An Old-Time Easter

The following story is an excerpt from The Heritage of Etta Bend. It’s a story my mother told me, an old-time Easter, about her childhood in northeast Oklahoma. The “I” is my mother, Susie Latty Day. I thought it was appropriate for this Easter,  more than 100 years after it happened. Mom told me this […]

Rain, a Hundred Years Ago

Rain, a Hundred Years Ago

  On this rainy spring day, I’m thinking about long ago Etta and my Latty family. It would be dark on the farm at this hour, house lit only by kerosene lamps, no outdoor lights at all. Pappy would take a lantern as he walked through the rain, across the road to the barn to […]

Keeping the Hearth Fire Burning

Keeping the Hearth Fire Burning

  Maybe it’s because October is here and with its arrival, the promise of cooler weather. Crisp days and nights make me think of much chillier temps and that, of course, leads to the thoughts of the fireplace. So, why do I have a life-long love of fireplaces? Could it be because Irish ancestors sat […]

Easter and the Easter Egg Tree

Easter and the Easter Egg Tree

  The following story is an excerpt from The Heritage of Etta Bend, a story my mother told me about her childhood in northeast Oklahoma. The “I” is my mother, Susie Latty Day. Mom told me this story and I wrote it to be included in The Heritage of Etta Bend in 1989. It was […]

When Grandma Bohannon Came to Etta Bend

When Grandma Bohannon Came to Etta Bend

The Heritage of Etta Bend and Remembering Etta Bend are books of the stories of my mother’s childhood on a thriving Oklahoma farm in the last century. My cousin Carolyn Cochran Karinen drew the cover pictures for both books. Then, as now, everyone was glad to see signs of spring and know that the long […]

Starting Points

Starting Points

  Sometimes I think back to Etta Bend, to the middle child in a family of three girls and one boy who grew up there, as the starting point for my family, at least for my mother’s branch. Then, of course Dad’s side had another starting point in Mena, Arkansas. From those beginnings came (so far) five, […]