(Book 2) Man oh man, did I ever love the 4th of July back in the Sixties! Every year our family would buy a smallish bunch of firecrackers, smoke bombs, bottle rockets, Roman candles, sparklers, fountains and snakes.  And every year, my Fire Marshall Dad would give me The Speech. Thou shalt not: At this point, […]

(Book 2!) Or at least you should have, considering I caught a whale of a lot of fish at Lake Thunderbird, and on the occasional family safari to Lake Texoma in the Sixties. After my Dad left the Fire Department, he bought a modest tri-hull boat with a small Evinrude motor. It didn’t look like […]

As a kid, I idolized Norman High football players as they strutted around Norman in their NHS letter jackets. The jackets featured a black woolen body, black leather sleeves, knitted black and orange collar and wristbands, and a big orange “N” sitting boldly over the heart, with the player’s orange number on the left sleeve. […]

MORE Memories of an Okie Boomer (Book 2) When I was growing up, our family’s Thanksgiving ritual was more carefully planned and executed than the Battle of Normandy. A couple of weeks before Halloween, my Mom would buy a frozen turkey about the size of our German Shepherds and harder than a bowling ball. Then […]

(MORE Memories of an Okie Boomer...) Imagine letting your kids dress up in weird costumes and walk around the neighborhood, unsupervised and at night, collecting candy from complete strangers. What could possibly go wrong? But nothing ever did back in the day, when kids were safe, free was good, and none of us on Nebraska […]

(From MORE Memories of an Okie Boomer -- Book 2!) I had dreamed about it my whole life: running onto Owen Field as a Norman Tiger. I finally got to do that my Junior year at Norman High, and it was the most exciting thing I had ever done. As little kids, my best friend […]

Every year when September nears, my mind is flooded with memories from the Sixties, when I attended brand-spanking new Cleveland Elementary and spent a lot of time in Mr. Sullivan's office. I was known to talk too much in class, make the girls squawk, and maybe take the obnoxious boy thing to unacceptably high levels. […]

(First Memories Book) Most of my "Memories" are from when I was littler. But with brutal summer football practices approaching, now's the time to share this one... SURVIVING TWO-A-DAYS WAS AN ABSOLUTE MIRACLE Other than war, there is nothing more traumatic, more hellish for a young man, than Two-A-Day football practices. Especially in Oklahoma's brutal […]

(From Book 1) As a kid in Norman, you knew that when it rained, it poured. I remember water gushing out of our new house's downspout so hard that it ripped up the Bermuda grass. Sometimes, the rain and hail would overwhelm the gutters, and sheets of water would come over the side. If you […]

(This Memory is from the Okie Boomer's reporting years in Texas) I must have seen a million Willie Nelson concerts when I was a reporter in Waco back in the 80s. It even feels like I knew him personally, because I interviewed so many people who did. Like Marge Lundy, who was one of those […]