I Reckon So: Life in the Potato Hills

By Diamond Taylor

My friend, Martha and I would sit and talk about Oklahoma and we shared a lot of good times together. We shared memories together and laughter and we would help each other when times were tough. She had suffered a stroke and we would share each others adventures as a young women and how we had met our husbands and the adventures we and our children would have. I had lost track of my dear friend Martha and I remembered a lot of things she described to me and I to her. I later found that she had passed away and her son also. I had taken notes of our friendship and I decided to write this and dedicate it in her memory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462867967

Diamond Taylor

My name is Diamond Ann Taylor— I was born in Augusta Arkansas to Cletus and Pearly Taylor. I came from a large family consisting of 13 children, 8 boys and 5 girls. I am the 7th child of the children and the third girl. It really was cheaper back then to have a large family than it is now. My dad wanted to give my mom a diamond engagement ring to go with her wedding band. So he saved money and when he had it all, he came home and said, “Mother get ready, we are going to town.” When she asked why, he said, “I am going to buy you a diamond ring.” She flatly told my dad, “Well not today Daddy, we are having another baby.” Then her Diamond came along nine months later….. I am a mother of 3 children and my youngest child was born in Talihina, OK in the Potato Hills. I went to work at Eastern Oklahoma State College eleven years ago and it has been home to me here. I often go to Sardis Lake for fishing and swimming and look around the Potato Hills…they are beautiful especially in the fall as the leaves turn color leaving the mountain sides looking like a patch work quilt. I have traveled across the United States and 3 times across Canada. I want to go to Alaska and Hawaii then I will have been to every state in our country. I have been all around Oklahoma and Arkansas, and when the spring and fall comes it is breathtaking.

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Copyright © 2011 by Diamond Taylor.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011907245

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4628-6795-0

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4628-6794-3

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4628-6796-7

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DEDICATED TO:

MARTHA HOOSER

I WISH I COULD SHARE THIS WITH HER.

SHE WAS A TRUE FRIEND AND WONDERFUL MENTOR AND

I WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER THE SPECIAL TIMES I SPENT WITH HER AND I SHALL MISS HER.

My friend, Martha and I would sit and talk about Oklahoma and we shared a lot of good times together. We shared memories together and laughter and we would help each other when times were tough. She had suffered a stroke and we would share each others adventures as a young women and how we had met our husbands and the adventures we and our children would have. I had lost track of my dear friend Martha and I remembered a lot of the things she described to me and I to her. I later found that she had passed away and her son also. I had taken notes of our friendship and I decided to write this and dedicate it in her memory.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Marlene and her sister Janet lived with their mother in Oklahoma City during the depression. Marlene’s mother worked at the Linen Company, and Marlene and her mother eventually went to Seattle, Washington during the depression to work at Grandmother Beasley’s Oyster Bar. This was the first for Hazel to ever witness a woman in a bar let alone to be drinking and without a man by her side. Hazel eventually sent for her older daughter to join her and Marlene in Washington and there began a new life. Janet eventually marries and moves to California. At the end of the war Hazel moved back to Oklahoma City and went back to work at the Linen Company. Marlene married a young military man and had two sons whom she raised at a young age in the city. After tiring from military life and travel she joined her mother in Oklahoma City. Her mother eventually moved them to a little village in Oklahoma called Clayton where she opened the first bar run by a woman. No one believed that it would work out. Marlene and her young sons knew nothing about living in the country. Marlene and her young boys, Cody and Jerry begin learning how to adapt to going from city life, with indoor running water, and indoor facility to that of country living where the water is drawn from a well or creek and the facility is called an outhouse.

Marlene eventually met and married a young Choctaw man and this is her story. Cody and Jerry adapt without trouble as they look upon this as a constant adventure that all young boys do. Marlene on the other hand looks on it with trepidation as she is not fond of the country critters. She soon learns to adapt and her life becomes an adventure as well. The life that Marlene shares with Hawk is one of trials and adventures as they raise their children in the Potato Hills in Southeast Oklahoma. She would always look upon Hawk’s saying I reckon so, as the normal part of their relationship.

Chapter 1

The best thing that ever happened to my sister and I was being born at the beginning of the depression when a jar of mayonnaise was a luxury and a piece of candy once a month would seem like pure heaven.

Our mother became a widow when I was a few weeks old, so I never knew what it was to have a Father, however; I didn’t miss having one. Mother had the ability to handle any situation that came up. To support us, she did Linen Supply work in Oklahoma City earning a dollar a day.

When my older sister and I were eight and six years of age, we saved Mills, this is how the school board came up with the School Mills tax. They were made of brass or aluminum and had a hole in the center. We strung them on a string and tied them around our necks so the other children couldn’t find them. Each Mill was worth one tenth of a cent. We traded frogs, marbles, pretty rocks, and lightning bugs in order to get more Mills from the neighborhood children. If we couldn’t talk them into trading for any of our lesser treasures, we would trade our latest play gun. The guns were made from pieces of lumber which we found at the local dump yard-where of course we were forbidden to play. When we had saved enough Mills, off to the grocery store we would run to buy candy or bubble gum. It all depended on how successful we had been in our trading.

We were staunch listeners of the Jack Armstrong radio program and along with hordes of other children, we were secret code members. We practically sat on top of the radio to figure out the code for the next day so we would know what was going to happen before it did. We also listened to a program called Gang Busters and thought up all kinds of morbid things to do to the neighborhood kids we didn’t like. However, we never went through with these plans for fear of the Hickory Switch that mother would use on us.

She wasn’t from the school of parents who said, Spare the rod and spoil the child. Mother didn’t like our selection of program listening. Being the eternal wise mother though, she didn’t forbid us our choice. She believed then, and still does, in independent thinking. Like all mothers she had her own subtle way of getting an idea over to her children.

She would make a point of turning up the volume on the radio when classical music was on saying, I can’t hear all the instruments. Will you girls please be quite so I can hear well?

She believed if we heard it often enough we would eventually and naturally come to like and enjoy it as much as she did. I believe today they call it brain washing.

Mothers have been doing it for centuries and most children – and husbands—have learned without knowing it until too late. I love classical music even though I don’t always understand it. But then, do any of us?

My sister and I didn’t actually realize we were living in a depression. To us it was just a way of life. Everybody we knew lived the same way. I must say it taught us that if we wanted anything out of life it would be quite necessary to work for it. Every small gesture or friendship or gift of any kind was a thrill to us.

Christmas was always so exciting and an experience. We would bundle up in heavy clothes and coats and tramp out into the snow to search for the perfect tree and chop it down. We couldn’t afford store bought decorations so we made our own. We would string popcorn and cut strips of paper that we would color and glue together to make a long chain to drape around the tree. There was one small gift each, and a stocking filled with candy, one apple, one orange, and a handful of nuts.

I don’t know how mother did it on her small wage, but, she always managed to save a dime for us to attend the neighborhood matinee every Sunday after church. A continued series would be playing with bad men and a beautiful lady in distress. I never did find out whether she ever got out of the bad men’s clutches or not.

Mother took me to Seattle, Washington, leaving my sister with grandmother until she could get a job and send for her. Arriving in Seattle was, to say the least, a little out of the ordinary. We went directly to Grandmother Beasley’s place. On the way we had our first glimpse at Mt. Rainier. I had never seen anything as huge and majestic in my young life.

Mother said, Isn’t it beautiful Marlene? Look at the snow on top. Just like a monstrous ice cream cone.

All I could do was stare because it was so enormous that, it just took my breath away.

Grandmother owned and operated a tavern and oyster bar. Mother and I assumed we would have a family gathering. But, upon arriving at the tavern, grandmother introduced us to each and every customer. She had invited them all to be present when we arrived. During a family gathering hours later, she told us that they kept us talking so long because the liked our Oklahoma accent.

Mother and I fell completely in love with Grandmother Beasley, Seattle, and the customers in that order. Grandmother was a small, dark-haired, fine featured Cherokee who looked French, and was the type of person that loved everybody no matter their faults. She would lend money to any one knowing that it might not be repaid.

Grandmother put mother to work teaching her all she could about drawing beer from a keg and showing her how to make oyster stew. However, even though she had the greatest confidence in mother, she stayed right by her side the first few days.

She even said, Hazel, you have a sweet smile and a nice personality. You could work anywhere.

I