"COLUMN ONE"
By Mary Mayo, Editor

Since last week somebody somewhere has blown a whistle and Spring has begun its march from behind the backdrops of Winter to strut hopefully onto the field again.

Spring started right on time for me because it was at about 3:30 in the morning of the 21st when I got up to give aspirin to a feveish child and heard the advance guard of the wild goose brigade fly over. The first faint honks to the south jarred me to attention while I visualized a huge V-shaped formation flying with purposeful mien behind the fearless leader on a spring-over-Labrador mission, not a feather out of place and every flyer briefed to the last air pocket.

Geese, I read somewhere, fly as fast as 60 miles per hour on their migratory flights. If they actually cover 60 miles of territory in an hour, I'd like to accompany them to find out how they make up for lost time.

This particular flock spent at least 10 minutes over Jenks and from the gabbling and squawking and questioning and back-seat driving, disciplinary problems have obviously crept into the ranks of wild goosedom as well as into the home and classroom.

Everybody but the leader seemed dissatisfied with the route and nobody hesitated to complain to high heaven about it.

"That was Bixby we just flew over, you dope, and we were supposed to fly BETWEEN Glenpool and Jenks! You planning on trying to navigate right through those new glassed-in buildings in Tulsa?" . . . . "Yeah, maybe you'd like a beakful of glass for breakfast, but I sure wouldn't!" . . . . "Sure your instruments are working okay, Pal? Seems to me our flight plan's been screwy ever since we left Shreveport!" . . . .

"Evelyn, am I seeing things in the dark or is that really an outdoor powder room down there?"

"Well, all I can say is, I think we oughtta organize our own formation and to heck with this screwball outfit!"

Noisy, disorderly, quarrelsome, they still continued their flight in a generally northerly direction so eventually we can count on Spring, I guess.

Colorful blobs of brightness increase every day in Mrs. McLean's yard across the street and purplish auras hover above the redbud trees in Cowherd's yard and down the street at the Rooker's. The limbs of the maple tree have become the color of rhubarb and little catkin-like buds dot the length of them.

Later on, they'll burst and the air will be filled with what the children call "helicopters" and what I call a halt to collecting when heaps of them begin to accumulate among the clothes in the dresser drawers and any teacup not being used at the moment.

Springtime has invaded the grocery stores in Jenks, too. Once green onions and radishes become abundant in the produce corner, real old honest-to-goodness spring can't be far behind. But even if there is still a little cold edge to the air, you can toast your fingers over the glow of the pictures on the seed packages with their red zinnias, blue morning-glories, purple petunias, yellow snap-dragons and striped gourds.

Speaking of gourds, do people still raise them and if they do, are cups and water dippers and dish rags made of them as they once were?

I remember my grandmother used to cover an unsightly backyard fence with gourd vines every summer and to find one of the brightly colored ripened gourds down under the heavy leaves was like discovering an extra present hidden among the branches of a Christmas tree to us children.

There's also signs of spring over on the south side of town. Bud Bolton, it's whispered, took time out from the joyful pasttime of working in his yeard to teach some of the little kids in the neighborhood the art of flying kites along the levee.

Bud is fill of self-sacrificing deeds of this type and to show how he throws himself into these projects, I hear he made a big pretense of enjoying the whole thing as much as the kids did. (Good actor, too!)

Out west of town, the baseball field for the younger boys' practice and play is shaping up with the land first cleared by the Fire Department and now being leveled with equipment loaned for the use by the county. With boys from Bixby and Glenpool and Jenks participating in the fun, that corner should soon be jumping.

What if it is more than 3 weeks until Easter which the old almanacs used to claim was the first genuine sign of spring?

Today's beautiful and signs of Spring are bustin' out all over and not too much can be wrong with a world so full of promise.