Until I was seven my grandparents lived in Oklahoma on a dairy farm. I loved going to the farm. During the summer when my mother wasn’t teaching we would ride the train to see them. Grannie and Papa would meet us at the train station to drive us out to their farm. When my dad had a “Long Change” at the plant we would all drive up together. The farm was outside Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. We drove over a big hill, down a long road and turned left at the Nunnery. A short way down the road we turned at the cattle guard. From there, down a gravel road, you could see the farmhouse. It was a little white house with a screened porch at the front and back doors.
I loved playing on the front porch. Grannie had toys, a small table with chairs and tiny dishes perfect for tea parties with stuffed bears. Being an only child, all I needed was my imagination, to play for hours. On special days my cousins, Phil and Joyce would come out to play. I dearly loved having cousins, they were what I imagined brothers and sisters would be like.
The back screened porch was long and narrow. When Papa came in from milking the cows he would change clothes and put his work clothes in a laundry bag hanging on a hook by the washer at the far end of the porch. On the back wall of the porch was a large, long freezer. The whole top of the freezer lifted up, I imagined that was so little kids couldn’t get into it. Inside was ice cream, pies and all kinds of things my grandmother had made and frozen for our visits. My parents stayed in the garage apartment but I slept in the guest room in Grannie and Papa’s house. Each morning when I woke up I could smell bacon and homemade biscuits baking. There would always be fresh strawberries Grannie and I had picked the day before.
One morning though, I woke up to the loud voices of my grandparents and parents. They were having a serious discussion which was not the normal morning routine. Papa was saying that they never locked the back screen door. Then Grannie said that the freezer could have burned up. I jumped out of bed thinking there must be some kind of fire. They didn’t even notice me come into the room. Breakfast wasn’t ready and wasn’t even started yet. They all turned and walked out into the back yard to look at the “Marks”. There was line in the back yard where something had been dragged through the grass smashing it down, as we stood in the yard, a police car pulled up. Papa had just had a calf butchered and put in the long freezer on the porch. All of the meat had been wrapped in white paper with the name “Emerson” on it . The butcher and Papa had unloaded it and placed it in the freezer. Everyone had been awakened that morning to the screen door slamming in the wind, they found the freezer lid had been left up, with all the beef gone. The laundry bag that hung on the hook had been left in the driveway. They were baffled at who could have come through the gate and stolen the meat. It had to be someone who knew their routine. We left for home that weekend with the mystery unsolved.
A month went by with no news about the meat. Mom and I had once again ridden the train up for our monthly visit. We heard Papa’s old truck drive up, the door slam and him yell, “Maggggie.....Magggggiee!!!” Grannie heard him and went running out into the yard.
“What?? What are you doing all the yelling about?”
“It’s Guy....that damn Guy. “
“What about Guy? Did you see him today?”
NO! And it a good thing I didn’t I would have beat his sorry ass! No you wanna know what I would have really done to him?”
“Delbert calm down, Jan, Faye....they can hear you.”
Guy was my grandfather’s younger brother. He was a bum. He never worked and was always asking family to give him things. Papa had no use for him because he was lazy.
While Papa had been in town, a friend of Papa’s had come up to him and said, “Well I see Guy is finally working. I saw him today and he was selling some beef he had butchered, his name was on it and everything. I bought about 50 lbs from him.” Papa fumed, got back in the truck and took off in a cloud of dust.
It was the beef that had been stolen from the freezer. Stolen by Guy, Papa’s own brother. Papa called the police and turned him in. That was my first experience with an outlaw......
After the meat incident, none of the family would have anything to do with Guy. Not even his children. I don’t remember if he went to jail for stealing the meat, but he did spend time in jail for something. Guineth, his real name, was a bad seed. His poor wife bore the brunt of his thefts and debts. He had six or seven children and then abandoned his wife. My grandfather and his other brothers helped Guy’s wife raise his children.I never met him, this was my only association with him. He was from a family of very honorable hard working people. When he died no one would claim his body and he was buried in a pauper’s grave.
