REFLECTIONS OF GRANDMA KATIE

GRANDMA KATIE
By Diane Frame Bertone for all of her grandchildren

Our Grandma Katie came to Oklahoma from Arkansas in a covered wagon pulled by two mules, “Pepper and Ader”, when she was only five years old. The family milk cow was tied to the back of the wagon. The trip took five to six days. Grandma Katie passionately told about crossing the river at Webber Falls on a ferryboat. She was so very scared that the wagon would fall into the river, and she said her little feet nearly froze off. The family cooked on a campfire during the trip. They were coming to Oklahoma to share crop.

Grandma Katie quit school after the eighth grade to help with the kids and work in the field. She was a very smart lady with an awesome memory. She taught me to spell “asaphoedita” when she was 97 years old.

Grandma Katie told us about picking 100#’s of cotton in one single day while pulling a kid on the cotton sack. Family members bragged how she plowed 10 acres in one day, pulling a one- row cultivator with a horse on each side –from dusk to dark.

The government only allowed ten acres for a row crop. She hated Hoover Days. She said they nearly starved and could remember block long lines of people waiting to get 1# of lard. She loved FDR and said he saved the day, even though he had polio. She told about working at the ammunition depot in McAlester. She had an old car and would wake @ 3:00 a.m. to pick up two other ladies and a man, who drove the old car for his carpooling part. They painted ammo boxes. She worked long enough to save enough gasoline stamps to go to California and back. While in California she picked potatoes, peaches and grapes for eight months, saved $1,000 and returned to Oklahoma to buy her little where she lived for the next 60 years.

Grandma Katie was a great Grandma to all of her grandchildren. She would take care of us when we were sick with Vicks and Mercurchrome. She loved to cook and share her food with us, even though she never had much money. She was the best cook in the world. She taught us how to shuck and milk corn, pick cotton, do a job correctly or lick the calf over again, not to be a tattle-tale, avoid her willow switch if at all possible. She loved watching Tim and Pam hunt tigers at the farm and all of us ride “old Star”. She provided a sanctuary when Becky needed to run away from her brothers. She taught us that blood is thicker than water.

Grandma Katie kept you humble when times were going good and pumped you up during troublesome times. She was the most non-pretentious person I ever met. Grandma taught us unconditional love by living it every single day. When leaving her house we’d say “I love you Grandma”, she’d reply “I double love you”, then the competition was on, all the way to “I quadruple love you”. We would let her win, but we will love our Grandma Katie “to infinite” forever and pass that love on for generations. We were blessed.