"COLUMN ONE"

Since year-end reports are the plague of my life just like everybody else's this week, I am going to pretend I am a big-town columnist and let other people do some of my work.

I'm going to start out with a letter and if I can dig up enough of them, I'll end with another and sandwich a couple in between. If my boss disapproves, I can always go back to darning socks which the family would probably prefer, anyway.

I'll start with a letter little Debbie Wasson loaned to me. It's from her Grandpa Wallace Baker who used to be a member of the school board here in Jenks, but who now lives down in Liberty, Texas.

Wallace and Mabel Baker left a lot of good friends where when they headed south but, as you can see from the letter, he took his Irish wit and patter with him.

"Dear Deb," the letter says, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party. I am like an old fiddle player who has to start patting his foot to keep time even before he starts playing. Old Santa Claus came all the way down to Texas after he left Jenks. He was here with his ponies though, instead of reindeers, just like he was last year on account of there wasn't any snow. He took all the kids riding again in his horse-drawn sleigh and I saw some of them riding in his 'wap' just like Deb did last year. Santa sure was good to me and I want to thank everybody who had anything to do with his bringing me my De-Clining Chair. It sure is a dandy, but after the first few days, I've never got to use it anymore. When I come in from work, Old Tippie is in it and when I try to make him get out of it, he bites me. He stays in it until Grandma comes home, then Granny sits in it until Uncle Joe comes in and makes her get out so he can sit in it, and by that time, I am already in bed asleep. Maybe after Uncle Joe goes back to school, I will trade Tippie off for a pet alligator which will be satisfied staying in the bathtub and then I can use my own chair again. Guess I had better stop now, because I believe Granny just shut the door behind Tippie, so maybe I can sit in my Chair until he gets back. Please excuse this spelling and writing because your Uncle Joe has this typewriter so fouled up nobody can make it spell or write anything anymore. Be good now and write to us often . . . . Granddaddy and Granny."

Not long ago, a Third Grade teacher told me she liked teaching Third Grade children better than any other age.

"It's a challenge," she said . . . "Children in the First and Second Grades accept what they are told and go on from there but by the time they reach the Third Grade, they begin to grope ahead on their own, a future becomes important to their thinking . . . "

So I believe her, especially since one of my children (third grader) was absent from school for quite awhile and the children of her room, probably at the instigation of their thoughtful teacher, wrote letters to her.

Most of the letters conformed to standard, nice, chatty and newsy. But I thought of that statement my teacher friend had made about the future. The shadow of the future certainly seems to loom before these excerpts.

"Dear Betsy: How are you feeling? Better I hope. D... has been sick too. He was absent but he is back today. Yesterday was nice and quiet. Today is noisy and awful. Love, S..."

Fifteen years from now this little born-mother will be writing: "Well, school starts week after next, thank goodness. I do love the kids, but....."

And just so nobody would get any false ideas about how he feels toward old girls, one little boy was quite specific: "Dear Mayo:" He signed it, "LIKE, M......" (Look, Toots, don't be including me in your plans . . . I'm the confirmed bachelor-type.)

Instead of just quoting letters, maybe I'd better exercise my woman's prerogative and change my mind to lament the loss of our neighbors.

When we first moved to Jenks, we could sit on the east side of our house and watch the traffic on Second Street and wave to Mr. John Price as he walked to the Post Office and keep tabs on anyone who went into Rooker's or left.

Then Bob and Frank Vreeland and various aides and assistants came along and started building the brick house east of us and the larger it grew the more Shakespearish I became, especially when he wrote "His nose being shadowed by his neighbor's ear" in one of his plays.

Then the Bob Warren family moved into the completed new house. That was more than 2 years ago and sometime during those 2 years, the Warren family's presence has become part of our lives.

We never developed the habit of dashing unannounced into each other's houses or baring our innermost secrets to each other, it's true, but we must have all been closer than we knew, else why this sudden desolation now that they have gone back to Oklahoma City?

Probably because both families of us knew we were there when needed and we are all still blazing frontiers of one kind or another and might be, like our pioneer forebearers, dreadfully in need of a good neighbor's help.

I don't recall either of us ever having to help the other harvest his crops, but did you ever run out of aluminum foil on Thanksgiving morning?

Anyway, somebody over in Oklahoma City is getting some mighty nice new neighbors and we hope they appreciate them as much as we did.

We made a mistake last week in reporting that Doc Davis was in another hospital when actually he's in Room 339, St. John's Hospital.

We're sorry for the mistake, but glad to hear that Doc's getting along much better.

Benjamin Franklin said it, but it still makes good sense: "Three people can keep a secret if 2 of them are dead."