Why poetry? In Jr. High I wanted to be a rock star. So I started writing songs. None were very good. Then we had to write stories for an English class. So I wrote some stories. I continued writing throughout Jr. High and high school but it wasn’t until I was a Junior in high school that I started getting into poetry. It was in Mrs. Innis’s English class in 1988-89 that I really found my calling, so to speak. We had to write some poems and I got a good response from the teachers and other students. So I wrote more. I found it to be a nice escape from my problems and a good way to vent my frustrations with the world.
The first building raised in Waukomis. The Railroad section chief lived and worked out of it in 1889.
Editor’s Note: This series began on Monday of last week. It most likely will run for five weeks. Please refer to this link for the introductory information and “Entry One” of “My Grandmother’s Memoirs.” Thank you. ~ RDK
“One Spring I was at a widow woman’s house picking up apricots. She was in the tree and hung a bucket on a limb. It broke and the bucket of apricots fell on my head. Did I ever have a big gash! She told me to run home to my mama. By the time I got there my clothes were soaked with blood. I remember all the children of the neighborhood lining up across the screened-in back porch watching Mom clean me up. I had to go to the doctor at Enid for him to dress and care for it every other day.
I had the small pox vaccination at Waukomis by a Dr. Wolfe. I always imagined he looked like a wolf, but he was pretty nice. He gave me a stick of gum and a penny because I didn’t cry.
I had chicken pox in the Spring of 1930; it was near Easter. Our class at school was having an egg hunt, so Papa took me to the principal’s office to see if I was over them enough to go to the event. I was so happy because he said I could go!
One winter we had a big snow. Papa walked ahead of us to school to make tracks so we wouldn’t have as difficult a time getting to school. We were always thrilled when the weather was bad and didn’t have to go home for lunch! Mom would call the grocery store and the owner would prepare a good lunch for us. One of us would go pick it up; he would make pressed ham sandwiches with buns – that was really good!
We children of the neighborhood would gather in the evening by the street light, choose sides and play a game called “Trail.” One side would hide, the other hunt. We would make arrows with chalk marking the direction we were going. Then at the point we decided to hide, we would draw a circle with arrows going all directions making it more difficult to find us.
Another time I remember was my sister Catherine and brother Charles and I went to a Methodist revival. When coming home we had to go past an opera house. We were told a little man lived under it; we were always frightened to go by. We watched the building closely! As we were walking along Catherine slipped on the ice and I fell over her, breaking my collar bone. I was crying so loudly Catherine said, “Be quiet! That little man will hear you!” My parents were at the door to meet us when we got there. It was so painful and difficult to wear a coat that I missed several days of school after that incident.
~ by Sheldon S. Stout, 2008, From “Pop, Punk or Pulp Poetry?”– 2008
