September 2005

Think how great our Divine Creator’s wisdom is above all other wisdom created. The rain which is so needed, the sunshine so needed - along with men in charge of needs like sowing seeds, harvesting crops - supplies the continuation of our cycle of plant life. Thus man’s need for food is supplied by that Wisdom.

It is such an example of infinite Wisdom supplying the needs of man. I like the Wisdom we’re given to keep the continuation of the food supply with man as caretaker.

What if our world which whirls in space weren’t perfect in supplying mother’s milk for babies, from humans, to animals, like cats, dogs, and buffalos. Brains capture this Infinite Wisdom. All creation has an origin too far back to imagine when there was nothingness.

"What’s the good of trying?"

I like to think of all our needs being met from a complete plan set into action.

"In the beginning," that Awesome Wisdom we call God, made all things from nothing that existed before. What unfolds causes us to worship, which comes from those brain cells naturally.

We take each new day so carefully prepared for us with uninterruptible perfection.

It’s the vastness of such perfect doings: night, day, sun, rain, cold winters, warm and continuous hot summer days.

One man had the wisdom to come to Beaver County to settle a grand place for his current family and all the future Spohn family to occupy. It was never to be sold to anyone outside his family. He was part of a large group of those settling in with their schools, churches, and supply stores.

He had a large part in developing the Beaver community, working at many jobs, including county attorney and county judge. All this was accomplished even through the tragedy of the death of his wife and having to send his daughter to live with an aunt in Iowa.

August 2005

A good rain is a good blessing in this country!

In Georgia where I used to live, we would sigh, "Oh, my, it’s raining again." Well, I have lived long in both places and I prefer less rain - I’m a sunshine one for sure and it does seem to me here is best, because we have lots of sunshine, which I do prefer, and it is very seldom if at all we get too much.

When wheat fields need to be cut, we all are distressed but certainly it isn’t often. Of course, here that cool with dampness is a blessing. Well, it’s home to me.

When you get old, one does forget long pasts.

Right now it’s cooling off - that is special. A perking up with the cool, even my dog doesn’t seem to mind rain. It is the cooling I think since it is so hot in the summer here.

Who fusses over weather you can’t do anything about? I like less rain because sometimes it can get distressing as it did in Georgia. "Isn’t it ever going to stop raining?"

It is often said when I lived with Bill in Georgia. We had a very pretty yard which was so big it was a job to keep it pretty, with all the rain making everything grow so much. It amazes me that here with little rain, the soil gets used to it and makes other pretty things to grow, like lots of soapweeds and sagebrush.

Living in both places, I can’t choose which I like better because they are both favorites. In both places, we lived in the country, which I have always preferred. It is a quiet benefit for writing books and columns.

I love "Windmill Valley" except for my wonderful Bill. It’s the reason I came home when I did. Not having him and having been willed this place, it was easy to come home.

Oh, how I love it! My friends are all so special here.

My Windmill Valley is a little bit of heaven, with all my Beaver friends.

-----

It’s interesting to find out you don’t feel any older at ninety-seven than you did at eighty-five.

I have rather blurry eyes, and don’t walk without short steps and a hump.

For many a previous year I have seen old people walk and said I was "not going to walk that way!"

But at 97, my walk is badly bent over and my eyes are blurry.

I take the cake as they say... being old.

What I am so very relieved about is that nothing at all happens to your thinking! Oh, what a relief! That thinking "machine" has no blur at all.

For years, I’ve kneeled down and asked God to tell me what to say and I get a clear result which has not stopped and oh, how filled with gratitude.

I am telling you this because if you are old and never can think the way you used to, I say "kneel down and ask God for what you need to know."

You are pleased to the brim with the contact and joy knowing "God is everywhere and I think for sure, he is our Father in Heaven, we His child."

That was Christ’s way to get the help He needed.

It gives God full attention.

With His mighty unfailing help.

Oh, "Thy Kingdom Come. Thy Will Be Done."

God the Completer of Life on Earth!

----------------

God never lets go of us is what I hang onto continually as I’ve said often.

From babyhood on I feel safe in my Creator’s arms.

Maybe it’s because I feel safe, well, happy, and at peace.

My conception of God is unequal. Wisdom Creator of all our good, keeping it good.

From a hatching bird in a nest to a tiny child safe as it develops and emerges.

Our infinite wisdom. God fills so much space with the good in its variety of all; from humans to the nesting of the birds.

It’s such a joy to be a part of it all, all perfect from a leaf to our ears.

You say not always? To me it’s God; our infinite creating wisdom.

Where does the bad come from? Rattlesnakes? Fleas? Its own, its own. A disobedience of the mind that thinks you.

Our humble, pure, holy, infinite Creator of good, where freedom makes a very slight slip, where the preacher doesn’t fully catch an intended uplift.

July 2005

In all my 97 years of living I cherish most we were given eyes.

Looking out the window at a beautiful tree filled with every branch loaded with rather large bright pink blossoms it’s a sight I’ve never before seen. I’ve encouraged all to make the trip out to add to your life such a sight.

Something about it seems as though it is overflowing with joy and love. Oh, the gift it is to all who have it to add to their memory.

And much to my delight the blooms are lingering as though to give everyone a chance to see it! And do feel welcome for I don’t think anyone has seen its equal.

I am thrilled over its love. You just feel loved by it!

Oh, the gift trees are! Can you imagine never a tree anywhere?

When my husband and I went to California we found hardly a tree in Arizona. Just sagebrush and soapweeds which we have here, except we can plant trees and with care they grow, like this gorgeous pink bloomed tree. I water it thoroughly to keep it lasting as I promise you have never seen its equal.

I want it to be long lasting. Years ahead, one of the grand sights in the panhandle so that in the years ahead all of the state will have to have a look!

Years ahead, "Have you seen the Pink Tree?"

The top event of the spring.

"Oh, you’re overdoing it!"

Wait till you see it! I say again and again.

----------------

My happiness has hit tops. I feel good, hear good, see good. I am overflowing with thanks to God. Maybe it is my reward for always starting the day with my lesson from the Bible and the book, "Science and Health," by M.B. Eddy. A new lesson every week. This week titled Love.

My life takes a lot of love this morning. For my big cat that dashed out in the cold to go to her tree and settle on that high limb where she spends the day. She doesn’t like the old cat nor the white kitten that loves to play and the other cat is above such silliness.

I myself, woke up excited today. I am close to 97 years old and feel 50. I simply feel fine. I think that a day starts with a very good Bible lesson. It gets me "cleared out."

I gave myself a life thinking I’m 50. Who could drag around at 50? Thinking fifty and stick right to it is a real help. In the long ago before such figures were invented, I kept out of the age numbers.

And I enjoy my pets, all so loving. I think of dear friends I like and pray all are well and keep good food to eat at mealtime.

Being happy is my daily job.

Fifty in age?

------------------

It’s interesting how our big stretches of pasture land have many, many soapweeds, along with patches of cactus full of stickers.

The cactus has beautiful yellow blossoms which end up in nickel-sized pads covered with needles that really stick in like needles if you accidentally step on one.

So many farm lands elsewhere have trees and wild berry bushes.

But our old, old rather gray prairie grasslands are such that you can see in all directions for endless stretches. Along creeks there are often wild cottonwood trees which I like so much. They have small balls that open into loose white balls that blow in our warm summer winds tossing the "cotton" in little whiffs. - "Summer snow."

Grayish buffalo grass covers the lands, so short and curled it would be impossible to cut. For wheat and broom corn stalks, one just plows the soil to loosen it, the little gray grass particles mixed in.

Now and then up leaps a gray jack rabbit with its long ears and little tail.

Our Oklahoma panhandle at least is quite pleasing in its very different areas.

Those big yellow cactus blooms that make them like stickery fruits have been cut (with gloves on) and tasted, slightly sweet in their seeded yellow pulp.

My old unbothered land is quite typical with its soapweeds and sagebrush - the sage is very gray and furry, like an old gray cat. They are no more than two feet high and the bushes a foot or so high and never blooms.

There is not a tree in sight.

The now and then seen rattlesnakes find themselves a good place to get out of the hot summer sun.

My long stays in Iowa and Georgia with all their greenery make this my homeland special. Hot summers, cold, snowy winters make "Home Sweet Home" for sure.

Think how great our Divine Creator’s wisdom is above all other wisdom created. The rain which is so needed, the sunshine so needed - along with men in charge of needs like sowing seeds, harvesting crops - supplies the continuation of our cycle of plant life. Thus man’s need for food is supplied by that Wisdom.

It is such an example of infinite Wisdom supplying the needs of man. I like the Wisdom we’re given to keep the continuation of the food supply with man as caretaker.

What if our world which whirls in space weren’t perfect in supplying mother’s milk for babies, from humans, to animals, like cats, dogs, and buffalos. Brains capture this Infinite Wisdom. All creation has an origin too far back to imagine when there was nothingness.

"What’s the good of trying?"

I like to think of all our needs being met from a complete plan set into action.

"In the beginning," that Awesome Wisdom we call God, made all things from nothing that existed before. What unfolds causes us to worship, which comes from those brain cells naturally.

We take each new day so carefully prepared for us with uninterruptible perfection.

It’s the vastness of such perfect doings: night, day, sun, rain, cold winters, warm and continuous hot summer days.

One man had the wisdom to come to Beaver County to settle a grand place for his current family and all the future Spohn family to occupy. It was never to be sold to anyone outside his family. He was part of a large group of those settling in with their schools, churches, and supply stores.

He had a large part in developing the Beaver community, working at many jobs, including county attorney and county judge. All this was accomplished even through the tragedy of the death of his wife and having to send his daughter to live with an aunt in Iowa.

A good rain is a good blessing in this country!

In Georgia where I used to live, we would sigh, "Oh, my, it’s raining again." Well, I have lived long in both places and I prefer less rain - I’m a sunshine one for sure and it does seem to me here is best, because we have lots of sunshine, which I do prefer, and it is very seldom if at all we get too much.

When wheat fields need to be cut, we all are distressed but certainly it isn’t often. Of course, here that cool with dampness is a blessing. Well, it’s home to me.

When you get old, one does forget long pasts.

Right now it’s cooling off - that is special. A perking up with the cool, even my dog doesn’t seem to mind rain. It is the cooling I think since it is so hot in the summer here.

Who fusses over weather you can’t do anything about? I like less rain because sometimes it can get distressing as it did in Georgia. "Isn’t it ever going to stop raining?"

It is often said when I lived with Bill in Georgia. We had a very pretty yard which was so big it was a job to keep it pretty, with all the rain making everything grow so much. It amazes me that here with little rain, the soil gets used to it and makes other pretty things to grow, like lots of soapweeds and sagebrush.

Living in both places, I can’t choose which I like better because they are both favorites. In both places, we lived in the country, which I have always preferred. It is a quiet benefit for writing books and columns.

I love "Windmill Valley" except for my wonderful Bill. It’s the reason I came home when I did. Not having him and having been willed this place, it was easy to come home.

Oh, how I love it! My friends are all so special here.

My Windmill Valley is a little bit of heaven, with all my Beaver friends.

June 16,m 2005

What cuter than a playful baby kitten! I can watch her play endlessly. I call her Bessie. Her mother is very proud of her baby and watches her constantly.

They want to make sure I am watching them. Johnny Dog has a pleased look as he watches the cats play. His old nest keeps him laying near me.

In a nursing home the old people need a pet to love. Please sons and daughters bring your loved one a pet to love sometimes.

When you go on vacation leave your pets with someone that cares for them until you return.

I enjoy my freedom to have as many pets as I want. Also, I enjoy my collection of music boxes and quite a doll collection. Live things are best...my loving pets.

June 9, 2005

It’s a wonderful feeling to be shown safety.

I was writing when comes a knock at the door. It was a friend who wanted to know how I was feeling and check up on me.

It was a great and sunny morning. We enjoyed a good visit. Oh how wonderful to have special friends. Such a surprise.

It’s a bumpy journey to here but not too bad. One has to slow a bit. What a joy to live here on the farm. I enjoy myself too much to worry. My cat jumps upon my lap when I sit down...so loving.

When I was a child we had a cow named Bess and a horse named Ginger. We took turns riding Ginger.

My neighbor has Black Angus cows on the grass. A happy sight.

I feel safe here and so at home.

May 19, 2005

Oh, what a birthday. Biggest save for last!

Born in 1908, mother died when I was eight, and her last wish was that I GO LIVE WITH HER SISTER Fannie in Iowa since my father John was County Attorney and would have a big enough job in raising their two sons, Jean and Hugh.

So off to Iowa I went, for years so lonesome for daddy and brothers, Jean and Hugh, as well as being a lonesome daddy’s girl.

Grown, I went to Iowa City on the recommendation of my English teacher that I go to study writing since my story writing was good.

That I did. So lonesome for my brothers as well as being a daddy’s girl. When I went to the dining hall to eat lunch and left with William Newton following me.

We eventually married and he got a teaching job at the University of Texas.

Bill was very pleased I wanted to write instead of raising a family as he admitted kids drove him nuts. He lived where there were six noisy kids!

Years later while we lived in Atlanta Georgia on a farm we called Care-Careless Acres and got two grand horses so we could go riding and had three dogs we loved.

I wrote books, have eleven published, when finally he died I immediately wanted to come to Beaver and build a house on the 140 acre farm west of town which my father had willed to me.

Dean Gregg came out and welcomed me to Beaver and said he would take me to the courthouse where I could register as a tax payer and get the advantages of citizen with all rights.

So here I am, happy as a lark even enjoying reading The Herald-Democrat and asked even to write a column for it.

Thank You isn’t a big enough word for Beaver’s birthday party for my 97th!

I thought all who read my column and don’t know me from Adam would like a glimpse at least. So this is it.

May 12, 2005

Think how great our Divine Creator’s wisdom is above all other wisdom created. The rain which is so needed, the sunshine so needed - along with men in charge of needs like sowing seeds, harvesting crops - supplies the continuation of our cycle of plant life. Thus man’s need for food is supplied by that Wisdom.

It is such an example of infinite Wisdom supplying the needs of man. I like the Wisdom we’re given to keep the continuation of the food supply with man as caretaker.

What if our world which whirls in space weren’t perfect in supplying mother’s milk for babies, from humans, to animals, like cats, dogs, and buffalos. Brains capture this Infinite Wisdom. All creation has an origin too far back to imagine when there was nothingness.

"What’s the good of trying?"

I like to think of all our needs being met from a complete plan set into action.

"In the beginning," that Awesome Wisdom we call God, made all things from nothing that existed before. What unfolds causes us to worship, which comes from those brain cells naturally.

We take each new day so carefully prepared for us with uninterruptible perfection.

It’s the vastness of such perfect doings: night, day, sun, rain, cold winters, warm and continuous hot summer days.

One man had the wisdom to come to Beaver County to settle a grand place for his current family and all the future Spohn family to occupy. It was never to be sold to anyone outside his family. He was part of a large group of those settling in with their schools, churches, and supply stores.

He had a large part in developing the Beaver community, working at many jobs, including county attorney and county judge. All this was accomplished even through the tragedy of the death of his wife and having to send his daughter to live with an aunt in Iowa.

April 28, 2005

God never lets go of us is what I hang onto continually as I’ve said often.

From babyhood on I feel safe in my Creator’s arms.

Maybe it’s because I feel safe, well, happy, and at peace.

My conception of God is unequal. Wisdom Creator of all our good, keeping it good.

From a hatching bird in a nest to a tiny child safe as it develops and emerges.

Our infinite wisdom. God fills so much space with the good in its variety of all; from humans to the nesting of the birds.

It’s such a joy to be a part of it all, all perfect from a leaf to our ears.

You say not always? To me it’s God; our infinite creating wisdom.

Where does the bad come from? Rattlesnakes? Fleas? Its own, its own. A disobedience of the mind that thinks you.

Our humble, pure, holy, infinite Creator of good, where freedom makes a very slight slip, where the preacher doesn’t fully catch an intended uplift.

April 21, 2005

This year’s cowchip days were great!

I think they gathered many old dried-up cowchip on my farm since there are many Black Angus cattle grazing on my grassy farm.

I enjoy the sight, especially the bouncing calves.

Long, long ago my father used to take the horse drawn wagon with us three kids and go all around gathering the dried cowchip to burn and oh, how cozy the house was during the winters.

No trees, the cowchips made it possible to live in this wide tree-less Panhandle.

I imagine in this day Cowchip tossing is awful to visitors, but if you saw one you would find they pick up without breaking and do burn in a strong steady blaze.

I well remember the large box full of cowchips keeping us cozy.

"Better go out in the wagon and gather some more cowchips! We want to be cozy at Christmas!"

"Maybe we’ll find a little tree by the creek."

"Oh, we must never pull up a little tree! That wooden one daddy made is all right for you kids to hang your stockings on."

In this day our stores have shipped in trees to sell and we think nothing at all decorating our big shipped-in trees.

We’re pleased when we drive around in the truck, no trees, looking for those cowchips to toss.

In parts of our Nation full of trees I bet it’s hard to collect cowchips if not impossible as it would take so long to find dry ones.

Good old Beaver County is just right for the game!

All those huge machine traveling though town though it was a grand joke to get onto! "Whee!"

I yelled Whee!, too, because I don’t have to go out in the pasture and get a wheel barrow full of cowchips to keep warm when the wind blows in snow and you can’t find the bloomin’ things!

I do thank all our guests in a big way to celebrate those old days.

We don’t need the dang things here on the farm in APRIL

April 14, 2005

To the child, the cats and dogs are something to love and take care of.

This is my case. I have three cats and one dog. All loved and given every care to keep them happy and at peace.

Friends on a trip left their cat with me and the white pretty cat did not like the place, nor me, nor my three cats and dog.

I gave her special attention but in a week she dashed off and with days of calling, searching, and phoning neighbors to find out if they had seen her I found they hadn’t seen a cat like that.

It made me think we must leave our pets at the animal clinic where they cannot escape and get in trouble.

Oh, how I pray she’s safe somewhere!

When we go on trips let us remember our very loved pets don’t like to be left with strange people (cat lovers though they be!) with other cats and dogs they aren’t familiar with.

From the picture you can see of all animals I have them at the top in ability to love people.

Oh, the joy they bring us.

My heart overflows with thanks to our divine Creator of it all!

March 31, 2005

My two brothers surely were disappointed when that baby mama was going to have turned out to be a girl. Oh how awful - a girl!

"What’s her name?"

"You name her."

"Fiddlesticks" is a good name. Mama and Papa laughed. Hugh and Gene thought that was a good name. They laughed and said "Fiddlesticks."

I was told the boys bounced around saying "Fiddlesticks." It was a word Grandpa used frequently. I was told my crying was maddening to all.

And they called me "Crybaby."

"Dear boys, you should have heard Hugh cry." Papa said. Hugh was the loudest crybaby. Gene was a premature child and his cries were rather faint; in fact, Papa said we both prayed a lot that he would even make it.

Papa laughed. Gene Rushkin had a time of it as a child. But here he is my little Jeanie Boy. Even church folks prayed about him. Those little feet and cute little hands. Oh, how everybody prayed. It was a nice circle of dear ones and it was not until Mama died when I was 8 years old that I realized how much it meant to me.

Sometimes we went to the sandhills, running to the top, and rolling down. We had a syrup bucket full of lunch for the trip. If a birthday was present, we would have a big cake, which was all of the special things that we had long, long ago.

Now days it seems all to be entertainment with TV, good and educational. But, oh, the sandhill days were my favorites. Sunday school classes went there for picnics often after church.

So Beaver does have its sandhill playground, which makes our town very special. I hope still it’s the special treat for Beaver’s children.

That picnic to the sandhills.

Never let TV outplay our sandhill picnics!

March 24, 2005

To the child, the cats and dogs are something to love and take care of.

This is my case. I have three cats and one dog. All loved and given every care to keep them happy and at peace.

Friends on a trip left their cat with me and the white pretty cat did not like the place, nor me, nor my three cats and dog.

I gave her special attention but in a week she dashed off and with days of calling, searching, and phoning neighbors to find out if they had seen her I found they hadn’t seen a cat like that.

It made me think we must leave our pets at the animal clinic where they cannot escape and get in trouble.

Oh, how I pray she’s safe somewhere!

When we go on trips let us remember our very loved pets don’t like to be left with strange people (cat lovers though they be!) with other cats and dogs they aren’t familiar with.

From the picture you can see of all animals I have them at the top in ability to love people. (Ed Note. Pictures to come later.)

Oh, the joy they bring us.

My heart overflows with thanks to our divine Creator of it all!

March 17, 2005

She’ll be 97 on May 5. She lives alone, plays her 100-year-old Emerson piano to lift her spirits, and writes a weekly column for the Herald Democrat in Beaver. "I couldn’t live if I couldn’t write," Alice said recently. In July 2002, Alice wrote in her column, "I can’t think of a time in my life I like better than now with this column-writing job." Though she had a desire to write beginning at age four, she followed in her mother’s footsteps and received a degree from Simpson College Conservatory of Music. With encouragement from a college professor, Alice Newton went on to the University of Iowa to study English and writing.

In her 16th book, The Sun Says When, Alice wrote at age 86, "I would feel bad to leave a book idea unfinished — so fulfilling is the job of writing. It’s because it is a form of listening. I put down what Something bigger than I am tells me to. It makes me feel terribly close to our divine Creator, which is a feeling I long to share. Dying, for me, will be one chapter in life’s book closed for the next one."

Alice Spohn Newton’s life has not been easy, but her sunny disposition conceals that fact. "Life is a fabulous adventure!" Alice wrote in one of her columns. She admits to being "a happy person by choice." She advises others to keep active; find something you enjoy doing and do it! She is excited to be alive and feeling good.

Alice and her husband, William, who was a chemical engineer, taught at Georgia Tech. After retirement in 1973, William found he had Alzheimer’s disease and decided to end his life. Having never had children, Alice was left alone.

Alice had yearned for many years to return to her roots in Beaver, Oklahoma. For Alice, Beaver was her home, though when she was eight years old she was sent to Iowa to live with an aunt after her mother died of spinal meningitis. Her father, John Alva Spohn, an attorney, had ridden a bicycle from Iowa in 1902 to homestead 60 acres near Laverne, at Clearlake. The family found its way to Beaver when Alice’s father became the judge, even before Oklahoma was a state.

When Alice moved back to Beaver, she had a house built on 160 acres purchased by her father. Her new home replaced the sod house that had been home for her parents. She included a built-in swimming pool that she swam in daily until about a year ago. She also drove her car until a couple of years ago.

Beaver is the best place on earth to live, according to Alice, full of helpful, caring people. Her special friends bring her mail and meals three times a week, stock her refrigerator, and look after her needs. She wrote in one of her columns, "Beaver is the first step taken on the way to Heaven."

Alice has the key ingredients to a happy life: someone to love (God, her animals, and faithful friends), something to do (writing her weekly column and taking care of her pets) and something to look forward to (her daily Bible study and the hope of life after death).

Alice’s Column can be read on the Beaver Herald Democrat’s home web internet page at www.beavercowchipnews.com. Many of her books are at the Beaver Library and at the Jones and Plummer Trail Museum. Her father’s autobiography, Mountains Herald the Direction, can also be found at the museum.

March 10, 2005

Ed Latta Calhoon
Services were held
Wednesday, March 2.

I read my column to Doctor Calhoon and he was pleased.

Oh, then the terrible news.

Then the awful shock, the sadness, his death.

It makes us think he never told of HIS ills. I’m sure it’s natural for a doctor to do this, yet for the rest of us, we conjure up a good story!

I very seldom went to him for help and enjoyed his jollyness. It was as though he himself was NEVER sick, yet here he suddenly fell forth on the floor dead (I’m told).

I admire him to no end that he was able to continue with problems and yet no one ever thought of such a thing of him dying.

In all my life I have never seen or heard of someone who was that ill and had no complaints.

The column I put in the paper before this event, I thought of him as Never Sick, and I think I told him this.

He just grinned and said: "Oh, maybe NEVER is a bit strong."

He seemed to know people never thought of the doctor himself as needing a doctor.

This is true in a way with me. I thought Doctors would know what they needed to do when THEY were sick.

It’s a good lesson learned from the stand point of their strain of sitting all night with someone in danger of dying, then see many patients the next day.

It makes me think we all can learn a valuable lesson.

Think about the Doctor not only tired but he could be torn up about his patient not doing too well. So WHAT ELSE can he do for him, or her.

There IS SOMETHING.

When I feel awful I pray to God. "Please, God, Help Me!"

I’m such a devout Christian scientist and studying the Lessons every morning that I do get help. The mind has so much to do with how we feel..

Christ Jesus healed all who came to Him. He said He would Be With Us Always and I find He keeps His word!

Life Is What You Make It, so Make It SPIRITUAL!

"Gods Spirit, Man His Likeness SPIRITUAL.

It’s that internal self we see doc as now.

March 3, 2005

My 140 acres of winter grazing land has naught but dried up buffalo grass for its herd of Black Angus cattle so I hope their barn is full of hay.

So much of my life on the farm (other places) I find cattle and horses a big treat, especially the calves and colts.

When my husband died I couldn’t get back to Beaver quick enough and change the old sod house into a comfortable home.

Now days likely it would be hard to find a sod house. They were made by the first settlers.

There was a "sod plow" that dug into the dirt in rows brick size. It had to be free of sand or they would fall apart.

This new land the government opened up was free to people by the government so this part of the Oklahoma panhandle would be occupied.

My daddy tried to add a little wood part for my mom who was from Iowa and never heard of anyone living in the dirt, so to speak.

They had three children, my brother Jean, first, then Hugh, then at last a girl...me.

Daddy a lawyer was soon called in to help at the Courthouse.

All went well. When old enough we three walked the mile, with Daddy, to town, to school, and I remember so well how we picked those stalks of white bells on the soapweeds.

I took them to the teacher and they all liked them. I also found what is a moss rose which is a low plant with red roselike blooms. They were even fragrant. Oh, how I did love a bouquet of them for the teacher.

On our walk to school we often scared up a jackrabbit with very long ears sticking straight up. When the plants moved, they jumped. Hop, hop, hop!

Now and then we would find a spotted turtle crawling along. Once we came upon one which had somehow got turned on its back and wobbled to turn over. We felt sorry for it and quickly turned it over and off it went, glad we had come along just there on our walk to school.

One day we were walking along the path and could hear ahead of us a rattlesnake! We ran around it and bounded forth hoping it would be gone when school was over.

Hugh said, "I bet if we come back we better stay on the path because it will be at the end and turn off to the side."

It may have since there was no sight nor sound of it.

Daddy on his walk to town finally heard it in the sagebrush and got a big rock and killed it at last.

I as the youngest, when I was eight, mama died. Oh, what a horror.

Never again the joy. Then sent to an aunt in Iowa to mama’s sister. Grown, I married, then at my husband’s death the first thing I did was to come home and enjoy the old-time living here where childhood memories are clear and the rest like a dream, happy days back!

The windmill still sings its happy song! Three cats and a grand pet dog for company! Home sweet home!

February 24, 2005

I find myself asking this every day. Why do commentators seem to delight in starting with something dreadful which has happened?

"Silly! We need to know about such things!"

But right off, you barely listen to the rest of the news for being upset over the bad news.

"Thirty people killed in a crash of a plane."

You hardly listen to the rest of the news.

"A line of stretchers."

"Anybody you know?"

The rest of the news becomes vague. If it came first, you would be glad to know your choice for a replaced Congressman got voted in. Glad the weather will continue its warm up. Glad neither parents nor child were hurt in the car missing its turn. Glad beef was on sale.

All of these "glads" helped hearing about the plane crash afterwards.

February 17, 2005

My dog Johnie is a good baby sitter for cats.

When I go outside looking for cats, find the dog, and there they are.

Years back when I got the cats, the owner said if you have a dog there they will be.

He also said the dog will let the cats go in first. With a chuckle he said, "More for seeing them all than for politeness."

These little ones are quite loved by me and they seem satisfied with the new owner.

I never get over thanking God for creating animals, pets especially.

Horses are especially welcome, were certainly when we hitched big Ginger to the buggy and we went to the little country church near Laverne.

There was always a picnic under the tree by the creek, and then the tales about the week’s events. Helen had her baby which was so very grand.

They named her Janie Arlene and she had pretty blue eyes and light hair.

Each span of time has its now that is best of all.

Even elections. Daddy had come down from Iowa on a bicycle and was in Beaver’s elections. He was voted in as Beaver County Attorney.

We filled the buggy full and found a sod house they could mov in to. He built his loved wife, Dee, who was a graduate and had her father send down her piano.

Oh how the family - with its two boys and a baby girl they named Bessie Alice.

Nothing was missing for a grand family life!

There was even a creek in the west. Home Creek it was called, and they went fishing and caught jackrabbits for a treat of their meat. And of course, in the summer there was wild plum patches in the draws.

Nothing was missing!

There was for them cats and a dog Billie.

I’m not going to tell you how the story of mom, pop, and we three kids ended. But here I am on that same piece of land and it’s full of happy dreams I never forget.

I have a cat sitter dog which keeps it all fun.

My favorite hobby is writing, and you can see I have plenty to write about.

But so do you!

I bet Joe could squeeze it in.

Why not.

February 10, 2005

Who watched a calf getting all its food from a cow’s bladder, and found it good?

In the beginning of humans on earth these things so common to us now had to be discovered.

By the pull of the hands, milk came and was good. All good having been discovered by man, this cow milk was very welcome. Babes survived with its mother’s milk, but if needed it was found cow’s milk did it also.

Then came the process of butter from the cream in the milk.

Centuries ago all our eating habits from things were discovered. Man trying everything from the milk to the cow’s meat at its death?

I would guess growing tree with fruit that apples. Oh, what a find! Plants, peaches, berries.

It makes us glad it’s 2005 years later!

How soon after meat was found good did someone find that fire started with the spark of two rocks. So important when the weather was cold - did cooked food taste better?

My goodness! Even spinach - of all things to be thankful for in life I find out time here on earth. It’s a great time. From food to houses, to health knowledge to so many blessings like churches, stores, vehicles for getting around, and then televisions where we can see what’s going on in other countries - as well as the moon!

In that long ago the now was unthinkable.

So what about 2,000 hence? I can’t even imagine, if progress should match the now from the beginning.

I feel deeply, little change will come.

I can’t even think of some marvelous discovery. To me we are at the peak of all the discovered good. We just don’t want to decline, like food shortages from the overflow of population.

It makes me feel the infinite divine Creator we call God had this ruled that all living things die and who can but agree?

Ah, in the mourning the loss of friends and loved ones, remember.

Ah, this problem, no death in thousands of years.

My goodness! It makes one at peace over the idea, sad as it is, we are making room for that newborn child to grow up and add its important life!

February 3, 2005

Depression Days brought us closer

Raise your gloom recalling Depression Days. Or hearing about them. We surely were Depressed! Either no job to find, or the present barely making a go of it.

Bill, my husband, decided to go the long way to California because we were told jobs could be found there.

Money was so scarce no one could splurge! On our drive to California from Oklahoma, we slept in the car and did eat things we could buy, like a loaf of bread and cheese slices, with now and then an apple.

Finally, we got there and so many had come you had to stand in line to apply for a job, any job.

We got a job selling a newspaper for ten cents. The newspaper put in the news of a job teaching at the university. Bill was very excited. He had just graduated from Georgia Tech. He called the college in California and sent his teacher’s recommendation.

The university president said he was considering him, the job was his if he would be willing to put lots of time in on their religious activities.

He said, "No, I’m sorry." He turned around to me and said, "I’ll be darned if I’ll be a hypocrite."

Bill was the most kind, helpful person I have ever known. But he said he couldn’t go for that God stuff with so many poor, distressed people. Wars, killings as much as possible to settle some question. I said I know what you mean. And I think the world is beginning to see how awful it is for our best young men to go out and shoot each other to decide.

I think our many shared beliefs is what made us loving. Bill wouldn’t eat meat because he couldn’t bear for an animal to be killed so he could eat it!

I ate it and still do. I foolishly think as I go home from the store along with most everyone else, that it didn’t die in vane.

With all my heart and soul I love Beaver and am pleased with the opportunity to say I’ve lived in lots of places. But Beaver is far my favorite!

When I was a little girl mama said I’d ask for pencil and paper "to write a story."

I’d be lonesome out here if I didn’t recall people.

Those depression days even brought us closer!

January 27, 2005

My happiness has hit tops. I feel good, hear good, see good. I am overflowing with thanks to God. Maybe it is my reward for always starting the day with my lesson from the Bible and the book, Science and Health, by M.B. Eddy. A new lesson every week. This week titled Love.

My life takes a lot of love this morning for my big cat that dashed out in the cold to go to her tree and settle on that high limb where she spends the day. Because she doesn’t like the old cat nor the white kitten that loves to play and the other cat in above such silliness.

I, myself, woke up excited today.

I am close to 97 years old and feel 50. I simply feel fine. I think that a day starts with a very good Bible lesson gets me, "cleared out".

I gave my self a life think I’m 50 who could drag around at 50? Thinking fifty and stick right to it is a real help.

In the long ago before such figures were invented, I kept out of the age numbers and enjoyed my pets (all so loving). I think of dear friends I like and pray all are well and keep good food to eat at meal times.

Being Happy is my Daily Job.

Fifty in age?

January 20, 2005

I have a big, I would guess old gray, cat willed to me by a friend who could no longer care for her. I was suddenly fond of her and I took her in my arms. She didn’t squirm or try to escape.

I thought here in my arms is a good friend. I was excited. Living alone. I have a very old gray cat I’ve had for years. Martha I call her and she is devoted but seems to think I don’t want to be bothered so she’s careful not to.

But the big new cat recognized by affection and it was as though it was just what she wanted, a real pleased friend.

This morning a few months later she stood at the door and wanted outside. It was very cold and the snow was deep. Still she was desperate. Did she have kittens in the barn? It would seem so. So I called the humane society to get their opinion on the matter. So they came out and checked the barn, found no baby kittens in the cold. I was grateful for their help and avoided my getting out. Somehow I was sure the cat wanted out so bad but she wanted back in as soon as it was too cold out.

January 13, 2005

Eventually you get to the age, "I can’t find my glasses!"

Maybe it’s the stern way to be told by our Divine Creator that yes, you have to keep "I and my Father one." (He the one.)

My eyes have been wonderful. I still see to do this typing without glasses. There’s always something that I want to write about. Even as a little child I can remember asking mom for pencil and paper to write a story.

Mother was a music graduate and they said I should be taught to play her Emerson Piano which I still have and play. (The tuner said the tone was royal. Never had he tuned a more beautifully toned piano.)

I’ve composed quite a lot but none published which doesn’t bother me because with 14 books published I can’t complain.

The big fun now is my Herald Democrat column.

You see my mind wakes up pleased with an idea to sound off about.

My precious husband said, "I have to tell you before we get married that I don’t want any children."

I have always thought God brought us together. Here I a music graduate wanting to go to Iowa City to study to be a writer.

That’s the reason I feel so for certain there is a Father In Heaven who loves us. I think of God as "I and my Father one." I even talk to Him as the Divine Father who listens to us and does for us always what’s best.

Churches, preachers, it all proves it.

Our Father God wants his children to have a full, happy life and I tell Him my life couldn’t be happier because I know all my dears who have "died" very happy in Heaven.

I feel good, my health perfect for which I thank God continually.

He tells me what to say and how to say it.

Listenin’ is a must.

January 6, 2005

Not having a phone to carry in my pocket I usually get to the phone just after the fourth ring. So wait - instead of hanging up at once, just when I get there! It takes some time to get from my desk where I write columns to the telephone.

Oh, what a distress - five seconds wouldn’t hurt just to wait for my answer. I’m on my way!

Very seldom am I gone. Often some special friend brings food from the Center on Wednesdays.

I’m so very happy, all that good food. Although, my dear friend, Ray, keeps my refrigerator full much to my big thanks.

This column writing keeps me from getting lonesome. Here in the country the good old home. With a job to keep my mind off loneliness. We can always love and adore animals. They are a form of company never absent.

To my desk comes Martha with a meow to get my attention, either for food, time, or fun outdoors.

December 30, 2004
 

Long ago there was no such things as numbers. Old people were just old. Family and people knowing one day their life might quit.

I’ve wiped out such things as age as they did back there, and find it works wonders!

Try it! Maybe as a child it’s awful, you watch for that age 15, then 20, on and on better because older!

But old - Gee! 96! You know that’s near the end. People make the world new when they live to be a hundred!

Well, I prefer the no counting years and like it very much. I can think up columns as usual and don’t pay attention to my body as long as I eat and sleep as usual - as it would be before time was divided into years.

So now saying 40 does help in the realm of fooling yourself. Our thoughts are influential to our bodies. "I and my Father are one, He the One" gets us off on the marvels of creation from singing birds to hands that can play beautiful music on the piano. Even milking a cow and taking the appendix out of a person.

I think it helps your attitude when you let thoughts wander and keep out fear, which is a big enemy!

"Oh, what a mess it would be! "I’ll meet you at three!" is better!"

We do have to know in the beginning there was just dark and daylight for Adam and Eve. And right now I like this 96 years old sound because it’s too big a number! I kept to that 40! And did enjoy it, yesterday saying "I’m forty."

Try it!

After all first people’s nothing but night and day.

--------

I have an oversized booklet a friend gave me years ago titled, The Prayer That Heals, written by Ann Beals. Every day I read something to lift me up. I thought it would be nice to share some of the special ideas.

"Man is an idea of God."

"Each individual is an integral part of God’s plan. Therefore, man is obedient to God’s laws and is governed by them."

"What blesses one blesses all under the law of love."

"Spirit is the substance of man’s being."

God is my life," expressing bliss, health, activity, harmony, and perfection.

"The truth in consciousness is the eternal fact of being."

"Love motivates all God does."

"You begin to think of yourself as more loving to be just that."

"Not one atom in the whole of creation can act apart from God."

"Physicists have proven that there is no solid matter as the world thinks of it."

"Trust God for our health."

"The advanced intelligence that Christ Jesus embodied was wholly spiritual."

"Criticism is a violation of the law of love."

"Your thinking determines your experience."

"While we may seem separate from God, He knows we aren’t separate from Him."

"As you discern mind of its ideas as ever present, give over to trust and rely upon them to guide and protect you."

"Remember we think our way is the highway of Heaven."

"Spiritualism of thought comes through as total commitment to it."

"When you make truth real, you challenge evil."

"Every problem, illness, limitation has a mental control."

"All disease has a mental cause."

"Love."

"Break all fear of each."

"Don’t talk about age."

"We have control over our life because we can know how untrue our thinking."

December 2004

What if you didn’t know your age?

Had no way at all of knowing.

What would you guess?

I would guess seventy six years old.

Not young like fifty.

Not old like ninety.

If someone said I was ninety six, I’d say it’s a lie!

It even sounds ridiculous.

That seventy six has a truth sound to it.

So why not say it when you think it?

When you stop and think about it, age can’t do something to you, like hurt. A few wrinkles but so what?

You can’t even make a wrinkle hurt so forget it!

Be that happy, fun-loving you that leaves the day out. All these big celebrations, we’re supposed to celebrate the day we were born!

When you’re little you like those birthdays so you can get grown and be special, like get married, etc.

Why don’t we reach the age of forty and quit?

There’s something silly about piling up the figures till you FEEL old because you are.

I’ve decided to set an age and keep it.

I’m seventy.

Like a house. Built in 1950. Still good.

My house here in the country is good as new.

Why can’t I be as good as new?

Right now I feel good as new.

One thing that helps is this writing, my mind on something that keeps age out of it would be wonderful!

I bet we wouldn’t give it thought and like a tree, no special age looks!

What I’ve done is knock age out and it helps a lot!

I tell myself "no such thing as age!"

It helps and that’s what counts.

---------

Think how great our Divine Creator’s wisdom is above all other wisdom created. The rain which is so needed, the sunshine so needed - along with men in charge of needs like sowing seeds, harvesting crops - supplies the continuation of our cycle of plant life. Thus man’s need for food is supplied by that Wisdom.

It is such an example of infinite Wisdom supplying the needs of man. I like the Wisdom we’re given to keep the continuation of the food supply with man as caretaker.

What if our world which whirls in space weren’t perfect in supplying mother’s milk for babies, from humans, to animals, like cats, dogs, and buffalos. Brains capture this Infinite Wisdom. All creation has an origin too far back to imagine when there was nothingness.

"What’s the good of trying?"

I like to think of all our needs being met from a complete plan set into action.

"In the beginning," that Awesome Wisdom we call God, made all things from nothing that existed before. What unfolds causes us to worship, which comes from those brain cells naturally.

We take each new day so carefully prepared for us with uninterruptible perfection.

It’s the vastness of such perfect doings: night, day, sun, rain, cold winters, warm and continuous hot summer days.

One man had the wisdom to come to Beaver County to settle a grand place for his current family and all the future Spohn family to occupy. It was never to be sold to anyone outside his family. He was part of a large group of those settling in with their schools, churches, and supply stores.

He had a large part in developing the Beaver community, working at many jobs, including county attorney and county judge. All this was accomplished even through the tragedy of the death of his wife and having to send his daughter to live with an aunt in Iowa.

May this Holiday season keep you safe and enjoy your time with family.

November  2004

Good is such a powerful word and can be of great value to us when we use it as Christ did: "Why calleth me good?" There is only one good and that is God."

When we wake up thinking it’s going to be a good day is giving the day a good start.

Waking up thinking it looks sunny and we need rain makes it good - if rain is needed, but if not needed we say, "Oh heck!" Rain again!

One gets a real contentment out of the word good.

It affects us. If in a crowd someone says, "Oh, I have something good to tell you," the group is united, all ready to hear that good.

"Jean and Ethel are getting married." (My brother’s name was Jean) You say, "My name’s Jean!" (Her name Jean Ruth.)

My brother’s name was Jean Ruskin Spohn, I say. And they did have a time in school as there were other "Jeans" since it at that time seemed popular. So we use that word good with a not good. Two Jeans finally for both boy and girl got spelled, Jean for girl and Gene for boy.

On his tombstone the name is printed Jean Ruskin Spohn so one will know he’s a man. Sometimes I’ve been asked, although the Ruskin should make it plain.

He was very loved by friends here in Beaver because he was not only cheery, but helpful. I’ve heard so many say, "I sure did like your brother, Jean." He wasn’t only cheerful but helpful. "Anything I can do to help!"

He ran a filling station and was out delivering gas somewhere in the area of Forgan where his truck hit a car that stopped in front of him and the jolt threw him out and his neck was broken in the fall.

I’ve never quit missing my loving brother Jean. For a long time his friends spoke of missing him.

Can’t you still see that smile always there?

I can!

November 11, 2004

It’s interesting how our big stretches of pasture land have many, many soapweeds, along with patches of cactus full of stickers.

The cactus has beautiful yellow blossoms which end up in nickel-sized pads covered with needles that really stick in like needles if you accidentally step on one.

So many farm lands elsewhere have trees and wild berry bushes.

But our old, old rather gray prairie grasslands are such that you can see in all directions for endless stretches. Along creeks there are often wild cottonwood trees which I like so much. They have small balls that open into loose white balls that blow in our warm summer winds tossing the "cotton" in little whiffs. - "Summer snow."

Grayish buffalo grass covers the lands, so short and curled it would be impossible to cut. For wheat and broom corn stalks, one just plows the soil to loosen it, the little gray grass particles mixed in.

Now and then up leaps a gray jack rabbit with its long ears and little tail.

Our Oklahoma panhandle at least is quite pleasing in its very different areas.

Those big yellow cactus blooms that make them like stickery fruits have been cut (with gloves on) and tasted, slightly sweet in their seeded yellow pulp.

My old unbothered land is quite typical with its soapweeds and sagebrush - the sage is very gray and furry, like an old gray cat. They are no more than two feet high and the bushes a foot or so high and never blooms.

There is not a tree in sight.

The now and then seen rattlesnakes find themselves a good place to get out of the hot summer sun.

My long stays in Iowa and Georgia with all their greenery make this my homeland special. Hot summers, cold, snowy winters make "Home Sweet Home" for sure.

November 4, 2004
 

A good rain is a good blessing in this country!

In Georgia where I used to live, we would sigh, "Oh, my, it’s raining again." Well, I have lived long in both places and I prefer less rain - I’m a sunshine one for sure and it does seem to me here is best, because we have lots of sunshine, which I do prefer, and it is very seldom if at all we get too much.

When wheat fields need to be cut, we all are distressed but certainly it isn’t often. Of course, here that cool with dampness is a blessing. Well, it’s home to me.

When you get old, one does forget long pasts.

Right now it’s cooling off - that is special. A perking up with the cool, even my dog doesn’t seem to mind rain. It is the cooling I think since it is so hot in the summer here.

Who fusses over weather you can’t do anything about? I like less rain because sometimes it can get distressing as it did in Georgia. "Isn’t it ever going to stop raining?"

It is often said when I lived with Bill in Georgia. We had a very pretty yard which was so big it was a job to keep it pretty, with all the rain making everything grow so much. It amazes me that here with little rain, the soil gets used to it and makes other pretty things to grow, like lots of soapweeds and sagebrush.

Living in both places, I can’t choose which I like better because they are both favorites. In both places, we lived in the country, which I have always preferred. It is a quiet benefit for writing books and columns.

I love "Windmill Valley" except for my wonderful Bill. It’s the reason I came home when I did. Not having him and having been willed this place, it was easy to come home.

Oh, how I love it! My friends are all so special here.

My Windmill Valley is a little bit of heaven, with all my Beaver friends.

October 28, 2004

I gave a lot of thought to what to write about that would be of interest.

Now, I want to tell you about what we did before there was any such thing as TV. I can say we were as happy then as now. Grandma made quilts sewing by hand all scraps left from making dresses into squares for the quilt pieces.

Starting out with Mama and Papa coming a year or so later, baby Gene Ruskin. An immature child no bigger than a ball, this meant tiny clothes as well as tiny diapers. They were so thrilled over the tiny child. They prayed and did all they could that their son would grow into a fine young man with lots of talent - and he did!

He liked to sing. When Mama played the piano, brought from Iowa where she was born, in a wagon and team. There was lots of celebrating, neighbors coming to hear music in this little panhandle. A year later came a little boy, lots bigger than the other and they named him Hugh Napoleon. Papa added the last, so he would be special. So here they were, two boys, then a baby girl, they named Bessye Alice. Mama gave piano lessons to help with the income.

Wagon trips to Bluegrass school, where they had Sunday church.

Rabbits caught to eat and the long trips to Laverne to get sugar and flour were also a treat.

I grew up with much happiness then as now. No change in the night bed and day fun.

Those oatmeal breakfasts like today, dinner with fried jack rabbit, and suppers with such, milk from the one cow Papa called "Goody." There was no thought of any lack.

It was such a big treat when finally came a mailbox and mail came from the grandparents in Iowa. We would all wait for the horse and buggy to come. We would hold out the letters to be mailed and he would put the incoming mail in the box.

When I was 5 years old, I got a birthday cake. Oh, what a joy, a luxury for us all!

Our Father God was thanked for as much goodness as today. I remember it so well.

It is such a blessing that I was able to come back to the home place. Now I have more conveniences to make living easier, but my happiness is still as much as when I lived with so little. The experiences through the years of coming here, moving to Iowa, marrying Bill and going to Atlanta, then coming back after his death have all added joy to my life.

October 21, 2004
 

I call her enormous but her name is Norma Smith, and in all my long years I have never found a person who spends all her time helping others.

She must wake up telling herself about someone who needs help, like the friend in Laverne who’s husband died. Then there’s the man and wife in Beaver who are both ill.

"I’ll worry if I don’t go to see if they have needs."

"Then that hospital visit where those desolate friends are - hoping for a visit."

We all know that if we actually make a list of dear ones who could use a bit of cheering up.

Yes, we all could spend many a day scattering cheer where needed.

Clearly Norma gets those nudges about dears which I call "God’s nudges." But life’s just too cluttered with personal problems to go all out to bring cheer if not help that direction...for us.

Maybe God cleared her of so many personal problems knowing she would put her time to their use.

On the go, on the go, but it’s all for others.

Our "on the go’s" are so important!

We think.

You say, "I don’t think so, I know so."

Sick hubby...Norma is widowed.

Yes, I agree that families go to bed exhausted.

Night and day is the divine plan. I am thankful I have been able to follow! I think it’s responsible for my clear thinking and good health!

Norma can sit with the sick, drive all night to get where she is supposed to be living on her thoughts, and that’s what it takes.

Imagine the job God has!

It makes me think of a checker game, a place for all and all in place. Millions of people on earth, of course each one feels special and is! To God. So what more exciting? We were born into this great enormity! How could we be more special?

October 2004

Letter to the Editor,

Age is not a robber of our thinking unless we let it be.

Our brain that catches thoughts from the One Creator of all things won’t let age take over unless WE let it.

I’m 96 and tell myself harshly to quit counting life by years because they rule like a whip!

That’s the way I think of myself. I say I’m 25 years old.

Numbers don’t change.

So I hang like, say June 15th does, it’s a great help.

Try it.

Who’s old at twenty five!

There is a lot of influence in telling yourself you’re @% years old.

There was a time when there weren’t such things as numbers.

There’s a kind of magic in numberless night and day.

It holds a magic no other way found!

Try it when you get to be 96.

God Bless You Always.

Alice Newton - age 25.

Let’s hear about Bud and Cheley’s trip to California!

Bud and I hooked up our trailer and left Beaver on August 29 as soon as church services were over, driving into New Mexico for the night. The next night was spent in Flagstaff, AZ. We don’t recommend that town for any sleeping as the trains whistle through there all night long! But there is an excellent place for dinner and entertainment called Black Bart’s, which we have visited numerous times before. College students who are majoring in music and also wait tables entertain customers throughout the evening.

When we got to California, we went to visit Bud’s older sister, Myrle Richardson, who is very ill in a nursing home near her home in Santa Fe Springs. While in the area we also visited with Myrle’s daughter, Linda Brown and her husband, Al in Norco. The Brown’s have a huge 40-year-old turtle, who lives in their yard and grazes on the grass just like cattle do. Linda’s son Bill Foster was also there along with his wife Lynn, a native of Thailand and his daughters Robin and Amy. Bud had a good time explaining where Oklahoma was and what a cow chip is.

We were privileged to attend worship services at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove. The sanctuary, pipe organ, and grounds are indescribably beautiful. At the time we were there, the grandson of Robert Schuyler was the speaker, and I thought he did an excellent job.

We drove on to San Diego where we parked at an RV "ranch" at El Cajon, near where my former boss, Nelson Escue and his family lives. We visited one evening with him and the next day with his office staff nearby. I was dismayed that the weather was so hot during our visit, the ocean breeze usually keeps the temperatures moderate.

My youngest son, Mike Cates, his wife, Joanna, and daughters Jessica and Samantha flew in to San Diego from Idaho Falls, ID. Joanna’s parents, Kathi and Bill DiNallo of Cape Cod, MA came in shortly after. They and we were in San Diego to witness the ceremony of Lima Company recruits as they graduated from basic training, which occurred on Friday, September 10. Our grandson, Brandon Cates, was a member of Platoon 3094.

We met the Cates’and DiNallos at their hotel and went to dinner with a group of Marine parents, grandparents, and other relatives at Old Towne Mexican Cafe. This particular group had family members in Platoon 3094 of Lima Company, and kept in touch on-line during their sons’ basic training.

We all went to Seaport Village the next evening for dinner out on the bay...where we were able to see (at a distance) the newest carrier, the Ronald Reagan.

Friday, the graduation was held at the marine Corps Recruit Depot at San Diego. The band played several John Phillip Sousa numbers as well as the Marine Hymn and other great patriotic songs. What was surprising to me - since the Supreme Court has ruled against public prayer - that the chaplain gave the invocation before the ceremony began. There were probably 500 recruits who got their "stripes", and were officially in the Marines. It was sad to imagine what those boys might be facing and brought a tear to the eye.

Sunday we left for Tucson and spent a couple of days there visiting cousins, Jerry Phelps and Barbara Phelps. The Phelpses send their greetings and best wishes to family and friends here.

As we were traveling towards home, we saw some country we hadn’t seen before - the White Sands of New Mexico, and some unusual cacti growing in the wild.

Just a side-note: when we went into the grocery stores in California, I noticed that the bread prices were almost $1 higher per loaf than they are here.!

We were greeted by hot winds and hot temperatures when we got to Beaver, but were nevertheless happy to be back home.

September 2004

May and George Porter with Alice

I have some old pictures that tell an old story of the early part of this century.

I’m over ninety-six, (birthday May 5, 1908) and I’ve seen so much of all those years.

What I remember clearly is that my mother died when I was eight years old and I remember it so clearly. She was on a raised bed so that her nurse (my aunt) could wait on her without bending and stooping over.

Around midnight she called together a few special friends in Beaver. There were several who arrived by horse and buggy. They wanted especially to be with my father. I could hear my brother, Jean out behind the house sobbing.

I wasn’t crying because I really did not know what it all meant. There had been several weeks when I faced the corner of life completely. It was such a relief that folks came out and hugged me, "poor little motherless child."

I didn’t really understand the death as much as the attention.

I found it distressing to hear my daddy cry. He said, "How can I live without her?"

Back then are old pictures which show life back then, her dying in 1917. I have included a picture of uncle and aunt George and May Porter who came to stay with me, Jean and Hugh after mama died.

Hearing my daddy crying became a sobbing thing.

I was sent to bed with the women seated there sobbing. I went to sleep.

Later, I was sent to Iowa to live with Aunt Fannie. My brother, Hugh, went to live with the grandparents. Jean, my older brother stayed with father, whose work continued.

October 2004

I had an experience with God (who we call the Creator of heaven and earth.) "I and my Father are one (He the one.) I just suddenly felt Him in all power and presence; I stopped and said aloud, "God, I love You." And heard his response, "I love YOU," as I do all mankind and womanhood from the newborn to the old.

I had such a warm, tender feeling. This was a visit from God. I could feel His never-absence. In His wisdom as Creator of all creation, all very good. Evil is totally missing. God in His love was unmistakable. It filled all space with His love and wisdom till my life was overcome.

With the realness of it all. And I know this earthlife with its heavenlife is endless.

The thought of killers came to mind and I got the message, "Hell, as we call it was a preparation of mercy completely cleaning out the violence until totally in shame cleared out every hate."

Then union with God made us loving little children. They were aware of the joy that came with being a loving person.

In God they lost every fragment of wrongdoing.

A mother in heaven called to her son. I kneeled and prayed for that manchild to overcome so that he would be in heaven one day with her. "Oh, son, I knew God could rid out the bad. Now God’s love lets that mad out like a washing machine, because He loves you and washes out the bad, I expect."

"Oh, son, see how nice it is to be good like a baby. Oh, son." Good makes all His likeness in heaven forever. When you are here, they fill the thoughts with goodness. You’ll see!

That’s God’s way; He loves us.

September 23, 2004
 

I got up at 6 a.m., studied my Bible lesson, fed Johnny the dog, Martha the cat, ate my oatmeal with raisins, and drank my Sanka coffee. And on this day hoping to be able to go to the Wednesday grand dinner at the Beaver Senior Citizens Center. They have such grand meals prepared for anyone (not just for senior citizens) to come to eat.

I miss you all too much!

Right now I forget why I stopped going - except that always having to "bum a ride" now that I have stopped driving.

There are too many things that happen to those who have that real old age. That call for transportation to City Hall is a bother for that big transporter’s bus to turn around in my soapweed-filled field. It is also a bother to call for friends to come, although they will come in their expensive cars.

Botherations were on my father’s list of "don’ts" about how to relate to your friends. His "don’ts" were robbers of friendships.

The solution to this problem is to "let the cooks make their living there selling another plate of food to be delivered." Someone could deliver the meals to senior citizens, much like those who do it for the nutrition site.

"OK. A good way to drop the subject!"

"Free yummy meals delivered over the mile-long soapweed trail! - Now stopped - since so urgently requested by the receiver.

As a writer, I’ve never been lonely because of the contact with our Divine Father!

Oh, but it’s fun to get His help so clear and satisfying. When it’s finished I know and am full of "thank yous!"

September 16, 2004

Oh, what a glorious parade! Our big Beaver on a float in the grand event. The Beaver in all its glory and everything such as fathers wheeling their children to young people from our schools in their colors and bands playing, not only from Beaver, but from towns near.

Oh, what a glorious group parading! Beaver honored and both sides of the street were lined for a long ways.

Surely it was a day for celebration to the limit! To me the day was tops in glory!

There’s something magic about parades and I don’t see how we could have had a better one.

Then we all went up to our pavilion at the fairgrounds and had foods of many kinds from trucks getting the chance of selling loads of things from hot dogs to pumpkin pie!

After that we all went into the pavilion and looked at utterly countless homemade things which were such a treat. All from hats, dressed, and the farmers blue ribbon getting excellent. Wheat, pumpkins, and even marked off places where handsome horses and cows got into the act.

Even a few cute calves.

I tell you, county fairs are hard to beat.

Then at night was young men’s football.

Almost continually you heard friends from one town meeting friends from another town.

"Oh, hello, hello! Haven’t seen you since last year! How are things going?"

"Fine, fine, how about you? My! How your little girl, Edith, has grown! Oh, and here’s that new boy! What’s his name, you said, but I’ve forgotten."

"Joe Mack." adding "Mack for McDonald."

"I like that better, too."

That’s the Beaver County Fair for you and don’t think it doesn’t bring the crowds.

I wouldn’t miss it! Even old people in wheel chairs.

Long, long ago, they were started and who can imagine such a happy time ever stopping.

See you there next September!

-----

"Man made in His likeness is unimpeccable!" This is a statement that does things to you. That I and my Father are one sinks deep. Such thought takes over when you live it - let it!

Frets, worries, and fear just love to rule! But you’re the boss, you and the violent you insist, the more you mark out these dreads, fears, and misbeliefs. You run that think machine and don’t ever doubt it anymore!

Never allow yourself to think you can’t run your think machine. Right now, stop; see how you boss what you think. So now what are you afraid of? You think it’s going to happen and you fear it and it didn’t happen. Put in its place relief, as an example.

There is such a lot of relief in staying sure in all that goes on in your life.

Many have to. Like men with important jobs. They get to be great bosses of such things as when to wake up, what will have to be done before you leave for work. That self bossing is a must.

I like it! Don’t you?

Boss is a word that helps a lot.

That’s the thing about words. I like their power. Listen to it. Such as hungry, sleepy, hurry, don’t never, distress, and love that affects the chest!

What better?

Always when I think wrong, God gives me a feeling that my thinking is wrong. He wants me to be in self-control. I kneel down and ask Him to help me with my thoughts and I get a very definite answer. How you think about things influences what you do. That think machine is mine for sharing thoughts and using them to live in peace.

---------------------

A good rain is a good blessing in this country!

In Georgia where I used to live, we would sigh, "Oh, my, it’s raining again." Well, I have lived long in both places and I prefer less rain - I’m a sunshine one for sure and it does seem to me here is best, because we have lots of sunshine, which I do prefer, and it is very seldom if at all we get too much.

When wheat fields need to be cut, we all are distressed but certainly it isn’t often. Of course, here that cool with dampness is a blessing. Well, it’s home to me.

When you get old, one does forget long pasts.

Right now it’s cooling off - that is special. A perking up with the cool, even my dog doesn’t seem to mind rain. It is the cooling I think since it is so hot in the summer here.

Who fusses over weather you can’t do anything about? I like less rain because sometimes it can get distressing as it did in Georgia. "Isn’t it ever going to stop raining?"

It is often said when I lived with Bill in Georgia. We had a very pretty yard which was so big it was a job to keep it pretty, with all the rain making everything grow so much. It amazes me that here with little rain, the soil gets used to it and makes other pretty things to grow, like lots of soapweeds and sagebrush.

Living in both places, I can’t choose which I like better because they are both favorites. In both places, we lived in the country, which I have always preferred. It is a quiet benefit for writing books and columns.

I love "Windmill Valley" except for my wonderful Bill. It’s the reason I came home when I did. Not having him and having been willed this place, it was easy to come home.

Oh, how I love it! My friends are all so special here.

My Windmill Valley is a little bit of heaven, with all my Beaver friends.

August 2004

I gave a lot of thought to what to write about that would be of interest.

Now, I want to tell you about what we did before there was any such thing as TV. I can say we were as happy then as now. Grandma made quilts sewing by hand all scraps left from making dresses into squares for the quilt pieces.

Starting out with Mama and Papa coming a year or so later, baby Gene Ruskin. An immature child no bigger than a ball, this meant tiny clothes as well as tiny diapers. They were so thrilled over the tiny child. They prayed and did all they could that their son would grow into a fine young man with lots of talent - and he did!

He liked to sing. When Mama played the piano, brought from Iowa where she was born, in a wagon and team. There was lots of celebrating, neighbors coming to hear music in this little panhandle. A year later came a little boy, lots bigger than the other and they named him Hugh Napoleon. Papa added the last, so he would be special. So here they were, two boys, then a baby girl, they named Bessye Alice. Mama gave piano lessons to help with the income.

Wagon trips to Bluegrass school, where they had Sunday church.

Rabbits caught to eat and the long trips to Laverne to get sugar and flour were also a treat.

I grew up with much happiness then as now. No change in the night bed and day fun.

Those oatmeal breakfasts like today, dinner with fried jack rabbit, and suppers with such, milk from the one cow Papa called "Goody." There was no thought of any lack.

It was such a big treat when finally came a mailbox and mail came from the grandparents in Iowa. We would all wait for the horse and buggy to come. We would hold out the letters to be mailed and he would put the incoming mail in the box.

When I was 5 years old, I got a birthday cake. Oh, what a joy, a luxury for us all!

Our Father God was thanked for as much goodness as today. I remember it so well.

It is such a blessing that I was able to come back to the home place. Now I have more conveniences to make living easier, but my happiness is still as much as when I lived with so little. The experiences through the years of coming here, moving to Iowa, marrying Bill and going to Atlanta, then coming back after his death have all added joy to my life.

-------

"Man made in His likeness is unimpeccable!" This is a statement that does things to you. That I and my Father are one sinks deep. Such thought takes over when you live it - let it!

Frets, worries, and fear just love to rule! But you’re the boss, you and the violent you insist, the more you mark out these dreads, fears, and misbeliefs. You run that think machine and don’t ever doubt it anymore!

Never allow yourself to think you can’t run your think machine. Right now, stop; see how you boss what you think. So now what are you afraid of? You think it’s going to happen and you fear it and it didn’t happen. Put in its place relief, as an example.

There is such a lot of relief in staying sure in all that goes on in your life.

Many have to. Like men with important jobs. They get to be great bosses of such things as when to wake up, what will have to be done before you leave for work. That self bossing is a must.

I like it! Don’t you?

Boss is a word that helps a lot.

That’s the thing about words. I like their power. Listen to it. Such as hungry, sleepy, hurry, don’t never, distress, and love that affects the chest!

What better?

Always when I think wrong, God gives me a feeling that my thinking is wrong. He wants me to be in self-control. I kneel down and ask Him to help me with my thoughts and I get a very definite answer. How you think about things influences what you do. That think machine is mine for sharing thoughts and using them to live in peace.

-------------------

July 29, 2004
 

I had an experience with God (who we call the Creator of heaven and earth.) "I and my Father are one (He the one.) I just suddenly felt Him in all power and presence; I stopped and said aloud, "God, I love You." And heard his response, "I love YOU," as I do all mankind and womanhood from the newborn to the old.

I had such a warm, tender feeling. This was a visit from God. I could feel His never-absence. In His wisdom as Creator of all creation, all very good. Evil is totally missing. God in His love was unmistakable. It filled all space with His love and wisdom till my life was overcome.

With the realness of it all. And I know this earthlife with its heavenlife is endless.

The thought of killers came to mind and I got the message, "Hell, as we call it was a preparation of mercy completely cleaning out the violence until totally in shame cleared out every hate."

Then union with God made us loving little children. They were aware of the joy that came with being a loving person.

In God they lost every fragment of wrongdoing.

A mother in heaven called to her son. I kneeled and prayed for that manchild to overcome so that he would be in heaven one day with her. "Oh, son, I knew God could rid out the bad. Now God’s love lets that mad out like a washing machine, because He loves you and washes out the bad, I expect."

"Oh, son, see how nice it is to be good like a baby. Oh, son." Good makes all His likeness in heaven forever. When you are here, they fill the thoughts with goodness. You’ll see!

That’s God’s way; He loves us.

I gave a lot of thought to what to write about that would be of interest.

Now, I want to tell you about what we did before there was any such thing as TV. I can say we were as happy then as now. Grandma made quilts sewing by hand all scraps left from making dresses into squares for the quilt pieces.

Starting out with Mama and Papa coming a year or so later, baby Gene Ruskin. An immature child no bigger than a ball, this meant tiny clothes as well as tiny diapers. They were so thrilled over the tiny child. They prayed and did all they could that their son would grow into a fine young man with lots of talent - and he did!

He liked to sing. When Mama played the piano, brought from Iowa where she was born, in a wagon and team. There was lots of celebrating, neighbors coming to hear music in this little panhandle. A year later came a little boy, lots bigger than the other and they named him Hugh Napoleon. Papa added the last, so he would be special. So here they were, two boys, then a baby girl, they named Bessye Alice. Mama gave piano lessons to help with the income.

Wagon trips to Bluegrass school, where they had Sunday church.

Rabbits caught to eat and the long trips to Laverne to get sugar and flour were also a treat.

I grew up with much happiness then as now. No change in the night bed and day fun.

Those oatmeal breakfasts like today, dinner with fried jack rabbit, and suppers with such, milk from the one cow Papa called "Goody." There was no thought of any lack.

It was such a big treat when finally came a mailbox and mail came from the grandparents in Iowa. We would all wait for the horse and buggy to come. We would hold out the letters to be mailed and he would put the incoming mail in the box.

When I was 5 years old, I got a birthday cake. Oh, what a joy, a luxury for us all!

Our Father God was thanked for as much goodness as today. I remember it so well.

It is such a blessing that I was able to come back to the home place. Now I have more conveniences to make living easier, but my happiness is still as much as when I lived with so little. The experiences through the years of coming here, moving to Iowa, marrying Bill and going to Atlanta, then coming back after his death have all added joy to my life.

July 22, 2004
 

An immediate flood broke just as my dear guests went running out the door to their car.

It was like a river gap opened rising water covering sudden tons on top of my friends as they ran to the car.

As they came back to the door, the same avalanche set loose. They got into the car and left and in minutes the rain was over.

Later there was a slow rain which in time stopped. The shock of the flood upon them as if meant, I can’t forget, It was as if their dousing was my doing!

We knew it wasn’t. No person can make it rain! And the good of God on our fine preacher man and his wife is impossible to take as fact.

So unforgettable as the biggest dousing of water I’ve ever seen is, I say, "Please forgive!"

Oh, how they must have gone home as wet as caught in a tank of water over their heads!

A gate up town to open, then close, who got to take a tub bath first?

It was one of those experiences one doesn’t forget.

Do I own a big water dump from my door to my front gate?

I’ll bet they’ll not forget it, or it would seem so.

I love them both; I vow it was no trick. I think at this point I’ll let him have his say about the huge sky tank of rain unloaded.

It brought tears to my eyes instead of laughter.
July 15, 2004

"Man made in His likeness is unimpeccable!" This is a statement that does things to you. That I and my Father are one sinks deep. Such thought takes over when you live it - let it!

Frets, worries, and fear just love to rule! But you’re the boss, you and the violent you insist, the more you mark out these dreads, fears, and misbeliefs. You run that think machine and don’t ever doubt it anymore!

Never allow yourself to think you can’t run your think machine. Right now, stop; see how you boss what you think. So now what are you afraid of? You think it’s going to happen and you fear it and it didn’t happen. Put in its place relief, as an example.

There is such a lot of relief in staying sure in all that goes on in your life.

Many have to. Like men with important jobs. They get to be great bosses of such things as when to wake up, what will have to be done before you leave for work. That self bossing is a must.

I like it! Don’t you?

Boss is a word that helps a lot.

That’s the thing about words. I like their power. Listen to it. Such as hungry, sleepy, hurry, don’t never, distress, and love that affects the chest!

What better?

Always when I think wrong, God gives me a feeling that my thinking is wrong. He wants me to be in self-control. I kneel down and ask Him to help me with my thoughts and I get a very definite answer. How you think about things influences what you do. That think machine is mine for sharing thoughts and using them to live in peace.

July 8, 2004
 

What if you and your husband moved to a remote place which no one knew about and you were lost. No matter which direction you went, you were on a little bit of land surrounded by sand that left no footprints.

Soon weary, you decided to stop hunting your way out. When the food gave out and you lumped stones together in which to start a fire for cooking birds and little rat-like animals, you began to think, "I am sure folks are looking for us."

"How will they follow the ups and downs?"

"Let’s clear out an area making it flat. This they did. They realized that they had not been too socialable with people. It was possible no one gave them a thought; that they were just probably on a trip somewhere. Not being church goers and really thinking of God as some remote Creator, they remembered the church folks who often sang "God be with you till we meet again."

"What do you think about God?" Marie asked.

"Oh, I don’t know, I just don’t" replied Matt. "Who is God to you?" Matt asked.

She shrugged.

"Where is heaven?" Marie shrugged.

"Not here; in the sky somewhere" as she looked up.

Days passed, and their island was soon going to be bare of grass, and they imagined what they would eat then.

"Oh, Matt, I am scared. Are we going to die?"

"No way out of this trip" she began to cry.

"We’ll die and never be found" he shrugged.

"I hope we die together. To be alone here would be awful, just awful.

"Matt, I am going to do what church people do. I am going to pray to that somebody called God.

Help us, Oh, God, help us.

He cried...she began to sob.

"If there is a God, please, help us."

Suddenly they heard voices. There they are! And Marie and Matt cried. Oh, God, here you are. Never this place!

Sobs of joy.

The man who wouldn’t give up the search said, "God, you know where they are. Please lead us to them."

More sobs of joy.

Matt said to Morley, "You know what I feel "Our Father which art in heaven." Marie said, "It’s an inside relief feeling that someone cares a lot!

One of the rescuers said, "Never would I have come here! Except for the help of God who created Heaven and earth who is always with us to guide and protect.

July 1, 2004

So much to celebrate! I see well, read without glasses, hear well. Oh, how I thank God I can hear what people say, and beautiful music! My large round music box, with the press of a button plays lots of my favorite songs just by the touch of a button, a gift I treasure so much. I have so many music boxes all needing to be wound, a friend, to my relief stopped the continual winding pretty little things though they be. The did interrupt my writing. Now there is music even in another room where before meant going to my high shelf where they are. So decorative with their little glass figurines of heads, angels, and even a little church.

You wouldn’t believe how much all my lifetime of gifts keeps me well, happy, and clear of mind! Reminded of their love!

In all the 96 years here I am back on the old home place I call Windmill Valley, well and at peace to be "In Heaven" from now on!

Anyone who has been in my house among all the years of gifts will know - Ah, no room for more! Just the years of togetherness celebrated!

I’m well aware this could be my last birthday, God ever in full charge, with my daily Bible lessons, "Thy will be done."

I have a black cat 20 years old, a gray cat (given after the owner died) at least that old, and my Johnny Boy dog that old. We get along so well...old. My wise friend, their loving keeper and big helper!

Like the story with its happy ending, I have a deep feeling this will be mine. To my life time of coveted friends I say "God Bless you each in a big way!"

June 24, 2004
 

What if you and your husband moved to a remote place which no one knew about and you were lost. No matter which direction you went, you were on a little bit of land surrounded by sand that left no footprints.

Soon weary, you decided to stop hunting your way out. When the food gave out and you lumped stones together in which to start a fire for cooking birds and little rat-like animals, you began to think, "I am sure folks are looking for us."

"How will they follow the ups and downs?"

"Let’s clear out an area making it flat. This they did. They realized that they had not been too socialable with people. It was possible no one gave them a thought; that they were just probably on a trip somewhere. Not being church goers and really thinking of God as some remote Creator, they remembered the church folks who often sang "God be with you till we meet again."

"What do you think about God?" Marie asked.

"Oh, I don’t know, I just don’t" replied Matt. "Who is God to you?" Matt asked.

She shrugged.

"Where is heaven?" Marie shrugged.

"Not here; in the sky somewhere" as she looked up.

Days passed, and their island was soon going to be bare of grass, and they imagined what they would eat then.

"Oh, Matt, I am scared. Are we going to die?"

"No way out of this trip" she began to cry.

"We’ll die and never be found" he shrugged.

"I hope we die together. To be alone here would be awful, just awful.

"Matt, I am going to do what church people do. I am going to pray to that somebody called God.

Help us, Oh, God, help us.

He cried...she began to sob.

"If there is a God, please, help us."

Suddenly they heard voices. There they are! And Marie and Matt cried. Oh, God, here you are. Never this place!

Sobs of joy.

The man who wouldn’t give up the search said, "God, you know where they are. Please lead us to them."

More sobs of joy.

Matt said to Morley, "You know what I feel "Our Father which art in heaven." Marie said, "It’s an inside relief feeling that someone cares a lot!

One of the rescuers said, "Never would I have come here! Except for the help of God who created Heaven and earth who is always with us to guide and protect.

June 17, 2004
 

I find myself asking this every day. Why do commentators seem to delight so much in starting with something dreadful which has happened?

"Silly! We need to know about such things!"

But right off, you barely listen to the rest of the news for being upset over the bad news.

"Thirty people killed in a crash of a plane."

You hardly listen to the rest of the news.

"A line of stretchers."

"Anybody you know?"

The rest of the news becomes vague. If it came first, you would be glad to know your choice for a replaced Congressman got voted in. Glad the weather will continue its warm up. Glad neither parents nor child were hurt in the car missing its turn. Glad beef was on sale.

All of these "glads" helped hearing about the plane crash afterwards.

"I say it took away a calm day!" Coming after the good wiped out the bad!"

But the good had strength to take the bad. Think if someone you knew whose body hurt and you were going to rush to the hospital, that good news had you well prepared.

It’s just interesting what a good meal does for us.

There is definitely a change in the help it brings when rushing to a sad event.

Long, long ago man divided eating into three meals. Breakfast, noon, and dinner, and night supper.

Now it’s dinner at nihts, although when I was a child it definitely was the big meal when men folks came in from the fields.

June 10, 2004

I opened the door to let the cat out and a mouse was there waiting to come in, since it was that unusual, cool day. The cat grabbed the mouse and went on its way to have a good time outside with a mouse to play with.

Cats fed well on tuna seem not to eat the mice now days - they’re playthings.

I did see the mouse later, then the dog had his turn - then no longer was the mouse seen, either eaten or escaped up a tree till free then; if he was smart, he went back to the barn. My two cats and dog are in a wide fenced area and are safe.

These cool days are a joy. I’m sure after the heat, where the cool house is a blessing to the pets.

I enjoy the company of the pets and like their thoughtfulness of not bothering me when I have my notebook and pen in hand, everyday except Sunday, when I get TV church services so enjoyed by shut-ins so. I was a faithful churchgoer, enjoyed seeing friends. But now the going is over and inside enjoyments are joyous.

My big cat, Martha, doesn’t come out from under the davenport till noon when food starts her day outside and inside according to her mood.

She and the dog are friends, the cat always leaving a bit of her food for the dog who waits for it.

Being an only child, my husband, was brought up with pets so all of our long life together we had them.

It’s almost as though our divine Creator God created them as child replacements.

Happiness is important and pets prove it.

"God is love." More we cannot ask.

Nothing is truer than that my contentment is due to their company.

I hope they are provided for as the oldies.

The silence of aloneness is dreadful. Even though now there’s TV with its sounds of interesting events.

My start, 1908, included a lot of welcome experiences. Best of all now are my pets and getting to hear the daily national events.

My close friends in Beaver toppin’ it all! "Love one another" seems to be their motto along with mine.

Friendship indeed is a way of life!
June 3, 2004
 

My two cats, a little over twenty years old, and one dog that old, do look after each other.

The dog, Johnny wanted out when I got up at 6:30 a.m., and the old black cat, Dickie Boy darted out; the big gray cat, Martha, was still fast asleep.

While I read my Bible lesson and afterwards ate breakfast, dog, Dickie, and cat, Martha, as usual wanted to be fed - then rested.

I called for Dickie but no luck. Off and on I kept calling but no luck still!

Here in the country, skunks and opossums are out looking for food and would munch quickly on an old rather small cat.

So I called off and on with no luck until finally around ten o’clock, Martha wanted to get out and find her friend, having thought about going several times. Then hid in the back of the house with no luck. I prayed for the dear old cat, all those years of showing so much affection.

Ah, then in comes Dickie and it was clear that Martha was relieved as well as Johnny - they are a set of caring pets you wouldn’t believe, seeming to know old age is important to deal with.

It makes me wonder, who will die first?

I hope the pets do go first for my going will have them in a stew and if any one other of them goes first, it will be distressing to them and I have the feeling I must let them see the process for otherwise they will be in a hurting distress.

I’ve come to an age where I seldom leave and the calm is wonderful. The house gets cleaned and mail delivered by friends as well as yard work!

I turn on TV only in the evenings, local, world, and national news is available which helps.

In my 96 years, I have lived through it all and find the now age little we don’t know about.

I remember as a child our first telephone. "Gee! What an invention!" Oh, but we were shocked: "I hear Grandma talking and she’s 10 miles away." Now I wonder what life on earth will be like 100 years from now.

It’s beyond guessing.

I can’t help but hope in our promised heaven we do know what loved ones and special friends are doing, and they are that little silent voice of help.

"Something told me I shouldn’t buy that house and be darned if a couple years later, lightning struck it."

Pets can - days to locate the joy so special is I find I do not mind dying and have a real feeling the next life is joyous. Earned by the degree of humbleness and striving.

Maybe like a graduate school. If we need more we get it.

There’s room for all through thousands of years with our being spiritual.

Can’t you see spiritually the need for unending crowds of people.

May 2004
 

Back to dresses!

My hubby Bill would be breathing a huge sigh of relief.

Well, so am I. Pretty dresses are far more becoming on old women, and 96 is old, I find!

The nice part is that I have plenty of dresses. No need to go shopping for any because I have always liked pretty clothes and now I think our stores meet that requirement.

Short dresses, long dresses, I have both and amazing to realize I have shrunk in body so that some will have to be shortened or drag the floor!

Just above the ankles, I find, the cats like a dress to rub against.

Yes, I have lots of shirts, and also old long skirts that used to be in style. So now with me I’ll stick to the long!

Very tall women usually like long legs covered which helps.

I laugh when I think I have a fur coat in good condition kept in the cedar chest. If I last through the winter, the good fur will be a member of the family.

Zero day weather is taken with the greatest of ease in that warmth of fur.

It’s interesting to me to find I don’t mind dying or don’t mind living since I feel fine!

It’s been such an interesting fulfilling life. I’ve loved it! The greatest joy now with my writing job. Oh, how it fills the lonely long hours. Remember that.

Maybe when I’m gone you can talk Joe into keeping the column space filled with volunteer writers. It’s fun.

Who knows, a specially good writer may be uncovered.

Instead of the Alice Spohn Newton "As I See It", could be various names over the years.

Cheley to start with, a good choice.

Maybe volunteers to keep it going since it is a popular part of the paper, I’m told.

Maybe a man will be pushing for the job.

Just always remember to make it worth the reader’s time.

It’s what I kneel and pray for - a chance to be uplifting.

Realize how important to life comes with reading something you enjoy, get good from. Surely it’s what I try hard for.

Someone gave me a bluebird so well made I could look up and see where it was perched and it gave me a lift.

My bluebird of happiness.

It was so well made I imagined it flying.

Looking up bluebirds I found they are prevalent in the south.

Oh how beautiful they are in their bright all blue.

They brought happiness just because they are such a just-right size, not too small or too big. Just a jewel of nature unmatched.

Red birds are a delight, but the bluebird has some sort of soothing effect.

It’s so exciting to think our Creator thought of birds of various sizes and colors and songs that are incredibly soothing.

It’s easy to make hobbies out of birds. In my early days I used to just love to listen to the mockingbirds; often one perched on the windmill on a still day. I’d sit out on the porch just to listen to its variations.

How God created all our gifts of birds make us feel loved. So many interesting things like jackrabbits.

Why skunks that throw off such a bad odor in self defense?

Skunks and snakes don’t seem to fit into the divine plan.

Were they a long time later to give distress to man’s evil doings?

Don’t we almost all feel God-loved?

All of our earth gifts, the plan of earth things and doings can’t help but make us feel the love of God. Wild plum patches, crab apples, to me our "Father in Heaven" makes me feel childlike, so anxious to please, bluebirds like "playthings."

Gone one day, safe in His care.

Every living thing has its life span, all for what’s best.

Aren’t you glad to be now instead of at the start of earth life?

I remember as a child on the Oklahoma prairie earth seemed to be stretches of soapweeds and sagebrush.

What if that was it?

Our world is very occupied with vegetation for which we can rejoice!

I wonder what they will say about us in the year 2100?

Somehow I feel sure that in after life’s Heaven we do know what it’s like down below when in Heaven. Loved one (like Mama) are so in touch with us they warn and advise. I say, "Mama, you told me to do it." It seems so true and isn’t it what she would do if she could?

May 12, 2004

It’s like being in a sweet little flower shop where I do my column writing.

In the midst of beautiful flowers in pots, eight of them. One a mixture of pink, white and red with baby breath, this from our dear friend who comes to clean. She came early and the flowers in the pot were pretty white. It’s a week old and as fresh as at the start.

Then at Senior Citizens, I was treated as a special guest with a very pretty birthday cake, and seven beautiful pots of flowers. A red one, a pot of white blooms, one with a big daisy like pink, white, and yellow. With smaller red blooms. Then a big pot of all bright pink blooms - one with red tulips, and with beautiful pink roses, light some, and some darker.

I’m in the midst of this beauty, which speaks so clearly of love. Then along with the flower beauty is a box holding a box of chocolate to last and enjoy so much!

My dear niece, Alice Kay Wilson, who flew in from Idaho left yesterday and even my pets miss her!

"How do you know?"

They aren’t’ around, in the house but in cold sleeping places asleep.

My niece loves pets and has some and they treated her as someone special which she is. Her trip so far, driving her own big white car was a big job both ways, going through the big cities. Denver and Idaho Falls where she lives out a ways to get peace, as well as nearer to where her husband, Gary works at a special job in a factory.

While she was here, my nephew, Jean Spohn, came with his two grandsons for a day and night, no longer stay because of a sick wife.

But we did have a great time together, the rest of my kin, my husband, Bill’s family in Florida, the son and children from Oklahoma City.

What a joy it is to see those that you are special!

No one mentioned it, but who knows but 96 is my long life over.

These beautiful flowers speak naught but joy!

My biggest problem is it’s such a job to walk. I had promised myself that I was never going to walk like an old lady, but I do.

April 22, 2004

I got a letter from my brother Hugh’s daughter, Nancy, that tells about the earliest events recorded in this part of our nation.

She wants to know my knowledge about it. With my mother’s death when I was a child, then sent to be raised by an aunt, I want to know what my readers have to say about these excerpts from an article in "The Shamen’s Portal."

This excerpt explores the possibility that Francisco Vasquez de Coronado had an experience with the paranormal on one of his explorations into the Oklahoma Panhandle circa 1540 A.D. "From the time of the earliest Spanish voyages to the New World, the soils of Texas and Oklahoma have inspired a continuous flow of legends and searches for deposits of gold, silver and mysteries." Francisco Vasquez de Coronado was among the very first of this long line of fortune seekers in the Midwest.

Coronado was born at Salamanca, Spain in 1510. At the age of twenty-five, he sailed to the New World, and settled in Mexico City. There, he married, started a family, and was appointed in 1538 as governor of the province of Nueva Galicia.

In response to reports of riches at the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, Coronado led an expedition into what is now the southwestern United States and northern Texas. The expedition totaling nearly one thousand men left Mexico in 1540. After months of searching, however, the expedition found no trace of treasure. Most of the party returned to Mexico the following year, but Coronado and a smaller force continued the search. They finally returned to Mexico City, with their saddlebags still empty, in the spring of 1542.

Although Coronado’s expedition failed to produce gold, it marked the beginning of an endless stream of tales of lost mines and buried treasure in Texas as well as the continuing enigma in the strip of land known as "no man’s land" (an affectionate term given it by the Indian natives who knew it, later this term was adopted by the white settlers for other reasons.) These legends, some documented and others passed down only by word of mouth, inspired countless searches into the sun-baked expanses of Central and West Texas. And it did produce one other legend, which stands alone in its own right. The Shamen’s Portal, otherwise known as the Beaver Sands Portal. The Shamen’s Portal is a place of mystery, nestled somewhere in the sand dunes of Beaver State Park, just outside of the town of Beaver, Oklahoma. It is a little known enigma, a gate in the unknown if you will. Coronado and his men were the first white men to experience what the natives of the area had known for thousands of years. It is a place that demands respect of its power. Coronado lost three of his soldiers in a blinding flash of green light. He was careful to avoid the area on the way back to Mexico. A friar who went with Coronado’s soldiers kept a journal of the experience. "It was the work of El Diablo" he penned, "That night by the sandy hills we had been warned by the natives to avoid, lost we three able bodied men of valor: Juan Viscaino, Marco Romano, and Juan Munoz. They had been hunting game for the men when the three fated soldiers were taken from us in a lightning bold of green" (translation by Albert Gettis. - The Journal of Discourse of Fray Juan De Padilla, 1543) Hernando Bermejo did record the incident as well, but was later ordered by Coronado himself to strike it form the notes. This was to be the beginning of the largest coverup in centuries. In fact, it took centuries for the truth to come out. It was not until 1993 that any real investigation began, although people had continued to disappear until 1987, and these disappearances were always highlighted by the same green light. This Shamen’s meditation ground, was it the real reason the Oklahoma panhandle was first called by its natives "No Man’s Land?"

April 15, 2003

Never in my lifetime have I seen beauty to match my pink-blooming crabapple tree. It’s very tall and stately, with pine trees on the right. I call it God’s birthday present for being strong to be useful even at 96 years of age.

Oh, what a glorious sight so all pink. I’ve never seen the match!

A friend took pictures of it and I hope the camera recorded its beauty. The picture would be one to enlarge and frame to keep as nature’s best!

You have to see it to believe it!

It’s why I call it a glorious gift divine.

As I remember it was small when purchased, and has reached this glory just this year for my 96th birthday that could be the last.

What is exciting is that such beauty makes me feel God-loved.

I’m full of "Thank Yous."

I want to stay out by it to enjoy its glory.

Oh, what beauty! So much so I cannot help but feel very loved!

Nature, God’s doings, does fill our lives with oh, such glorious trees, flowers, winding vines and food producers from potatoes to beans.

It’s easy to keep on the routine and realize how well watched over we are by our divine Father.

I invite all to come see the beauty of a lifetime!

It makes tears come just to feel so loved by our God Creator of the world and all that’s in it!

We say loudly, "Thy will be done!" and want to do the absolute best we have in us.

April 8, 2004
 

Well! Back in Georgia!

Rained out!

Last night we said, "If it doesn’t rain, let’s go see the Masons, since it’s Camille’s birthday and I’m sure it will be quite a party. I fixed a little book of my poems since she said she really liked them.

We lived out in the country on our farm, Careless Acres. (Bill, a professor of technology had never lived on a farm.) It had been me that said, "I love it! And you will, too. No Noise! And now that we’re fenced and have our horse, Nellie, which I know you’ll learn to ride, all this to come to will be just what you need!"

And it was.

When he retired he even planted a garden with the help of our neighbor.

Finally retiring, I wanted to come to Beaver and build on the "never-to-be-sold Spohn property."

So when he got sick and died, I came. Our Georgia property sold and with a truck so loaded with contents.

Even that day it rained and I told my friend, "Even the sky is crying as we passed!"

So rain here today, March 2004, I live again the day.

Life has been full of good friends and good times.

A long growing up in Iowa after Mama died, then all the years I was Bill’s wife, in spite of tragedies, I am old, old, but happy with the good time ending up where I started.

It’s the rain, rain today with its gloom uncovered memories.

When our Divine Creator created man "His likeness" He knew that ability to remember would be appreciated and it is, more than words can say! Don’t you just love to think back over the years!

It brings a contentment no other was found.

God heals all human hurts.

April 1, 2004

I expect in the centuries ahead that man will have invented something that stops aging. Grow up from childhood and take something that stops aging. They body just keeps on replacing cells.

"Grandpa just had his 160th birthday. Sound awful? To me it does. I like nearing life’s end at age 96. I am still mentally OK; just a little body worn.

Time never stops. It’s March 25, 6000. "Grandpa is 500 years old." To me it sounds awful even though he is still in good shape with the discovery for the continuation of body cell replacement.

"Great, great, great grandpa did a good job painting the house!"

"Yes, it sounds awful. That old!"

But not impossible.

It makes us grateful for the divine plan of Heaven for the next step in life.

As far as I know no one has revealed it. No one knows there is Heaven.

In the case of the Christ, we see him as having Life Eternal.

I think of all my family, friends, and I as alive in Heaven.

All my dear family and friends!

Also I think of aging as stopped, except for maybe babies. I can’t see crying babies in Heaven. Many a child has died but I see them cared for and growing in Heaven. God the Creator is the "One Good" whose good would not stop a child’s growing, is my belief. Old people slowly refresh in what to me is a bodiless form, all spiritual.

Who can think of Heaven as people fed? Good to digest to me it’s a spiritual you that never dies again.

"God is a Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth" says the book "Science and Health," by Mary Baker Eddy.

It all makes good sense to me. I get up early and read a well-worked out lesson.

It’s so vivid, Christ Jesus eternal.

Thus others in time fully spiritual.

Striving to keep spiritual is a way to keep healthy I find, and "God’s likeness."

March 25, 2004

I started in Beaver County, Oklahoma, and am making my ending - after years elsewhere - in the location my folks bought at papa’s courthouse job.

It’s my favorite of all places, a farm I call Windmill Valley; with horse tanks for horses, and windmills to keep plenty of water.

I chose it feeling so at home in my childhood place, so many old-time friends you love.

Store keeper friends keep all needed supplies priced okay and in stock.

Church funerals are crowded with sorrowing friends.

Weddings celebrated by all!

Beaver declared the county seat when the courthouse was built. Then the hospital came as a needed advantage.

On, on schoolhouses; the planners working always toward what’s best.

From the start our founders worked for the best.

We have so much to thank them for!

That big old water tower declares best the motto: Don’t Stop-NOTHING BUT THE BEST FOR BEAVER.

Tired of hearing it?

I’ll never get done bragging it.

Everyone is special.

You are. That’s a fact.

I don’t know how it happened but think about different one.

Likeableness is the trend.

Big crowd days at Senior Citizen’s Wednesday dinners say it.

Merchants, offices, needful townsmen; all born helpful.

Many other places have I lived so I speak from experience.

"Out of my way!" said in other places.

That may be the secret.

We are not hurryers.

If someone HAS to hurry, we give them room.

Thoughtfulness and rush don’t go together.

"Ah, late’s awful!" you say.

"Yes, I’m miserably late."

A good job is for as long as needed for us here.

Life being eternal, what more vital than our striving to keep out a life of regrets?

Beaver, full of good folks that honestly care.

We can always tell when someone really loves you in a sister-brother way!

March 18, 2004

I like being happy when there isn’t anything specially to be happy about!

That’s my life in general.

There are plenty of things not to be happy about like Mama dying when I was a child, sent from Daddy and brothers to live far away staying with Mama’s sister, her two boys and hubby.

Moving here and there with hubby, Bill, during the depression, and his death.

Lots of things to feel distressed over. But it’s past and I keep unpleasant pasts out.

It makes me free to enjoy Beaver, all the special friends, my home comforts and pets. And my writing job which is fun.

I guess I’m just naturally one to think in the present by keeping the past over with, nothing to do about it.

If something bothers me often I go play the piano. I have several favorite pieces I just love to play and it clears out everything distressing. Music is the best picker-upper there is and my 100-year-old piano is a glory. It’s tone is beautiful. So soon, I’m happy. All is well.

Don’t ever forget we have total charge of our life.

You say, "No! Hubby and children do. I’m tied up with them and it keeps me dragged down."

Pretend separateness to the point where mind is happy. Keep happy.

"How can I? Bogged down with work and worries!"

"Cut out the worry! Don’t allow it!"

"Hah!"

Just go back in thought to the first of this century. Life was a struggle with nothing but prairie. The job was too big and you had to grow in a big way just to cope!

But our dear divine Creator saw to it.

No matches, hit flint rock made a spark and we had to learn to do it or no fire for heat and cooking was accomplished.

March 11, 2004

Johnny, my dog, gets cold after awhile and knocks on the door with his foot to come in. Then after awhile he gets hot in the house and comes over looking up for me to read his mind, "I want out. It’s too hot in here."

Each transmission, he expects a piece of dog biscuit.

The two cats, Dickie and Martha stay in. One whiff on the cold and they aren’t wanting to go out; they turn back to their respective comfortable places, a comfortable chair for Martha and a comfortable davenport for Dickie. Indeed, they are a great comfort to me.

Being old, we need company and when I feed them at night, they all eat, meowing and close together. The dog waits till the cats are done and licks their containers.

It’s astounding how thoughtful they are to each other, not the slightest bit rude.

Their company is so wonderful. We are like a group of kind people all enjoying each other.

Like a plan worked out by God for happy living, I am full of Thank You’s for it!

I get up at seven and spend the first hour studying my Bible lesson, all of the pets quietly waiting. When I put up my books, they jump up knowing they will be fed. Then comes my breakfast in which they find contentment.

At noon, they know I eat but are undisturbed. Supper, too. My eating is my business, themselves well fed they have no concern for my meals. Johnny Dog sometimes comes up if it smells inviting, but pieces of bread satisfy him.

I’ve come to the age where I seldom leave and the calm is wonderful. The house gets cleaned and mail supplies get delivered.

More I cannot ask in life’s last lap. TV is great. In the old days, people had no interruptions to the silence. I turn it on only in the evenings. Surely, local, world, and national news is great. Long ago there was naught but the local news in the weekly newspaper.

A letter from someone out of state brought facts.

"Did you hear about who got elected President?" one is asked a month later from a letter in the mail.

In my 96 years, I have lived through it all and find the now age very fulfilling.

What do we not know about?

I remember as a child our first telephone. "Gee! What an invention!" Oh, but we were shocked: "I hear Grandma talking and she’s ten miles away." Now I wonder what life on earth will be like 100 years from now.

It’s beyond guessing.

But now, I cannot ask for more of the good life.

March 4, 2004

How could the Christ heal people just touching them?

Church and health go together.

It’s a Christian Science practitioner that I go to when I am sick, which is so seldom.

Here is a quote from Ann Beals book Christian Science Treasure, The Prayer that Heals: "Spiritual laws relate all that God creates in perfect oneness of divine cause and effect. Perfect God, perfect man, His likeness. Individuality, beauty, harmony, perfection are a law to all that God creates...One Father, Mother, God ever near caring for all that He creates...Keep totally spiritual to be reachable to Spirit."

I get up early and start the day reading the well prepared lesson which Mrs. Eddy worked out - week at a time.

What is hard for one to realize is the power of our thinking.

To feel awful and imagine all bad leads to trouble sometimes.

When I spend an hour or more reading the worked out lesson from the Bible and Christian Science With Key to the Scriptures, I have a grand mental bath and am ready to feel great and do my best whatever the day presents.

I’ve said before I lived by a Christian Scientist in Georgia and was healed at once of a cold which would have kept me from going to Georgia Tech’s welcoming party!

So here I am, fifty years later, healthy and happy as a lark!

Isn’t it wonderful Beaver has so many churches that each can have his own when actually there isn’t any huge difference since we are believers in God and His son the Christ who gives us joy and relief that we are not as long ago heathens who never had the word God, let alone worshipped Him for so many centuries that church to prove our worship is a weekly event to get us all nice and ready for Monday’s job start.

It is my prayer that you feel the love of God.

To me, my Father is in charge, I have no aloneness. I even knelt down and asked for His help that I be helpful in maybe someone who didn’t think much about God.

Ah, remember He is our Life, Mind, and substance that He keeps in working and well.

I feel like a good example at 95.

"Except ye become as a little child..."

See what I mean? Go to Him as you would your father.

That’s the reason Christian Scientists do.

Our faith in the Father heals.

February 26, 2004
As a little girl, I wanted to write. It’s wonderful how we are born with wanting to do something.

Our Creator gives us each special likes so we will be happy, at peace in our life’s work.

It’s so interesting how children do have dreams about what they will do when they grow up. "I’m going to be a doctor." or "I’m going to be a builder." or "I’m going to write," said I, and had already written a poem.

So grown, I had many books of poetry. Here are some I call my favorites.

In my book The Old Prairie Windmills Can’t Stop Singing,

Now for a century

The prairie windmills

Have sung their song

Life’s giving should never cease

Any more than the water

Forever pumped

For the brave and their cattle.

Oh, giants of such grandeur

Never stop your rescue song

Of unmatched beauty

That tells of lovers

Where better found?

In my book, On the Wings of Tomorrow, an excerpt of the poem, "The Bluebonnet Room,"

Porfirio’s massive oak that bowed

To its bluebonnets, filled the parlor

With unsurmounted grace. The bare pine walls

With their old wood hue enhanced the view

The eye of the artist stole to share.

In my book, The Nonconforming Professor, a song which Bill liked,

"Goodbye, dream boat

Sailing in the sunset glow

With the only love I’ll ever know.

Every moment takes us farther apart.

Soon there’ll be the empty sea

Of a lonely heart."

In my book, The Reminding Wind,

The wind, the wind, what a tale

It has to tell of the wide and empty

Prairie, with its cottonwoods

That sip along the edge

Of a long and winding creek,

Where the killdees cry

And sail above the sandhills

To join the hot and cloudless sky!

‘Twas in the early nineteen hundreds

When a man of remarkable courage

Dreamed of greatness for the prairie

Called the land of Oklahoma

In the narrow Western Strip.

He saw the room to grow,

To soar, to contemplate,

And somehow never cease to know

An excerpt from the book, I Love Those Indians, shows the innocence of children on the prairie:

"When I saw Eddy Little Fox holding a rattlesnake I nearly fainted. The snake and the child were looking at one another. I was afraid to move. Rather under my breath I said: "Be careful, Eddy."

Eddy moved the rattlesnake close to his face. "He’s my friend. See?"

Note: All of the books written by Alice Spohn Newton are available at the Beaver County Library.

February 19, 2004
Oh, day for expressing love!

Oh, how the staff at Senior Citizens did express a wave of caring!

Even with a special table for 96 year olds. Such a beautiful red Valentine table cloth on a table where sat ten 96 year olds, including me.

I was slow deciding to go to the Senior Citizen’s Center, but I kept thinking about it being a day to express love and I wanted to express a lot of love to all those dear friends at Senior Citizens, so getting out of my farm pants and shirt I went because it was as though God said to go.

Behold when I got there, here was this beautifully decorated table and the dinner was just starting. Here I was with the other 96 years olds with all the special attention. Oh what a blessing our Father God didn’t want me to miss.

Don’t tell me God doesn’t watch over us while striving always to please. He wanted me to go.

Surely, surely, it was a day of days never to be forgotten.

How did this Valentine’s Day get started?

A guess is at school somebody drew a heart for a friend and then came more. Gee! I can remember so well in school how we made valentines, had parties, and expressed love all day long. So I decided to continue the day, a start to continued loving. Why stop?

That valentine love from youth has been real and it’s a good way to live it because it is special.

It’s just what we need to have a full happy life to the end.

When we care for people in that special way always, wouldn’t it raise the human race above the bad, that is expressed even to killing wars?

It’s just what mankind should incorporate into human affairs.

That’s just part of mankind. We can know each has his troubles. "This won’t do," "I don’t like what’s going on." "Hell with him!"

We have that one day a year where somehow from childhood that day we wanted everybody to do "Be My Valentine."

Be that kid love at least a day now. It’s real for that day!

Why? Why? Why? Why can’t we be smart and change the human path of dislikes?

Wake up to the thought that starts in childhood, one day devoted to love. Made into every day like it!

I hear you scoff, impossible!

I hear you say, "It’s a kid’s day, you nut!"

Yes, but it’s so real. The lunch at Senior Citizens proves it’s the air full of that child’s day love.

So let’s work harder even in little old Beaver town to express that all-out caring on valentines, and have all-out love day after day.

There’s something that brings back youthful love which the years lose. And it’s just what we need, and can have, believe it or not!

Child-like love Valentine style is a path of life to stay on!

February 12, 2004
 

I remember how excited I was when old enough to vote.

We were voting for the President of the United States as well as Governor of what at that time was Iowa, where I was sent to live with an aunt at the death of my mother.

I was told by several that my vote counted which seemed so incredible. Yet, of course, like a jar of beans; left no room.

Voting committees saw that even all nursing home members vote because one missing could change the outcome.

If you have a favorite candidate, the one could win or lose.

Oh, how it takes all!

I remember in a school play I won the part with one vote. I was ashamed as I knew the friend was distressed. These voting projects leave the loser just naturally disappointed.

Think how the Presidential candidate gets a devastating let down! Oh, how all his family and friends hurt!

That’s the worst part about elections. Someone is going to feel deeply upset for a long time.

It’s a kind of "nobody likes me" hurt.

We used to have a saying, "nobody likes me. I’m going out in the garden and eat worms."

Even in thought.

So here we are at election time. Even absentee ballots are available which is such a help!

Imagine the job it is to count all those votes!

And the grave need that vote counters be trustworthy.

I cannot think of one job in which the public demands more 2+2=4 exactness!

And how nice it is we have quick results with TV announcements.

Far back as a child I remember how my father waited for "Who is the new President?"

It’s such things as these that bring on inventions like TV.

Long, long ago, the mail box held all the important news.

Then the telephone. What an invention that was!

I was born in 1908, and have experienced the excitement of it all!

Time is like a growing tree. So much to show for of importance to that pretty little tree!

Mother Nature knew every tree leaf counted!

February 2004
 

In 1904, when my father, John Spohn filed on a claim of 48 acres in the Clearlake area, it was a long 11 mile buggy trip to Laverne for supplies. One could see for miles every direction, the land filled with sagebrush and soapweeds and short prairie grass.

Now and then a jack rabbit would hop up above the sagebrush and soapweeds. I remember as a little girl how they hopped and ran.

Buggy trips with Ginger, our handsome horse to Laverne meant I always got candy at the store which had all needs from flour to underwear.

Most all the Laverne families had come from distances to file on free claims.

Just imagine how little could be bought and how joyous it was to see even the few people who shared the problems.

I like that long span of years which brought so many life changes from Oklahoma to Iowa to Georgia to good old Windmill Valley where Beaver is just over the hill.

My cats, my dog and I are so at peace. What the dog likes is that he can come in the house when he want to, and to go outside when he wants. We’re a happy bunch.

Town is now a rare trip, because my helper brings mail and supplies. I don’t even turn on TV except at the 6 p.m. news and some good program later.

You just can’t imagine how much more loving and quiet it is here compared with bigger, larger places. The total quiet gives one total thinking power without interruptions.

It’s a need when you’re trying to write, the peace is so good to come up with the exact thoughts for columns which I pray over, so all who read them get an uplift.

At last I am pleased with something that brings back memories, or to new younger readers a pick up of the past first hand.

Our old Oklahoma panhandle was land unworked till given away. Now, with those sandhills and the Beaver River, it’s special!

There is something entertaining about life.

At least for me.

I will be 96 May 5, and have a complete satisfaction that even now I have had a long full life and ever since childhood to be as good as asked by that mom and papa was enough.

I was taught from childhood to do my best.

In school, taught that thoughts were inside a hard skull, I had a time in figuring it all out.

In time I gave out.

To think right was what counted.

When old people died I was told they went to Heaven which was the end of the trip. And since old they had problems I thought that Heaven was just the place.

Still do.

There certainly are a lot of loved ones, parents, brothers and my hubby there.

"How do you know all this?" you ask.

It’s such a nice Life Trail. If you had never heard the like, wouldn’t it be rather distressing to think, like the old cow, death is the end?

"Maybe not the end for the cow that gave us milk every day. How do you know so much?"

When I come upon old Daisie’s body it look so gone for good. In pretty caskets with lots of flowers it doesn’t!

Thinking can’t be stirred up like a cake. It’s just a long, long life of experience. Nothing sadder than a baby in a casket, with no chance at all to enjoy toys, swings, parties, school plays and learning to read, figure, and GEE, finally marry having your own children!

What a joy of joys you yourself got born to be a part of it all.

What about those miscarriages?

I am too grateful for words to have lived through it all till now I am so old I know there isn’t much time left!

I like, widowed, selling out in Georgia and coming to build a home on the John Spohn 140 acres where there was nothing but a sod house and old windmill. Dad from Iowa, loved trees and there were many which was great. My good fortune was it being just a mile from Beaver which to me is best of all places!

The people are so special! Gee! Being friends is a part of life here. I mean real friends that go out of their way to help when help is needed. And one of the grandest things that ever happened in my long life is this column to write. It keeps my thinking cap on and that’s so important to an old person!

I pray, pray, pray that I come up with something interesting.

This time it was how one feels when you’re almost 96 years old.

Above all KNOW it is important to be as helpful as possible.

At this job, I try my best to have interesting thoughts to play with, like how it feels to be a real old person.

Just don’t forget when you get there have a project. Think up something to do! Hope it helps!

All my many years have taught me that’s what counts!

Interesting not to busy projects that make life enjoyable!

January 1, 2004

Since I was a child I have said (was taught) to say HAPPY NEW YEAR!

It’s good to have time broken up into years, months, weeks, and days! As well as hours and seconds.

Think how it was at the start of life on this earth where there were but a few people. Night and day was it.

It’s good to be living on earth at this time where now it would seem as though nothing of the sort were lacking.

Maybe a thousand years from now we will be thought of as so with needs.

Imagine back for us even in 1908 when I was born and we lived near a little town called Clearlake, and a little farther to Laverne.

Horse and buggy travel, a well where water was pumped, and those wooden outside "toilets." Then time, time passing time as I’ve said...

Mom, a music graduate from Iowa and daddy a graduate from law school, he got elected county attorney and we moved to Beaver and he bought this where I now live. That old sod house torn down and this home with even a swimming pool, which I no longer use because swimming at age 95 (in May, 96) is hard work! Yes, old folks repeat themselves. But what about new!

Well, that’s what time marching on does! Like plants old, pull ‘em up! What can beat the twentieth century?

To me that is what counts. Human nature is built that way and this is a good time to remind ourselves of it. It’s needed to live comfortably.

My prayer is that our nation doesn’t in the centuries ahead give up belief in God. My husband did not. He said a God called a supreme being "the only good" was not real to him. Nature, leaves, birds, etc., it created perfection from a natural foundation of perfection. To him a loving God was a human invention. We stayed off the subject.

"I and my Father one, He the one who doeth it all" like right now. I listen to Him to bring joy to the reader that lift Christ had keeping one with "Our Father which is in Heaven - Who leads us not into temptation, but delivers us from evil."

It’s His wisdom that I hang tight to like a child to its parents.

Just that situation for me takes God.

So make 2004 the best...turning to God because you couldn’t love Him more! And we want his Son to have a happy birthday!
 

January 8, 2004
 

When Bill and I were married, he wanted to go to Mexico where his father, now having died, worked in Mexico mining gold. We went there and I remember the big dug-out places, where the gold had been extracted. We picked up a few little pieces which are rock with a shine or two, small in size, about marble-sized; only jagged lumps could be seen in the rock. So many had picked out the little pieces that they were hard to find, but I still do have a little somewhere, in a bank deposit box.

It’s not shiny as you would expect, just dull yet recognizable, and the little rock can be shined.

Just think how exciting it was for men to pass over the border and help themselves. It, of course, called for a permit, which I assumed was to the Mexicans a way to make money on our living expenses.

The Mexicans as a nation are friendly and Nacho Querose and his family with small children became good friends. Nacho liked to help us with the gold finding.

"Here’s a nice little piece."

When we went into a shop there was a cut glass bowl I simply had to have and did spend my wedding gift money from Papa. I spent this entire $25.00 on this lovely bowl. I wrapped it up in a blanket since we were sleeping out on the ground at night.

Remember it was during the depression and so far Bill hadn’t found a job in sight as a teacher.

Oh, but it was tough going. We even sold subscriptions to a little newspaper for $.50 per year. But love deepened the relationship between us that sharing the hard times was a nice big sign of caring. "Here you take the rest of my sandwich." "No, no, no!" I said in total refusal. I think our honeymoon was so blessed for ever parting which of course it was.

Bill sent in so many applications to various universities. One offered him a job if he would take part in the Christian activities of the university. He did not want to be hypocritical about it, so he turned it down.

January 15, 2004

Now at the start of the new century it’s our inspiring, ever helping Ray Cummins, that is my very needed helper with my 96th year coming up the first of May.

He and his wife now live near Forgan with Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays he’s here to bring mail (to the Greggs also) and lend a hand where needed! Oh, how deserted life would be without him!

I have my old black cat, Dickie Boy, my gray cat, Tammy, and old but very active dog, Johnny Boy. If you have never had them, pets are a blessing from God. There should be a pet room in every nursing home, so the old folks would have something to love in their laps.

Love just is that way! "God is Love." and pets created proves it.

As soon as we married, he said now my dog, Jack can come.

"And my cat, Bessie" I added. Our depression days, though hard, pets were still a must. So we were content!

Now alone, nothing more sure than not being rid of the aloneness - little darlings, they’re so thoughtful, not bothering me when I’m writing, eating, or sleeping. Surely in these last years, I couldn’t be more at peace, especially when we could enjoy our dear friends in Beaver, and also enjoy our pets.

Yes, I am surprised to be at what I call my "worn out" stage (like worn-out furniture), than being glad to die. We so often think of bad reasons to die, like sickness or a something bad happens to you. This is just being worn out too much effort to go on as usual with meals, night rest, and daily activities with my two good company cats, Dickie and Tammy, and dog, Johnnie Boy who are old and enjoy the fruit.

After noon, they like to be outside and this winter part of the year has been great with its still sunshine warmth, even dodging freezings. Eating and house duties (with help) I enjoy the writing along with piano playing, fingers as nimble as ever. There is always the TV at nights. What I find most surprising is so little wind. Hardly a windy day while some years it was rather continuous. I wonder why the change?

I have found in the few towns in which I’ve lived, that the place is as good as its hard-working thoughtful men who are such good fathers and husbands of our dear women. My life is at its close, but I pick Beaver over Georgia, California, Arizona, and Iowa.

December 2003
Bud McAlister

I have never seen a more likable person. No wonder Cheley thought him likable enough for her to live with as his wife.

His spunk (as old timers used to say) as well as his happy, fun nature for me has never found an equal!

Born so bodily out of line his parents just called him Bud.

But he is as bright and cheerful as a person can be and Cheley grabbed him as very fun loving, bright, and caring as a person can be!

Right now he is in the hospital sick and needs our prayers.

I keep him as my model of how high we can rise from difficulties.

The Christmas season is upon us in which we celebrate the birth of Christ Jesus who became our greatest of all great, healing the sick and even raising the dead, and we know He is keeping His promise to be with us always.

It’s faith we need that He keeps that promise and can make our fun-loving Bud well so he and Cheley can celebrate with us all.

My Christmas tree is up and never a more beautiful one! Ray Cummins found it and put it in that corner where they all have gone, a beauty and joy unequalled, this one so pretty I put a great big wide ribbon bow in front and an amazingly pretty crochet ornament above it.

Cards and presents sent, and Ray’s gift of a music box playing all my favorite Christmas songs, I’m celebrating with cats, Dickie and Martha, and my collie dog that loves us all! Yes, cats like him!

So who could ask for more?

Widowed since 1973 the memories shine on to the point where my Bill is like someone off on a trip.

It is my hope, my prayer that everyone in Beaver has a grand Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

Just think...soon it will be the year of 2004.

What I like about it all is that I feel well and really enjoy life! It is my prayer that all do this season of celebrating Christ’s birthday!

Friend above all other friends who promised to be with us always, "Even unto the ends of the earth."

With all, far and wide, our togetherness is precious on this one big day!

May each be very specially blessed in 2004.

November 2003
 

On the day of Thanksgiving I like to make a list to remind me of all the things I am thankful for. Starting with good health and being 95 still with clear thinking.

What do you start with?

It’s important to make a list you’re really thankful for because when we are all tied up with worries we do forget the wonderful things of life like loved ones and special friends.

This one day of the year we do need to see the good side of life like, if nothing else, someone we care a lot about.

Living in the old bracket with mostly very dear rather old friends, who knows when someday their earth life is completed and oh, so missed.

I like to think about those very first settlers who wanted a day set aside to count blessings for being settled in this new country.

Webster’s Dictionary tells us "It’s a day set aside for rendering our thanks to God, to our nation." Thanks, thanks!

The small beginning group, no doubt, were thankful for every little blessing. We don’t give even a thought...like stores with every needed supply, and good roads, electric lights, running water. Oh, how they did do without!

So our now days of Thanksgiving must overflow with Thanks!

And it’s so good to have such a day.

Let’s make it one of our biggest ones - just realizing the difference from the first one to the now ones!

And all along the way, the BEST must be our motto. This is what we owe those striving pioneers.

That good day for eating together, yes, but more than that, this big nation so well run from that meek start.

Wars, even the Civil War. It is my prayer that there will come a time when men killing men isn’t the answer.

And surely it will because "thou shalt not kill" is a DIVINE RULE.

What a Thanksgiving Day that could be!

New start for man and his wife is so nice, now for Ray and Wanda.

Joy and peace the rule, the waiting over.

Beaver and Forgan love them both and wish them very special joy. Oh, many well wishes are being felt.

He is my helper, lawn mowing and many other jobs that come up, like the pulling weeds out of the garden, putting in a ceiling light bulb, and the bringing in of a big sack of cat and dog food.

First thing when he comes, "You need help with something?"

Always!

All this and besides good sermons!

Yes, he is very special.

And now the good home life with Wanda, so well earned.

Beaver is such a good place to live, folks like them.I have lived in Iowa, Georgia, California, Colorado, Arizona, and even for a while in Mexico.

Bill and I were married in the awful Depression days and job hunting was an awful job in itself! An honor graduate from Georgia Tech kept him from being jobless because they knew he would be on track for a really good job,where no doubt he had applied, which was so true for most men at that time.

I’m so glad our newly weds today didn’t have that nightmare. Let’s do pray those days are never repeated!

I put this in so Ray and Wanda can rejoice to live in this day! Yes...there is something sweet about our day where with us our love was tried so vigorously. Above all hardships we had each other!

Marriages at the first get strength from problems. If it’s real love it helps in deepening the caring.

No going home to mama if you don’t have enough to eat!

This is a good time for marriages.

I hope during the Depression so much was learned there never will be a repeat!

To get married back then was sometimes a disaster, at least a big trial. The lesson we all learned was to start a savings account for emergencies.

Don’t forget this.

Banks couldn’t even loan they were so broke.

I just want you to be extra happy.

So we can play like marriage days during the Depression were just a dream.

How could the Christ heal people just touching them?

Church and health go together.

It’s a Christian Science practitioner that I go to when I am sick, which is so seldom.

Here is a quote from Ann Beals book Christian Science Treasure, The Prayer that Heals: "Spiritual laws relate all that God creates in perfect oneness of divine cause and effect. Perfect God, perfect man, His likeness. Individuality, beauty, harmony, perfection are a law to all that God creates...One Father, Mother, God ever near caring for all that He creates...Keep totally spiritual to be reachable to Spirit."

I get up early and start the day reading the well prepared lesson which Mrs. Eddy worked out - week at a time.

What is hard for one to realize is the power of our thinking.

To feel awful and imagine all bad leads to trouble sometimes.

When I spend an hour or more reading the worked out lesson from the Bible and Christian Science With Key to the Scriptures, I have a grand mental bath and am ready to feel great and do my best whatever the day presents.

I’ve said before I lived by a Christian Scientist in Georgia and was healed at once of a cold which would have kept me from going to Georgia Tech’s welcoming party!

So here I am, fifty years later, healthy and happy as a lark!

Isn’t it wonderful Beaver has so many churches that each can have his own when actually there isn’t any huge difference since we are believers in God and His son the Christ who gives us joy and relief that we are not as long ago heathens who never had the word God, let alone worshipped Him for so many centuries that church to prove our worship is a weekly event to get us all nice and ready for Monday’s job start.

It is my prayer that you feel the love of God.

To me, my Father is in charge, I have no aloneness. I even knelt down and asked for His help that I be helpful in maybe someone who didn’t think much about God.

Ah, remember He is our Life, Mind, and substance that He keeps in working and well.

I feel like a good example at 95.

"Except ye become as a little child..."

See what I mean? Go to Him as you would your father.

That’s the reason Christian Scientists do.

Our faith in the Father heals.

The Christian Science Church I belong to is being explained on the OETA television station in Oklahoma City November 13 at 8 p.m.

It is a religion that stresses divine healing. I got interested when my husband and I lived in Atlanta, Georgia. Invited to a Tech dinner of welcome. I got a bad cold, not expecting to go, and a neighbor said to call a Christian Practitioner for help. Never having heard of it, I called, and was quickly healed and soon was a member of the church and have been ever since. They have a booklet, new every three months, where daily lessons are worked out and I get up at 6 a.m. and spend two hours reading and writing down healing ideas and am well and happy at age 95, with 96 coming up in May.

Now let’s talk about my collie dog on the road to being 18 years old and never would you guess it! He has two cats to play with, Dickie Boy, who is 17 and is too devoted to me to worry about age. Then there is Martha, the cat who is 18 years old and not only the biggest cat I ever saw, but she loves me in winding around my legs till I can hardly walk but don’t care!

Life is full and happy and I think that has something to do with very old. Try as hard as possible if you are old or have parents who are, to have pets around for they are so devoted you keep old age out of the picture!

"In the beginning God created the heavens and earth and called it all as "Very Good."

We need to think back to that beginning and start over, leaving out such things as war, and getting mad enough to shoot someone or a beautiful bird, or perhaps, if like my hubby Bill, never even in the beginning started to kill cows, chickens to have meat. "How can you eat it?" Bill asked. And I admit last night I ate the fried chicken the Senior Citizen cooks gave me, and will likely have bacon and eggs for supper.

Are you horrified?

The meat counters are filled with meat for sale for people to eat. All my life I have taken it as food to eat. Food.

I have never known anyone but Bill who couldn’t.

Long ago praying about it I concluded if it displeased God Who I listen to with child obedience He would give me clear guilty feelings which I try hard to keep out! To me, He is my Divine Parent I love above all else!

Being a Christian Scientist and starting every day with marvelously cleansing lessons that stress "I and the Father One" the message I stress is that God created us with a clear "Don’t do it" feeling which I obey as well as my dog Johnnie Boy.

It’s his life, the desire to please!
To please our Father divine is my life. Christian Science lessons are a good bath. Don’t forget those good mental baths!

October 2003

I started in Beaver County, Oklahoma, and am making my ending - after years elsewhere - in the location my folks bought at papa’s courthouse job.

It’s my favorite of all places, a farm I call Windmill Valley; with horse tanks for horses, and windmills to keep plenty of water.

I chose it feeling so at home in my childhood place, so many old-time friends you love.

Store keeper friends keep all needed supplies priced okay and in stock.

Church funerals are crowded with sorrowing friends.

Weddings celebrated by all!

Beaver declared the county seat when the courthouse was built. Then the hospital came as a needed advantage.

On, on schoolhouses; the planners working always toward what’s best.

From the start our founders worked for the best.

We have so much to thank them for!

That big old water tower declares best the motto: Don’t Stop-NOTHING BUT THE BEST FOR BEAVER.

Tired of hearing it?

I’ll never get done bragging it.

Everyone is special.

You are. That’s a fact.

I don’t know how it happened but think about different one.

Likeableness is the trend.

Big crowd days at Senior Citizen’s Wednesday dinners say it.

Merchants, offices, needful townsmen; all born helpful.

Many other places have I lived so I speak from experience.

"Out of my way!" said in other places.

That may be the secret.

We are not hurryers.

If someone HAS to hurry, we give them room.

Thoughtfulness and rush don’t go together.

"Ah, late’s awful!" you say.

"Yes, I’m miserably late."

A good job is for as long as needed for us here.

Life being eternal, what more vital than our striving to keep out a life of regrets?

Beaver, full of good folks that honestly care.

We can always tell when someone really loves you in a sister-brother way!
 

I get up every morning at 6 a.m. to study the weekly Christian Science lesson and take many notes, and it occurred to me that my readers might like a look at them, so here are a few. Some for the week of August 19, 2003.

The subject for the week is MIND.

BIBLE 1st Chronicles 29: 10, 13 (My notes about it) I do know God our Father, Mother, Love, and strive to keep the 10 Commandments.

Chronicles 29. David pled with God before the congregation to follow.

Jeremiah 29. God thinks Peace for us when we call for help He gives it.

Now the Christian Science portion. "Nothing is real but God and His likeness. He takes wonderful care of us! Look to God for the truth that frees!

BIBLE Exodus 13. God led the people through Egypt. They did trust God with perfect understanding.

Just imagine that peace! Led on with certainty.

It’s what we must do! It’s such special peace, we find.

That’s why I like to get up early and read the lesson. All frets of the day gone.

Time well spent!

The Red Sea parts when we come to it because I have made God my Life, Mind and Spiritual Substance.

Red Seas part for a lot of things. Like the cat darted out when I opened the door for the dog. It was morning when the coyotes are out just looking for a nice fat cat!

It wiped out fuss over plans for the day.

Then the 100 degree heat again! How are our beautiful pine and cedar trees going to survive!

They get good waterings but soon the hot sun has taken over and doesn’t stop till the sun goes down!

All mornings started with God and my wonderful lesson, I feel the strength to TRUST GOD.

September 2003
 

I started in Beaver County, Oklahoma, and am making my ending - after years elsewhere - in the location my folks bought at papa’s courthouse job.

It’s my favorite of all places, a farm I call Windmill Valley; with horse tanks for horses, and windmills to keep plenty of water.

I chose it feeling so at home in my childhood place, so many old-time friends you love.

Store keeper friends keep all needed supplies priced okay and in stock.

Church funerals are crowded with sorrowing friends.

Weddings celebrated by all!

Beaver declared the county seat when the courthouse was built. Then the hospital came as a needed advantage.

On, on schoolhouses; the planners working always toward what’s best.

From the start our founders worked for the best.

We have so much to thank them for!

That big old water tower declares best the motto: Don’t Stop-NOTHING BUT THE BEST FOR BEAVER.

Tired of hearing it?

I’ll never get done bragging it.

Everyone is special.

You are. That’s a fact.

I don’t know how it happened but think about different one.

Likeableness is the trend.

Big crowd days at Senior Citizen’s Wednesday dinners say it.

Merchants, offices, needful townsmen; all born helpful.

Many other places have I lived so I speak from experience.

"Out of my way!" said in other places.

That may be the secret.

We are not hurryers.

If someone HAS to hurry, we give them room.

Thoughtfulness and rush don’t go together.

"Ah, late’s awful!" you say.

"Yes, I’m miserably late."

A good job is for as long as needed for us here.

Life being eternal, what more vital than our striving to keep out a life of regrets?

Beaver, full of good folks that honestly care.

We can always tell when someone really loves you in a sister-brother way!

September 11, 2003
 

Oh, the County Fair! Which I remember as a little girl when I sewed a dress for my doll and got a blue ribbon prize. Oh, what a mark of success for a child!

Mother was always sewing and I wanted to. So she cut out a dress for my doll and helped me manage the needle and thread, especially teaching the way to use thread and needle without getting the needle stuck. Once that happened was warning enough.

Making one’s family’s clothes was the main way then. Hardly ever did one have on some kind of bought ready-made dress, or even men’s shirts.

The County Fair was just the time to enter one’s blue ribbon best.

Eight, when my mother died, I was sent to Iowa to get good bringing up by an aunt, my sewing stopped, along with the county fairs.

There’s something so exciting about blue ribbons and so awful not! It does make one try harder, which is a good reason for our county fairs.

Along with the merry-go-rounds and Ferris wheels, along with that chosen queen riding in the parade in all her beauty.

The pavilion is always full of tables of homemade items and crafts. Every one of our county fairs honor people who have outstanding accomplishments to show. Even stalls of horses, cows, sheep, and even a coop or two of chickens, rather special.

I remember one county fair in which my Uncle George from Missouri (him and his wife Auntie May coming so I could be back home with the family,) won a blue ribbon on his broom corn each year till the dust storms started.

Oh, the dust storm days! You couldn’t see for the dust, let alone walk! The farmers had gone wild getting rich over their fields of wheat. But when all the wheat was harvested the bare land in our Oklahoma wind blew dust till you couldn’t see where you were going!

Uncle George died of dust pneumonia along with many others who had to be out in it.

So here now in the year 2003, we do have heavy grass pastures and for some reason not too much wind.

I think there were so meetings of prayer going on that it conquered heavy winds for all time.

Oh, how blessed we are to be freed of wind, wind, wind!

So here now in the rather cool quiet, let’s celebrate big with our county fair with many, many home grown items.

The grandest parade I ever saw. And the most outstanding homemade items ever. It’s good to have our county fairs to show what we can do when the dust doesn’t blow.

We even had extra prayer meetings where we got together and prayed.

Let’s don’t stop praying for our good weather. And know prayer helps.

We had the best parade I ever saw and I don’t even remember a greater exhibit of crafts, all homemade.

Let it be learned for all time.

Our buffalo grass pastures are a must in this windy country. And all the soapweeds and sage brush are a needed beauty.

The need a show-off place at the county fair every year!

August 2003

When I first came home in 1973, I was treated as a part of the Beaver family by Jim and Doris Lyle. They were so cordial, helpful, and caring that right off I knew I was back where I belonged on the old home place, sod house though it was, which gave me a job right off in building a home where the centipedes, wasps, snakes and mice didn’t think such an intruder belonged! Only the windmill had a song of welcome!

So Jim and Doris quickly filled any gap of a place to put belongings, while plans were drawn and construction began.

I did go back to Georgia to get that end of life’s journey wiped out with a sale of what wasn’t worth the haul!

Dear Georgia friends helped as we cried over what was 20 years of grand times together about to be over.

Recently widowed (3 years at that time) helpfulness was their goal.

Those three years were spent at a resort, Lake Arrowhead, Georgia, because I could NOT live in the old home place, Careless Acres, too full of wonderful memories! There was no way to face those destroyed treasures!

At the new resort home, new friends, the whole layout different, attractive with a Country Club by the lake where dining out was the fun!

Sure the Lord had led me to see, to join retired folks wanting friends and good times.

It was life saving!

But deep down my longing was to go home to the old home place willed to me by me father. He knew having been sent off as a child my longing to really go to that old childhood home, had never ceased, which was true.

Home had been a life longing and it could be fulfilled now!

So here I am - just as happy and at peace as I had dreamed of being!

Even with two cats and a dog to break the silence, the aloneness.

We surely are divinely loved and cared for. Each has his own pattern worked out for the ultimate of peace and contentment.

All living creatures from mice to man are born with wants and needs worked our my divine infinite wisdom which loves us with the desire that we be contented, happy, and healthy.

Don’t be glum, nothing to live for.

There’s a rhythm about existence. It’s music and we should sing like the birdies sing!

What are they singing about?

They’ve found the right twigs, the right place for a nest, the nest built, and a nice mate! Eggs laid, then baby birds to feed, watch grow, and then fly away in excitement!

Joy, accomplishment, is the pattern for all life.

It is the plan! It’s there for us all!

"Ha! I did my best and am an old wreck! The world is filled with the like!"

I do see this and cry WHY to the Creator of beautiful blooming trees, beautiful birds with nests of peeping babies, a child’s shining eyes at a dish of ice cream.

I ask WHY is there bad with such mighty Good!

Learning to walk the baby falls and cries. The old man and woman get aches and dreadful distresses.

Why!

How can we go by the pattern if we don’t see it?

We can’t!

My long life makes me stop and appreciate 95 years of improvements. In 1908, a coal stove for heat in which old dry cowchips were gathered to burn, a well with a pump to fill water in a bucket, the water used to drink as well to use in a wash tub not only for bathing but for washing our clothes.

There was a tall, narrow wooden building used for our outside toilet.

A mile away was a little white church where maybe as many as twenty did come every Sunday in a buggy driven by one horse if just old grandpa and grandma Gregory, but for more, like us, mama, papa, and we three children, we did better in the wagon. Then mama died!

My long life of ninety five years makes me stop and appreciate all of the improvements thus far.

Right now I started this column and wasn’t satisfied and beside me was a bottle of a white erasing substance which I have already used. So handy!

We moved to Beaver, dad elected County Attorney in 1908, and moved into a sod house on this spot where I was sent to Iowa to live with an aunt till married, then Georgia with hubby and at his death now here in a cement brick house. Me, two cats, and a dog.

What I’m wondering about is how much improvement after another ninety five years.

Let’s stop and give it some thought. None of us, likely, will be here except now a few children.

So what can they write about what happened the next 95 years!

I am trying hard to think of, say, what the houses will look like?

Here’s a guess. There will be a kitchen that you press a button and automatically on a table is something that brings and spreads on the table a prepared meal.

"Johnny, what do you want so I’ll press the right button?"

"Fried chicken!"

Well! 95 years ahead still fried chicken.

That’s a relief.

Asked about the dust bowl days I thought it was time we were reminded of them as one of our biggest blessings, their being over!

They are called "the dirty thirties" and came about as the result of turning this flat land in a great mass of growing wheat! We all got rich from good prices for wheat! Today you can see beautiful homes in the flat lands. All of those trying pioneer days were over.

Then when all the fields were harvested and plowed up for the next time to plant, it happened!

That old Oklahoma wind blew its hardest day after day lifting up the fresh plowed ground into whirling columns of dust, taking with it old trash, buckets, wagon wheels, even bales of hay! Even tops of sheds!

And with handkerchiefs tied over our nose and mouth actually to be able to breathe, we ventured out only when very necessary with it hard to breathe.

It was the time mother died and my father pled desperately for grandma and grandpa to come to Oklahoma from their home in Missouri so they could help him with his children. Uncle George and Auntie May came also because they didn’t like living by themselves so far away.

Uncle George got a job pulling broomcorn. In the terrible dust he got what was called dust pneumonia and died. His wife, Auntie May, blamed my father as if he had killed him.

In this Dust Bowl struggle, I remember our walks from here where I live in the country to school. It was such a struggle to push against the blowing dirt.

Many a funeral at Beaver’s grave yard where you could hardly stand up!

Farmers were out on quiet days plowing their fields by the instructions of the Farm Bureau as well as later the soil conservation organization set up to save the land.

Farmers were taught to plow in circles where the wind couldn’t pick up the dirt so easily.

It was very important, too, to plant deep so the seeds wouldn’t blow. Today we are hardly aware of the wind as it is almost always blowing.

"Well! The wind isn’t blowing today! Isn’t it great!"

We are so used to it we think nothing of it at all, our lesson on crop planting well learned.

Who ever heard of dust storms now! Those born since can’t imagine them.

I look out my east window now and then to see if the wind is blowing, I hope, pumping water in the horse tank!

Another blessing is our pastures of buffalo grass which stops any dirt from blowing. We quickly got over plowing up all the land. It’s as though the dear Lord knew it was our answer, that very short and almost indestructible grass, hot dry winds though there be.

When Grandpa Spohn got his 140 acres, if he came and lived on, from the government just to get all the nation settled, he was quite pleased with his stretch of free land all his.

Ah, on the first really windy day with no stop at all, he wasn’t so pleased, and when it lasted a week he said, "This is no place for people to live! I’m going home to good old Iowa where the wind is no more than fanning yourself in church on a hot day!"

So he and grandma (not so happy about it) left, trundling along in the wagon with all of us in it to the train station so far away!

Yes, in winter the cold north wind, and in summer the hot wind, blows often without stopping for days.

I hear it whistling around the windows now.

But for some reason I like it better than the strange stillness.

In this country the stillness gets a questioning, what’s wrong?

Wind is something I don’t remember in Iowa, California, Arizona, or Georgia.

I guess that’s why I rather like the wind’s whistle. It tells me I am at home where I was as a child---in dear old Beaver where we’re all good friends.

As often said, "Weather is something you can talk about but not do anything about."

There’s talk about a global warming, not very cold, cold.

But trees losing their leaves, animals gaining, or losing more fur.

Nature itself is too adapted to change.

Plan infinite.

Don’t meddle.

"How can we?"

That’s what I like. We can’t!

I read this statement and it was one of those 2+2 facts.

"All great truths are simple" (from my Ann Beals book The Prayer That Heals, published by Dodd Mead.)

Immediately I wanted to make it a part of my life.

Keep truth simple.

There are the facts. This is Monday.

There are personal facts.

"I like living in my home town where everybody I know is a special friend."

There is a fundamental likeness in Beaver folks even though you don’t know them too well. You may disagree from someone you know. But living in the country and not coming to town except for our wonderful Wednesday feast at Senior Citizens, and then on Sunday to church, Cheley and Bud’s Presbyterian church (I’m a Christian Scientist, no church here,) at these gatherings who could ask for more special friends!

There are many blessings that come with old age I find.

One thing to keep in mind is that when you always do your best there is a peace no other way found.

Likely we all do something we wish we hadn’t. But there is an understanding among Beaver folks. "Nobody’s perfect!" is Beaver’s forgiveness.

I take such times to our Father in heaven.

"God, I’m sorry. I should have known better."

There is the feeling He understands and will give me the feeling of my growing from the experience. Which is true, I do.

We never stop learning from our mistakes.

The older we get the more we do learn in this way, it seems.

I read, do my column writing, and eat all meals at a desk in the front room where in the evenings I can watch TV. The place is more satisfying than at a table where I somehow feel the aloneness.

One noon I was eating and had forgotten to bring my salad and when I went to the kitchen to get it, my little kitten jumped on my chair and put her two feet on the edge of the tray and all the food, dishes, water glasses, EVERYTHING, including the tray itself dumped on the floor scattering food, broken glass, water, all there on the floor!

I dumped the kitten outdoors and can’t remember me madder because I had fixed an extra good lunch and it was almost two o’clock from my working to finish writing my column.

Now a week later I find myself wanting to end the column about Great Truths.

Three cats and a dog keep lonesomeness away but here now as I write is my big gray cat Tammie rubbing my left arm as she sits on the piano bench beside me.

So in my gathering of Great Truths, I conclude that there is nothing at this point truer than it’s time to stop.

My never failing prayer for divine help when I start a column is now telling me to stop.

Let me know if you wish I hadn’t!

Yes, I am in a good humor and love my pets. Total aloneness would be dreadful.

Except for one glorious thing.

We aren’t alone!

God has promised to be with us always. "Even unto the end of the earth."

Just stop and think.

Who could ask for more?

"The only thing you need to heal is your thinking." (Ann Beals)

If ever we get a good shaking up it’s this statement. It has a magic you wouldn’t believe.

Of course we have to remember Christ Jesus declared "God is a Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth." (EX 20:3)

That means worshiping in declaring God Spirit, we His likeness spiritual."

You say, "I don’t even know what it is to ‘worship in spirit.’"

Long ago I found my church, Christian Science, which interprets God as a Spirit, we His likeness spiritual.

I see my flesh, my body, as an idea in God, Spirit.

We all can see a life after death, the eternal self. It’s a very common belief that when we die we go to heaven’s eternal heaven of forever.

My hubby thought dead meant dead.

But I remember since mama’s death when I was eight years old papa calmed me by saying mama had gone to heaven where she would be well and very happy. He said she was now with Christ Jesus and all the other dears who had died, like grandma, and Uncle George.

Church friends drove in horse and buggy out in the dark when papa called a friend to say his Dee girl had died.

I’ve always thought it was so wonderful they came in the dark to be with him. I still hear his sobs! He blamed himself for bringing her here in the desolate, unsettled panhandle of Oklahoma which wasn’t even yet added to Oklahoma...it was a No Man’s Land Strip.

The struggle in the sod house was too much for this music graduate.

Papa just was so adventurous and now having been appointed county attorney of Beaver County, he was sailing on clouds.

Now the end had come. But he had to go on.

My two brothers and I walked to school, the mile, carrying our dinner buckets grandma fixed, their coming from Missouri to live with their despairing son, Uncle George and Auntie May following soon after. Oh, sad the move as George died from pulling broomcorn and killed by the terrible dust.

Sent away to be raised by mother’s sister Fannie in Iowa (mother’s dying request) I found many a reason to learn to "heal my thinking."

But thinking CAN be healed for I love to write and was taught the important points. And here I am, widowed, and back home where at last, I spend the biggest part of every day except Sunday writing.

I can say with joy that all the sad past is healed like a sore and I couldn’t be more content.

This is why I want all dear sad people to KNOW we are very loved by our Creator, God, and He is a very loving Father who created us with an ability to think and heal bad thinking when needed.

There is something very tender about our divine Father.

This infinite creator is the Creator of all things from shiny apples, to scampering kittens, to great Presidents, Kings, and beautiful women who sing like the angels!

We are made with a caring of wanting to be helpful. Beaver is that way. I have never met a person who wasn’t wanting to be helpful.

Many places I’ve loved, this is Tops!

And I say it’s because our thoughts are healthy.

I bet you know what I mean.

So let’s realize the importance of healthy thinking. No "I hate you! I don’t like this. I don’t like that."

Churches are mostly full and leaders of our town are tops!

So now see how very important our thinking is?

And remember bad thoughts can be changed. You’re the boss.

That’s how extremely important our thinking is!

Gee! Isn’t it great, being able to think! That simple process of being able to think! Remember how we listen?

A Big Thank You, God for this wonderful part of our life!

Just imagine His having left out thinking!

How can we keep from loving God with all our heart and soul!

Oh, what a divine perfect creation we are!

Bad ills?

"God the only mind" you know now where to go.

For thinking to heal!

Just that "still small voice" to listen to.

DON’T FORGET THAT!

It’s very interesting to have absolute control over ourselves.

Thought does it.

Use it.

Not quite up to par I wanted to attend the 4th of July Sandhill Festival and did not allow anything to stop me.

The planners - Beaver County Chamber of Commerce and Beaver Beyond 2000 had worked hard and had visions of many coming so there must be food to the finish including hamburgers and hot dogs, with lemonade and iced tea along with watermelon for dessert, and cookies especially for the children.

I was there at the 4 p.m. start, and was pleased to find that all of those young trees planted sometime back we were not hardly able to see the sandhills for the trees! It was plenty cool and the cars kept coming!

It was great fun for all! Some of the folks brought chairs, one given to me that was for his child.

"He won’t stop playing in the sand long enough to sit!"

We all had a great time and even sang.

And kept in mind the great true separation from England which was for us all something to celebrate!

We’ve started something! Beaver is full of all of us good friends and with such a big crowd out to have food and fun the memory will linger. So what about Thanksgiving? We all have a lot to be thankful for!

Celebrate! We could have a food basket party.

One time, grown, I was introduced to someone who used to live here and she said, "Oh, I know you. You’re the little girl who always loved to share a party!"

Why not? The sandhills just the place!

With more than words can say, I do thank and appreciate all the two groups, Beaver Chamber of Commerce and Beaver Beyond 2000 came up with. I just can’t remember a more pleasing affair put on by any group.

You’re a rousing Let’s Have Fun Group.

Life has lots of trials to face. When those good times are sprinkled in, we stay on the long road of life I’ve found.

Good times like that enjoyed by all help in a Big family togetherness way.

What I though about the wedding of Tracy and Seth was that the grandness of it was such that they never would get a divorce!

Divorces are so common now days that it’s a joy to feel these two had such glorious wedding they could never part. When differences come, which they always do, that wedding will come to mind as being forever.

It’s easy to get married. In fact when Bill and I did, my uncle just got a preacher and his wife as well as his own wife for witnesses and that was it.

(I have a feeling they though he was such a great choice they didn’t want to give him a chance to change his mind!) I wasn’t a bit worried.

OH, but we did care for each other!

We were both at the student lounge at the university of Iowa, me at the piano. When I left he did and told me how much he enjoyed my music, and walking me to my place where I roomed, he asked me if he could take me out to dinner the next evening and gee! I was pleased!

In a few weeks we were married.

Being during the Depression we drove to California where it was told there were jobs.

Having got his PhD from the University of Iowa, we both thought surely he would find something. But we both ended up going door to door selling a little local newspaper. But our love was such that we lived on great hopes!

And soon they came with a teaching job at Georgia Tech were we lived till his death in 1973, and I came here and built a house on the old Spohn home place.

It is my hope and prayer that our newlyweds Tracy and Seth are as happy no matter what, as we were.

I think that most beautiful wedding will do it. It will have the same power to keep togetherness. These quick little marriages that don’t last often haven’t gone through something like we did. That very beautiful wedding can never be forgotten even when distresses take over.

After the beauty of the wedding so unforgettable, married they will feel no matter what!

And there was such a big crowd there to enjoy it!

I wish all would be that grand because it can’t help but put a damper on divorce. These quick marriages just don’t seem to last now days.

Mine quick but the Depression forbade grandness. Trying to make ends meet was all we could manage.

The beautiful wedding is a good example of our good times!

What I pray for is deep, everlasting love bringing young couples together. There can’t be anything in life on earth as joyous and satisfying as parental LOVE. Lover where precious children are brought into the world.

We can know it is the divine plan of God.

I just wish every couple that marries feels that deep love which is the divine Plan.

The gorgeous Saturday wedding reminds us how sacred man and wife together is.

Let’s keep that wedding our reminder.

What in life more stirring!

That long floor covered for her truly gorgeous gown, bridesmaids with their colorful bouquets, the crowd standing, so special and exciting for Beaver!

It made marriage very special.

Which it is!

Waking to a new day hanging heavy, my mind lifts with a Bible command such as "Be thou whole." It was what Christ said when He healed someone.

Whatever we do from shopping, to having a cup of coffee, to reading the morning paper, the words seem to mean it.

I surely have found it a good way to rid out those wake-up groans.

A new day needs to start off with a bang of an idea, whether it was thought of last night, or this morning.

It’s absolutely wonderful how the body gives in to thoughts which cause moods.

Sometimes I tell morning moods to go to the dogs and stay there!

That will do it.

Life made up of night and day is one of our biggest blessings from God.

When you stop to think of earth life, it is full of the goodness of our Creator.

I can’t think of a thing left out. Eyes, ears, teeth, hair, digestive system, breathing and making use of the air...

I hear you say, "Why not wings?"

No. No. I’m so grateful we don’t have to put up with wings. How would we keep them clean? At night, yours flopping in my face.

I give our Creator a big hug of thanks we don’t have wings!

How would we wash them?

I trade them for good thinking any day. We can build a house, plant a field of needed wheat, work our medicines that heal, where is the stopping place we can do?

We seldom stop to realize the abilities of man "In God’s likeness."

Appreciation and thanks for it all is in order. Surely "Hallowed Be Thy Name!"

We get bogged down when we start counting blessings!

Try it!

Yes, there are those who are miserable and wish they were dead.

Let us pray for them!

Help when we can.

I can’t think of a better feeling than when you know you have helped someone in a big way. Those "wings" really fly high.

It’s the best way I know to start a day because there is no other feeling that feels as good I’ve found. It lasts all day!

Good deeds keep out weeds.

It’s easier to "Be Thou Whole..." Christ’s magic words.

Remember how it worked?

Make use of its magic every morning. "Be thou whole."

It brings the Christ into your day.

Who doesn’t need that morning lift!

Oh, how I like my early Bible Study that gets me well cleared to write a column. (My favorite occupation.)

This one is a favorite.

We just need to have all fear and doubt wiped out. Everything works better when it is.

God (God, the only good) is powerful enough to scream when it isn’t. You didn’t know that? Something does. Who else?

Don’t mess up that Something powerful that disturbs.

Don’t ignore that Something when your child is really sick.

God never absent, Good never absent...there to turn to!

Evil is powerless in its presence.

For many years I gave in to evil mortal beliefs.

Knowing something had to create us so marvelously perfect and wise, how can we help but accept the wisdom of an infinite God, Creator of the universe and all the wonders in it!

We have to see with the eyes of the Christ...He and His twelve disciples healed thousands proving God Spirit, we, His likeness spiritual.

The truth, spirit, the real, too good to toss!

Yes, I have problems that prove it. Fell and hit my head on something. I wondered if I would ever be able to think again! Called a Christian Science practitioner and soon felt normal again. What they do is KNOW GOD’S SPIRIT, we his likeness spiritual, that you free of mortal beliefs as Christ proved in His healings.

I had a scare last night. The kitten, Martha, the feisty, darted out and so gone I couldn’t find her. Got up at 10... no cat. Got up at 12... no cat. Got up at 2 a.m., and in she darted. What a relief! I feared a searching coyote had found her!

Life is made up of incidents that keep us on our toes.

No way, it seems, to have it all good. But how those fearful incidents do teach us to be wise, do always what seems best. Sometimes it’s not. But we learn from it!

The Bible Study is such a help. Never missed. In fact, designed to prepare us to meet the day’s needs...

The Big Job is to cut out worry. That’s why early rising for it does prepare us. It’s such a good feeling to know the Creator of the universe and all that’s in it is available.

"How do you know so much!"

"Heavens! Something that made that perfect head - ears that hear, eyes that see, wisdom that builds a mansion, produces a child, heals the sick, and goes to the moon.

There is so little we can’t do.

If life gets to the point that you feel it’s more than you can take, it does help to read the Bible and go to church. That Creator of the universe is available.

"Ha! How do you know!"

Because I kneel down and pray, "God help me!"

I expect it and get it. You sound like my husband who could never believe in a God. "Why so many in distress!"

Disbelief! I have to KNOW the Creator of so many wonders is far, far beyond imagining. A beautiful singing bird! No man created it.

"How do you know?"

If one does I will still KNOW that what keeps me so well designed and satisfyingly active, I still KNOW it’s Something, somebody long ago called GOD. Never could I believe Christ Jesus didn’t believe and prove it.

There are no needs for unbelief. Too many needs for it!

Happiness the biggest, along with HIM to turn to in need and getting it.

I like repeating that Lord’s prayer. Here I am 95 and feel great. YES! I do call it God’s plan.

He’s my life, mind, and spiritual likeness. Who can ask for more!

Since I have lived from May 5th, 1908 I thought you would like to know that since early life about what it was like in the Panhandle on a farm near Laverne regarding the land itself, all a stretch of soapweeds and sagebrush, which is gray, the blooming soapweeds great stocks of white, rather large, cup-like blooms. Really beautiful in their undisturbed stretches.

My parents from Iowa, filed on a free claim of land, a sod house and a windmill was the immediate need, then afterwards a cellar when the wind threatened a tornado.

It all was a sight, a memory, I never forgot. Horse and buggy to go on Sundays to the little Bluegrass church a mile away, there was to me a joy today still vivid, maybe still there. The land was an endless stretch of sagebrush and soapweeds.

The prairie sun rises and sunsets were a glorious glow of pink stretching up to the brilliant blue of the sky. I even remember how mom and dad always took us out to look. As a little girl, I still remember the beauty ending the vast prairie land.

As we went to the little white church of Sundays, sometimes I got to hold the lines as Ginger trotted along.

Mama taught the little Sunday school and sometimes Papa would read and talk about the scriptures, if the preacher, who lived in Laverne couldn’t come. Maybe a question and answer session.

I’ll never forget Grandpa and Grandma Gregory because of his beard and her white hair.

There was a family that had several children who were the Burses, who lived not too far from us and they gave us someone to play with, which was fun.

Mama washed in our tub and hung clothes on a line between two posts Papa fixed. On Saturday we all got bathed in that tub, each with a change of water pumped from the well Papa had help with digging. It was such a long ways to water. Sometimes he had to dig father, and I remember looking down at him. We were glad when he got back up the ladder.

All these members are reminders of how hard jobs were. My brothers, Jean and Hugh were given little jobs like bringing in wood, gathering eggs at the small chicken house, and we all watched Papa milk the cow that stood so still for him. He called her Hanna. Once there was a calf — with no milk for us — except when we drove to Gregorys for some.

The few times we took the long drive to Beaver, Papa made it known he was a lawyer, so needing a County Attorney, he got elected and off we went with the wagon loaded.

Mama was pleased with the move, sod house though it was. But good school for the children and town not so far (one mile). Would you believe it! Here I am in a brick house where the sod was, an old widow.

But never forgotten is that first home with the endless stretch of soapweeds, with their spring stalks of white bulbs, their beauty a regular flower land. There are some here now, but never like the utter endless stretch! So many you saw the small green bluegrass a good contrast. There was also sagebrush, but the gray just blended like a shadow. Oklahoma has from my start been beauty unmatched! My first sight of life on earth was that fairyland of blooming soapweeds.

I call it my favorite earth scene.

Yes, soapweeds and sagebrush here in Windmill Valley to enjoy! Homeland beauty unmatched for us all in such a land of white bells.

They are called soap weeds because old timers were able to make a soap out of their roots — how I haven’t found out. Their beauty surely needs no weed name! Yucca isn’t pretty enough either, so I call them white bell towers, their beauty a song in itself.

Tornadoes do one thing for sure. They turn us to God pleading for help with all we have in us and still over a wide area, everything in its path is shattered, trash with people killed, even saints who shine with love and goodness.

I prayed to God about this.

It came to me that war was as a tornado in its killing of our very fine soldiers who go forth to fight, to kill, that these at war with us will not win in our issues of extreme importance such as — say the civil war everyone would be treated equally.

Now in our generation many years later, all of such foolish reasons are gone and there are folks of all races in high positions and held in high regard.

Of course we have no way of controlling of who we are!

There are countries where the majority are of a different nationality and could look down on us.

I am very fortunate that where I have lived — Oklahoma, Iowa, and Georgia — I have never had the misfortune of having to dash to cellars to avoid a tornado — so it’s nothing to do with people in any way except maybe when we are at where killing is "good" when you win.

Our TV can bring the whole nation together — in prayer for peace or joy our candidate for president got elected.

To me, it is God good, in which on TV we are as one big family.

We can pray about that child being murdered, the grief of her parents’ need we all can meet in prayer and that cane fail to help. It’s a definite feeling when someone is praying for us. That’s the way Christian Scientists heal one another. One time I had an awful cold when my hubby was being welcomed as a new teacher at Georgia Tech, and cried desperately that I couldn’t go until my neighbor called a Christian Science practitioner and the cold disappeared.

Well! What’s this all about?

Could tornadoes or war killings be stopped with much united pleadings for God’s help?

Isn’t it worth a try? Man killing by the thousands with deliberate shooting, isn’t there some likeness in the tornadoes of hate?

It came to me war is worse than tornadoes, the killing man’s way of settling a dispute when diligent peace talks (where war ends up) is the divine Father Creator’s demands that doesn’t always get.

The resemblance of the two (war and tornadoes) even though God is Love makes me think His power to keep God the only good (never absent) a good that destroys the evil, war. No war — no tornadoes, because God won’t allow them.

All the blessings from a child’s tiny hand that can hold a bottle, to eyes that see, to ears that hear and that love — a part of birth along with all else needed for a full, happy life, there could be no bad tornadoes.

What killings more mass than war?

My heart tell me since "God is Love — More we cannot ask" (CS) would not allow tornadoes but for the biggest of reasons our mass killing wars Horrors Unmatched. Those wonder soldier willing to die for our country can’t help but slash the heart of God Creator of all our needs without end!

I don’t believe our God of Love sends tornadoes of mass destruction. But killing wars to determine the winner of an issue could be a shattering distress to wisdom.

The U.S. Capitol has always been called The White House but is was not until 1850, that the first bath tub was installed. (According to the Public Speaker’s Treasure Chest by Herbert Prochnow and Son, publishers.)

Just think, the President’s servant had to bring in the wash tub.

When ours was brought in, I remember it was okay because I could get into it and sit.

But mom and daddy...well, I never saw them bathe as we were put to bed after our bath which was always on Saturday night.

This makes me wonder, in another hundred years, what will we bathe in? Time does bring its changes. Good for the most part, don’t you think? Long, long ago there weren’t even spoons. Likely the food far, far, back was picked from trees or pulled from the ground and eaten.

Yes, progress is the law and it’s a good one! Something to thank God for! But even if there is a great change in the bathing process, I would still love my tub where I get perfumed soap that sudses and just enjoy the soaking and feel life is full of so many grand things to enjoy.

Even my two cats, kitten, and dog, along with the black cows with baby calves in the pasture. (rented.) Not leaving out my singing windmill!

Days start with my Bible lesson for that week, and Gee! Who could ask for more?...since I’m widowed.

It is truly "Peace that passeth understanding" which we are so divinely endowed with...if we’d just get rid of all the terrorists doing their thing!

It is peace that is craved but not always reached. Like the man that sang solos anyway and was told he did a good job "because of his nerve" to get up and sing!

"I hear you say you have a family that has to be fed and clothed, and I’m lucky to have a job, even if it’s nothing but digging sewer lines and road ditches."

"What do you wish you could do? What has been your dream of being?" "Well, anything else BUT!"

"It comes to me with God our Father, you must see Him so. Go to Him as you would a parent, and tell Him what you wish you were!

"God is Love," remember. So get that tender relationship by just thinking of Him as your real father.

"Remember the President bathing in a wash tub!"

"With progress the law, we must expect when we do one job well we are preparing the way to be given another job more to our liking."

"Giving up is the enemy."

He walked away.

Later I saw him driving a van.

Aren’t we glad we don’t still have to bathe in a wash tub where our clothes are rubbed clean on a scrub board? It’s only the old, old who remember such things.

With Progress the Law, who can think of a better one because the human race is intelligent enough to do well what he does!

I think that is one of our wonders. We do try to do our best so we get that certain satisfaction from it.

I have never known a person who didn’t try to get the thing done right.

There have been a lot of changes over my 95 years. But all in my mind have been for the better.

How I did love the buggy and horse, Ginger! I still see the fun of it, now beautiful.

I still see that old outside closet. And of course the slop jar for nights.

Mom, a music graduate, Papa, a lawyer, who went far too, being a judge, we enjoyed life to the full. When there was Sunday company they took their turns, in that tall, slim structure.

Old man, Greggory, got up from the table after a long spell of our visiting and said, "Well, John, let’s go look at your pigs."

Life Doesn’t Leave Us Alone

How true.

At rest it said to me, "I’d like a buttery toasted cheese sandwich and a glass of grapejuice."

Then it said, "Mind me!"

So I did.

Then it said I should go to town and paint those little cement blocks at the gate. A light brown to cover the gray cement, and then when it’s dry, paint a pretty sunflower on each with artistic green leaves.

"Mind me!"

I haven’t yet, but I will as soon as all this rain dries up.

Worry, worry.

I’ve learned to treat worry like I do something I eat but don’t like. Spit it out.

It makes me think of the very poor people who are too hungry to spit anything out! They’ve learned to eat anything. Even from a garbage can.

Those in the welfare departments do their best to supply good food for their little darlings but still to them good food where ever found is edible.

Hunger is as much a part of us as our toenails.

Isn’t it wonderful how God is creating Man so perfectly!

Good digestion, good elimination, good growing until a good stopping point! Good hearing, good seeing, good voice that often can sing beautifully!

Even a spiritual love that mates man to woman so that there is no end to the human race.

How can we possibly not believe in a God! (several who actually don’t.)

My hubby was one who somehow didn’t. His father was killed and his mother died a terribly bad cancer death.

Well, to me that’s not God’s doings, but man’s!

I love God will all my heart and soul and get up at 6 a.m. to study for two hours the Christian Science lesson which is designed to make us feel spiritual.

God Spirit we His likeness spiritual.

"Thy will be done," surely is my wish!

Christ Jesus said, "Why calleth me good? There is only one good and that is God."

How can we not believe Him when He healed all just saying "Be thou whole."

I have enjoyed life for almost a century, have had good health, a sound mind and am naturally happy.

Because life doesn’t leave us alone.

The friendship of friends is life at its best!

Prisoners must sometimes feel friendless. It’s such a painful feeling it makes us pray for them. It’s too hard to bear even the thought of being friendless. It would seem as though it’s true that your dog is your best friend in that it is so unconditional. One can yell "Get out, you darned dog!" Even though wetting the rug unavoidable he moves forth with such shame and sadness you can almost see him as wishing he were dead.

Life gets after us, our life, when we fail in any way. It’s interesting how we do feel life, we should have done a better job when it doesn’t matter! Like in a hurry and not giving your dog his pat. Life is supposed to reflect our Creator "I and my Father one."

Love left out never are we without regrets!

So to me the Divine Plan for our life, never to leave us alone.

Life and death, life the boss.

Oh, what a grand thing is LIFE!

We can’t live without it.

No way could I love Life more than I do!

It’s a good feeling to honestly do the best you can.

Not good enough that best helps!

We sleep better.

Life Doesn’t Leave Us Alone

How true.

At rest it said to me, "I’d like a buttery toasted cheese sandwich and a glass of grapejuice."

Then it said, "Mind me!"

So I did.

Then it said I should go to town and paint those little cement blocks at the gate. A light brown to cover the gray cement, and then when it’s dry, paint a pretty sunflower on each with artistic green leaves.

"Mind me!"

I haven’t yet, but I will as soon as all this rain dries up.

Worry, worry.

I’ve learned to treat worry like I do something I eat but don’t like. Spit it out.

It makes me think of the very poor people who are too hungry to spit anything out! They’ve learned to eat anything. Even from a garbage can.

Those in the welfare departments do their best to supply good food for their little darlings but still to them good food where ever found is edible.

Hunger is as much a part of us as our toenails.

Isn’t it wonderful how God is creating Man so perfectly!

Good digestion, good elimination, good growing until a good stopping point! Good hearing, good seeing, good voice that often can sing beautifully!

Even a spiritual love that mates man to woman so that there is no end to the human race.

How can we possibly not believe in a God! (several who actually don’t.)

My hubby was one who somehow didn’t. His father was killed and his mother died a terribly bad cancer death.

Well, to me that’s not God’s doings, but man’s!

I love God will all my heart and soul and get up at 6 a.m. to study for two hours the Christian Science lesson which is designed to make us feel spiritual.

God Spirit we His likeness spiritual.

"Thy will be done," surely is my wish!

Christ Jesus said, "Why calleth me good? There is only one good and that is God."

How can we not believe Him when He healed all just saying "Be thou whole."

I have enjoyed life for almost a century, have had good health, a sound mind and am naturally happy.

Because life doesn’t leave us alone.

The friendship of friends is life at its best!

Prisoners must sometimes feel friendless. It’s such a painful feeling it makes us pray for them. It’s too hard to bear even the thought of being friendless. It would seem as though it’s true that your dog is your best friend in that it is so unconditional. One can yell "Get out, you darned dog!" Even though wetting the rug unavoidable he moves forth with such shame and sadness you can almost see him as wishing he were dead.

Life gets after us, our life, when we fail in any way. It’s interesting how we do feel life, we should have done a better job when it doesn’t matter! Like in a hurry and not giving your dog his pat. Life is supposed to reflect our Creator "I and my Father one."

Love left out never are we without regrets!

So to me the Divine Plan for our life, never to leave us alone.

Life and death, life the boss.

Oh, what a grand thing is LIFE!

We can’t live without it.

No way could I love Life more than I do!

It’s a good feeling to honestly do the best you can.

Not good enough that best helps!

We sleep better.

We Need A World Microphone

We need a microphone loud enough to be heard all over the world.

The first thing it should announce is that sending our most all-around good young men of one country to fight another’s best young men is wrong and must stop.

The Bible’s command, "Thou shalt not kill," must stop for all time.

The world’s Peace Table on a world computer staying on until differences are found by staying on till they ARE found!

I have a deep conviction in, well maybe one hundred years! But it will come, maybe not through compassion, but through the awful cost of war!

Fine young men to kill fine young men of another nation has gone on so long it has seemed unavoidable.

But the World Computer where the leaders can talk it out will eventually just the thought of war costs avoided a sensible way!

That Computer gets together where tempers and fears meet has an effect no other way found.

Let’s say our country has invaded a bit of Mexico, soldiers are sent to Stop it! Many soldiers on each side are killed. With a World Computer, the leaders see each other and tempers fly but an agreement is reached in which both sides are glad to reach an agreement without a big costly war where their finest young men are killed.

Surely the All Rightness of war would fade as they look one another in the eye and actually want to avoid war.

There’s something about these leaders fussing on Computer, and the deep inside hating of stupid war that the relief of Computer anger where a better solution is reached.

We need that World peace table in our living room.

"Why haven’t leaders talked out differences before to avoid war!" you ask. Travel is something somehow above them. Fight it out!

"Computers might make them madder," you say.

"Everybody talking at once!"

No. It’s the together seeing and talking.

It isn’t natural to want to kill a sensible leader you’re talking to, on computer though it be.

Oh, I know it will take time. But seeing and talking with the enemy who is King of England somehow doesn’t bring on a War where thousands of young men are killed over an issue.

My heart deep down says this new device where togetherness without being together is good. In years, even centuries ahead, it will make friends out of the togetherness. The want to kill is in situations where the enemy is visualized as a person who’s views differ and will not be tolerated. War the solution.

I have for a long, long time thought that if our soldiers could have lunched with the enemy they killed, they would have liked him alot.

That’s what our World Computer will do. Computers of the world can accomplish so much!

That wonderful artist in France put his work on the Computer so we all can see it!

That marvelous musician, let’s all get to enjoy his music!

Starting at birth, 1908, I like to review back from going to town by wagon, then that first Ford papa got of which the family was so proud, to the long march of time of accomplishments and alas death of all the John Spohn family but me, there have been most helpful inventions in most every field from washing machines, to automobiles, to dress, to of course TV. On and on! Life has been a fabulous adventure.

So now the computer with its road of progress where little on earth to be seen will be left out.

No stop to the March of Time. Will we all in centuries to come live to be a hundred? Will the World Microphone do it?

I now 95 (May), have the deep wish to be useful till my time is up, and no longer.

What I enjoy so much is the column where maybe the reader will get a lift, something to think about that wings off troubles.

It’s my urgent prayer.

What do you like most about life?

I like the total control over what I think and do. I can sit all day and listen to TV and press a button and be in perfect silence.

It’s a great asset to be in perfect control of pout thinking. Don’t ever forget it.

It’s such fun to be a happy person by choice. And remember God is a Spirit we His likeness spiritual (Science & Health by Mary Baker Eddy).

Old?

Oh, fiddle! Quit counting the years, life eternal.

Let’s all celebrate our Day of Birth, today!

I’m so excited about my party so carefully planned by Alice Kay and Cheley.

Don’t you feel privileged that God picked you along with so many others to represent Him on this big old earth? I surely do.

So here we are celebrating that Day of Birth into a life of joy and growing till we reach that grown-up time of life.

Something to celebrate in itself!

Alice Kay contacted Cheley and they certainly did work out every detail to perfection including having Ray Cummins come and play the organ and sing.

What a treat THAT was. It made the party a Perfect Affair and so many were there!

Let’s all find a way to thank God for our life unending, earth life just the start.

That’s the important part of this day of days.

The three biggest events in life are birth, life, and for me I’ll say this 95th day of days because actually I’m celebrating in my heart feeling.....Oh, no more than 55!

So thank you party arrangers for this Day of all Days where I’ve decided to quit counting years!

What better way to celebrate!!!! 50 and holding!

My Song of Many Loves is a book written by me and published in 1983. On page 17, there is a poem titled My Friends Are A Song. Here is the poem which was written with my Beaver friends in mind.
 

For counsel drawn from the well of knowing

From days of woe what pays and what doesn’t.

Ah, friend like the sun shining gold on wheat!

Like cool springs of water splashing o’er stones.

My hillside of flowers pepp’ry with sage,

My quiet river, friend ever the same,

O great snow-capped old friends joyous to view!

My symphony sublime that soothes the soul

With comforting release come violent storms

Of grief that tear the heart out by the root.

Friends are a glowing fire that warms and warms

When you’re sad, when you’re cold and alone:

A peace that settles in with gentle warmth

Till brings the tingling joy that life is good.

O friends are the faultless part of yourself,

All the favorite things you’d like to be.

Our friends are God’s very special gift,

Our cup that is always running over.

I’ve always loved cows. Ever since I was small and watched daddy milk that milk bucket full.

Cows are gentle creatures! Some time ago when I walked to town (car getting new air conditioning) I got to the north turn in the road and to the left was the whole herd of black Angus cattle rented as their present home.

The big bull eyed me respectively and with warning that I was not to do anything threatening. He was guard over his herd and all who meant harm beware.

On my right was my property fence line which I considered a sure defense. But I moved right by assuring him I was merely passing by. It did thunder, however, and I hoped he didn’t think I caused it. But evidently he was quite unperturbed with clouds, thunder, and showers.

So on I went to the gate by the water tower. No one was there and my being to tired to walk more I stopped at Oswald’s and Cindy said, "I’ll take you! My truck right here so hop in!"

"Bless you, my dear! I do feel I’ve walked my limit."

At Senior Citizen’s Wednesday feast they said they called the sheriff to check on me.

I’ve never had a more looked after feeling which is so wonderful!

I do take all sensible precautions with my high fence and locked gates. I think I’ll just give Bill Cassingham a key. Old, who knows how long before my agile, healthy body says, "I quit."

It would be so embarrassing to be found "smelly dead."

But back to the cows. What in the world would we do without cows?

Some countries count on goats, other on camels. One way or another, man has been provided the nourishment of milk.

See how loving our Creator? Milk is a food for one’s whole life, even the only food at times for the very old.

When you think of the love behind this you can’t help but care with deep reverence and thanks.

I think so often of our advice, "Except ye become as little children..." it seems to strike harder when you’re on the last end of the century. And its all because of countless demonstrations of a caring provider.

It’s funny. When I started this column I determined I would leave out religion but the maker I listened to the from the beginning is there regardless.

Back to cows, did you know it’s hard to learn to milk? I wanted to but I never could. There’s a trick. You have to squeeze and pull.

Now they have milking machines in dairies.

It takes a lot of milk to fill that store shelf and it has to be kept cold.

Grandma used to let it clabber so she could cook it and put it in a container to squeeze out the liquid to make cottage cheese which was a great treat.

My Bill not eating meat had the cheese daily and enjoyed it -as do I. It’s a good meat substitute for meat.

It’s interesting how we eat hamburgers and steaks but would never eat a dog or cat. It’s because we don’t love cows that much (I told Bill).

Yet I love cows and see them as darlings. Have had calf pets so bouncy and cute. Not housebroken, yet I bet they could be. It’s just that they grow so fast, and in the house would be a bit to contend with.

Dad started out with a jersey cow, then later holsteins, and now the pasture feeds black Angus. One or two have a white face which is interesting. I’m glad it doesn’t have that white on its side or behind.

Isn’t it interesting how ALWAYS our many creations are with color, the colors are artistic!

What in nature not artistic?

How can we not revere the Creator?

We dwell in a beautiful world, loved, safe, and beauties awesomely numerous-from pretty cows, butterflies, birds, to trees, flowers, rainbows, sunshine, cooling showers, and nights for a good long rest with the blessed gift of a new day.

Can we ask for more?

I can’t think of anything but that little airplane I can strap myself into and fly to town instead of walk!

The Holy Bible starts out, "In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth...."

"In the beginning" to me is rousing. Didn’t there have to be a before God?

"No," you say, "God started it all."

"But there has to be a before Him; is what human reasoning declares."

"No! He is the start."

We read "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the water was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep."

So there was darkness which to me is something which means out of the dark came God the Wisdom which speaks, "Let there be light." Then we read that God moved upon the face of the waters...so there were waters upon the earth, then light at the command of God. The sun which means earth going around and around; sun, moon, earth in the midst of space...is it space without end?

I’m trying to find a beginning so to me that’s it. Space without end which to me is Understandable. There’s always been space without end.

"Where does space come from?" I’m asked. "In the beginning God."

I knelt down a s I always do when I don’t know the answers. The universe according to Webster’s dictionary - Universe: once combined into one whole, one system; the cosmos; finite in extent.

So there’s the Beginning to start us off. Just space. It does make a clear start. And in it all came Wisdom-God.

It reminds me of the Bible’s remark, "The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without hypocrisy." James 3:17.

Doesn’t everything have a start?

To dictionary writers, it does. Space first; then Wisdom. To me, exciting to be a tiny speck part of such monumental creativity filling in the space.

Of all, from butterflies to snow-capped mountain, man to fill with joy and gratitude which means it’s very natural to worship God; filler of that emptiness.

I went to Beaver’s store, The Gardens, to pay for some ordered top soil, and thought suddenly I was in a wonderful gift shop in Chicago. Everywhere I looked I saw a pretty thing and wandered through. I bought more special Christmas presents I could enjoy till Christmas.

Gina Downing owns and operates the store south of the Pizza Hut. And as a buyer of store products she is the tops. Ah, how lucky we are to have her! Her help is the lovely Waunita Cochran who is so helpful and friendly, not following, just there for us to ask when the need arises.

She has given Beaver the most big city store we have ever had. It is my hope that little towns around will make use of it rather than thinking Liberal or Oklahoma City is a must.

I’m so glad I had a helper stop there for top soil- the ground around the store, especially north are filled with beautiful unusual trees and plants which is our luck!

I got the bill and was slow about paying it so one day I saw the bill and said to my kitty cats, "I gotta go pay this bill! But I’ll be right back." Of course, they don’t know what I say but putting on a coat tells them.

"How do you know?"

Because they settle down with a "ho hum" seemingly hating for me to leave.

Well, they had a right to! I was away for two hours! Just soaking in the joy that right here in Beaver was the best gift shop I’d seen for years!

Yes, we have very fine stores. Not a one must go! We’ve lost Smith’s Jewelry store which grieves me much! But surely they do deserve a rest! I never go to town but I stop and always find something I specially like and get to enjoy till a gift is needed.

Terry’s wonderful store is so important! All the beautiful cards, picture frames, and cut glass along with farm tools and paint! We can’t do without it making Beaver special.

Along with Otasco with all needs met along with furniture, appliance, tires, every need found but food! But there’s our great Downing’s Market for that! Best all-around need possible in the food line. No way a better store could be found!

The our citified Otasco which has everything. Pooh’s place with clothes, perfumes, make-up and more. Our marvelous Flower Shops, Russell and Karen’s and Kathy’s-city flowers no better. For rich folks, weddings, funerals, and gifts for mom.

The Cactus Grill and Ned and Darlene’s Cafe - once again ours with the best food you ever tasted. It’s homemade like that senior Citizen’s Wednesday feast!

What does Beaver lack?

Nothing! Don’t forget it!

My goodness, we even have a grand newspaper with great sports and local news coverage. As well as my old age tom write a column which keeps me out of our good nursing home for 95 years! Remember it all when I’m dead.

Beaver has several very special churches, all filled Sundays! A remarkable good record, don’t forget. Grade School and High School combined with coaches whose teams win. Special is the word for Beaver! A post office with staff who care in every helpful way!

Our courthouse filled with with staff members including thoughtful law enforcement officers! Law and order carried on in a top way!

We even have special undertaking care.

Plenty of gas stations devoted to being a help.

Even though I’ve gone much of my life widowed, I couldn’t get home quickly enough. Beaver is the first step taken on the way to heaven! And never forget it!

It’s one big truth I’ve learned in old age! Our competent law firms, like Trippet & Kee and Drum & Venable. Our hospital and clinic filled with doctors and nurses of which we are proud of and grateful for.

See the specialness of our place to live!

"God is Love -- more we cannot ask -- higher we must go." It does sound nice, but with this Love never absent, why is loving-ness so remote amid strife, wars, unending sickness? A little good amazing in the life of Christians.

I had a recent experience that answered it. Outdoors to fill my Johnny Boy dog’s water dish, I turned to come in and slipped on the small floor rise under the door and fell as hard as a brick off a wall!

Stretched face down, I turned over and said "This is the beginning of the end." I felt a broken body as well as head in which I might not even be able to think clearly.

I cried out, "Why? Why? Lying dead, no one knowing it! My goodness! Oh God, Why! Why!"

I remembered a Sunday where I seemed snowed in, but knew the church would need as many as could get out in such weather. And I said aloud I was going to prove to God I loved Him.

Time and again I do something to prove to God I love Him!

But here I was too miserable to move! "Why? Why?"

I heard the voice of God clearly. "Try to get up so I can prove I love you." God asking I had to try!

Groaning I made the effort and suddenly stood up with the greatest of ease.

"I’m up! I’m free! I don’t hurt!"

I had never had such a God helped experience!

"Oh God, God, God! Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

Of course the Creator of the universe and all that’s in it is aware of what He has created!

He loved me! He put me on my feet free, unhurt!

I was so excited the cats and dog stood around in awe!

"This is a miracle!" I told them. Remembering my thinking this was my start of death, I realized I was still God’s helper, still needed!

We need to think of ourselves as here to fill a need, doing what to us is our job to do.

It makes so much difference in our thinking when we feel God-sent and His to direct to do His will, the earth run with each in his place at his job. There’s an inner quiet such as a secretary doing as told, a job well done the goal.

God-sent, It’s an excitement just to know He needs us or He wouldn’t have created us.

We each with our place and job, the thought right away made me want to listen harder.

Today, what? Not hurt, I can do it!

From childhood aware of my liking to write, finally the perfect job, my listening to bring out helpful ideas...

So this tumble, God to the rescue, what better blessing to share!

I could NOT get up, hard as I tried, till God said He wanted to prove His love for me!

Let’s remember when something special happens or we are rescued that’s what it is!

God proving He loves us!

Sad, old, alone -- feeling deserted, don’t forget -- God loves us!

"No proof..."

Proving it to me, He will prove it to you, for the Father Divine we can be sure is not partial.

"God is Love -- more we cannot ask -- higher we cannot go." (Science and Health page 6, line 17)

Proved clearly!

"God is Love -- more we cannot ask -- higher we must go." It does sound nice, but with this Love never absent, why is loving-ness so remote amid strife, wars, unending sickness? A little good amazing in the life of Christians.

I had a recent experience that answered it. Outdoors to fill my Johnny Boy dog’s water dish, I turned to come in and slipped on the small floor rise under the door and fell a hard as a brick off a wall!

Stretched face down, I turned over and said "This is the beginning of the end." I felt a broken body as well as head in which I might not even be able to think clearly.

I cried out, "Why! Why! Lying dead, no one knowing it.! My goodness! Oh God, Why! Why!"

I remembered a Sunday where I seemed snowed in, but knew the church would need as many as could get out in such weather. And I said aloud I was going to prove to God I loved Him.

Time and again I do something to prove to God I love Him!

But here I was too miserable to move! "Why? Why?"

I heard the voice of God clearly. "Try to get up so I can prove I love you." God asking I had to try!

Groaning I made the effort and suddenly stood up with the greatest of ease.

"I’m up! I’m free! I don’t hurt!"

I had never had such a God helped experience!

"Oh God, God, God! Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

Of course the Creator of the universe and all that’s in it is aware of what He has created!

He loved me! He put me on my feet free, unhurt!

I was so excited the cats and dog stood around in awe!

"This is a miracle!" I told them. Remembering my thinking this was my start of death, I realized I was still God’s helper, still needed!

We need to think of ourselves as here tofill a need, doing what to us is our job to do.

It makes so much difference in our thinking when we feel God-sent and His to direct to do His will, the earth run with each in his place at his job. There’s an inner quiet such as a secretary doing as told, a job well done the goal.

God-sent, It’s an excitement just to know He needs us or He wouldn’t have created us.

We each with our place and job, the thought rightaway made me want to listen harder.

Today, what? Not hurt, I can do it!

From childhood aware of my liking to write, finally the perfect job, my listening to bring out helpful ideas...

So this tumble, God to the rescue, what better blessing to share!

I could NOT get up, hard as I tried, till God said He wanted to prove His love for me!

Let’s remember when something special happens or we are rescued that’s what it is!

God proving He loves us!

Sad, old, alone -- feeling deserted, don’t forget -- God loves us!

Snow! Snow! Can’t you hear the dried prairie grass rejoice! Along with the pine and cedar needles, along with farmers who have sown wheat!

The Sun is even bright in its wish to cooperate with farmers, alas some moisture!

My dog ate the snow, soon not liking the coldness.

The beauty is what pleases me, those white streaks in the pines like at Christmas time with its cotton snow!

In summer clean rain then in winter melted by sun snow gives needed moisture at all times.

The Father Creator, how He loves His children and meets their needs!

How in the world can we not believe in a Divine Creator Who has worked out every detail to every human need!

"Except ye become as little children-" is so true. How can we not!

Even the old, old, become as little children when we realize how well life’s needs are worked out!

"All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation" is something that we need to know and accept totally and surely needed snow is a good reminder.

As a child I remember we had stoves and coal piles in the back yard which did get covered when it snowed. Put in a coal bucket it soon melted when brought in, and usually laid out on an old newspaper till the moisture melted. It just had to be before put in the stove or the fire would go out.

All so well remembered where we lived down by Clearlake, the coal hauled in the wagon from Laverne.

Days of old weren’t easy.

But in future these days will be remembered as not easy, I would guess, new inventions not even imagined.

Time does indeed March On along with the road of betterment, which is some thing to be proud of which I see from my 95 years of life on earth. How glad I am my mom and pop decided to try for a girl.

Prayers answered, maybe that’s why I feel so happy with God to turn to.

In summer heat I think I like winter best and now in winter I think I like summer best with its Air Conditioning.

Florida is the place to live, I’m told.

But never could I leave dear old Beaver with everybody a special friend!

Furnace and air conditioning take care of this snow!

Even my brother Hugh who lived in Florida when his wife died where they were in Boston, came back to Beaver and decided it was Best! Even bought a house and found with me that where we were born is Best.

There is something so special here, not only the people but the stores where the owners do all they can to please.

I surely am blessed! So well and still writing.

My necessarily active mind is such a blessing!

It’s a joy to realize the human mind stays sharp with use!

Don’t forget it!

It could be help for good health!

Thoughts stay.

February 20, 2003

Seven of us Senior Citizens women were honored at a pretty Valentine table Wednesday by its Director, Louise Mulanax, her helpers, Sharyn Hester, Mistina Mulanax and Susan Rimple. The honored had to be over 90 years old. This included Olive Jenkins, Velma Goetzinger, Ilda Couch, Fannie Judy, Alice Newton, Florence Gleason, and Betha Anz.

Those who helped Louise were all very busy seeing that we were pleased which certainly we were! Gee! It brought back youth days!

"Now, child, we can’t invite everybody! Remember the ones we have to leave out on your big day?

Surely we oldies did love being special. I think it was a first, for I don’t remember another like it.

That doesn’t mean our dear ones in charge haven’t had them.

Old age is awful when it comes to memory.

I keep wondering why!

I still see well, hear well, walk well, and think OK.

And far back I remember well.

It’s just forgetfulness like, "Where did I leave the keys? What did I do with my watch? Who was it that called last night?"

Oh, yes, Betty Rhodes in Georgia.

The one thing I like is that I honestly feel ready to die anytime.

I’m sure with my daily Bible reading that there is a Heaven even if we do our best - even though not too good. To me, God knows our every thought and in my case well understands old age fumbles.

I couldn’t love Him more for His understanding which I do feel.

I’m a naturally happy person in spite of disasters since Mom died when I was eight.

Maybe the extra striving is why, along with my love for God.

So back to the Senior Citizens party, O happy happy day!

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

This is the place where I realized one couldn’t live in a more loving place.

Oh, how thankful I am I got that hunch to come home!

"No Place Like Home is one of those 2+2=4 things.