One Pharmacist's View

June long ago meant school was out. It was time to visit. To travel. It usually meant that my brother Gerald and I would be shipped off to our grandparents down in Leflore County to visit our grandparents and help out on the farm doing what my brother called “slave labor.” But this was different.

I know looks aren’t everything. At least that’s what mama tried to tell us when we were living hand to mouth over in Centrahoma. Things went pretty well when there was just immediate family around, but someone always came back.

Maybe it is the weather that is doing it, but I can’t seem to get all warmed up this spring. The news last week says we are a full and complete whole degree Fahrenheit warmer compared to just last year but I have to go by what is happening now. All respect to Al Gore, I am cold.

Courage at Home It was 1955 when I first saw this Marine Sargent. He served on my ship’s security detail, the USS Lexington, a carrier that fought in WWII. But it was on a Greyhound bus out of San Diego, California that I noticed he was going my way— east to Oklahoma.

Allen’s history never fails to amaze. There is this. The Green Corn Revolution in 1915. But first a little background. As usual, back in 1915 area farmers were having a tough time. Most were tenant farmers on small patches of farmland, and they could not seem to make money on them.

I get all my health care up at the VA in Oklahoma City but it’s when I am standing in a line or sitting in a waiting room that I find out a lot of stuff. Last week, in a slow line, I noticed this red-haired guy in front of me, turning around and eyeing the crowd preparing to make a speech.

Covid? About over? Are we, at last, in the final days of this great Pandemic? Some sources still run on about fresh outbreaks in scattered places, but the overall picture is good. Cases are declining. Each week hundreds of thousands are receiving their shots. Over.

Back in the 1940s I went to a place we called Victor. Like so many places in rural Oklahoma, Victor has completely faded away. Oh, there are still a few people strung up and down Highway 270 just East of the Big Caston bridge but the only place left that I know is my Uncle Herman’s place.

Walker Ray (Corky) my wife Pat and I made a drive down to Eastern Oklahoma some years ago. Our destination was Maxie Cemetery, about a mile off US-270 a few miles this side of Wister, Oklahoma.

May we always remember the long 17 days we just endured. It may not have been as entertaining as the winter of ’48 but so far it sure has my attention. It has been a time of something just getting worse. And yes it could have been worse. For many others it was. For me it started out on the 5 th .