Games, Friends Rekindle Past

Two recent events have caused me to revisit my past. My daughter Gayle and her husband were going to Duncan one evening recently to watch their granddaughter Hannah play a basketball game at the Simmons Center there. They invited Starr and me to go with them since we had not seen Hannah play.

Hannah is playing on the nine and ten year old team. She is a scrambler, to say the least. As I sat there and watched the game, my mind traveled back to the times when we had children playing at the school here. David never cared much for basketball, but he did play football all during his high school years.

Harold’s first love was basketball and he played on the team that went all year without a loss and advanced on to win the state championship in their class.

As I was recalling the games we had attended, I was reminded of all the excitement of attending the games the year Harold was a senior. When the team went to Oklahoma City for the playoffs, few businesses in town remained open. Someone laughingly remarked, “Whoever is the last to leave town, be sure to turn the lights off.”

Many former graduates of Waurika schools made arrangements to be in Oklahoma City during those final games. Some lived nearby, but others traveled quite a distance to be there to attend and cheer on their hometown team.

Those were good times.

The second occurrence that brought back many good memories involved a visit last week from a couple we knew in Dallas. This man worked for my dad when Daddy managed an icehouse in Dallas.

As time passed Al found Lydia, the love of his life, and they were wed. At that time Mother and Daddy had a garage apartment that happened to be vacant, so they moved into it as newlyweds.

During their visit last week Al told me, that as a bride, “Lydia could not boil water, nor cook an egg.” He said my mother had helped Lydia learn to cook, as well as giving her many housekeeping tips.

Al said every morning around 6:30, Mother would go into the garage and bang the broom handle against the ceiling of the garage and that was Lydia’s clue that the coffee was ready at Mother’s.

One of the things we learned was that the first week Al worked at the icehouse, he worked on Sunday. Sometime during the next week, he asked Daddy if he would pray with him. So, he said they went into Daddy’s office and closed the door. Daddy asked what did they need to pray about and Al responded that he had made a promise to God that he would never work on Sunday because he wanted to be in church.

When he told Daddy this, my dad said, “Why Al, why didn’t you let me know? We don’t have to pray about that. You can be off every Sunday from now on.”

At some point Daddy told Al he had no chance of advancement working there and helped direct him to a better job.

In time Al became a very successful person in the insurance business field and has now turned the business over to two of his sons who are operating it at present.

The only problem with our visit was that it was much too short, we still had a number of things to discuss, but perhaps we will have the opportunity to do so at a later date.

2-18-2009
#422