Business School

On a warm and sunny day in August 1959, I left that small, dusty country town and traveled on a bus to Tulsa with my Grandmother.  We were met by my Aunt, one of my Father's twin sisters, at the bus station where she then took me to the business school downtown to register for my classes to start in a few weeks.
I enrolled in my classes and in exchange for room and board, the school assigned to live with a local family as their nanny and do light housekeeping for $25 a month.  After all, kids, this was 1959 and $25 a month was adequate for bus rides, snacks and things.  My Aunt then drove me over to a beautiful two-story home around 23rd & Lewis Avenue to meet my new family.  They had two school-age girls, but the older girl was away at that time in a hospital undergoing a yearly routine of physical therapy.  I learned that she had been in an automobile accident when she was around two when they lived in New Orleans.  Her mother was driving and she was standing in the front seat.  Very sad, very tragic--I guess seat belts weren't used much, or there were none in that car--it was around 1947 when it happened because she was around 12 when I met her.  The younger sister was seven.  They were sweet girls but the 12-year old could be a little stinker at times, but I felt she was within her rights to be that way I suppose.  I ran into her several years later at the mall being wheeled around by a couple of kids.  I stopped and visited and she told me she had married and the kids were hers.  She looked happy and still beautiful.  I don't know if she is still around because I have not seen her since that time and we lost touch after a while.
I was a little homesick at first but the girls and school kept me pretty busy.  I made some friends at school and would visit my cousins in Turley on the weekends and attended the First Baptist Church on Sundays.  It was turning out to be a pretty good adventure for me so far.  I learned how to get on and "off" the city buses, learned that pay phones didn't give change, and found out you could actually use more than one fork at a table setting. 
The family always drank wine at dinner and I was offered my first glass of wine one night, took a big gulp, and thought I would croak right there.  I was not too anxious to try that again for a very long time.   They never said a word nor laughed at me but I imagine it was difficult for the Mister to keep a straight face because mine was probably lit up like a Christmas tree!

The father had a business in Guatemala and would be gone for six months at a time, and their mom did public speaking at women's clubs.  She was a celebrity of sorts, being from India, and would wear a beautiful sari when she had speaking engagements.   She was a beautiful woman especially when she would dress in her sari.  Her mother came to visit one year from Calcutta and stayed six months.  She introduced me to Indian cuisine, which I dearly loved!  My mouth would start salivating the minute I walked in the door from school and smell the curry, and she would love to see me eat.  I think I put on an extra 15 pounds that year!  Her mother was the most fasinating woman I ever met.  She would talk for hours about her life in Calcutta and I just couldn't believe the kind of life she endured there.  I wish now that I had taken notes when she would talk about her life in Calcutta.
When I wasn't attending school, I was practicing my shorthand strokes, playing with the girls or writing letters to a boy from back home who was stationed in Alaska, and letters my Grandparents.  They didn't seem to be worried about me too much--guess they didn't realize how much I had to learn dealing with a whole new life, children to take care of, maneuvering around town on those slow, smelly city buses, and dreaming about a good life I hoped to have some day.  However, I am certain that Grandmother prayed daily for my safety. 

I finished business school in about nine months, moved in with my Aunt and Uncle and five cousins in Turley, a surburb of Tulsa, and landed my first job with an independent oil company owned by three business men.  It was on the fourth floor of a building on Fourth Street & Cheyenne right over the Coney Island.  Every morning around 11:00 the smell of those coneys would waft through the vents and make me so hungry.  I could  hardly wait until time for lunch.  Coneys became my steady diet for a while.  Two coneys and a coke, for about a $1.  You cannot buy one coney nowadays for less than $2, and I have yet to find any that tasted as great as the ones from the downtown Coney Island!  I think it is still there today.  So at this point, I was beginning to love my new life! 



Ironing outfit for job interview!





I shared a room with Cousin Sharon.

My Senior High School Trip to New Orleans

Before I write any more stories about living in the city, my first car, my first job or my first love, my sweet daughter, Tiffany, wanted me to write about my high school Senior Trip to New Orleans in 1959.  So at this point, I'll regress just a little to my senior year. 

I think about high school trips today and the high school trips in the 50's in comparison and find absolutely no similarities to compare.  If any of my former classmates are reading this, and I think there might be one or two, they will no doubt attest to this story I am about to relate. 

There were probably 40 to 45 of us senior class that spring in 1959 who rode that long overnight train ride to New Orleans for our "Senior Trip". Early that morning we boarded the school bus to take us to Sallisaw to the train depot.  We had worked hard all year selling popcorn and goodies to raise enough money for the trip.  All expenses were paid from what we were able to pool together and we received contributions from many good merchants of Muldrow.  Our food, cost of the train tickets, the tour and the zoo we visited were all paid for in advance, and we had our own spending money.  I baby sat for extra money and probably earned around $25.

 Our sponsors, Ms. Rubye and Mr. Peters, presented us with very strict dress codes.  Boys were required to wear suits and ties, dress shoes, and of all things--hats!  Not ball caps but men's dress hats, probably right off their fathers' coat racks.  Girls wore dresses or skirts, medium size high heels or flats and hats as well.  Now picture that--a bunch of teenage boys and girls in suits and their Sunday best dresses riding on a train all night to New Orleans!  Tiffany still laughs when I relate this story to her but she recommended that I include it in my blogs.  I don't think we were allowed to wear slacks or jeans on the train either because arrangements were not made for us to store our things someplace, so you wore what you had on or you'd be carrying around a suitcase all day--I don't think backpacks had been invented yet.  Can you just picture the boys trying to fix their ties, straighten the hats (I don't think all of the boys wore hats, but a few did), and try to look decent after an overnight train ride?  When Tiffany's senior class flew to Hawaii, they dressed appropriately in shorts, t-shirts, and flip-flops!  Times have changed.

My Grandmother made me the cutest brown and white checked shirt dress with a matching belt, and I wore white heels, hose and a pretty white hat I bought down at Ms. Emma's Variety Store.  It was a very cute outfit, but I looked more like I was going on a job interview instead of a high school outing.  The funny thing about it all was that we didn't question why--we just did what we were told, and we had fun, dresses and all.  Some of the girls wore full skirts with those big starched petticoats underneath, and as I recall, it was a pretty hot, muggy day in Louisiana when we arrived the next morning.

When we detrained we were transported by a tour bus to a fancy hotel and served a nice hot breakfast in an elegant dining room.  I loved that, especially those fancy eggs and bacon that you didn't dare eat with your fingers!  How in the world do you cut a crispy piece of bacon with a knife and fork anyway?  But "Miss Manners" was watching.  After breakfast our bus picked us up for a tour of New Orleans.  We stopped on Bourbon Street and wandered around while being closely watched, especially the boys.  Didn't want them wandering off  and getting into trouble as boys always manage to do.  After souvenir shopping, we boarded the bus again and headed to museums, churches and a tour of the French Quarter.  We had a cute little tour guide--she also wore a hat and carried a purse.  We visited an above-ground graveyard which really fascinated me at the time.  The tour guide explained to us that they didn't bury people underground in that part of New Orleans because of the water.  I liked that, as I really do not want my old body buried under ground (remember that kids).  Next stop was the zoo where we ate a late lunch and spent the rest of the day just having fun with our classmates, taking pictures and posing for the monkeys--just silly teenage fun!  I saved those pictures for a long time, but I was cleaning house recently and getting ready to move, I may have thrown them out or packed them away somewhere.  I hope I run across them some day so I can include them in this story.

Around dusk we were taken back to the train station, hot, tired and probably a little smelly, but most of us, except those cuddled with boyfriends (strictly forbidden if caught) slept all the way back to train depot in Sallisaw where our school bus was waiting to take us back to school, and to think we did all of this without a cell phone to call ahead and text back and forth, no electronic games, no iPods or portable DVD players to watch movies on, but we were certainly entertained with at least 500 rounds of "Found a Peanut" or "Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall"!  Boys can be so annoying. 

I am glad to have shared this story, because after 50 years you forget the funniest things!  Yes, Mr. Dylan, "Times Have Changed"!

Our Guide Lady
in New Orleans

Published by Mom/Nana at 11:17 p.m., June 14, 2011,  because I want to share the funny parts of my growing up with you!
...I love you

Nine Lives and Counting

It was the year of '59 and it was time for me to leave the little dusty town of Muldrow and head out to the big city to make a new life.  I was an excellent typist in school and loved office work and knew that was just what I wanted to do.  After all, Ann Sothern, Private Secretary (1953-1957), was my inspiration.  I wanted my own typewriter, desk, and to wear those white blouses and full black taffeta skirts.  So I enrolled in business school and headed out to Tulsa on a bus with my grandmother to sign up at the business college.  I don't think Gran would ever have let me leave if it had not been for the fact that one of my Gran's twin daughters lived in Tulsa and she felt I would have a family member there if I needed help.

My Grandfather had suffered a heart attack in my junior or senior year of high school, retired from the County,and no longer drove the big yellow tractor.  He gave up fox hunting and the hound dogs had been sold.  My grandparents were getting older, they were no longer able to keep up the big garden, so they sold the land to a cousin of my Grandpa's who built a nice house on it.  The dog kennels were torn down, the black iron kettle rusting and no longer used, Sheena of the Jungle had long since put away her slingshot, and there were no more kitties or even fullgrown cats anymore since the mama cat finally died.  The dolls had been buried for some time now, and the paper dolls were thrown in the trash and burned.  Ricky Nelson's pictures were removed from the bedroom and replaced with Elvis pictures, but they were also removed after I left.   It was time to go and leave those childhood things behind. 

After I left, my grandparents didn't have me around anymore to keep them young and interested in goings-on, so they seemed to age much faster.  I visited when I could, but I didn't have a car for a couple of years and would ride a bus home to visit them.  I didn't like riding the bus--there were too many stops, I had to go downtown Tulsa  to catch the bus, which was usually at night, and by the time I got to Muldrow, there was no one to meet me because they didn't keep the phone after I left, so I had to walk a mile from the bus stop to the house.  The town didn't have any taxi cabs then and probably still doesn't.   I never encountered any problems, however--it was a little safer back then in the 60's, even in downtown Tulsa after dark.  Department stores and corner drugstores were open late and people were always on the streets going to eat or to the movies downtown. 


Grandma & Grandpa in Nursing Home

After about three or four years after I moved away, my grand-parents moved into a nursing home because they were unable to care for themselves.  They liked it at first, but their health continued to deteriorate.  John Wesley Riddle, my paternal grandfather, died on May 10, 1962. I continued to visit my Grandmother as often as I could over the next couple of years.  My paternal grandmother, Jean Ella Doyle Riddle died on September 15, 1964.  I spent many hours with both of them in the hospital sitting by their bed watching them take their last breath and it was very sad for me.  I had never lost anyone before and it was very difficult to see them die that way.

 It was especially difficult for me when my Grandfather died because I loved him dearly.  He was always a quiet, gentle man, except for the time when he practically threw a boy I was dating out of the house.  Grandpa had been sitting on the porch and suddenly walked inside only to find me sitting on Benny's lap.  Poor Benny!  I never saw him again--at least not for a while!  It was the middle of the day and Grandmother was on one of her treks to the store.  She asked what happened mato Benny but Grandpa never told her anything--he just said he had to leave. They were very protective of me--a little bit too much.  Benny and I did get together later on, and we corresponded after he joined the Army and stationed in Alaska. 

That's another interesting story --I had two boyfriends in Alaska, stationed at the same place and at the same time.  Benny was the "former" boyfriend, and Jerry was the "current" boyfriend, and they met one day.  Of course, they would meet--they were both from the same city, Ft. Smith, Arkansas, and they had something in common besides living in the same town--ME! 

Then there was the time when I was dating Mickey, the football player from Sallisaw.  We had a date one night and because he had football practice, he had to shower and drive 10 miles to Muldrow, so it was after dark, probably 8:00 or later by the time he arrived, and Grandmother sent him away.  She told him that if he couldn't come at a decent time to take her granddaughter on a date, then he had to leave.  He tried to explain but she wouldn't listen.  I was heart-broken over that incident too, and very embarrassed.  Maybe that's why I didn't have many dates in high school--they were afraid of my Grandparents! 

That's okay, Grandma and Grandpa, I know that you only meant well and were always looking out for me.  I know that you are there in Heaven still looking out for me, and I love you and thank you for the sacrifices you made for me.   I'll never forget what you did for me.

Dressed up for Church