One Pharmacist's View

Last week was a busy week for many Allenites. It was the alumni week here in Allen and many former Allen grads were all about town for the big celebrations. Then last Saturday night I drove over to my old hometown of Stonewall for the alumni meeting over there.

Seems like we spend a lot of time dealing with trash. It’s everywhere and there is lots of it. I remember living over at Stonewall. “Take the trash out” meant taking it out to the burn barrel and sticking a match to it.

I didn’t know that in order to leave one Baptist church and get into another (and keep your good standing) you had to walk down the wouldbe new church’s aisle, declare your intentions and instruct their church clerk to write your old church clerk a letter (on her own church’s stationery) and...

June long ago meant school was out. It was time to visit. To travel. It usually meant that my brother Gerald and I would be shipped off to our grandparents down in Leflore County to visit our grandparents and help out on the farm doing what my brother called “slave labor.”

I know looks aren’t everything. At least that’s what mama tried to tell us when we were living hand to mouth over in Centrahoma. Things went pretty well when there was just immediate family around, but someone always came back.

Bill Cook has long been forgotten by the good people living over in Stonewall. But not by me. Who was this Bill Cook? Bill Cook was a famous criminal back about the time I graduated from Stonewall High School in 1952.

Maybe it is the weather that is doing it, but I can’t seem to get all warmed up this spring. The news last week says we are a full and complete whole degree Fahrenheit warmer compared to just last year but I have to go by what is happening now. All respect to Al Gore, I am cold.

It was 1955 when I first saw this Marine Sargent. He served on my ship’s security detail, the USS Lexington, a carrier that fought in WWII. But it was on a Greyhound bus out of San Diego, California that I noticed he was going my way— east to Oklahoma.

Wayne is out of pocket this week so we are running one of his columns from the past.

For many of us the end of this pandemic is at hand. And I say, “Praise the Lord.” Being cooped up and suffering through one of the coldest winters in history has also been hard on us. I am a guy who loves getting out and seeing my fellow man.