in the bus terminal bathroom trying to sleep in a chair.
My family was too poor for a phone, so I called my brother, Matt in sixth grade at the elementary school he attended. I told him to tell my folks, that I would be a day late arriving Thanksgiving night because I missed the bus. When I finally got to Ullin Thanksgiving night, my Dad, Bob had prepared a traditional upstate New York turkey dinner with sage dressing, pumpkin pie and the trimmings.
In 1971 I started having Thanksgivings with my first husband’s big extended family the Spesses in Cleveland, Oklahoma. Lindy‘s Grandma Ruby would prepare the turkeys, dressing and pineapple cream pies. The rest of the fixings were brought in by all the relatives. The Spesses were affluent conservative Republican oil people, but good folks, despite the flaw of having too much money, being too conservative and living and breathing sports. In Oklahoma the culture always seem to revolve around sports, family and church and the Spesses were no exception. After the big Thanksgiving meal the Spess family gathered in front of the TV to watch the big football game between Oklahoma State University Cowboys or Oklahoma University Sooners or one of the other various opposing Midwest football teams such as the Nebraska Cornhuskers, Arkansas Razorbacks or whoever. Much to their shock and dismay, I would adjourn to a bedroom for a nap with a book.

My Dad, Bob, Me-Mary &
 my Mom,  Bobbie Jean
Thanksgiving 1973,Thebes, Illinois

In 1973 Lindy and I decided to drive from Tulsa to southern Illinois to have a shot at Thanksgiving with my eccentric and economical challenged family in Thebes, Illinois. We did not drive through St. Louis however. Again my Dad had a meal prepared and the little house was decorated early for Christmas and our arrival. The daunting highlight of the trip, was surviving the drive back through Joplin at night in blinding white out snow. After 34 years in Alaska it seems like no great feat, but for us Okies then, it was a miracle we made it back to Tulsa in one piece.



Mom, Bobbie, Sister Angie, Me - Mary, Rose & Abe,
Thebes, Illinois 1973 - brother Matt was in the Navy
so not at the Thanksgiving event.




Rose & Abe Phillips, Thanksgiving 1973



1979 Thanksgiving with Okies, Ronnie & Maggie
Anchorage, Alaska

In 1978 I had my first Alaskan Thanksgiving with vegetarian friends, thus my first meatless turkey free Thanksgiving. During my early Alaskan Thanksgiving years, dinner was always with friends, many transplants from Oklahoma who have since returned.  In 1979 four of us from Oklahoma prepared a grand feast and afterwards took a drive to Palmer in my new car.

Road trip to Palmer, Alaska, Thanksgiving 1979

In 1981, my future husband, Joe fixed Turkey dinner for my sister, Angie and I. In 1982, once Joe and I married and he continued to cook the turkey on Thanksgiving with my assistance. Joe, a bachelor for some forty years, is no slouch in the kitchen. For a number of years Joe could never quite get food in particular meat as done, or “burnt“ as he would say, as I like it. Now that he is a Vegan there is no problem with undercooked meat. This year I will have my second vegetarian Thanksgiving with Joe at the Vegan Potluck which so happens to be in Palmer where I last went on Thanksgiving in 1979, a mere 33 years ago.
One year in 1992 we bought a camcorder and decided to record the entire Thanksgiving event. It was the year we made asses of ourselves drinking too much wine with several friends and decided to cut back on booze at Thanksgiving after that. There is nothing more sobering than seeing oneself three sheets to the wind on camera.

 Joe and I have only missed Thanksgiving on Wendy’s Way a few times. One year we made the decision to eat out. Eating out is always my first choice, but for some reason not at Thanksgiving. We tried the Cattle Company and it didn’t work, perhaps because turkey isn‘t their specialty.   As another Thanksgiving draws near, I say perhaps strangely to some but proudly for me I’m a month short of being 64 years old and have yet to cook a turkey and to my dying day, probably never will, especially now that my husband is full fledged Vegan Vegetarian. If cooking a turkey depended on me, there would be a turkey glut on the exchange market and everyone would be a Vegetarian without a doubt.

A Few Favorite Halloween Memories in 1963 Oklahoma & Alaska from 1996 to 2002

     Halloween has been always one of my very favorite holidays. When else can one go to someone’s door that they don’t know, knock on it and hope it opens and to be given something for nothing, just to make you go away? Granted one does have the obligation to dress for the occasion, either by making an investment in time and or money to create a costume. However, if a trick or treating soul plays their cards right, the initial investment will more than pay off in pounds and pounds of candy and goodies for their efforts and the candy can last well into the Christmas season and longer.

      My first memorable Halloween was when I was 14 in 1963 in Chelsea, Oklahoma. I was living for the third extended time with my grandparents. After six years bouncing from place to place between Missouri and California with my parents and four younger siblings, two years of which were in a foster home in Artesia, a suburb of Los Angeles where I attended 7^th and 8^th grade, I was more than ready to be “home” again. That fall Grandma Alta who was almost 60 and myself in 9^th grade decided to go “trick or treating”! I never gave a thought that perhaps we were both too old. Maybe because I always liked getting free stuff and being genetically related Grandma must of too. I dressed as a gypsy and Grandma a pirate with a black eye patch. We made our costumes and headed out, going door to door in the small NE Oklahoma town of 1,600. Most people had no idea who we were until at one house they asked if they could see Grandma Alta‘s, the pirate’s hands. Grandma had vitiligo, a common autoimmune skin disorder in which white spots appear on the skin usually occurring on both sides of the body in the same location. The disease has been around for thousands of years and occurs in 1-2% of the population. Unfortunately, for my Cherokee Grandmother with dark skin, these white patches were a dead give away who she was, once her hands and arms were revealed. Nonetheless, we had a great time, got lots of freebies, fooled many folks and I learned that one is never too old to go door to door begging on Halloween as long as you can still get up and go.

Our niece, Ariana in her witch's costume - Halloween 1996

     It would be 30 plus years before I would continue this tradition in Alaska. In 1996 my brother Abe’s children, a niece and nephew came to live with my husband Joe and I for the year so their Mother could return to school in Oklahoma to study to be a nurse. She had enough of my brother’s laziness and living off the government and divorced him a year or two earlier. Joe and I took the two, Ariana and Ben, door to door on Halloween in the old established part of Anchorage, Turnagain.. The two siblings did well and gathered about 5 pounds of candy each. That year we learned where to go for the best treats and who to avoid.

 Ariana, Ben &
Mt. Mckinley, Talkeetna, AK
October 1996

Ben, Aunt Mary & Ariana - Halloween 1996

Uncle Joe & Ariana with their carved pumpkin

     Half way through the year my poor fragile niece decided she had enough of my rules and regulations. She was depressed and although we tried to get her the psychological help she needed, it wasn’t enough. She returned half way through 7^th grade to Oklahoma to live with my younger sister and that didn‘t work either. Ben, my nephew was another story. He lasted the year, made straight As in sixth grade at Turnagain Elementary and was a true joy. After Ben left in the summer of 1997 we decided to give another shot at adopting an older child. It would turn out to be pretty much a nightmare with a few good memories and consequences intermingled. It did keep the Halloween tradition of old folks trick or treating with the young alive, especially for my husband Joe that brought in 7 pounds with our adopted son John when he was in sixth grade. That was the year, 2000, when we had the “haunted bookshop” during the Turnagain School Carnival with many of the leftover books donated from our former bookstore, the Alaskan Renaissance.

     We met John in Aberdeen, Washington September 16, 1998 and within a week he returned to Anchorage with us. He was 9 years old and living in foster care for a couple of years in multiple foster homes. John was artistic but he couldn‘t read or count to more than 10 on his hands. We fixed this problem and he was on the honor roll eventually while with us, but the emotional damage he suffered we couldn‘t fix or anyone else including a multitude of psychologists and therapists.


     He, his brother and two sisters were taken away from the biological father and his girlfriend after his Mother left them with him. John came from a long line of petty criminals and was an example of ignorance breeding ignorance. His Mom decided to take back the two girls and give John and his younger brother up for adoption because she wasn‘t up to raising boys. Guess she should have thought of that before she had them, but ignorance is bliss. On the other hand I knew from the start John and I just didn‘t click. We tried and I knew what my Grandparents had done for me and I wanted to pass it on. Little did I realize that I had bonded with them as an infant living there my first two years and again in first and second grade. However, once a child is nine years old it is next to impossible to bond with them, especially if the parents are still alive as in John‘s case.

     Now if there is ever one thing that will help a person bond with a child, it is probably candy and its retrieval. John had not been here much longer than a month when Joe, John, Moonshine and I went on our first Halloween trick or treating event. John wore my nephew’s costume from 2 years earlier the first year. He collected enough candy that he was happy temporarily. The next year we continued the tradition and John entered a Monster drawing contest at Great Harvest Bread Company and won free cookies for his entire 5^th grade class at Turnagain. John however wasn’t too comfortable being a success, but he was from time to time whether he liked it or not. After that, Great Harvest Bread Co. became part of our Halloween tradition up until John was in 8^th grade and he outgrew it and us as well.


     These days we still frequent Great Harvest. There is a one cookie per Halloween drawing entry now, no mega winners like in 1999 when the bakery was still a newbie in Anchorage. Great Harvest is an exceptionally generous business, giving out huge slices of bread to all visitors since their inception, no purchase required. They even try to return your money and give you a new loaf of bread if you aren‘t satisfied with a selection. That is over the top for even tight wad me and where I draw the line on something for nothing.

Memoir - Mary Alta Buckingham - October 29, 2012

Remembering My Oklahoma One Arm Great Uncle, Jack Mason

      My maternal Grandmother Alta’s younger sister, my Great Aunt Carrie was married twice before marrying my Great Uncle Jack in the 1950s. Like they say the third time is the charm. Carrie wasn’t particularly lucky in marriage until then. Jack’s marriage to my Great Aunt was his first when he was in his early forties. He was of medium height and size, always wore clean starched tan kaki shirts and pants. Jack Mason was a super nice guy, with a big heart and a generous streak to match. He was a hard worker. My Great Aunt Carrie and Uncle Jack had a nice home in Nowata plus a cabin on Grand Lake also in Northeastern Oklahoma that I visited frequently as a child and teen. It was there I would catch my first and last fish, a carp that had to be tossed back because it was uneatable. I never had the gift for fishing or the stomach, but Jack did despite just having one arm and hand.

      Uncle Jack lost most of his left arm and hand in an industrial accident early in his work life in the Oklahoma oil fields, years before I knew him in the 1950s. Jack was giving a hand signal out of a vehicle when a passing vehicle damaged it to the point amputation was necessary. The missing hand and arm was replaced with a gold hook that served as his prosthesis. Jack used that hook like it was a hand until the day he died. He continued to work in the oil fields and fish incessantly despite his loss. He and his father both worked for Phillips 66 Oil Company from the start. One of my cousins claims Jack’s father sold his share in the company early on.

      The thing I loved most about Uncle Jack as a kid was his generosity and that he always carried a big pocket of change which he shared. He liked to give the money to the youngsters to spend on goodies. Once at a family gathering at my Great Grandparents, Claude and Nancy Wilson in Chelsea, I recall hardly being able to contain myself when I saw Jack was there. I grew so impatient wanting to capitalize on his generosity that I almost jumped the gun and asked him if I could have “some money?“. Was I afraid he would forget? He must have sensed my 7 year old impatience because he passed out the coins without delay and saved me from embarrassing myself.


      Jack worked in the Oklahoma oil fields up until his death in 1966 when he died of brain cancer at the age of 63. May he rest in peace and be assured that he is truly missed by his Grandniece “Alaska“ Mary.

Memoir -
I will always enjoy the memory of my Great Uncle, Charles Esc(h)o
“Jack“ Mason
- April 13, 2009/revised & posted Oct. 30, 2012

Survivor Day, October 4th, 1980 and a Second Chance at Life

     My life began again my third year in Alaska in 1980 when I was 31 years old. In the fall of 1979 after obtaining a job teaching Spanish and French to oversized high school classes of 40-45 students at Anchorage’s Bartlett High School, I bought my first Alaskan car.  It was  a brand new blue Honda Civic. Now it looks so plain, but then I thought it was a beauty.








My first road trip to Homer, Alaska, May 1980.

     When school let out for summer 1980 I landed a job teaching “American History to the Civil War” at Fort Richardson Army Base. The Texas college extension class was composed of all males. Now this should have made a 30 something woman joyful, but not being a great orator of American History, it simply added to my discomfort. However, the job allowed me to make additional payments on my new car and by the fall it was close to paid off in less than a year. Teachers in the Anchorage School District back then were the second highest paid in the country next to Connecticut and that suited me to a tee.

      With fall I started a new job teaching just Spanish at West High. This was quite an improvement after trying to teach French the year before with only two French classes from Tulsa Junior College. I didn’t have a clue how to speak French, not even how to say “do you speak French?” in French; but the Anchorage School District was desperate for teachers and I wanted a good paying job and that it was. I would listen to tapes each night before the next day’s teaching assignment. It was the days in Alaska when anybody with any sense and connections was working on the slope and the pipeline making the really big bucks, but I was teaching.

      Sunday October 4^th, 1980, (two days after paying off my Honda at Credit Union One) and preparing my lesson plans for the coming week of teaching Spanish at West High, I was off to pick up my sometime boyfriend, Joe Smith, from McLaughlin Youth Center. Joe worked there as a counselor. Back in Oklahoma in the spring of 1978 Joe Smith convinced me that Alaska was the promise land. Since I always wanted to come here to begin with, because of the cool weather and adventure, I was easily convinced and flew into Anchorage in August 1978.
     
     On my trip to McLaughlin to pick up Joe Smith from work that fall day, October 4^th, 1980 about 4 p.m. I was hit by a Gary Alberts driving with his family south on C Street. He ran a red light crossing 36^th and blindsided me on the driver‘s side. Fortunately I was NOT wearing a seat belt or I would have been killed. I was thrown to the passenger side.

The most annoying thing was  I was ticketed! By the Grace of God/Creator however I had witnesses that Gary Albert had ran a red light. My witnesses were Pentecostal evangelist missionaries that drove around the country in a big bus.  They lived near Abbott Rd. and Lake Otis. Raymond House and his wife Jan believed divorce was Biblically wrong and akin to adultery. They tried unsuccessfully to convince me to reunite with my first husband in Oklahoma. We had just got divorce the summer of 1979 on my way home to Alaska after a 2 month trip to Spain.  I was "hired" by the organizer to help chaperon high schoolers and make sure they didn’t drink too much wine.   There was no age limitations there and wine was served with every meal at the school, maybe because it was safer to drink than the water.

 The reconciliation never happened and my ex husband I would not see one another until October 2011, 32 years later. Eventually I got an out of court monetary settlement from the accident and used it to pay off my two land investments. However, the unjust ticket has always been a thorn in my side. What was the cop thinking? Was he partial to the other party because they had a pack of kids? But that was just the tip of my problematic iceberg. I was severely injured eternally and lucky to be alive and suffered from PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder due to the wreck that haunts me til this day.
 

My sister flew into Alaska shortly after my accident thinking I was a goner. When I saw her standing there in my room at Providence it literally brought me back to life. Dr. Frederick Hood told Angie by phone “that my lungs had collapsed and they didn’t expect me to make it much longer.” She arranged with the bank she worked at to borrow the money she needed to come to Alaska, a $1,000! She booked a flight that night for the next day for a week vacation!” She told me she “remembered riding the bus around Anchorage for a poor women’s tour and something to do between visits to the ICU for 15 minutes ever 2 or 3 hours. Doctor Hood, a graduate of Oklahoma University Medical School, told Angie that “it was a miracle I turned around as I did. When she arrived he told her if I made it at all, I would be in hospital at least 6 - 8 weeks.” It was three and a half. She made all the difference.

I was released in late October in time to vote in the Presidential Election. I walked the 3 or 4 blocks to Northwood Elementary on my crutches. A school where I had worked 2 years earlier as a bilingual tutor. My vote didn’t do any good. Yes I voted against President Reagan and he won anyway. Never really liked Reagan knowing he was for the rich. Also I had a high school boyfriend whose stepfather was a big campaign manager of Reagan’s in California before Reagan hit the big time. My boyfriend was physically abused by his stepfather, Reagan‘s campaign manager to the point of being put in the hospital due to injuries several times in Spain. As my Grandfather Robert use to say, “birds of a feather flock together.”

After being released from Providence Hospital I was advised to wait until second semester to return to teaching. However, I was so grateful to be alive and eager to get on with my life to the fullest again that I went back to work teaching Spanish at West High in December. In retrospect it would have been best to postpone going back to work.

In December 1980 I flew my sister back from Oklahoma for my Christmas vacation. I still have the snow covered Christmas tree I brought for her visit and use it from time to time when the Spirit moves me.  My sister, Joe and I must have went to Chilkoots every night she was here to the point I ordered a cup of coffee there one evening. Of course that New Year’s Eve was the grand finale. It was my “survival revival.” Angie, Joe Smith and I went early and stayed late, and late it was. Back then the bars didn’t close until the Ungodly hour of five in the morning.  

These days my sister has long since quite drinking, Joe Smith has returned to Oklahoma and although I still drink a bit more than I probably should, it is not usually at bars. That New Year’s Eve was probably one of my last one out on the town. After that I always considered New Year’s Eve, “amateur night” and prefer to stay home and remember when I didn‘t and was glad to just be alive.



Mary Alta Buckingham -
October 4^th, 2010 - 30^th Anniversary Survival
Revised October 7^th 2012

Looking Back at My First Wedding, September 4th, 1971

Tuesday night, September 4^th 2012, a Hellish unusual fall wind storm hit Anchorage and south central Alaska. It also happened to be the anniversary of my first ill begotten marriage September 4, 1971, 41 years ago that was a disaster from the get go.

We, Paul Linden Spess and I had just graduated from Oklahoma State University that May. His major was Electrical Engineering and mine was Secondary Education with a major in Social Sciences and a minor in Spanish. However, living in Oklahoma during those days’ folks did not ask a young woman when they were going to complete their college degree, but when they were going to get their MRS. and start breeding politely know as having a family. In a sense I was sucked into that time warped culture, because I too went along with the first part.

One problem was I never really wanted to be a married person or have a traditional family. As a child I always consider myself an aspiring intellectual, a wanted to be “beat” in some sort of deformed poor white trash way. At the age of ten I preferred ballet to rock and roll, loved books, knowledge acquisition and as a teen would have probably preferred death to being just a housewife. Wow, to me, to get to give birth, change diapers and cook meals was a life sentence in H E double hockey stick. But life does have a way of trapping us in to what we least expect or want at times. It seems the Creator has a sense of humor and the joke is on the human race, me in this case.

After graduation in May 1971 Lindy worked temporarily for his family’s small oil company in Cleveland, Oklahoma while looking for a job free of family ties. I moved nearby to Tulsa with a college acquaintance and got a dead end job at Oklahoma Natural Gas working in Collections. After working my butt off for four years, I was in trauma, discovering too late, while practice teaching, my degree to be a high school Spanish and Social Science teacher, was not much more than a high paid baby sister of mostly disrespectful teenagers. So I gave office work a shot desperate for a job. It was almost as bad as teaching, The real disappointment was when President Nixon froze wages in the fall of 1971 and I was due for one. Fortunately I was able to give notice after six months. Lindy and I decided to go back to Oklahoma State and work on graduate degrees in January 1972. My plan was to teach college Spanish and Lindy thought about being an environmental lawyer, neither of which ever happened.

Now back to our wedding day September 4^th, 1971 at the First

Christian Church in Chelsea. It was Oklahoma; it was miserably hot, in the days before air conditioning. I wore a high school friend’s wedding dress and my maid of honor, my cousin Judy, wore a gown she had worn in another friend’s wedding. We were thrifty, as in waste not want not. We did have flowers, cake and a worthless photographer whose name I can’t remember. I can’t even remember the name of the best man. Anyway, the photographer took the pictures in black and white not color.

Dad had brought my biological family from Illinois down for the wedding. He happen to be late to our wedding saying he got ”lost“ and he‘d been a cab driver in Chicago. I don‘t think so. I figured it was because I asked Grandpa Robert, his father in law, who raised me for the most part, to do the “giving me away“ part of the ceremony. My sister Angie says it was because Dad was busy making plans to burn their house down in Southern Illinois for insurance money. Dad was pretty unhappy that I was marrying into a rich Republican oil family, being a dyed in the wool New York labor union man and Democrat. Either way Dad got there in time to eat cake and to have his picture taken, but the photographer neglected to take my Grandpa’s picture. The Great Spirit‘s sense of humor? Or the Devil at work?

Reverend Billings performed the wedding ceremony and 17 years later in February 1988 in the same church and he would perform my Grandfather Robert’s funeral. The day we married was a bit better day, but not much. We made the mistake of trying to open all the gifts we were given in the unforgiving heat. We opened gifts for two hours until we finally gave up sweating like hogs. Lindy’s folks, Paul and Wilma Spess, eventually gathered our gifts together for us. We took off for my least favorite place, Dallas, Texas and Six Flags. We spent the first night in my second least favorite place OKC. Nothing was right about our wedding, except we did care about one another. He was a good person and in a sense I loved him and always will, but we were a mismatch. He was raised as a conservative and myself a nonconformist to the core. My plans for life were to see and experience the world and it seemed to me Lindy thought Oklahoma was the world. His idea of a good time was playing basketball and watching football, the later which I detest; mine is cross country skiing, listening to music, being with my dog and anything but organized sports.

After my sister Angie, who came to live with us in 1974, completed high school in Sapulpa in 1976 we moved to Shawnee, Oklahoma. Lindy had gotten a promotion with Oklahoma Gas and Electric. Meanwhile, for a year I attended Graduate School at Oklahoma University in Norman. Not being satisfied with life there and having wander lust, I decided to pull out and headed for Niagara Falls, NY in the summer of 1977, then back to Oklahoma where I met another Joe, (not the Joe I married) and headed to Alaska, landing in Anchorage, August 19, 1978, the best day of my life!

Eventually, after a year working for the Anchorage School District bilingual education program and spending the summer of 1979 helping chaperone Anchorage Bartlett high schoolers in Valencia, Spain, I went back to Oklahoma to get officially divorced. We both cried at the hearing, but we were not cut from the same cloth. Our situation was like the movie, “The Way We Were”. I settled for a meager $5,000 divorce settlement, my sister Angies still tells me I was crazy but I felt a great sense of guilt which I no longer feel, now I just feel crazy. (The money went toward my first piece of Alaska real estate in Rabbit Creek Heights which I owned 25 years and sold and invested in a lifetime annuity in 2005.) After the hearing, my sister, Angie, Lindy and I went out for coffee and desert. We took pictures and said our goodbyes. I’ll never forget the desert menu said “happy endings”. The Creator’s sense of humor at work again?

A couple of years after our divorce Lindy’s parents would have a bitter divorce after a lifetime together and four kids. Fortunately Lindy and I didn’t breed, something his folks always were pressing us to do. Today Lindy is following in my footsteps trying to raise two older adopted boys, one of which has left and wants no part of the adoptive family. No surprise, as adoptions seldom work out unless an infant is adopted. I had hoped it would work out better for him and his wife than it did for me and my new husband of 30 years, Joe, but it didn‘t.  The Devil at work again or maybe, just maybe the Creator's sense of humor at work again?

September 9th, 2012

Most Likely & Graduation 1967



Graduation May 1967



Yesterday, May 26th, 2012 was the annual Chelsea, Oklahoma Alumni Celebration and Banquet and also 45 years since my class passed through those ivory green high school graduation doors.  My thoughts turn to reflections of those blissful hopeful days not so long ago.  Life was much simpler then. Boys were boys and girls were girls and opposites married, the way I feel the Creator intended. Now that being said this isn’t a sermon, but just a remembrance of the way it was and what I liked about it.

That last year of high school in the fall, our senior class elected the “Ten Most Likely”. The categories included:

“Best Athlete“: Ruth Schwaesdall & Robert Garis, deceased 2 years now after teaching Pharmacy at the University of Nebraska. Rob was short like me, about 5’4”, but a phenomenal football player in high school. We both went to college at Oklahoma State. He was a frat rat (in a fraternity) and I was a GDI, but when he needed a date that first year, he would often give me a call. After that destiny called and we went our own way.

“Best Figure & Physique”: Janice Cowan & Tom Rue, needless to say, not me.

“Most Active”: Jack Stinnett, also deceased 2 years, retired as a pipe fitter, and Barbara Axley, a nightclub singer and comedian for several years in Oklahoma so I heard.

"Most Humorous": Jack Stinnett & Barbara Axley, incidentally I was runner up in this category.

"Most Dependable": Ronda Hunt & George Baker. George also lives here in Southcentral Alaska since 1976 and has adopted several children through the state.

"Best Citizen": Ronda Hunt & Robert Garis

"Best All-Around": Ann Jennings & Mike Morrison

"Best Dressed":  Roy Best & Patty & Becky Sears, twins and daughter of our high school science teacher that my boyfriend Wayne once tried to punch in the face, another story for another memoir. In this category I again was runner up, only  because I learned to sew.

"Best Personalities":  Patsy Carmack & Leon Bible: 

Last but not least “Most Likely to Succeed“:   Mary Phillips (me) & John Hunt.  Rhonda (“best citizen and most dependable”) and John Hunt got married while still in high school but eventually divorced. John went into tribal law in Tulsa and was quite successful and approximately 10 years ago retired to Hawaii with his second wife and family of many years. I moved to Alaska in ‘78, became a a Jack of all trades, master of none and am still quite happy here since it is rarely hot. Now I know most of my classmates must think John is the greater success since he wound up living in Hawaii but I have to say living in Hawaii is my worse nightmare. I don‘t even want to visit there. The only thing of interest In Hawaii is the fond memories of my old “most likely to succeed” classmate John who help me get my high school nickname, Mickey, long before he got married. When I found out the other “most likely to succeed” John in Hawaii was going to forgo the reunion this year I decided that I would skip it too. Especially since one could not bring their spouse unless it is their 50 reunion. Fortunately this archaic rule was changed by a vote of 155 for to 58 opposed last night. Maybe now  Joe and I will go next year when my first serious ex boyfriend Wayne Treadway that happens to live in Sitka, Alaska,  (800 miles south of Anchorage) has his 45th reunion. I want to find out once and for all, why he took a swing at our Mr. Science teacher other than to get kicked out of school for a week to hunt and fish.

With graduation in 1967 came awards and accolades. I was Salutatorian, an academic title given, in the United States, Philippines, and Canada, to the second highest graduate of the entire graduating class, all 59 of us. The class started out with 69 of us, but due to unforeseen pregnancies before the days of birth control it dwindled down to 59. We were Chelsea‘s largest graduating class at that time. It was a disappointment not to be Valedictorian but I realized the person that was, took no classes that were not easy As and had moved into Chelsea during her senior year. It seemed she, as many other young women classmates, aspired to be nothing more than a secretary and housewife. This was another worse case senario, like that of living in Hawaii. Eventually I discovered not everyone wants a college education as bad as I did then; and as my Mom, Bobbie Jean use to say it, would be a boring world if we were all alike.



Me, Becky Sears & Valdictorian without her rope?



Dr.  Frank Hester presenting me my diploma.





Wayne and my Aunt Bootsie at my graduation.







As class Salutatorian I was requested to participate in the commencement and give a speech. The best part of my speech was that it was short, a page and a half double spaced. I still have 3 type written copies of it that traveled across country with me in 1979, 12 years later. Part of that speech from 45 years ago follows below.

“As you all know before long we shall be out of school, away from home and before a critical and appraising audience--the world. The pen still behind our ear, the ink stains on our fingers, and innocence in our eyes we shall find ourselves surrounded by a vast amount of different ideas and morals. Then will come the trial. But the goals that you hold high in your mind and the morals that you believe in--this you should build your life by, live by, and this you will become.

There is one last thing I’d like to add to my speech; it is a saying that I feel holds some excellent advice. “yesterday is already a dream, tomorrow is only a vision; but today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and tomorrow a vision of hope.” (May 1967)