My Life And Welcome To It

 Being born in a small town is a multifaceted blessing and maybe a bit of a curse. 

I consider it a blessing in many ways because I was fortunate to grow up in an Oklahoma version of Mayberry, minus Andy Taylor and Barney Fife. In fact, we didn't have any full time law enforcement of any kind. 

We did have Charlie Hoffman, at Hoffman's Grocery. Charlie saw most of the kids in Wann every day or so, and he always quizzed them on their recent activities. Charlie was always quick with a "You know your mom or dad wouldn't like it if they knew that you were doing that."  That admonishment always seemed to put the kids on notice, worried that their parents would find out.

I had two, sometimes three aunts that worked in the school cafeteria, one aunt that ran the local phone company switchboard, an uncle that was the mayor and also worked in the school bus barn, another uncle that was the school janitor and one that ran a county motor grader, maintaining the unpaved roads in the very small town.

I grew up feeling very safe and secure, but with eyes on my every movement and action. Living that Andy Griffith Show Mayberry life gave me and my abundance of cousins a bubble of a comfort zone, but also isolated us from some of the drama of the world around us. 

Our small school was integrated years before we saw the news reports of the integration controversy in Little Rock, Arkansas and other Southern states.  It sounds cliche', but one of my best friends was Jake Austin, a black student that had an older brother and sister in our school.  As a first grader, in 1963, I assumed that black kids in school was normal, not something that would require a court order or calling out the National Guard. 

I and my 3 siblings walked about a mile to and from school everyday, weather permitting, and we were usually joined at the corner by the neighbor kids, one of which was my good friend, Larry Schlape. Larry's father had been in the Air Force, in Germany, so Larry spoke fluent German. He did his best to teach me German phrases, but I wasn't a good student. Extra lessons just interfered with play time.

Most of my close friends were related to me. Not a luxury that most kids have today. In our tiny school, with an average enrollment of 200, nearly 25% of the students were related to me. In my 1st grade class, and all the way to the 8th grade, when my family moved from Wann to Pawnee, I had 3 cousins and 1 double cousin, out of a class of 10-12. I always assumed that was normal, so I was in for a rather rude awakening when my Dad's job took us 90 miles away. It was a hard adjustment, and one that I must admit that I never fully made. Joe Ryan, my double cousin in the class, was also my best friend. We were nearly inseparable. I called him my Cousin-Brother or my Twin Cousin since many people mistook us for twins. I was older than Joe, by a few months. I was born on April 28 and Joe didn't make his first appearance until September 11, both of us in 1954.

Joe and I spent hours and days hunting, fishing and exploring the countryside around our homes. The great outdoors was our true home. We worked hard and we played even harder. I have heard some old timers say that the street lights were their alarm clock, to send them indoors. But we didn't have street lights, so we stayed out past sundown. Sometimes way past sundown. After all, that was the best time to catch fireflies or hunt bullfrogs.