"COLUMN ONE"
By Mary Mayo, Editor

If enough of you keep your fingers crossed and your eyes fixed hopefully on the long window box at the front of City Hall, maybe it will help us will a flock of pansy plants to brighten Main Street and further Sam Allton's accomplishments at making Jenks the "Pansy Capital of the World."

Sue Wasson is convinced that if pansies grow for us there is a real magic in the soil hereabouts and more than a touch of the magician in Sam, who presented them to us after seeing them through what he optimistically termed "their most difficult stage."

Sue claims that Sam's giving us the pansies at all is on a level with handing a fluffy little Easter chick to a two-year old, but Sam merely smiled in his unruffled manner and continues to believe pansy plants just naturally GROW in Jenks soil.

There's a story about Sam's start in the pansy-specializing part of the nursery business and, like most stories, it may be true and then, again, it may not be.

They say that Sam, who always did have the love of seeing things take root and grow, kept taking note of all the little wild Johnny-jump-ups that seemed to spring up from among the goatheads and Johnson grass along roadsides and all over the levees.

Sam had been college-trained on the habits and dispositions of plants by this time so he reasoned that Johnny-jump-ups growing so easily and unsolicited was sure proof that pansies, their aristocratic cousins, should do well in the same environment with just a little more care and attention.

The rest of the story is local history, of course, because Sam Allton's pansies have come as close to representing an industry as anything the town can boast. And their fame is more far-flung than any one product this side of Frankhoma.

Sam gets letters commending the quality of the plants he starts here in Jenks soil from places like Florida and California whose residents evidently still think nothing comes out of Oklahoma but Okies.

I sneaked a peek at some of the letters that have apparently become routine mail to him but I won't divulge the name of my accomplice in the dark deed because if he hadn't been so modest, I wouldn't have needed an accomplice.

One lady wrote from Norman, Oklahoma. . .

"I very recently ordered 50 pansy plants from you and wasn't even sure I'd receive an answer, let along the plants." (The lady had sent $1.00 cash in the envelope, a bad practice even if it is addressed to Sam Allton.)

"I was pleasantly surprised to receive, and promptly, a generous order of wonderfully healty plants, plus your letter. Service such as yours is a boon to our whole State."

A lady from St. Louis, Missouri wrote that her mother was 85 years old, had suffered for years from a broken hip and pernicious anemia and had "derived a maximum of pleasure and joy out of these beautiful pansies."

Another lady waxed slightly poetic as well as grateful:

"My pansies and violas arrived in perfect condition today. I have grown pansies for many years, but have never seen such fine plants. Thanks for the generous count and also for your promptness in sending them. Just as I set these plants out, a gentle rain began to fall."

Think of that!

Not only is the guy a regular magician in the pansy patch, he's a full-fledged weather wizard!