Description:
Sisters Jeannee Adams and Patricia Hall talk about their lives growing up in Oklahoma City.
Interviewee: Jeannée Adams, Patricia Hall
Interviewer: Patricia Hall, Jeannée Adams
Interview Date: 04/29/2008
Interview Location: Oklahoma City Library
Transcribed on: 12/10/2017-1/14/2018
Jeannée Adams (JA): Well, we’re sisters. Patty and Jeannée Vahlberg were our maiden names. Only, Patty really is Patricia (laughs), as she reminded me this afternoon. But, uh, we were born here in Oklahoma City. I was born the eldest on March 31, 1927. So that makes me about 81 right now. Patty, how about you?
Patricia Hall (PH): And I was born on September 22, 1929, one month before the Great Depression. But I was awfully young and just don’t even remember it.
PH: In fact, both of us were discussing it, and we decided that we…neither one of us really realized that there was a depression. Our parents just got through it, I guess real good, and uh, we’ve been told that, that we did have to eat over at our grandparents house quite a bit.
JA: Well Granddad was County Treasurer, and he was the only one making a living right then (laughs). So—cause my father was an architect. And, uh, our father sort of looked at four walls, and I remember that, Mother and Daddy saying that they had to max out their withdrawals from his insurance, his GI insurance, in order to be able to get through the Depression. He was kind of like the book that said, you know, they would, he would—Ayn Rand, I think, uh, where the architect in that particular book would, uh, give anything just to design a doghouse (laughs).
PH: Well, we both grew up here in Oklahoma City, went through our school here all of our public school life. Uh, first attended Gatewood Grade School, then Taft Junior High School, then Classen High School, which was the old Classen High School. Uh, then, uh, you graduated in 1945, and I graduated in 1947.
JA: Right.
PH: Uh, then, uh, our, was it, you said our parents were, uh, Grace and Walter Vahlberg, and they both—Their, their parents—neither one of them were born here in Oklahoma City.
JA: No.
PH: But, uh, their parents brought them when they were just, young. Mother was just a baby
JA: She was close to, she was 9 months old. It was 1904. And Daddy was, uh, about the same, cause there was a seven year difference between them, after they were married. And, our par—Our maternal grandparents came from Wyoming, Illinois.
PH: It’s around there.
JA: We don’t really know why, other than feel that probably Granddad, uh, his father had died, and his older brother had died, and the burden of the farm was on his shoulders. And, besides the burden of the farm, he had the burden of three sisters and the mother. And, I think it got to be, got to be a little bit too much for him.
PH: Well, we’ve always felt that was the way it was. But for any reason, some reason they, uh, they come down here, and we’re glad they did, cause I’m an Oklahoman and I’m gonna stay an Oklahoman (laughs).
JA: Me too.
PH: Daddy came from Ark, Hot Springs, Arkansas. And, originally, his family came from Eva, Evanston, Indiana and, uh, before that Germany. So they really were immigrants but didn’t get over until about the 1850s. But, uh, uh, Grandfather moved down to Hot Springs from there when he was of age and, uh, did various jobs. Did, uh, had a grocery store, and then worked for the, uh, the City in the park department, and then became City Clerk and uh, uh, eventually he, I guess didn’t, didn’t win the election the one time, and so not too long after that they decided to come to Oklahoma, or maybe he had this in his mind all along, I don’t know. But they moved over to Oklahoma City, and that’s where our parents finally met.
JA: That was about 1903.
PH: mmm-hmm
JA: They came just a year before the Vorhees family. And, uh, Granddad, I think, Granddad Vahlberg, our father’s, uh, father, uh, he had been in politics over in Hot Springs, and uh, he had been elected County, I mean City Clerk, and when he came here he began to move toward that. And he became a member of the Oklahoma City Park Board. And then he was one of the, Patty, what was it?
PH: Uh, oh, I wrote it down. Oh, the, uh, School—
JA: School Land!
PH: The School Land Board. And then for some reason he decided to run for County Treasurer, and that lasted for 20 years. He was County Treasurer—
JA: At least 20 years. And while he was on the Park Board, one of the things that they were doing, and he was a part of, very proud of it, was, uh, uh, laying out and planning for the Grand Boulevard around, encircling the city. That was the first belt line that we had, was Grand Boulevard. Just bits and pieces of it are left now. You know, talking about the Depression, some of the things that I remember were the fact that Grandmother and Mother made all our dresses. We didn’t know what it was to have a store-bought dress, and it was about the time when I was 13 when I had my first store-bought dress. I imagine you probably got one not too long after that. (laughing) You always did get stuff just after I did.
PH: Or at the same time, even though I wasn’t as old.
JA: Right. And, uh, the other thing was, you know, like you said, we ate a lot at Grandmother and Granddad’s, we spent the night over there a lot. And that was, kind of—
PH: Mother and Dad had to work through, through the night quite a bit.
JA: Right.
PH: Trying to get, uh, specifications done, and things done, so that Daddy could earn, earn a little bit of money.
JA: And that sort of was when, uh, they came out, uh, the Depression started to uh, people started to get out of the Depression. And they were begin—jobs were beginning. Roosevelt had the WPA and the PWA, and Daddy got a lot of work there.
PH: I remember when Roosevelt came through Oklahoma City.
JA: Uh-huh. I do to.
PH: And, uh, Daddy’s office was on the—Well, we think maybe the third floor, we’re not sure which floor, but it wasn’t a very high floor, of the Hightower building.
JA: Right.
PH: And, uh, the motorcade came right down—
JA: Hudson.
PH: Hudson Street.
JA: Yeah.
PH: And, uh, so we were up in his office looking out, and we saw Roosevelt just waving at all the people.
JA: Right. And it was, uh, interesting, too, during, during that time that led up to the war. Uh, most of the business was in schools, and Daddy did a lot of churches, and he did a lot of courthouses across the state, too.
PH: Yeah, but he didn’t like to do homes, cause he—
JA: No.
PH: People were too picky he said (laughs).
JA: Right. Right.
PH: But, uh, but he did them all. Many churches, municipal buildings, and schools all over the state.
JA: And the way he got to be an architect, was interesting, too.
PH: Yes.
JA: He went into World War I, 1918, he was there for about a year. Before that, though, he quit high school. He decided that he was going to apprentice himself to architects. And one of them was Layton and Forsythe. And if you remember, they were the ones that did the state capitol. I had forgotten but, uh—
PH: I reminded you.
JA: You did re, did tell me.
PH: Yeah.
JA: But, he, uh, came back from the war, and they had a GI Bill, and when he, uh, was mustered out, he said, okay now, he said he wanted to take advantage of it. And he said, “Okay.” And he said, “I want to be an architect.” They said, “Okay, you can go to Oklahoma State University.” Or, it wasn’t a university at the time, it was just A&M.
PH: Right.
JA: He said, “No. Not at all. If I can’t go to MIT, I’m not going.” So, they kind of hustled around, I guess, and gave him his GI Bill at MIT. And even though he never finished high school, he went to MIT and did two years of post-graduate and graduate work. And the, and the interesting thing we found was a clipping of our father standing by a car, and the headlines were, “Local Boy Makes It to Boston.” And he had driven this Ford all the way from Oklahoma City to Boston in 8 days with only one tire puncture. Which I, they say was a pretty good thing.
PH: Yeah, and growing up in Oklahoma City was, uh, uh, really good. I, I feel like we had a good education, and uh, uh, it was fun. I remember, in our neighborhood, uh, there was only three girls and the rest of them were all boys (laughs). And uh, so we got to play all the boys’ games.
JA: Right.
PH: And uh, kick the can, ride bi—We always rode bicycles and roller skates, and, uh, played jacks on the front porch all the time, and uh, hide, hide and seek—
JA: Oh yeah.
PH: And, uh, different kinds of games. And had a lot of fun, you know, we didn’t feel like we were deprived at all.
JA: And we’d take a card table out in the front yard, cover it with a blanket, and make our tent, our little house.
PH: Yes, yes.
JA: And then we’d throw a, Daddy had a, I think it was a feather bed wasn’t it? Something like a feather mattress?
PH: Well,summer nights—
JA: Uh-huh, summer nights.
PH: We’d take mattresses, they’d take mattresses out in the backyard and sleep there all night. Til we got—
JA: You didn’t remember, but it sure got cold before dawn, and that’s when we pulled the sheet up.
PH: Or went inside.
JA: Yeah, or went inside.
PH: Mm. And it was fun. We enjoyed it, we—
JA: Tell, tell the, tell about the Dust Bowl, I mean—
PH: Oh, well, the earl, some of the earliest memories I have is of, uh, standing on—We had a bay window, and the couch was right there in it, and I was standing on the couch looking out the window, and it was just orange. The air was just orange.
JA: In the middle of the day. Uh-huh. Mother would hold it down tight. Of course, the dust would still come in the house, and we’d have to help do a little bit of dusting, and picking up. The skies were orange. I remember that. Really orange.
PH: Yes. Those were, I guess, terrible days, but that’s, that’s all I remember about. Well, thank goodness (laughs)
JA: Me too.
PH: Well, did you, uh, you had a nickname. Do you want?
JA: Oh, Patty.
PH: (laughs) Do you want to mention it?
JA: You would do that.
PH: (laughs) Well, my nickname’s Patty. And your…
JA: Well, my nick—My name never did lend itself to anything, really, except that Patty used to call me Née-Née.
PH: Because I couldn’t say Jeannée.
JA: She couldn’t say Jeannée. It kind of stuck. And it had its life period because everybody would say (imitating a horse) “Oh, she’s a horse. She’s neigh.”
PH: Oh, well I don’t remember
JA: Don’t you remember that? I do. I do.
PH: Well, you would, of course
JA: But now I’m Aunt Née and Grandma Née, and I’m kind of proud of that.
PH: Yes.
JA: Patty started it.
PH: Yes. Oh goodness, well, that’s all
JA: We did, uh--
PH: Our—
JA: We didn’t tell about Gate, the Gatewood addition.
PH: No, we, uh, lived in the Gatewood addition, so that’s why we went to Gatewood, but, uh, back then we thought nothing of walking to school.
JA: Uh-uh.
PH: I guess a lot of kids walk to school now, but, uh, it was only about three blocks and we walked to grade school every day and back home. Uh, in fact, sometimes, well, generally I rode the—when we went to junior high, I rode the city bus. Did you, d-did you?
JA: Yeah, we had tickets for it.
PH: And I, uh, I, uh, a lot of times me and some of my girlfriends, we’d walk home on pretty days.
JA: And I always walked to high school, too. ‘Cause that was during gas ration times.
PH: Yes, during—
JA: Once in a while, Mother might pick us up, but not very often. We’d walk back and forth. And to get the car during that time was really a big deal. Once in a while we go the car, we got to drive.
PH: Yeah. And when we learned to drive, we learned to drive on a stick shift car.
JA: You better believe it, yeah.
PH: That’s all they had at that time.
JA: Stick shift.
PH: We used to go to movies a lot. Remember going to church with our grandparents would always take us to church.
JA: mm-hm.
PH: And afterwards, a lot of times we would eat, uh, maybe at Bishop’s.
JA: Uh-huh.
PH: Or at the Skirivin.
JA: Uh-huh.
PH: And, uh, then go to a movie, because Grandmother Vahlberg loved to go to movies.
JA: Boy, she really did.
PH: mm-hm.
JA: And I remember seeing that first Shirley Temple movie that had the birthday in color.
PH: Oh, now I don’t remember that.
JA: Little Colonel.
PH: Oh, uh-huh. Uh, yeah.
JA: But we uh, we would, we’d eat at Bishop’s. One of the things that I always did was, once in a while I’d say, “Could I have a shrimp cocktail?”
PH: (laughs)
JA: And if Daddy had a little money, he’d let me have a shrimp cocktail along with the meal.
PH: We were extremely lucky, too, because our father loved to travel, and we got to go on many trips, uh that were very educational as well as fun. Uh, I guess about the first trip we went to, went on, was out California.
JA: Right. Christmas time.
PH: Uh-huh.
JA: And we were afraid that Santa Claus wasn’t going to find us.
PH: Right.
JA: And Mother and Daddy made sure we had stockings.
PH: And we put them up in our little berth, and next morning, Santa Claus had been there.
JA: Yeah.
PH: And left dolls, and I think a Mickey Mouse watch? Was that the time we got the Mickey Mouse watch?
JA: I don’t remember if it—I don’t remember.
PH: But, anyway—
JA: Probably was.
PH: Yeah. Went, uh, we stopped at the Grand Canyon and, and saw it. And, uh, then out in California we, uh, went and saw the Rose Bowl Parade and the Rose Bowl Game.
JA: Uh-huh. We visited our Great Aunt Emma on Mother’s side.
PH: uh-huh.
JA: That was Grandmother Vorhees’s sister.
PH: Yes.
JA: And her daughter, Lucille. And then we went to the, uh—Daddy was a big football fan, so when Oklahoma for the first time played Tennessee in the Rose Bowl and the—
PH: Orange Bowl.
JA: Orange Bowl. And, uh, we went with the Tankersleys and the uh—What was the other family? I can’t remember right now.
PH: I can’t either. Well, I—
JA: The Wetzels! Wetzels.
PH: Yeah, but we met them down there. They didn’t drive.
JA: No, I guess not.
PH: We, we, the two—
JA: The Tankersleys and us drove down.
PH: Drove down to Florida.
JA: Grandmother went with us. And, uh, we drove down through the Tennessee Valley Authority and saw all the dams, and then went on down to the Florida, went to the, the Rose, uh, the, uh—
PH: Orange Bowl game.
JA: Orange Bowl. And then we went to Cuba.
PH: Right, and we spent New Year’s over there.
JA: And we spent New Year’s over there in the car with Grandmother, because she would not go into a night club. Mother and Daddy did, but of course we weren’t allowed to. Do you remember when we stopped by that, it was a cigar factory, I think; we were sitting in the car and all these little kids came up
PH: Yes, I’ll never forget it.
(laughing)
JA: And they, well you tell what happened.
PH: Well, they thought I was Cuban and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t talking to them.
JA: That’s right.
PH: But we had been swimming that day, and my hair was real frizzy, and I was dark-skinned, you know, from a tan and everything, and, uh, so I guess I looked Cuban.
JA: I always thought that was funny.
PH: Yes. Well—
JA: You just couldn’t, you just couldn’t speak Spanish.
PH: And then we got to go to the World’s Fair in 1939.
JA: Right.
PH: In New York City. Took a ship, a boat, from Galveston to New York.
JA: Uh-huh. With Aunt Mariana and Mother.
PH: And, uh, then, uh—
JA: Daddy flew in.
PH: Mm-hmm. And we had a—that was a wonderful experience, and the first time we ever heard of television or knew anything about television.
JA: That’s right.
PH: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
JA: Matter of fact, they had a, an exhibit of the television.
PH: Right.
JA: And you could go in and be televised, and then you could go back out and watch—
PH: And watch yourself.
JA: --your other, you know, your family as they went through, get televised. That was really something.
PH: Yes, it was. And, uh, we also, um, got to go to Hawaii.
JA: Uh-huh, that was at Christmas.
PH: That was in nine, 1940.
JA: uh-huh.
PH: And we arrived on Christmas Day.
JA: uh-huh.
PH: We went by ship from California. And, uh—
JA: Uh-huh. The, the, uh—
PH: Matsonia.
JA: Matsonia. And that was called the old tub, because—And we found out why. Because there was a storm, and—We were asleep in our bunks, and all of a sudden, everything became still. And it jerked way up one way—
PH: It rolled up as far as it could on one side and—
JA: Right, and then it stopped, and rolled over as far as it could on the other side.
PH: And you could hear dishes clanging from both sides—
JA: Right.
PH:--down in the dining room.
JA: And it landed in a trough.
PH: Yes.
JA: And, uh, boy that was something.
PH: And we were seasick.
JA: Yeah, I was seasick a long time.
PH: But they took care of us. They put us on deck chairs.
JA: uh-huh.
PH: And just catered to us, remember?
(laughing)
JA: Yeah. Daddy was the only one that didn’t get seasick.
PH: Do you have any favorite stories from school? Anything that you can think of that…?
JA: Favorite stories from school.
PH: I, uh, I can’t think of anything off-hand.
JA: Oh, I can tell one! Was in the cafeteria--as a matter of fact, I was at Gatewood last week with the Gate, with some of the guys that went to Gatewood in my class. And, uh, we meet for lunch, oh, whenever Don Bolen decides that we’re gonna do it, or Van Barber. And we went by the cafeteria, and I remembered when I went home one day and told Mother that I’d had steak for lunch, and it was sure good. And, so, she thought…finally, she found out, she told me, “That was liver, Honey.”
(laughing)
JA: I did not like liver. That’s the only time I did like liver. It was crazy.
PH: Did you ever, uh, have a perfect day when you were young? One, a day that you thought was just perfect?
JA: A day that I thought was just perfect.
PH: And what did you think it, life would be like, when you got older?
JA: I never thought what my life would be like.
PH: You, know I—
JA: Because my life has been like anything other than what I would have thought of.
(laughing)
PH: I ne, I don’t think I ever thought about it either. Uh, I was just having too much fun in the present.
JA: Yeah. Well, that’s kind of the way Mother was. You’re much like Mother in that respect. She never lived in the past. She was always in the present.
PH: Right, Right. We both attended school, uh, college, away from here.
JA: Mm-hmm. And we went to Mills College in Oakland, California. It’s a women’s college. And I remember that when, uh—I got a scholarship there for the first year. And uh, I was, Patty didn’t, you didn’t even know this, but I was very shy, very insecure in myself, in my abilities all through junior high and high school. And, uh, I decided very definitely when I went away that that had to change. And so that was my, I guess that was my thrust for that first year. And it happened; I changed. She says I’m very verbal. I had to become very verbal. But, uh, it was the most wonderful experience. And of course, going away and being on your own away from your family and independent, uh, you just, were ready to do all kinds of things. We’d go over to San Francisco. And I remember going up the streets, they had little carts that had flowers. And violets have always been my favorite flower, and I would always go get a little bouquet of violets when I would go over to San Francisco. And your experience, I’m sure, was different.
PH: Well, I went over to San Francisco a lot. I used to go to the opera and other, plays and other things, shopping. Uh, it was a fascinating city. And, uh, they had wonderful eating places and—
JA: Oh yes.
PH: Uh, which we enjoyed, too.
JA: I learned to eat a lot of things that I had never eaten before.
(laughing)
PH: And, but—
JA: Then we went back down to OU.
PH: Right. You always have to come home, I think, anyway.
JA: Well, Daddy sort of indicated that he—
PH: He always wanted us to graduate from OU, I think.
JA: Yeah, from Oklahoma University.
PH: Right. And we did.
JA: ‘Cause he never, you know he never had.
PH: You taught.
JA: Mm-hmm.
PH: And I started working for Oklahoma Natural Gas Company, and uh, wound up in Muskogee. And, uh, there I met my future husband. And, uh, and we have stayed in Oklahoma, and we now live in Tahlequah. He is part Cherokee, so we’re, uh, involved in all kinds of things over there.
JA: Now, yeah. I do remember one time, though, it was early on in your marriage, when I was over there. And, uh, for some reason the fact that Harold was part Cherokee came up, and he said, “But I can’t understand why these darned Indians let these cars rot in the woods.”
(laughing)
PH: Well, he’s, yeah.
JA: I got a real kick out of that.
PH: Oh, we both—
JA: He was always the, very much the woodsman, and he was executive for the Boy Scouts in that area.
PH: Yes, he, he was that for several years and enjoyed it and, uh, had a good, good relationship. He ran some of the Boy Scout camps in the, uh, Tulsa, uh, for the Tulsa Council, as well as for the Muskogee Council. And uh, he loved that, because he’s an out, outdoor person, loves to fish. And, uh—
JA: He’d rather fish than anything.
PH: Just about. In fact, the, the weather this, uh, spring has really kept him from going fishing much.
(laughing)
JA: It’s, it’s been kind of, of a, a, bad thing.
PH: Lakes, the lakes are too high, and they’re too, too dirty. Mm-hmm.
JA: Yeah. Well, you know there were some other things that I remember, uh, particularly about World War II and the gas rationing, and sugar, and coffee. Nylons had just come on, and they were wiped away. We kept our silk hose as long as we could. I re—you don’t remember this, but I do remember putting them in a jar. Putting them in the refrigerator, that was supposed to keep them. Now whether it did or not, I don’t know. But those awful, awful rayon hose that sagged and bagged.
PH: Yeah. Well I remember in, especially in the summer time, we used to, uh, uh, it’s, you know, you didn’t wear hose, but you weren’t, maybe you weren’t tan, we had a, what you call a liquid hose or something.
JA: Oh, yeah.
PH: And then, hose used to have a seam up the back and you’d take a, a dark pencil—
(laughing)
JA: Yes.
PH: A dark eyebrow pencil, and put your seam up the back of your leg.
(laughing)
JA: I really don’t know how that must have looked. It must have looked terrible, but we thought it was great.
PH: But, uh, but, uh, as a friend of mine, might say nylons were the greatest invention since peanut butter.
JA: Probably
(laughing)
JA: And I remember some other other—You know, we really were fortunate, because, uh, even though our parents weren’t rich or anything like that, they saw that we were involved in a lot of things. And we were able to take dancing. Toe, tap, and ballet. Down at the old Shrine building.
PH: mm-hmm.
JA: Which is now the, where the Bombing was, occurred.
PH: Oh.
JA: In that building.
PH: Yeah, that is.
JA: At the west end.
PH: Oh. I didn’t realize that—
JA: But that was the old Shrine Building. Shrine Auditorium.
PH: I don’t think I ever realized that.
JA: Yeah. It was. It was the Journal of Record Building after the Shrine Building. And, uh, I think about those days a lot. And then, we also, uh….Well, I don’t know, we just, uh--
PH: Well we could, we could go—We had took piano lessons and such. And our piano teacher, uh, lived not too far from us, right across the street.
JA: Oh, Mrs. Simpson is the one—
PH: But that taught us.
JA: Mrs. Simpson is the one that was across the street from Gatewood.
PH: No, she was our, our dance teacher.
JA: No, that was Gertrude Cox-Sims.
PH: Oh, Sims, okay. Close.
JA: And Mrs. Simpson—
PH: Close.
JA: Close. And Mrs. Simpson was the one who lived in the two-story house across west from Gatewood School.
PH: Yeah. Gertrude Cox-Sims. I also took uh, uh, speech lessons, uh, down at the, auditorium.
JA: Oh!
PH: At the old auditorium. And we’d go down, take the trolley down.
JA: Yeah.
PH: From high school after school.
JA: Yeah. Sixth, er, 18th Street station? Yeah, 18th Street station.
PH: You were telling me today about, uh, when World War II was declared.
JA: Uh-huh. Oh yeah.
PH: Go ahead.
JA: You didn’t remember that.
PH: And I didn’t remember, uh, these things, but you go ahead and tell about it.
JA: Well, it was a Sunday. December 7th. And of course, we’d been to Hawaii the year before. And we knew, I remember, the Duvall boy, us, you know he was uh, uh, the son of Mrs. Lawrence?
PH: Mm-hmm.
JA: And, uh, he came and saw us. He was a marine.
PH: He was in the marines over there.
JA: And he talked a lot about the fact that the really didn’t—They were very careful when they came to town and they always wore their civvies, because there’d been a lot of knifings in alleyways and so on. So there were, there was unsettling, there were set, unsettling events all during that time in 1940. And maybe a little before, but definitely 1940 leading up to ’41. And we’d come home from church. We always laid down on the floor and looked at the newspapers, which had Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and all that good stuff. Futuristic stuff. And uh, I don’t remember who heard, but we kept hearing some voices. And finally, I don’t know whether I went to the door, or Daddy, or Mother, and we kind of heard in the background, “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” And down from Pennsylvania came this kid with his big bag of newspapers. And as he came down you could tell what he was saying. “Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Pearl Harbor Attacked!” Well, that just really upset the apple cart with all of us, because Colonel and Mrs. Farnsworth were friends of Mother and Daddy, and they were at Hickam Field. And the rest of the day, Daddy tried to call Hickam Field and never got an answer. Finally communicated with them later on, but that’s how we learned about Pearl Harbor. It was on that same Sunday later on.
PH: I remember when we were over in Hawaii the year before, Daddy had a movie camera.
JA: Mm-hmm.
PH: And, uh, we were in a, uh, well we had a, a, a driver that was taking us around, uh, on a tour.
JA: Right.
PH: And Daddy was trying, we, as we past Pearl Harbor, Daddy was taking pictures and he speeded up. He says, “You can’t take pictures.”
JA: I, I hadn’t remembered that.
PH: You can’t take pictures. And, uh, we—
JA: A long time.
PH: It surprised us.
JA: Uh-huh.
PH: Of course, we know now why.
JA: Yeah, we do. Definitely.
PH: Well, I, I think that, um, all-in-all, we had a wonderful childhood. And uh,
JA: And, you know, the, you know, the fact that, uh—It just, it just brings to mind at my age, the fact that I have two Japanese daughters-in-laws. And, uh, they’re beautiful people. And I’ve been to Japan three times. It’s a beautiful country, and the people are wonderful. It’s when some people in a country decide that they must have something, and they fight for it. Or they…raid their neighbor for it, whatever. They want, they want to dominate. And it isn’t the fact of whether they’re Japanese, German, American, whatever. It’s the people that want the power. And it’s too bad that we have to—I’ve always felt that it’s too bad that we have to put blame on people who are innocent.
PH: But that’s who always gets the blame.
JA: But that seems to be the world.
PH: Yes. You’re right.
JA: I know, I remember in high school, when I went to high school, I wanted to take German. Because Grandmother and Granddad were, or Granddad Vahlberg was from Germany. Second, first generation, I guess, in the United States in his family. But I hesitated, and I hesitated because we were at war with Germany. I didn’t have the guts to do it.
PH: Were they even teaching it?
JA: Yes, they were.
PH: Were they? I’m surprised.
JA: I took Spanish instead.
PH: They weren’t teaching it when I was in high school.
JA: Well, they may not have been. But one way or another, it’s, it’s funny how things happen and why. Well, there has to be something happy after this.
(laughing)
JA: I guess one of the happiest things that I remember is when, when we started our families. You had the first girl, and I had the first boy.
PH: And you had the second girl, and I had the second boy (laughter)
JA: But I had, yeah. And of course the two middle ones, Rob and Barbie, are just three months apart.
PH: Right.
JA: And then we had many happy days going back and forth to Tahlequah. Floating the river, and uh—
PH: Skiing on the lake.
JA: Skiing on the lake. And I guess, except for a few Christmases, we have never missed being together, either at my house or your house, and originally at Mother’s.
PH: That’s right.
JA: We used to always have Christmas at Mothers. And everybody came, including Mrs. Buttree, Aunt Marie, Uncle Guy, and my in-laws that were in town.
PH: Sure. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
JA: So those were always happy times.
PH: Yes they were. Well, I guess that pretty well ends our—
JA: I think so. We probably talked long enough.
(laughing)
PH: But it’s been fun reminiscing.
JA: It has been. It’s not exhausting. Oh, I do know something we need to say.
PH: Okay.
JA: We have been working for close to ten years on genealogy scrapbooks. So, Barbie, Sandy, Rob, Mark just remember that all of this is for you, and these CDs will be part of your heritage. And, uh, the books flesh out what we’ve tried to say in a very brief time.
PH: Thanks.
JA: Love you.
PH: Love you, too.