LET’S MAKE A STAND, SHALL WE?

My mother, Juanita Carr Rush, told me a story once about being back home in Checotah, Oklahoma. It was one of the Carr-Fests wherein the Carr Sisters would take advantage of the opportunity of Juanita bringing her boys to have a family reunion. Juanita would have still been in her twenties, with at least one, possibly two, three, or four children

After the kids have gone down for the night (or, at least, behind closed doors and no loud bangs or blood coming out into the hallway under the door – Juanita says her mother, Mama Carr, who had always been so strict with her own children, wanted to cut her grandchildren a lot of slack), some of the grown-ups (Juanita remembers that it was Harry Dodd, Peggy Dodd, Lucille Seifert, herself and her husband, David Rush, and maybe another man, she’s not sure) stayed out on the front porch, sitting in chairs and “visiting.” For those of us who were raised away from Oklahoma, “visiting” is talking, not about anything in particular, just wherever the conversation goes. Well, at some point, without making a big show of it someone (she thinks it was Harry or David) moved from sitting on the seat of the chair to using the back of the chair to sit on and the seat for their feet. Nobody said anything about it, the visiting continued, and somebody else copied that. Not a word was said about it. Someone else moved up to the seat back and the conversation continued, turning a blind eye to the sitting arrangements, until everyone was sitting on the seat backs of their respective chairs. Eventually, someone, maybe the first person to change their sitting arrangements, Juanita does not remember, the identity of the person lost in the mist of time, stood up in the seat of the chair. The visiting continued with no allusions to the new arrangement. Someone else stood up, the reminiscing of family stories and characters continued apace, with no mention of people’s postures as one after the other stood on the seat of their chairs. They continued like this for hours until eventually someone broke the spell. At that point, everyone had a good laugh about it.

Juanita remembers they continued visiting until daylight, and children started waking up and another day’s routines and responsibilities were upon them. She remembers people catching naps

That would have been in the 1950s, early 1960s.