Juanita’s Memories of Mama Carr’s Soft Side
I was the recipient of Mama’s wrath many times but also the recipient of the practical expressions of her love many more times.
I remember one year she set her sewing (more…)
Tommy’s Daughter Meets Him
Administrator’s note — In pulling this over from the old site I lost who wrote this. I believe it was either Angela or Buffy. Perhaps someone can set me straight.
I was luck
y to be blessed with two of the most amazing women in the world as Grandmothers! Unfortunately, in November 2004, I lost the first one and that was one the most devastating blows I thought I would ever suffer. That was until March 2008 when I lost the other one. Nancy Irene Schulze was one of the most amazing women I had (more…)
Peggy Dodd Terrorizes Small Child
Now that I am older, I recognize Aunt Peggy as kind, gentle, woman. However, when I was little she put the fear of Peggy into me. You might even say she “terrorized” me.
I remember staying with her one summer in Ohio. Since she was one (more…)
Burp Bird
Another story for the grandkids…about grandkids. 
When my son (David Bryan Rush) was around 3 or so we were all at my mother’s house for dinner. My mother is very strict about manners and all the grandkids knew that unquestionably. They all tried their darnedest (at least at that point in their young lives) to avoid a run in with Grandma about manners. My son burps, and we all look at him expecting an “excuse me”. He looks back at us and says, “It was the burp bird in my pocket.” What you do after that?
Mama Carr Gets Mad
I’m told Mama Carr had a bit of a temper, but I only recall really seeing it a couple times. The primary time being when Rudy Woodard decided he was going to be a “bull rider”.
The old house that Mama Carr lived in off of 69 Highway had a pasture attached to it. There was a pear tree in the middle of the pasture that I remember being exceptional good for climbing, and (more…)
Frankie and Johnnie
I am flooded with many, many happy childhood memories at Mama Carr’s house. There were always swarms of cousins, screams and laughter, heaps and heaps of good food, and “the Aunts” were everywhere.
Because there was no T.V., we children, entertained ourselves. Occasionally though, (more…)
Tammi Woodard…Gone Country
I came from a house in Tulsa, when I was four to what I thought was the wild, Wild West. First we moved to a house on Hadley Mountain in Locust Grove called the Ponderosa, no runni
ng water or electricity, we weren’t even sure where the closest town was.
It was scary to me at first, our move there was not the most calming (more…)
Juanita Carr Rush’s Grave Experience
Yesterday, I went down to the Checotah cemetery to put flowers on our families’ graves. When I got to where Mama, Papa, Grandma Austin and Tommy are buried, I could see that there was a man sitting on Mama’s headstone. (more…)
A Brief and Incomplete Sketch of My Life
At approximately 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, September 14, 1933,
in a dilapidated farmhouse a few miles out in the country from Warner/Porum my 42 year old mother gave birth to me, her 11th child and ninth daughter. It had been six years since the birth of child number ten, my sister Peggy, and it had been both the assumption (because of Mama’s age) and the fervent hope of the whole family that there would be no more children. Needless to say, I was not exactly a welcome addition. (more…)
Aunt Katy Gives an Anatomy Lesson
It was summer, and we were in Oklahoma again. Back from the east coast, and our urban life style.
It was early in the morning, and I was at Aunt Katy’s house. I was not very old, I’m thinking 3rd or 4th grade. She asked me if I wanted to go out to the ranch that day; they were going to make steers. That caught my interest as I thought steers came into the world the usual way; I did not know they were manufactured. Being an inquisitive child I asked her, “How do you make steers?”
She replied, “Well you know, they cut off their #%$”. I looked at her perplexed not understanding what #%$ meant. She proceeded to go through a list of slang terms for that portion of the male anatomy, with me looking puzzled the whole time. 
Finally, in desperation, she said, “They cut off their testicles.”
“Oh”, I said. There was a word I finally understood and being not only an inquisitive child but precocious I quickly cross referenced all the previous attempts back to this word. I learned several words that day for which my mother would have grabbed the soap bar had she heard me saying them.
I did not go watch steers being manufactured that day. I don’t remember if that was my decision or Aunt Katy’s decision, I suspect the later.