View our terms and conditions for use of our web site and our privacy policy. Visit Electric Scotland's Aois Community, our social networking site. Find our contact information and learn more about us. The Home Page of Electric Scotland ES Common Header Bar
This is where you'll find a comprehensive resource on Scottish accommodations. Electric Scotland's Article Service where you can both read articles and post your own. Beth's Newfangled Family Tree is a monthly publication giving genealogy advice as well as what's hapening on the Scottish Scene around the world. This is where you'll find around 300 books on Scottish history that we've published on the site. Our pages where you'll find books and articles about Robert Burns and his work. Gives you some information on the business scene in Scotland. This is where you can view Scottish events around the world and add your own. Learn about the history of Clans and Families of Scotland and the Scots-Irish. The personal site of Alastair McIntyre where he's posted his own mini biography as well as his travel journals. 5 volumes worth of biographies relating to Significant Scots. A weekly newsletter about the political scene in Scotland from the Scots Independent Newspaper. Lots of Scottish recipes along with contributions from our visitors. Play our collection of online games. 6 volume Gazetter on the place names of Scotland. This is our page for trying to give you advice on Genealogy. A FAQ where you go to get answers to frequently asked questions. Information and pictures about Historic places in Scotland such as castles and other properties. Main index page for our very large history section. Children resources including over 800 children's stories and lots of online and offline games. A bit of a catch-all page where you find loads of pages about music, haggis, scots language, culture, religion, humor and lots more. Our nature page where you can explore information on Scottish Wildlife, Plants, Flowers and lots more. Our weekly newsletters archive. Thousands of pictures of Scotland for you to enjoy. Loads of poetry and stories for you to enjoy with many contributions from visitors to our site. Our very own Webcard program which you can use to send online postcard to friends and relatives. Huge resources about the Scots Diaspora around the world and here is where you can find this information. A continually building information resource on the Scots-Irish who emigrated to Ulster and then onto many parts of the world, especially the USA. Create your own family tree with our special software. You can also import and export gedcom files. Our web-based scottish search engine which is a free resource for Scottish companies as well as Scottish organisations around the world. Current Scottish News headlines and links to Scottish news resources. A range of services, both big and small, that we currently offer. Our Tartan pages, giving you access to information on Tartans as well as tartan search engines. Sponsored by House of Tartan. Our travel section where we have loads of suggested tours of Scotland as well as old historic travel books. A wee collection of videos some of which we've produced ourselves. Learn about the last 100 pages we've added to our site which is updated daily.

Click here to get a Printer Friendly Page
 

Send Flowers

Upon Their Hands They Will Carry you
Page 7


    Rod's class picnic at the end of the year was held at Boomer lake, a site I had never visited. There was a large, covered deck, built out over the water. It was a big and heavy platform and even walking out across it didn't cause any movement of the floor which was directly over the water. At one end of the space was a juke box filled with the latest dance music. The rails around it allowed a person to be able to look down into the red, sienna colored, water which had run off the red clay soil during the spring rains. That hue was so strong the waters looked to be mud moving and rippling. Benches lined the outer edges and there was plenty of room for seating for the folks who were onlookers of the dance floor.

My husband was relaxed and seemed well acquainted with everyone there. The men and their wives were on a first name basis with each other and I felt a little hurt and left out when it was made apparent the group had been socializing for the entire year. This was the first suggestion in our married life that there was to be a separation like this and it was the beginning of having to deal with this arrangement. Apparently it was for this reason Rod has spent most of his time away, rather than studying at home. For the most part of the day I remained aloof, staying apart, and not making any attempt to get to know any of those who were there. I had been slighted and It was a little late in the year to become friends as far as I was concerned. Maybe the joy of association might have relieved some of the heaviness of grief but apparently these people were little interest, in fact weren’t even aware of what I was suffering. This was almost fifty years ago and just the beginning of my realization that the majority of people would be largely uninterested in the pain of a disabled person or of the people caring for that person.  From that experience I made up my mind, no matter what, I would put on a smile, a happy face, totally ignoring anything to stand in the way of what was a Trojan horse filled with divided unity. I didn’t even realize then that I would never fit into Rodney’s world and he would find it difficult to accept mine, although he valiantly tried. Race, religion, the rancher’s culture, beside Rodney’s oil field family’s unbreakable determination, too, gave us a separation in many ways but instead of creating a barrier that seemed to just stimulate our will to work through all of it.

Rod had made a decision, alone, in his usual way, to look for work in Oklahoma City. This too, would become a pattern. All that was left, in Stillwater, was for us to clean up a few small debts, say goodbye to friends of my faith, and to his Uncle's family. After all, they had been my friends and confidants.

His aunt had taken me in and treated me as well as one of her own daughters. She seemed genuinely proud of me. Mary Jane had her master's degree in Home Economics and had taught at the college. She was a well-spring of virtual knowledge as far as running their business, sewing wardrobes for her own college girls, running a small café for their sales lot, and was just generally managing any of the work and services about the town. Her girls were busy with their lives, and she was left to pick up the work there at the cattle sales lot. I learned a lot from Mary Jane Selph Flood. I enjoyed the stories she told about her own family. Her father was a banker and her grandfather had been a doctor who was “engaged” in treating some of the early day outlaws who hid out in his small town close to Stillwater. They simply made payment for the fixing of their gunshot wounds with a sack of money left on the table. Of course, the doctor would not and, in fact, could not ask any questions.

Mary Jane's husband, Ross, suffered a heart attack that year and I remember the day she came by the house to tell me. It was the first time she showed anything that was close to worry. After she had stayed a while to play with the baby, she was up and gone. Her usual personality with a positive, bright, attitude prevailed. We remained friends for all the years and I called her on occasion to visit even after we moved back to Ponta City.

“My friends told me how you have paid off your small debts here,” Mary Jane smiled to me as she went out my door for the last time. “I'm proud of you,” she said.

Pictures of Stillwater, The yellow house is almost identical to the one where we lived:
http://www.reslife.okstate.edu/recruitment/stwpics.html 


Return to section index page