Talking to the Monkey

My children are full of requests. They do not hesitate to ask of me whatever it is that they want. Which is alright as it’s my responsibility to fill their needs, not necessarily their wants, but their needs. I once heard a man tell his daughter that it was his responsibility to provide her with a pair of jeans to cover her butt in the wintertime, but it was not his responsibility, legal or otherwise, to cover it with “designer jeans.” I liked that and have made it my own since then.

When friends ask me what I will be doing over the weekend, I tell them simply that I do not know. I haven’t yet been told by She Who Must be Obeyed. For me, I have no plans, I have instructions. I am instructed where to go, what to do, what to eat, speak and think.

Today, when my children make a request of me I simply tell them, “You’re talking to the monkey. You need to ask the organ grinder.” That’s their cue to go to She Who Must be Obeyed with their request. I’m trying to cultivate in them a proper respect for authority.

Lucky the Squirrel

I’d never seen a baby squirrel. I had seen younger specimens (probably akin to human teenagers) playing in the springtime, doing a lot more playing than the serious work of finding food for then and later (again, probably akin to human teenagers). I just assumed they stayed in their nest, close to their mother, until they became those teenagers.

We lived in Norman at the time, on a tree lined street. Norman is run over with squirrels, a remark probably totally misunderstood and misapplied, and yet appreciated, by people from Stillwater and Austin, Texas. Not far after leaving our driveway, we came upon a small animal, looking something like a small mouse, in the middle of the street. She Who Must be Obeyed ordered me to come to a halt and I did as I was told. She ran out and gathered the thing, barely having any fur on his little body, into her hands and She became the proud owner of a squirrel. Following a visit to the veterinarian, who gave us a formula for making something to feed him, we bought a medicine dropper and accepted him as our new responsibility. The vet had told us that he may have climbed out of the nest and fallen to the ground or his mother may have kicked him out. He said that if she did, it was probably because he was sick. I have since learned that veterinarians sometimes speculate on things now and then.

We got a bird cage and kept it in our bedroom. We would take him out and feed him the formula the vet gave us and watched him grow. There is nothing cuter than a baby squirrel. Of course, a baby anything is cute, but this little animal had a special place in our hearts because of his uniqueness. We would take him out and hold him. He fought a little at first when we placed the dropper to his mouth, but then he tasted the formula and grabbed it with his front feet and drank like a man athirst in a desert. As he got older, he graduated in his diet to Cheerios. That was a learning experience as I did not know he had such ingrained intelligence. He would eat his fill and then take a Cheerio from our hand, jump down on the carpet and go through the motions of burying it. When he finished, the Cheerio was there on top of the carpet but he was satisfied that he had hidden it away for later.

As he continued to grow, we could take him from his cage and allow him to run through the house. He always returned to his cage in the bedroom. And then he started chewing some things which did not need chewing. I still have some books which have corners he damaged. He began to run around and around our hand while holding him, from the palm to the back to the palm. It seemed to be a fun thing for him to use your hand in this manner, much as one in the wild runs around and around a tree branch. After he was through, you would have scratches all over the back of your hand. Whatever he was doing, we enjoyed having him for a very unique pet. And then, puberty set in.

A horny little squirrel is a mean little squirrel. Puberty in a male animal, even a human animal, causes him to want to dominate anything and anyone around. We had named him Lucky when we found him and the name fit. He was lucky he was found by us rather than by Mookie the cat. He was lucky we were willing to feed and nurture him. And now that he was turning mean, he was lucky I didn’t put him in a cooking pot.

We continued to handle him, thinking familiarity with humans would make him a better and calmer animal. What we ended up making, though, was an animal that wasn’t afraid of humans. And the absence of fear makes an animal dangerous; it invites the animal to try to dominate humans. As we continued to handle him, he got a little more aggressive all the time. He added biting to his repertoire of favorite things to do. Not serious biting at first, just gentle nips. Sometimes he would place his mouth on your finger, letting you feel his teeth, and I would marvel at the restraint he would exercise as I gently slipped my finger out of his mouth. But, controlling him was getting more difficult all the time.

One Sunday morning we were getting dressed for church while he was trying to tear heck out of his cage. I was dressed and was waiting for She Who Must be Obeyed when I decided to take him from his cage and try to calm him down while petting him. When I did, he turned vicious and violent. He was going crazy, biting and scratching. Finally, he got my thumb in his mouth and bit down. I heard and felt his teeth crunching down on the bone in my thumb. As the bone in my thumb is not any stronger than a walnut, which he could chew open, I could see in my mind having to go into the hospital with a crushed thumb. I threw him off and he landed somewhere across the room. He turned to come back after me until he saw I was prepared to get hold of him and put him back into his cage. He didn’t exactly back off, he held his ground, baring his teeth and daring me to try to pick him up.

While I was fighting the wild beast, She was in the adjoining bathroom applying the finishing touches of her makeup. I told her what had happened and that I was going to get some leather gloves out of the car. Coming back into the house, She met me at the door with a look of terror on her face, and there was blood all over her white robe. “Lucky attacked me,” She said tearfully. Her hands looked like they had been cut up in a knife fight. She had tried to coax him to her, thinking she could get him back into his cage. But, he had turned on her with a fury normally reserved for wild boars or bears or mountain lions.

Returning to the bedroom, I cautiously opened the door and looked in. Lucky was not to be seen. I stepped inside, closing the door behind me. We had recently painted the woodwork in that room, including the door, a clean white. It had brightened the room. But, when I looked at the door I saw blood smeared all over it and the door facing. There was a heavy covering of bright red blood smeared around the doorknob where She was obviously trying to get the door open so She could escape the mean little devil. There had been an obvious fight and so far that morning it looked like the squirrel was winning.

Lucky appeared on the headboard and glared at me with evil intent. He jumped down on the bed and came toward me. I reached my gloved hand down and he attacked me. He was doing a number on my hand even through the leather gloves. I had hold of him and had no intention of letting him go. I eventually got him back into the cage where he stayed until something could be done with him.

We cleaned the human blood from off the woodwork and laundered the robe. We bandaged the hands of She Who Must be Obeyed and I wondered about Lucky. Perhaps his mother really did kick him out of his nest.

Barry and Me

My first active participation in a presidential campaign was in 1964 when I campaigned for Barry Goldwater. I invested a great deal of time and energy in that losing effort. I handed out flyers, put up posters and talked to just about everyone who would listen to me as I extolled the virtues of Goldwater and conservative politics. Most of my circle of friends and acquaintances were Democrats and were perfectly happy with the direction Franklin Roosevelt had taken the country, beginning just about three decades earlier. Most of them were older than me, and most were kind and considerate as they gently tried to explain why they were going to vote for Lyndon Johnson who promised to continue utilizing government programs as much or even more than did FDR. The irony was that by the time of the election, I would have just turned 20 years old, still, at that time, a year too young to be voting in a federal election.

When I look back on my youthful exuberance, I see a young man completely devoted to conservatism, and not just conservatism, but a radical form of those principals of government. I actually bought into the whole concept of libertarian philosophy. I was fond of the phrase, “Build my roads, fight my wars, and leave me the hell alone.” And, at the time, in my very limited life experiences, I was serious in those sentiments.

I come from a family that benefitted from the politics and domestic policies of Roosevelt. He was elected President of the United States during the Great Depression, the same time period as when my parents came of age. They were children of the depression and recalled vividly the suffering of the people in Western Oklahoma while the area was being ravaged by the Dust Bowl and the worst economic depression the country and the modern world had seen. Tom Brokaw later gave this entire group of people the title, “The Greatest Generation.” I sometimes question whether it is wise to call them a greater generation than any other because it appears every generation plays the hand they are dealt. It’s just that they had had a particularly difficult hand laid out for them and they didn’t have any choice except standing up to their responsibilities; in the game of life you aren’t given the luxury of folding and taking your losses. Perhaps in some instances you can, but not when the survival of your nation is at stake and, in fact, the survival of Western Civilization. But, I don’t believe anyone can say that the generations immediately before and after them would not have gallantly faced and survived the Great Depression and World War II, and flourish in their aftermath.

Our loyalty to the Democratic Party was seriously challenged in the campaign of 1960. Events had weakened the hold it had with the common people even before that. In 1948, the Party had adopted a platform that called for an end to segregation and the Jim Crow laws so prevalent throughout the South. It called for integration and even condemned lynching which was still a not uncommon occurrence against African-Americans. The American South was a dark place which had finally had some light shown on it during and after World War II. The nation saw what was going on in that mysterious region and what it saw was not good. The condemnation of segregation and the Jim Crow laws that enabled it, and even lynchings, caused rebellion in the Democratic Party which resulted in a walk-out of the party by members of the South, the Dixiecrats, who ran their own candidate, Strom Thurmond. These Dixiecrats would eventually find a new home in the Republican Party and in less than two decades would move from being its most stalwart members and supporters to a position whereby they could claim ownership of a second national political party. That mass political migration was racially motivated, inspired and sustained.

The elections of 1952 and 1956 weren’t a referendum on anything. There was a movement developing in the country in the 1950s which eventually resulted in the creation of the John Birch Society in 1958, the precursor of the Tea Party movement of today, and the influence of this movement was evident in the presidential elections of that decade. But, their hatred for Democrats was little more than their hatred for Republicans; they seemed to hate everyone.

The turning point in the elections of the 1950s was the popularity of Eisenhower. As a slogan, “I Like IKE” was an altruism which transcended party lines. Everyone liked IKE, Republicans and Democrats alike.

In 1960, the campaign was ugly; the ugliness raised the specter of religious bigotry. John Kennedy had to make a courtesy call to a group of Baptist ministers and pledge that as the President of the United States he would carry out his responsibilities independent of his own church and independent of the Pope. The very idea that a candidate would have to make such a pledge should be offensive to Americans, and those who currently are haranguing for an American Theocracy should be held to the same level of religious independence as they held the then candidate Kennedy.

My own family, steeped in fundamentalist Christianity, was furnished a strong diet of anti-Catholicism. Suddenly, preachers and others became aware of the Catholic Church. The Bible was read with new interest in prophesies of the New Testament which, in the interpretation of the reader, referenced the Catholic Church and the Papacy. Of course, the interpretation just happened to confirm the suspicions and biases already held by the reader. There was one preacher who had spent his life becoming an “expert” on Catholicism; he spoke on little else. During the campaign of 1960, his services were in great demand as a travelling evangelist. He confirmed our greatest fears and ratified our preconceived notions.

With the continual weakening of public support of the Democratic Party, it was alright for me to support Goldwater in 1964 and still claim to be a nominal Democrat. In Oklahoma, at that time, there were few Republicans. Among elected officials, there were hardly any Republicans whatsoever. In most districts, the results of the primary election determined the officeholder as there were no Republican candidates to field a contest in the general election.

It wasn’t just the decline of the Democratic Party that made it alright for me to campaign for Barry Goldwater. I was being heavily influenced by the Libertarian thoughts of the time, probably due to my youth and youthful ignorance. And, the influence of the John Birch Society, and lesser inflammatory propaganda machines, spreading information on the evil of communism, socialism and big government, had an effect on my own thoughts. But, the primary reason for my endorsement of Goldwater was, probably, that Johnson was the candidate of my father and his generation. I was looking for something different.

While racism did not come into significant play in the campaign of 1964, there was a great deal of campaigning against the poor. It was the beginning of railing against the welfare system, as if that alone was bringing about a decline in America and Western Civilization. Cursing the “welfare state” had been a staple of the Birchers and was quickly becoming a staple of the Republican Party. The peculiar thing about all this is that I had no idea at the time what the John Birch Society was, but I was obviously heavily influenced by their doctrines. And, secondly, I was not too far above the poverty line myself, if any at all. I have often reflected on that time and find my conduct somewhat curious. While I am disappointed in myself and my failure to analyze current events and social problems better in those days, I take some comfort in the fact that I eventually became more astute in my observations and better at applying the teachings of Jesus to my daily life.

I came to understand that the government is not my enemy; it is a tool to be used for the benefit of everyone. Problems were simply too big for us to think we could ignore them. And the problems were too big for a single person or a few people to solve. Neither could we address them by expecting responses from organizations occasionally rushing to aid those less advantaged. Sometimes, droughts were too extreme, storms were too severe, national and regional catastrophes were too serious, and economic recessions and depressions were too destructive for the problems to be addressed by anything or anyone short of the entire corporate body of America. There is only one association in which we are all members; we are all citizens of America, and live under the Constitution of the United States and the government created under the auspices of that Constitution.

When campaigning for Barry Goldwater, I was often dismissed with the observation that, in the mind of my hearer, it was a good thing that I wasn’t old enough to vote. I was trying to convince my father, a child of the Great Depression, that he should consider voting for Goldwater, and in the course of the conversation I made some remark which reflected a haughty attitude toward the poor. He listened for a while and finally said, “Son, your problem is that you’ve never seen a man begging for money to pay for burying his little girl who starved to death.” And, with that, I started to think.

The Stovall

Beckham County Courthouse
Sayre, Oklahoma

There weren’t that many institutions for a kid when I was young, the early part of a transition stage when society was moving from adult-centric to one being focused on youth. We were moving from a culture that honored adults to one that worshipped youth and set kids up as the beneficiaries of our largesse. By being on the wrong side of history and time, I essentially missed both eras. Few things were provided for us as kids but we did have two experiences, dragging Main Street and the Stovall Theater.

“Dragging Main” was something we could do for hours. In Sayre, Main Street was four or five blocks long, depending on where you started counting the west end. The County Courthouse sat at the east end and you could either go to the left, out of town east on State Highway 152, or make an approved U-turn and go back west on the same street. Dragging main had a set pattern. Beginning at the Courthouse, we drove west two blocks to where Main intersected U.S. 66, turned right and drove north on 4th Street (U.S. 66) nearly to the end of town where the highway veered toward the east. A block or so east we circled the Dairy Mart Drive In. Sometimes we stopped there for a drink or fries or their best offering, the Chili Cheese Burger. As we circled we got back on U.S. 66, drove south on 4th Street and back to Main. Turning right on Main, one could drive either one or two blocks west, shoot a “U” and then drive east on Main. At the courthouse, we made another U-turn and started the drive all over again.

If we saw friends afoot, we would stop and give them a ride. Sometimes we would ride together and leave a car sitting for a few rounds. Some nights we had a girl friend with us and others it was just a carload of boys or girls. It was a constant flow of traffic on and around Main Street for hours on end. We could do it because gas was less than a quarter a gallon and we did it because there wasn’t much else to do. An alternative was to stop and go to the movies at the Stovall Theater.


The Stovall was an institution which was born, grew and thrived, and then declined and died before my very eyes. Built, owned and operated by George Stovall, it opened for business June 22, 1950, and provided just about the only entertainment available to young people, and even families, for more than two decades. Of course there were ball games and a few other activities available through the schools but that was about it. The theater was the dominate gathering in town. There were many churches and social groups but there was only one theater. There were surrounding towns and settlements, each with their own schools, social organizations and churches, but there was only one theater. George held sway over the community bringing the world to our little town, thereby laying claim to at least a portion of most of the entertainment dollars, few as they were, which were then available.

He hadn’t always been a theater operator. He became a jobber, involved in the wholesale delivery of gasoline, when he purchased the local Magnolia Oil Company in 1925, along with the Mobil station on South 4th Street. But he moved into the new industry shortly after that. Hollywood was cranking out movies as never before. The industry was converting from silent movies to “talkies” and the public, longing for both entertainment and escapism, was taking to the movies with alacrity. In 1934he built the Rio and claimed his place in the business of theater.

The country was deep in the Great Depression during the 1930s and Sayre and the surrounding area was hit hard, perhaps as hard as or harder than the rest of the country. Not only was there an economic depression, there was also a crippling Dust Bowl over a large area of the Great Plains which included Sayre and most of Western Oklahoma. People were suffering, trying in vain to squeeze productivity out of a land without water. People were jobless, sometimes dying of the most rudimentary problem, starvation. Many people fled the area but many more stayed and tried to cope with the elements, tried to play the hand which they had been dealt.

Those people suffering the depression had to have something to draw their minds off their everyday suffering. They went to the movies, watched Hollywood’s fantasies and imagined themselves in those grand places and glorious costumes doing those exciting things while living those exciting lives. It was in this setting that George built the Rio. In 1936 he bought the Ute Theater from his competitor and from then on he had a monopoly on this type entertainment in Sayre.

I remember the Ute and I think I remember the Rio. We lived on a farm in the Hext community, located between Erick and Sayre. Closer to Erick, it was our town for most purposes. As a small child in the late 1940s, there were three small theaters in Erick, a town of about 1500 people. My family enjoyed going to the movies. The Depression was over, having ended with the public works provided by the Roosevelt Administration and the successful involvement in World War II. But there was still the need for escapism and there was more money available for entertainment than there had been in the 1930s. There were a few times we would go see a movie in every available theater in Erick during a week or weekend and then go see whatever was available in Sayre. This was during the 1940s and on into the 50s for a brief while. Then there were other things that became important to our family and took up our time, thus restricting time we had available to go to the movies. We became involved with church and its activities which took up more of our time and there were, beginning in 1950, four children in elementary school which placed demands on our time as well. These things, together with the introduction of television locally in the mid-1950s, meant our own reduced involvement in the movies.

We attended the Ute Theater often in the latter 1940s. Mainly western fare, the Ute was an enjoyable theater, about the same quality as the ones in Erick. I have many memories of seeing old black and white movies of the 1930s there, along with many westerns of the same era. There was always the standard fare of morality plays, good guys and bad guys. Good guys always won. They rode the fastest horses, shot the fastest and straightest guns, won the fights and gained the hearts of the prettiest girls. Bad men lost. Indians were nearly always bad, an unfortunate stereotype of early Hollywood. One time I even remember seeing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a black and white silent movie. It was the only silent movie I ever saw in a theater.

In 1950, sixteen years into the industry, George built the Stovall and shortly afterwards closed the Ute. (The Rio had been closed earlier.) The Stovall was a grand theater for that day. A single screen theater, everything was new and beautiful. The architectural style of the theater is often spoken of as western but a closer look reveals a mid-twentieth century modern appearance. The box office was just off the right side of the entrance and there was a large and inviting lobby in which you entered. George or another family member was there to take the ticket you had just purchased from the box office. There were two entrances into the theater itself from the lobby and a large concession stand was situated against the wall between the two entrances. You could get just about everything from that concession stand. It was my first experience getting pickle juice or a “pickle Coke.” I would buy a nickel’s worth of pickle juice which was the limit they would sell you. They didn’t want you getting sick during the movie. There was a boy’s restroom off to the left of the lobby and, I assume, a girl’s to the right. That was the first place I ever saw a urinal built into the floor. While the “standing urinal” is one of humankind’s better inventions, to build it right into the floor was a work of genius. The only way to make it better would be to construct an artificial tree in the middle of the restroom with drains all around the bottom in the floor.

The screen was larger than any I had seen before although it was probably not any larger than most in other towns. Two aisles with three sections of seating, there was a larger section in the center and smaller ones on each side. It was a good theater. The facilities were clean and beautiful. They were comfortable. The movie selections continued to be the morality plays, mainly westerns, that didn’t change much. Color movies became commonplace and Hollywood started making some epics. Stars became bigger than life. The MGM musicals of the 50s all made their way to the Stovall.

I attended high school in Sayre, graduating in 1962. I dragged main and I went to the Stovall. I watched many movies, some not worth the time I invested and some leaving an impression on me I will never forget. I took dates to the Stovall, sometimes went alone and sometimes met friends there. There was usually someone there I could sit with. One of the things we did back then that I still find quite amusing was that we would go to the movies when it was convenient, often coming in after the movie was already in progress. We would go in, take our seats and watch from that point forward. We would watch to the conclusion, watch the credits, the advertisements, the previews and the comedy and then begin the feature film. When it got to the point where we came in, we would get up and leave.

George would walk up and down the aisles from time to time. He carried a flashlight in his pocket and used it when he needed to see better or call attention to someone or something. We were expected to behave. We could hold hands, put our arms around our date’s shoulder and maybe sneak a kiss now and then. Sometimes there was a little more than that but it wasn’t openly tolerated. Not by our parents, not by our social structure and not by George. He demanded and he received respect and proper behavior. I never saw him eject anyone from the theater but I always knew he could and assumed he would.

I graduated in 1962 and left town. From time to time I would return to Sayre and go to the movies. With improvement in television, the movies took a beating. They couldn’t compete for a time. George, like the rest of us, got older and the day came he couldn’t run the theater anymore. And then he wasn’t there at all except in a memory, a cherished memory. The theater changed hands and Barbara Lewis completely rebuilt the interior, putting in a smaller screen and reducing the seating capacity. The outside was in a state of disrepair. It closed and someone else tried to reopen it. Finally it closed for the last time. It sits there on Main Street, a block from the courthouse, recognizable to those of us who came to see her and her offerings of entertainment in better days. The owner advertises that she is for sale and more than one of us looks at her longingly, wondering if we could possibly take it over and make a go of it. Probably not.

The Ute and the Rio are gone. The Stovall is also nothing more than a memory. George is gone. His daughter, Micki, is a dear friend of mine. We dated in high school and went to the movies in a neighboring town. Her dad walked the aisles of the Stovall.