Hobos used to be sort of like leprechauns in downtown Norman. We talked about them a lot, but nobody ever saw one. One time a guy told me that the awful smell at the annual Lion’s Club Carnival, held on the southwest corner of Main Street and the railroad tracks, was a Hobo who’d been […]

(New Book) Before I started school, there was nothing, and I mean nothing, better than watching "Lunch with Ho-Ho" on KOCO Channel 5. When the theme song started, Pokey the Puppet would start wildly jumping all over the place. Jeanie the Boston terrier would chase her rubber ball into her doghouse. And then the fun […]

(From 'Memories 3') I spent a significant part of my childhood totally blind, with glowing red eyes and a blank expression. We have a drawer full of photos to prove it, somewhere. They’re probably at my oldest sister Lynn’s house. Or at Cathy’s. Or in somebody’s attic. But I know we kept all the old […]

(From 'Memories 3') ...Woe be it to thou and thy household, for a thousand generations, if there was no Cain’s coffee percolating away when Dad got home. I guess that was fair because most firemen were sort of addicted to cigarettes and coffee, maybe because they were so often sleep-deprived. When we kids would visit […]

(From 'Memories 3) ... Sometime later, when my sister Cathy was away on a hot date or something, I suffered a significant error of popcorn-related judgement while cooking Jiffy Pop. In my defense, I was starving to death and had maybe three minutes to get the popcorn popped before Rawhide came on. Obviously, I needed […]

(From 'Memories 3') We’ve all got them. Relatives who we never met, or sort of met, or maybe just heard about for so long that we felt like we knew them. Like Aunt Katrina, who was a legend in our family. She was always brought up when an adult wanted to lecture us about always […]

(From 'MEMORIES 3') The Giant Slide on Lindsey Street, by the Taco Bell, was unanimously voted “Entertainment Facility Most Likely to Snap Your Spine and Smash Your Head Like a Coconut.” It towered over everything and stood as testament to two basic truths. First, hordes of class-action lawyers had yet to descend on Norman. Second, […]

(From 'MEMORIES 3') Getting up to “no good” used to be a whole lot of fun, and it didn’t hurt anyone. Making prank telephone calls was the easiest, cheapest, and “funnest” mischief you could get up to, at least from inside your own house. You just needed an extension phone and parents who were playing […]

(From MEMORIES 3) Rounding up prehistoric horny toads was a rite of passage for all Okie boys, but you only became a man when you looked death in the face and didn’t flinch. The North Base swimming pool was where many of us Nebraska Street boys became men. It was the perfect testing ground. After […]

(From 'Memories 3') By the time I was 12, I don’t think Mom was ever really shocked by what she found when emptying my jean pockets. Still, she might have raised an eyebrow the time she found half a dozen rolls of caps, a spent .410 shotgun shell, a 5-cent pack of BBs, some Black […]