"COLUMN ONE"
By Mary Mayo, Editor

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Dear Mrs. Cunningham:

It just occurred to me that with Third Street shifting position and talk of a new shopping center sparking the conversation along Main Street, Jenks is becoming more citified every day. I see now how those "once upon a time" things follow inevitably in the wake of progress. My family has been in Jenks only some 12 years and here I'm already recollecting at a mile a minute clip.

When we first moved to Jenks, the kids of the town gravitated unswervingly toward the fountain at Mac's Drug Store which was located west of the Bank with the site of their present location occupied by the Post Office. A trip to Bayouth's Department Store could lead you right through the wide east door into their variety store. This made it handy for a child sent on a hurry up errand for a pair of hose before the bus rumbled in when he wanted to sneak a quick look at what was new in the model airplane department.

Sam Allton's pansies were a going concern then as now and it was about that time we first heard the story of how Sam noted the abundance of wild johnny-jump-ups around here and decided this was ideal country for the business of starting pansies. And it is by the slender stems of these johnny-jump-ups my recollections hang . . .

Just before we moved to Jenks, a little black rabid cocker spaniel came into our lives long enough to make life miserable for everybody but Daddy who escaped the series of shots by the simple expedient of never being home long enough to get an affectionate licking by Boots. Aside from feeling somewhat akin to martyred Swiss cheeses, we children actually fared very well in the experience but it turned out that Mother was allergic to the vaccine and had to go to the hospital for treatment.

So, along with the excitement of moving into a different house in a different town, we found ourselves under the supervision of our Texas grandmother who had come up to stay with us while Mother was in the hospital. And it was probably that extra sense of freedom and abandonment that goes along with uncrated packing boxes stacked to the ceiling and the general confusion and uproar that caused Pat to do a foolish thing completely foreign to her usual careful planning.

Daddy and Mother had no more then stepped out of the front door on the way to the hospital than Pat beckoned us to a corner of the living room. "Look here," she whispered, "this is my going-away present from Janet but don't tell Daddy or Mother . . . or Grandmother! I've been keeping it under my bed!" She lifted her hand from the top of an open 2-pound coffee can to let us peer down at the dumpy, golden-tan hamster crouched at the bottom.

"You know what Daddy and Mother said!" we shrieked in horrified unison. "NO animals for pets .. . just fish or birds . . . they don't go mad!"

"Shh!" warned Pat, but it was too late to remember that Daddy always forgot his car keys and had to come back to get them off the mantel. "What's going on here?" he asked, "and how can 4 cats divide a canary?" He referred, no doubt, to our guileless expressions.

He took the coffee can from Pat's hands and looked inside. "Well, now . . . where'd this come from?"

"From Janet," said Pat tremulously. One thing I have always envied about my sister, Poor, Pitiful Pat, is that when she becomes tremulous, her eyes automatically become bigger and bluer and tearful. "It's a going-away present from her. I had to take it or else hurt her feelings horribly!"

"I thought you all understood . . . " began Daddy.

"He isn't rabid, Daddy!" Pat said hurridely. "See, he's nice and gentle and clean!"

"So was Boots." said Daddy, glancing at his watch. "Why don't you give it to some boy or girl who hasn't just finished 21 shots in a row. Then we'll get you all some birds and fish."

Nobody can leave a room so fast as Daddy once he heads for the door, but he did pause and call from the hall, "Any kind of a pet will do . . . just so it flies or floats!"

Pat took the hamster from the can and fondled it lovingly. The new rule in our famiuly was harder on Pat, we knew, than any of us. Tim and I could still hunt up a recently discarded stuffed toy when loneliness overtook us and Jim had reached an age where he wasn't interested in anything that didn't come wired up for electricity, anyway. (He's changed a lot, since then.) But Pat loved animals more than we did and even if we lived in the middle of a big town with no yard at all, she always managed to coax somebody's pet to follow her home.

"Isn't it darling?" said Pat, "so soft and cuddly . . . his name's Charlie. You can pet it if you want to . . . " she offered.

It was a sore temptation but not nearly so sore as the site of 21 shots in a row and so the rest of us resisted to a man.

"He's tame, too" continued Pat, "and he'll come to you when you call his name. Look . . . "

She set the hamster on the back of the sofa where he began at once snuffling at the upholstery, advanced a step, snuffled again with his nose twitching and whiskers trembling and then he darted swiftly to the opposite end and down the arm of the sofa to the floor.

Pat dropped to her knees. "Here, Charlie," she coaxed softly so that Grandmother wouldn't hear, but Charlie sped across the room to a heavy chair and disappeared beneath it.

"It's okay," said Pat confidently. "He'll come when I call him after he gets tired of exploring. Especially when he gets hungry."

But Charlie didn't come when Pat called him even after he'd had time to explore the Magic Empire. And we soon decided he was living on the fat of the land in some form located inside the chair for even after 2 days' time, Charlie remained out of sight. When Grandmother went upstairs or outside to burn trash, we converged on the arm chair and dropped to our knees to listen. Soon we could hear distinct gnawing sounds somewhere within but at Pat's first whispered "Charlie", the gnawing stopped and there was nothing but silence except for our breathing and Grandmother's returning footsteps.

Then one morning marked the fifth day of Charlie's disappearance. We sat at the table eating breakfast cereal and Grandmother buttered our toast as it popped from the toaster. "You know," she announced pensively, "I'd swear I saw a blonde mouse dart across the living room floor this morning."

There was a quick intake of breath somewhere around the table, a piece of toast dropped on the floor butter-side down and a distinct choking sound came from another side, but not a word was spoken. After a minute of silence, each of us cast oblique glances in Pat's direction.

And then we knew with shuddering clarity that Pat was going to mats wits with her Grandmother . . . GRANDMOTHER, who came from Texas and could recognize a tall tale a mile away.

"Of course," continued Grandmother, "it ran so fast and it wasn't too light in there. But it was a yellowish color, still . . . "

"Oh, it probably was a blonde mouse, Grandmother." Pat replied airily and obviously enjoying her private little melodrama no matter how our stomachs ached. "There's lots of them up here!"

Grandmother glanced at her sharply and Pat went on imperturbly. "It's these wild johnny-jump-ups they eat, or something!"

"You don't say!" Grandmother studied Jim thoughtfully.

Jim is known in our family as "a good kid" which, reduced to even plainer language merely means he's not really any better than the rest of us . . . he just never did learn to lie. But we knew from long and bitter experience that a 15 minutes session with one of Jim's prolonged silences could get us in more Dutch than narrowed at the same time and all the tattling in the world.

Jim's eyes rested steadfastly on his bowl as he concentrated on counting his Post Toasties. But Grandmother apparently decided she had her problems and from the looks of things, Daddy and Mother had a whole passel of them for she sighed, and got up from the table. "Well," she said, "I'm going to the Post Office and down to Bayouth's to get a few souvenirs while you all finish eating and stack the dishes."

We watched Grandmother disappear behind the bushes toward Main Street. Pat jumped up from her chair. "Charlie has got to go!" she declared.

"How?" asked Jim practically.

"We'll take the bottom out of the chair and poke around inside with the broom. That will cause him to jump out." explained Pat.

Jim was as agrivated as Jim could ever get. "Straw and stuff will get all over the living room floor and when Grandmother gets back, she'll see it . . . "

Pat scowled thoughtfully. "We'll move the chair out to the refrigerator room," she said "and then when we get Charlie out of it, we'll sweep the stuff out the door!"

So as we frequently did in those days, we played "mule train" with Jim and Tim and I playing mules and Pat the skinner, and the heavy old chair finally moved to the refrigerator room.

"Now," said Pat in satisfaction, "from here it's going to be easy . . . but first, we'll have to man our stations."

It followed then that Tim stood at the screen door, I stood guard at the kitchen door, Jim wielded the tool to loosen the tacks holding the cloth bottom of the chair in place and Pat hovered over the entire scene with the broom. "Be sure to catch Charlie when he jumps out!" she ordered and we cupped our hands and stood poised.

Jim was fast and efficient with the screwdriver and the tacks dropped monotonously into the palm of his hand. Finally the cloth was off except for a tack or two and Pat held the broom in poking position behind Jim.

But suddenly everything happened at once and it was all wrong. Too late we realized Charlie had a plan of his own. Jim fell over backwards in shocked surprise and tacks flew all over the room as Charlie hurtled into his lap; Pat and I screamed and Tim, without even hesitating to look twice upon the scene, fled straight out the back door with Charlie right on his heels.

Tim came back at supper time but that was the last we ever saw or heard tell of Charlie.

No telling how many people in the Jenks area have seen blonde mice darting about the countryside since then but just didn't want to say anything for fear of being laughed at. That's why I thought they might be interested in learning it wasn't their eyes playing tricks on them after all . . . it's just these wild johnny-jump-ups the mice around here eat or something and if you don't believe it, just ask my sister, Pat.

Yours truly,
Suzi M.