Copyright 2008 Kent Pinegar. 

Anyone remotely related to Lee and Suzy can use this as they wish.  Anyone else that wants to use it has to buy a relative of mine a beer.  

    He [Lee] lived in Arkansas and visited a friend in Missouri.  He was to be home by dark.  The lived close to the state line.  He had the opportunity to go as far as the third grade.  He studied our books and helped our oldest sister [Willie] with her school work.  He was good at practical math.  He lived close to several cousins in Arkansas and kept in contact.  We visited, at different times, Tom High, his Mother's brother visited us in Oklahoma.  He was a story teller and entertaining.  John Lee's father, William Franklin, and wife moved to Paris, Texas, in 1905.  Lee was fourteen when the moved.

    One time we were visiting at the house in the country and Willies family was there too.  All of the kids decided to go across the road to the sand pit and hunt for rocks and Grandma went with us.  After we had been there a while Grandma found a yucca plant.  She decided she wanted to plant it in her yard and was going to pull it up.  She bent over and started pulling on it but it was really stuck.  She pulled really hard and when it came out of the ground she fell back and landed right on her rump! At first we were scared, but Grandma started laughing really hard and we did too! She lay back on the ground and laughed for a long time, then we had to pull her up off the ground.  That's the only time I ever really heard her have a long good laugh.    When I was a teenager we were visiting and I slept with Grandma in the iron bed in the bedroom that had the two double beds in it.  It was so hot and the window was open and you could hear all of the night noises and smell that horrible old stinky sewer smell....  I couldn't sleep.  After a while I felt something run across me on the bed.  I think I was awake most of the night after that.  The next morning I was telling everyone about the something in the bed and Grandma said "Oh there was a mouse in there the other night, that was probably what it was".  She was all nonchalant about it.  I don't think I slept for the rest of the visit! I wasn't used to bed partners of any type Ha!

    Another night time memory...  One night we were all in bed asleep and were awakened by dogs barking and growling under the house and beneath the bedroom where we were sleeping.  We heard Grandpa get up and go outside and Daddy got up and went out too.  An Armadillo had gotten under the house and the dogs had ran in after it.  A fight ensued with the dogs hitting the floorboards, making an awful noise.  We heard Daddy yell "Lee don't shoot!!!! The girls are asleep in the bed right on top of them!!" Grandpa had his shotgun and was going to blast it under the house!

    I can remember the last trip Grandpa made to Ponca while he was still driving.  If my memory serves me right he had been to Missouri to go to a funeral.  I think it was an Uncle.  He came back through Ponca and went to Gene and Graces house and we went over there.  He was going to spend the night here before he went on home.  Linda and I wanted him to stay at our house, and Earl and Danny wanted him to stay there.  Grandpa flipped a coin to decide.Genes house won.  Linda and I were so disappointed.  I can't remember Grandpa ever being at our house, although I'm sure he must have been.     Janice also remembers being told how Grandma decided to drive somewhere and wound up in a ditch.  Janice thinks that is when she gave up trying.  Here is another driving story, from the author.  One time Lee was driving me, and someone else, to the lake.  He ran over a snake and said that snakes would jump up into the engine compartment and then crawl through a hole in the firewall to get you.  I still think of that when I run over a snake or hose on the road.  
    Grandma and Grandpa used to have an old Sheepdog.  His name was Max.  I believe that this dog was originally Roy and Glad's dog.  (?) We went to visit and poor Max was hardly able to walk.  It was of course hot and humid and he had heavy fur.  He spent his days roaming the woods.  My Dad got his pocket knife and some scissors and started cutting Max's matted fur off.  Embedded in the fur he found sticks, a piece of wire, a clothespin etc.  When he was through, the dog got up and walked off just fine.  Poor dog was weighted down.   

    When I was in high school I took my closest friend with us to Texas.  One morning at the crack of Dawn Grandpa came in and woke us up.  He told us to get dressed and come with him because he had something he wanted to show us.  He took us down to his garden.  The fence on the south end was totally covered with blooming Blue Morning Glories.  It was beautiful.  I will always think of my Grandpa when I see them, and have periodically planted them on my south fence in his honor. 

    Also, on this trip Grandpa was taking us somewhere up the road.  He was driving and my Dad was in the front with him.  Grandpa was driving pretty fast and turning the steering wheel back and forth as he always did.  He began telling my Dad that a mouse has gotten in the Glove Compartment the day before and eaten his cigarettes...  you can imagine two girls getting pretty freaked out, so we put our feet up in the seat just in case that mouse came crawling out.  About that time Grandpa was flying down the road,  hit a bump, and my friend flew up and hit her head on the car roof! We sometimes still laugh about that.  She learned what it was like to "rough it" that summer.   

    One of my very best memories of my Grandpa was him telling me to come down to the garden because he had something for me.  He reached down and picked a watermelon.  He said he had grown it just for me and had been waiting on me to come so we could eat it.  (Of course this was one of his many tall tales ! ) He had a little enamel topped table down there, laid the watermelon on it, picked up a butcher knife (probably filthy) and whacked the watermelon like you would do with a Samurai Sword.  The melon split open.  He reached down underneath the table and pulled out a salt shaker.  We stood there and ate watermelon and I felt like the most special kid in the world.  He had a way of making you feel that way.   

    One year we visited them a couple of days before Christmas.  I was nine years old at the time.  We were on our way to Tyler to spend the actual holiday with my Dads family.  There was snow on the ground and driving down the road to their house there were several Cardinals in the trees.  It was so pretty and really felt like Christmas.  We had taken gifts, and those Chocolate Drop candies that you only see for sale at Christmas.  Mother said Grandpa used to buy them and he called them Christmas Chocolates.  That evening we all sat in the living room with the fire lit.  As we were talking, Grandpa leaned forward and spit clear across the room and into the fire, making it sizzle.  He reared back and laughed.  He said he had been practicing that so he could show us when we got there!  We had taken mixed nuts with us, and he got a brick and set it by the fireplace and let Linda and I hit the nuts with a hammer and throw the shells in the fire.  I'm sure we made a huge mess, but that didn't matter.  I guess that was the most "Old Fashioned" Christmas I ever spent, but I wouldn't trade the memories for anything.   

    Another Grandpa memory is sitting at the kitchen table early in the morning and him coming in the back door with a little wire basket with some wild Strawberries and blackberries he had just wandered off somewhere and picked.  That man must have know all the woods down there by heart.  I remember waking up in the wee hours and him being in the kitchen cooking sausage and eggs.  The smell would drift back into the bedroom.  He would cook and eat them, then go back to bed.  My Dad said he got up one time and ate with him and it didn't taste near as good as it smelled cooking.  Grandpa would cook the eggs in the sausage grease, put the eggs on the plate, then pour the grease over them.   

    I can even remember your brother Tracy getting up in the morning when he was barely walking and sitting in my lap.  He peed through his sleepers and onto my leg!!  I probably remember it because of the trauma! Nothing like hot pee! I need to thank him for that one!

    Mother said one time Grandpa gave her a large jar of peanut butter and told her to hide it so she would have something to make your Dad's, Wesley's and her school sandwiches with.  She more or less had the responsibility of her little brothers.  She said she got them up, dressed them, fed them breakfast and saw that they got to school.  They also all slept together at night.  She always talked about your Dad and Wesley with a special love for them.  I think she felt somewhat like a Mother to them.  Uncle Wesley referred to her as his second Mama and still does.  [I seem to remember something about this --  Kent.]

    Linda remembers Suzy staying with her while Lou was in the hospital with Janice.  Tom also remembered that when he called Suzy, to tell her Janice was born, she was confused about which end of the receiver to put to her ear and could not hear him clearly until he told her to turn it around because she was using the wrong end to listen into.  He thought it was because she was used to the old fashion phone.

Here is something funny. Daddy reminded Janice of this today and I can remember mother telling about it. On a Thanksgiving when they still lived in Billings, Grandpa bought a turkey.  It weighed about 25 pounds.  It was to big for the oven and there was no pan large enough to cook it in.  They built a fire outside and put it in the wash tub and cooked it. Daddy said he could remember it turning out good.  Wonder how many people was there to eat it??
Reminds me of the oversize hot water tank Grandpa bought for the the house on the farm.  That thing was huge! He said they never had enough hot water and he wanted to make sure they never ran out! ha Remember it was in the bathroom

    I have a story to share as a great grandchild about grandma Suzy. She had come to visit one year, staying with my grandparents. Grandpa had given me a very large owl that you could hang outside to scare the birds away. They used  them down in the Conoco refinery. Well, grandma Suzy had come to our house, saw that owl and her face lit up like a Christmas tree! She was pretty demented at this time. She kept laughing, saying "woo, Woo". I gave grandma Suzy that old owl. I can remember her getting in the back seat of grandma and grandpa's car, holding the owl like it was a baby. Driving away, saying "Woo, Woo!". She was so cute.
    Another story, was a time when we went to visit grandpa and Grandma Suzy's house on the farm and had walked down to the lake. I was very, young. Probably about three or four. I can remember milking the cows, completely grossed out! I also fell down by the lake and got a rock in my knee. To this day, I still have a small rock in my right knee cap that has never came out! I guess you can say I have a little bit of Paris, Texas that I carry with me at all times.

    I remember we went as a family to Paris. Grandpa Lee's farm assistant took me, Jill and my father and taught us girls how to milk a cow. After we finished we took the milk to grandma Suzy and she taught Jill and I how to churn butter. Jill and I remember it to this day.  Also, Jill and I remember Grandpa Lee getting out of his "death" bed to see us.  He said, I know you kids aren't having much fun so let's have some fun. He got out a homemade toilet paper shooter and was "chasing" us with flying toilet paper wads.