“Is it OK for us to park out here tonight?” The guy was a gypsy. He was pulling a little metal camper trailer and dad looked him over and said, “go ahead.” What dad didn’t know was the guy was just a spearhead for about 18 other gypsies and it was a part of their religion, beliefs and rights to steal anything they wanted--even if it was nailed down. In a few minutes the grassy lots between our grocery store and the old rock gas station on Highway 3 in Centrahoma was packed. It looked like a carnival had come to town and I learned something that afternoon. Gypsies are easy to get, hard to get rid of.

The year was 1944. My dad had just opened up the old Main Theatre in Stonewall but still owned the little grocery in Centrahoma. Each evening he and my brother Gerald drove up to Stonewall and left the store in the care of my mom and a clerk, Rev. Crabb. Oh yes, there were my two sisters and myself. Mom was as mad as a “One Eyed Spider” that dad was going to Stonewall real soon leaving her to deal with a large crowd of gypsies camped out in her yard. Not happy at all. But it was Wednesday and prayer meeting night. So Mom, Sue and Kay and I walked down a sandy street to the Nazarene Church after we locked up the store to participate with Bro. Crabb ‘s prayer meeting.

Did I mention that Mom had worked herself into a nervous tizzy over her campers down by the store and her “tizzy” was not lost on me and sister Sue. Especially Sue. We walk back from church with Mom carrying Linda Kay, me leading the nervous Sue, only to hear mom exclaim, “We’ve been broken into.” Sure enough the hasp was torn off, the door ajar. She dragged the three of us into the living quarters and told me, “You stay here and watch after these girls, I’ll go get help. I sure hope they’re not still in there” (in the store) and suddenly so did I. There had been far more talk of the Gypsy’s encampment at prayer meeting than of the pressing spiritual needs of Centrahoma. I was a brave and secure 8-year-old but I have to admit to a tiny bit of nervousness.

The gypsies, I soon learned had stolen the four, 100 pound bags of sugar that had just arrived for a local farmer to use in canning. Dealing with the government of the United States during WWII on how we had lost four big sacks of rationed sugar was somewhat akin to the selling our atomic bomb secrets to the Nazi’s. At least it seemed that way to me. The Gypsies. Well, they were long gone. Vanished. With our sugar.

Conspiracy theories abounded. Was the sugar theft an inside job? Did the gypsies bribe my dad to turn away his gaze while they, the gypsies stole the sugar? Well no. It was and I guess it still remains a mystery. In the end we were without the precious sugar forever. My little sister Sue was a nervous wreck and still is, Linda Kay got over it OK but mom’s emotions danced between being mad at dad and her natural fears of all things after dark. Especially Gypsies. And Brother Crabb? I can’t remember ever seeing him again, but that may have been a result of us moving on up SH-3 to Stonewall.

You might think the 12 mile move to Stonewall would have solved all of our nervous disorders. We were, after all, away from the site of the sugar snafu, living in a town that had streetlights. What else could go wrong. Well, it did. Dad worked nights. Mom sat home with the nervous Sue and fretful Linda. What we didn’t know for a day or two was that we had moved next door to a notorious and scary looking and active window peeper. But that’s another story.

Hope you have a nice weekend and are able to be in your church Sunday.

Wayne Bullard,

DPh

waynebullard@sbcglobal.net