Chester Drawers

I am reading a new book by Bill Bryson on the history of the home. Yesterday, I read about how the first furniture to store clothes was a roll-top chest like the cedar chests of today. They later started putting legs on them and drawers to get to the stuff on bottom. They have always been called "chest -of-drawers". In my family we called them "chester drawers."

Lunch Half Hour

Lunch time in "Grade School" meant two choices. You could take your lunch and be marooned at the lunch area segregated for those who had sack lunch or eat cafeteria food and set with regular people. During my hitch in the lower grades, lunch cost 25 cents a day or a dollar for a weekly ticket. The wealthier kids got a monthly ticket!

I may have been one of the only kids who actually liked cafeteria food. Their bowls of stew or brown beans was as good as any ones. Of course I wasn't crazy about Lima beans and celery filled with a weird cheese spread, but no body's perfect. Besides in elementary it was eat fast and head to the playground. These were the days though where you could get seconds on anything left and that sometimes meant an extra piece of cake for desert. Milk was 3 cents and a little ice cream carton was 5 cents.

In junior high things changed. Once in the High school building the classes lined up according to which home room classes behaved the best the preceding week. In junior high and High School we had a new choice we could leave campus to eat. You could even go home for lunch if you were quick enough. Most went downtown (three blocks away). Many kids went to Bynums, Allens, or Nessers Grocery stores and bought pop, candy and chips. Others headed to the Right Way Cafe or the Busy Bee.

Whenever I went downtown, I went with the guys headed to the Busy Bee. The problem was that eating downtown was expensive compared to the lunch room by about 15 cents. Getting enough to eat was a problem. 35 cents would by a hamburger and a coke at the Busy Bee, but hamburgers need french fries and that presented three problems. French Fries take longer to prepare and they alone cost cost 25 cents. the third problem was you were expected to SHARE!

So the solution the older guys had developed was to order a side of mashed potatoes and brown gravy with our burgers. This side cost 15 cents and was a large portion. I was never crazy about this but I went along to be one of the guys. That was the junior high diet for the town crowd. At least in the cafeteria they didn't serve a chili dog with green beans!

In High School I had a car but chose to eat most meals at the cafeteria and then jump in the car and drive to Parks Supermarket. For a quarter I could buy: Pepsi-10 cents, a bag of potato chips-5 cents, a Mister Good Bar - 5 cents and a package of pretzels to sneak into Mrs. Sim's English Class.

Planning lunch was not easy in 30 minutes!

The Palace

I am a movie fan. Not the video rental kind of fan, I 'm a sit in the dark, watching the big screen with my feet sticking to the floor kind of fan. At the movies today I pay $6.50 for a ticket, $3.50 for a drink, and $5.00 for a tub of popcorn. That is quite different to the first movies I attended at the Palace Theater in downtown Haskell in the 50s.

The Palace was two doors down from City Hall and was owned by Sy Pack. The price of admission in 1957 was 10 cents for children under 12 and 35 cents for adults. The concession stand consisted of a popcorn machine in the corridor and a small bag was 10 cents. They sold nothing else!

Legend had it that they once sold fountain drinks and snow cones, but someone threw a ball of ice through the screen. I don't know the real story, but thinking back there was no plumbing or drain for such items and the corridor was about six foot wide.

The theater had two aisles with a center section of 14 seats and across the aisle were pairs of seats along the wall. My favorite seat was along the wall on the left aisle at the second wall light from the back. The theater (we called it the show) held about 200.

Many a Saturday I would head downtown with a dollar and a quarter. The dollar was for a haircut (a burr) at Mr. Watts barbershop, a few doors from the "show". Once the haircut was finished, I would race across the street to Walker's Drug and by a Three Musketeers for a nickel to slip into the movie. The remaining 20 cents paid for admission and popcorn at the matinee. It was usually a western or war movie complete with two cartoons and a Flash Gordon serial.

Once a year Hawks Milk would hold a Kid's auction at the Palace on Saturday. We would save milk carton tops, ice cream wrappers, and ice cream cartons all year to use as "money" to bid on the toys, baseball gear, and other stuff before the movie. When you think about it, it was very smart marketing.

The Palace wasn't a first run theater, but it got movies like Elvis in "Love Me Tender", "Gone With the Wind" and my favorite, Audie Murphy in "To Hell and Back".

The Palace burned to the ground when I was 10. We had to go to Muskogee for movies after that. A movie and popcorn for 20 cents was pretty hard to beat, but 20 cents was also pretty hard to get in 1957!

The Men of the Church

This story is not about religion but then again, it has everything to do with it. You don't have to worry about me preaching a certain doctrine or a set of beliefs, I just want to talk about The Men of the Church when I was growing up. While we all have different experiences, you will remember similar men.

The men of my church included a large cross section: From men who didn't want to be involved to those who led in a grand manner.

Prayer

Some men, when asked to say a public prayer, would always say the same prayer. The SAME prayer. I was so exact that I could recite it with them. It was a journey to the land of "Guide, Guard and Direct Us". Here is a prayer made up of the phrases that I remember most:

"Heavenly Father

We thank thee for all the many blessings that you have blesses us with.

We thank thee for sparing our lives so that we can gather again to worship Thee.

We thank you for the rain that we have received.

As Brother Smith is about to bring us a message from your word, give him a ready recollection of the the scriptures.

Father, we pray for all those that is our duty to pray for the world over.

We ask for your forgiveness for any sins we may have committed, sins of omission or commission.

Guide, Guard and Direct us and if it be your will, bring us back at the next appointed time.

In Jesus Name

Amen"

It is like the old joke. Each man could have been given a number and just say, "Now we will pray #14." Everyone could just set silently reciting his prayer in our mind and then say, "Amen".

As a kid I always dreaded hearing, "Let's stand and Brother Hamm will lead us in prayer." He could outlast us all with a prayer longer than the sermon! He would quote scripture to the Lord as if he thought God may have forgotten!

Singing

Riley Taylor was one of our song leaders. I always enjoyed service when he led, but as a child, I only knew him as a "song leader". I was much more impressed later in life when I realized that he was also the Muskogee County Clerk. We sometimes forget that kid who only see adults in one setting (like church) can't get a handle on who these people are. It is even more impressive now when I think about him trying to teach us boys to be song leaders. I was about 10 years old and it certainly didn't "take" on me. He was, however, the first person to encourage me to get up in front of a group of people. Now when i speak before people, I have Riley Taylor to thank.

Role Models

One of the ministers that had the biggest impact on me was Johnny Mahan. He was not just a preacher for a Haskell church, he was well liked in the community as a little league coach, an active parent with kids in school, and as one who participated in local civic events. he showed me the importance of being a well rounded person and not just a religious one. Before him, I thought that religious people were only interested in spiritual things.

Leadership

When I think of the church leaders of my childhood, the first that comes to mind is Cy Willis. I knew that he was a successful business man because he bought a new Chevrolet every year. More than that, I noticed that he was someone who people listened to and respected. besides being one of the church's leaders, he served on the School Board and was involved in the community. I am sure that he had some fellow "brethren" who thought he tried to "run things" (don't all church leaders get accused of that?), but as an eight year old, I was impressed.

I always paid attention when he spoke. he was a man "worthy of respect" and was joined by others, of the same mold. They were men like Solus Wisdom and John Mackey, who worked hard as farmers, yet teach a Sunday School class of fourth grade boys. These men were my role models, and I was luckier than I knew. After all the 50s was a time more conducive than today.

People weren't as openly critical about everything and everybody as is true today.

I now look at these men as examples of what I should be, and I also see the influence they had on those who followed. I am partial, of course, but I believe my dad must have watched Cy Willis too, for in later years I felt that he took many of the traits that Mr. Willis had. But isn't that the way it is supposed to be.

Church is about doctrine, faith, religious sacrament and all, but it also needs to be about role models.

See, Kids do other things in church besides playing "under the sheets" with song books. Sometimes we pay attention.