My earliest memories are a jumble. Images run through my thoughts, but the order and timing of what was happening are unclear. The story of my birth, as I heard it, was that mom was nearing term when she went on a service call with Dad. Dad was a radio (and later a TV) repair man. In those days most radios were in a large wooden console and in some locations, they needed an outside antenna. I never learned the purpose that Dad was driving down a bumpy dirt road. But according to Mom that is the reason that she went into labor the next day and I was born.
At the time of my birth, Pryor did not have a hospital. So, I was born in the clinic of Doctor Jones. Several years later that was also the place I had my tonsils removed. This same Doctor Jones was beaming with pride when he helped deliver my daughter Lynette.
I don’t remember the first house I lived in. My folks were buying a small house east of Pryor Oklahoma. It sat next to Highway 20. That was the busy road that ran from Pryor East across Grand River to Salina and beyond. I was just starting to toddle when their dog got out on the highway and was hit by a car. If a dog was so easily killed out on that road what would happen to a toddler who wandered out on it? This worried them.
With the advice and a loan from my great-grandparents Pierson, they bought a house just down the road from where the Pierson’s lived. This is the house I remember and so my jumble of memories begins there.
Bare's Den 