Oral History: Glenna Miller and Maria Lemke

Description:

Transcript:

Interviewee: Glenna Miller and Maria Lemke 

Interviewer: Susan Pierce 

Interview date: 11/20/07 

Interview location: Unknown 

Transcription Date: 6/18/20 

 

Susan (S): I’m Susan Pierce and I’m so glad to get to talk to my mom today: Glenna Mary Grant Miller. Good morning. 

 

Glenna Miller (G): Good morning 

 

S: Tell a little bit about where you were born.  

 

G: I was born in Garvin County, but it was a historic spot--has a history marker there now, Fort Arbuckle. It was established, I think in the 1840’s. And my great-great grandfather bought that when the fort was demilitarized or whatever after the Civil War and gradually added land to that. So that’s where I was born and that’s where I grew up, Fort Arbuckle, which is about seven miles west of the little town of Davis, Oklahoma. I was actually born in a log cabin. The house was a big two-story white frame house, but originally it had been officer’s quarters, two big log cabins with a connecting hallway, when the fort was established there. So, it really was a log cabin, although you couldn’t see it any longer. There on the grounds, when I was a little girl, there was a great big barn that we used as a hay barn but that was the commissary when it was a fort. And I remember there was this small building that said ‘office’ over the door. That’s where we kept saddles, but that was their office. And there were a number of other buildings there; I remember a washroom and some others I can’t remember. They’re all gone now except one little building with an original rock chimney. Mostly, the rest of the remains are gone. People found lots-- and still do somewhat—find lots of arrowheads, mini-balls, old relics from the Indians of that time and from the military people that were there. They actually never fought a battle there, but they did have lots of military people stationed there at one time. That was long gone by the time I was a little girl.  

 

S: So in the 1840’s the fort was there to protect the settlers, and maybe the Indians as well, from each other? 

 

G: Really the civilized Indians. I’ve just recently realized that the civilized Indians, when they were forced from their homes in the southeast, they also displaced Indians that already had space here, the Comanche, the Kiowa, others. This was their place. But when the government took the Civilized Tribes out and brought them to Oklahoma— 

 

S: Including our people, the Choctaw on the Trail of Tears. 

 

G: Including our people the Choctaw of course, there was a little hostility towards that. They established this fort to try and protect the Civilized Indians from what they called the ‘Plains Indians.’ So that was really the function of Fort Arbuckle originally. 

 

S: So, we had family here at that time that came over on the Trail of Tears. Did we have any of your father’s—the non-Indian— family here at that time? The Scotts, yes? 

 

G: The non-Indian would have been my great-great grandfather, I think they called him a sutler, and he worked at, I guess the commissary anyway, a store there at the fort. When the thing was disassembled, he was able to purchase land from the government that had been Fort Arbuckle. He is the one who married a Choctaw woman, and that is our heritage.  

 

S: His name was Grant. 

 

G: His name was Grant. 

 

S: Stella tells about the Choctaw woman coming on a train. No, she came on the Trail of Tears. 

 

G: No, she [presumably the person who came via train] wasn’t Choctaw; that was the next generation. 

 

S: Oh, okay. 

 

G: The Choctaw woman that was my great-great grandmother, I suppose must have been on that Trail of Tears. They came from Alabama to this part of Oklahoma. And the woman that came on the train then would have been her daughter-in-law that their son fell in love with at first sight.  

 

S: As soon as she stepped off the train, he said that’s the woman I’m going to marry and went and bought that diamond. 

 

G: That’s exactly right, and he did shortly afterwards.  

 

S: So, you were born on the fort, on the parade grounds at Fort Arbuckle? 

 

G: I wasn’t really on the parade grounds when I was born. Likely I was in a more sheltered place. 

 

S: It was a little bit civilized. What was life like there? 

 

G: It was wonderful. It was a blast. I loved it. I just thought it was great. I didn’t know anything else to compare it to, but I was a very happy little kid, and I had a lot of freedom. Ran around on the farm. I liked playing by myself; I had fun. Then I had a cousin there I played with. And then I had a sister two years younger than I that we could play with. But I just loved being by myself, and I loved playing with them. There was just so much freedom. I realize that children now don’t have that probably even in the country, but they sure don’t in the city. I could just roam to my heart’s content and just come in at mealtime and nobody worried about me. In the summertime, I loved to walk down to Garrison Creek. I have many memories of hot-footing it down to Garrison Creek because I would never want to take time to put on my sandals. So I would go hurrying off to wade in the creek and the dust would be four inches think, hot as fire. And I would just be burning my feet. Then I’d see a little patch of grass and I’d run and jump in that grass to cool off my feet…only there were stickers in it [laugh] and I would land on those stickers. I did this year after year, day after day, never took time to put on—but anyway that was really fun. Another memory that probably sounds silly but is really dear to me, is when I was very little. I was down close to the ground. In the early spring I remember these tiny little blue flowers that would come out and I was always just so excited to see those flowers, and then some bigger pink ones would come out. And I just loved it. And then as I got older I loved to make a cheese sandwich; get me a good book; go find a nice long, low limb on a tree; climb up there; read my book; eat my sandwich; that was just lovely for me. I thoroughly enjoyed living on the farm and lived there with my parents and three younger sisters until I was eighteen and went to the University of Oklahoma and met my husband-to-be. 

 

S: What was daily living like in the big house? I remember you said your mom said she had some antiques that she wasn’t particularly sentimental over that she went to work with every day. 

 

G: That’s right. One of her least favorite antiques was the wood-burning cook-stove and she had to cook meals for threshers. In those days a threshing crew would come in and they would all work and thresh the wheat. They would all come, and Mother would cook fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and hot rolls. [They two speakers talk over each other for a moment here, though Glenna appears to answer a question in the next sentence] I don’t remember helping out, I was a little bitty girl when that was happening. There was no air conditioning, just the wood stove, the way she regulated her temperature. (Transcriber’s Note: She says “chocolate cake, whatever” here, possibly referring to the menu a few lines up.) The way she regulated her temperatures was how many pieces of wood she put in there. I don’t know how she cooked these incredible meals, but she did. And one of her favorite stories was after she’d slaved all morning fixing all this food. I was really excited to have all this company eating dinner and eating fried chicken, chocolate cake, homemade rolls, etc. I said, “Oh, you guys be sure and come back tomorrow.” My mother, of course [she pantomimes her mother’s exhausted gasp], “Please don’t tell them that.” One day was all it took. But anyway, I remember that. But yes, the house was huge. It was a great house in many ways. It must have had twelve-foot-high ceilings and it was two-story at this point, great big center entry hall, black and white checked.  I remember that. And basically, the heat was these great big rock fireplaces in each room which scorched you on the front side and froze you on the backside, whichever way you were turned to the fireplace. Mom had trouble because it was just so big and money was close and anything you did as far as decorating went, she said it was just lost in the house. She did not have quite as much fun, as it was a historic spot and people would come and take pictures and write newspaper articles about it. But Mother had no sentimental attachments about that house; she was delighted years later to destroy the house and build a modern house that was easier to live in.  

 

S: Maria, anything else you want to ask about life on the farm? [Maria says nothing, and S directs her next question back to G] How about your schooling? You had a really good school. 

 

G: Had a good school, small rural school, Woodland High School. It’s no longer there.  It was a twelve-year school and there was a total of seven in my graduating class. That was one of the smaller classes I will say, but still there were two hundred in the entire school from first grade through twelve.  

 

S: Where were you ranked in your class? 

 

G: Well I was right up there at the top. 

 

S: Top seven [Everyone laughs] 

 

G: Top seven! But anyway, we actually had awfully good schooling. I realized that when I went to the university, had an excellent math teacher. We were just blessed. Had an excellent English teacher. Some subjects were very lacking; science was one. We didn’t have any of the equipment or anything like that. But for some of those basic skills, I was well prepared. I see that was a huge advantage. With just a few people there, you had the individual attention. We actually had very good teachers. I don’t know how we got them, but we did. So schooling was great; schooling was fun. I loved it. We had a basketball team. We weren’t big enough to have a football team, but oh my goodness everybody rooted for the basketball team. I was in love with the star player. 

 

S: What was his name? 

 

G: Wendel Jones, darling boy. Anyway, I would scream at those games, literally until I had no voice. I just can’t believe now that I ever got into a sport like that, but it was life and death. It was live or die to win that basketball game, oh man. So anyway, that was high school, and I enjoyed it and I got a good education.  

 

S: You played basketball too, didn’t you? 

 

G: I did.  In junior high I played basketball.  

 

S: Now you had wheat on the farm? Did you call it a farm? 

 

G: Well we called it a farm and/or a ranch because we had cattle. So when you have cattle you kind of think of it as being a ranch, but we had crops. Wheat and alfalfa hay were two of the big crops. There were others: oats, corn, so forth and so on. But those were our basic crops I would say, wheat, alfalfa, and cattle.  

 

S: And your dad, as I recall, rode the Chisholm Trail with cattle as a young man? 

 

G: Daddy may have done that. I know that a generation before him did that. I’m not quite sure that my daddy did. It could have been, because they were kind of getting past those eras by the time dad was a farmer. He went to OSU for two years before his own father died. And when his father died, he came home and took over the— 

 

S: Your dad? [G confirms] And he had to be kind of encouraged to stay at OSU. 

 

G: Yes, he did. He felt like he knew more. He was taking agriculture classes, and I’m sure he did feel like he knew more than what they were teaching there. And he was not diplomatic about it [M laughs]. He would point out the errors and it made him pretty unpopular with his professors. That was after he was forced to stay, because he apparently beat his father home the first time he went.  

 

S: His dad took him up on the train to Stillwater to go to school?  

 

G: Yeah. 

 

S: And your dad beat him back to the ranch? 

 

G: Dad got home before--Yeah, he didn’t wanna go to school, but he did. 

 

S: So how did he convince him to go back to school? 

 

G: I don’t really know. I don’t really know what the method was. 

 

S: I do. He had to stay in the pasture and mountains and whatever with the cattle all winter long in the lean-to to take care of the cattle. That convinced him. [M and G laugh] Next semester he went back to school. 

 

G: That’s a good way to make your kids go to school. Make them do some real hard manual labor and then they decide, ‘I’d like—’ 

 

S: He was probably a tough nut to crack. He was kind of a rounder. 

 

G: He was kind of a rounder, he was. He and his brothers were fighters and scrappers. He and his two brothers are the ones that farm together. Their mother lived there, and he had two sisters, but they married and were not farmers. But the three brothers all lived there in kind of a little complex and farmed together. They were buddies. They fought in grade school and were scrappers in high school and were good companions and great husbands and good people. 

 

S: Tell about how he met Grandma, took her for a ride. 

 

G: Oh, that thing! Yes. He saw Mother somewhere. She was a young teenager and he was two or three years older than she, maybe five years. I don’t know. But anyway, he thought she really looked attractive to him and so he came to her house with a friend. She was there with her cousin and this other friend liked her cousin so they asked if they could take them for a ride in the car. Mother thought, ‘No, this guy is way too old for me to go riding in a car with him.’ But they asked her mother, and her mother said, ‘If Mary goes along, it’ll be alright.’ That’s the cousin. And so mom said, “Okay, if you just go around the block and bring us home.” And he said, he would go around the block and bring her home. And they rode and they rode and the rode. And she said, ‘You were supposed to go around the block and bring me home.’ And he said, ‘I didn’t say which block it was.’ So anyway, she was smitten after that time. I remember mother’s favorite song was: “Blue skies smiling at me, nothing but blue skies do I see.” Apparently, that was a song that was popular back when she and Daddy were dating. So they fell in love right off and they had a wonderful marriage. And I had wonderful parents, and a wonderful life with them. 

 

S: Now, did your dad raise pigs?  

 

G: Yes, he did raise pigs [laughs]. Not forever, but he did raise pigs for a while. 

 

S: As an unmarried man maybe?  

 

G: Well I think he might have been younger and married when he raised pigs, but I know what you’re asking about. I’m seventy-two and I’ve lived in Oklahoma all my life but for seven years when I was in California in the Los Angeles area. While we were in the Los Angeles area, Mother and Daddy came out to visit us and we wanted to take them Disneyland. We hadn’t been ourselves and this was wonderful and exciting; Disneyland was pretty new in those days. So we went to Disneyland and as you come through the gate there’s this street called Main Street USA. They have horse drawn carriages that pick up people and drive them down Main St. and show them Disneyland. So, we got on one of these and this driver, an old guy, driving the horse. He kept kind of looking around and finally he looked at my daddy and said, “Aren’t you one of the Grant boys?” Well, we just couldn’t believe our ears. In Davis, Oklahoma everybody knows the Grant boys, but we’re in Los Angeles at Disneyland. He said, ‘Well yeah I am. I’m Dick Grant.” And he [the driver] says, “Ah you don’t remember me, do you? I bought a pig from you one time.” Daddy said, “Oh” [everybody laughs]. And story ended up that Daddy and some other man were sitting around the stove at Rhodey’s Store, which was this this store out there in the country kind of close to us, talking. This man, the driver, came in. He said, “Does anyone have any livestock or anything they could sell?” And my daddy, “Well I got a pig I’d be willing to sell to ya.” And he [the driver] said, “Oh yeah?” “Yeah,” and he told him where it was and told him he could go pick it up. He [the driver] said, “Okay, he would do that.” About thirty minutes later he comes back and he said, “I cannot catch that pig. He’s wild.” Daddy laughed; everybody laughed. “What kind of a guy can’t get that pig?” So he says, “I’ll come get the pig for you. I’ll show you how it’s done.” So what he did was they got there; he picked up a bunch of stalks of broom corn, a sturdy club at this point, long thing; and he gets in the pen with the pig. The pig looks at him and snorts and comes running. So Daddy takes the long thing of broom corn and whacks him over the snout. The pig kind of staggers and looks kind of shocked and the boom corn breaks in half so now he’s [her father] got a shorter one. But he charges again and so he comes by and Daddy whacks him again, it breaks in half again, and the pig is coming at him again. So he used the last little stub at whack him as hard as he could, and it did not stop the pig, so Daddy came scrambling over the fence; that was pretty good. Anyway they did manage to finally get the pig in the truck trailer and the man paid him for the pig and left. So now the man, thirty years later, at Disneyland tells him... 

 

S: Now wait a minute. 

 

G: It’s the end of the story. 

 

S: Okay. 

 

G: The end of the story is, he [the driver] said, “You know that pig I bought from you? I went over to Davis to the dried goods store and I stopped there to pick up something. While I was there this pig gets out. He ran through the store, wrecked the store, went out through the back door into a wooded area. We finally had to shoot the pig.” And so that was the end of that story. 

 

S: Well why don’t you introduce the lady sitting across the table from you? 

 

G: This lady sitting across the table from me is my other beautiful daughter, Maria Lemke. She lives in Illinois now, but she was born and bred in Oklahoma, went to school in Oklahoma for a long time. Then she went to school other places -  

 

S: [S kind of hushes G here] That’s her part. 

 

G: Okay [laughs] 

 

S: Were you born in a log cabin as well?  

 

Maria (M): No I wasn’t [G laughs], I was born in Oklahoma City in a… 

 

G: Baptist hospital [M confirms]. It’s Integris now, I think. It was Baptist then.  

 

M: But we spent a lot of time at the farm when we were kids. Mom said earlier that she didn’t think kids got that kind of freedom anymore, but I think we got it when we were kids. We spent a lot of summers out there. We had a lot of freedom to do that same thing. We just ran around all day long and came in. In fact, they kicked us out of the house most of the time and told us to go outside and play and come back at lunch or dinner. It was great, a great childhood. I don’t think a lot of kids have that. Played in hay barns, played with snakes, and cows, and horses, and just had a great time. We got to enjoy a lot that you enjoyed too when we were growing up.  

 

S: You were pretty little when Grandad died. Do you remember him? 

 

M: I have memories of him. How old was I, about five or four? 

 

G: I think you were five or four. One or the other; I don’t remember. He died in ’69.  

 

S: So it would have been four or five, depending on when. 

 

M: I have some memories. One of them is—he piled all of us into his pickup truck to go out and count cattle. And we all thought he was really going to listen to what we had to say, right? So we thought it was very important that we got the counts right, and we all had different numbers. Years later I look back, and he was counting them too, but I thought he really needed our information. That was really fun. And I also remember him sitting in a big blue chair smoking a pipe. That about all I really remember distinctly. 

 

S: Going to Birdie’s to get candy?  

 

M: Let’s see. We did go somewhere one time in Davis and got some kind of peanut butter bar that he loved.  

 

[all three people begin speaking simultaneously] 

 

S: Those white and brown striped ones?  

 

G: I can’t remember the name of those. The striped ones, yeah. 

 

M: And it was my favorite candy bar for a long time, yeah. I remember there was some kind of little diner there across from the car dealer place that Uncle Bruce worked at. His father-in-law owned it, I think. So I remember doing that. I don’t remember going to Rhodey’s with them. 

 

G: It may not have even still been there. 

 

M: I kind of remember going in Rhodey’s once or twice when we were really young. But it wasn’t open much longer I think after that. I remember a lot of stories about him, but that’s about all. I don’t know him particularly. 

 

S: So you were the first daughter after two boys, a year and three years older than you. What was it like growing up with two older brothers?  

 

M: And a younger sister [everyone laughs]. I don’t remember that. My first memories were of all four of us. I don’t remember you not being around either.  

 

S: It wasn’t that long, was it? 

 

M: Another year later. It was great, I think. We had always had someone to play with. [There is a pause here broken by laughter]. 

 

S: Tell us the real story. 

 

G: Tell the truth. Let’s here the real thing now. 

 

M: Well, I don’t know. Joel and I were really good buddies for a while, used to play a lot. 

 

G: Yes, you were. You were good buddies. 

 

M: We played army and airplane. And at the farm I know we used to set up little plastic cowboys and Indian figures and have big battles and wars and stuff out there. Yeah we were—probably about when I was four, five and six, we were pretty good friends. 

 

S: And there were marathon Monopoly games, I remember.  

 

M: At the farm, probably. 

 

S: Joel was excellent at games and still is.  

 

M: I was horrible at Monopoly. Growing up with them was like any other family, I guess. 

 

S: What special devices did they have to entertain you as a young person? 

 

M: Well, you know, they were very creative. [laughter] One of their inventions was called a nose warmer. What they would do is roll up their really, really nasty socks. 

 

S: Acrid, pungent, odiferous, well-worn socks. 

 

M: Week-old socks. And they’d roll them up until they formed this little donut shape, and then they would put it over your nose and tickle you. [G is breathless with laughter]. So you had to breathe and laugh meanwhile breathing in the nose warmer socks. It was one of their favorite things to do. Another favorite thing was my old brother was a wrestler in high school, and one his favorite things to do was to come home and show me his new wrestling moves. There’s like a half nelson or something like that. All kinds of really painful things he would show me. 

 

G: Nice big brother. 

 

S: Take one for the team. 

 

M: Yeah. We also had good times. I mean, my oldest brother and I were housemates for a longtime in Norman when I was in college. That was great. I never thought that would work. Mom said, “You both should live together. You’re both in the same town, you both need roommates.” I thought, “I don’t think that’s gonna work.” But we did, and it was great. We find out we were so much alike, and we didn’t even know it. So that was a good time to spend with him and get to know him a little better.  

 

S: So what other childhood memories do you have, school or neighborhood? 

 

M: Well I remember—I can talk about horses. I did a lot of horseback riding, and I remember when dad brought home a horse. I wanted one for so long and he decided he needed a horse for hunting. So he bought a horse from his friend, Bill McNutt. And it was a about a two-year-old gelding quarter horse. Beautiful. We named him Epic. I think his name originally was ‘Woodland Babe.’ Dad brought him home and for about three or four days we had him in our back yard in Oklahoma City, and it was a hit in the neighborhood. The kids would come over and play with him and ride him. I was probably eight I think. I was pretty young. He was a great horse. He was raised as a racehorse; so he knew ‘stop’ and he knew ‘full blast’ and he didn’t really know any speeds in between. So we ended up having to have him retrained. I couldn’t stop him half the time, for years. I had him for, I’ll bet, twenty years maybe, all the way through college and some of the way through grad school. And even then, there were days that if he got full blast in running, he wouldn’t stop. So it was always tricky trying to stop him, but he was a great horse. I used to ride him a lot. We had him in Oklahoma City, and I used to ride him five days a week all through high school. We’d ride up the Dairy Queen, the drive-thru, get something to drink [S chuckles]. We rode through the neighborhood. 

 

S: That was over in Bethany wasn’t it, where they had some less populated areas?  

 

M: At the time I think there was a lot more area than there is now. But even then, we’d just ride him down the street out to Lake Overholser and ride all around there. 

 

S: You rode with your friend Laurie, who had a horse. 

 

M: We took him down the farm one time for a week. That was great. We’d get up every morning, around five o-clock, go riding until about nine, until it got too hot. I’d put him away and ride again in the evenings. We had a great time, lots of funny experiences there with them. 

 

S: Who is the ‘we’ at the farm? Were there other horses there? 

 

M: Just Laurie and I stayed out there. Mom hauled the horses down for us all by herself, I think. And the truck was acting up, and she had two horses-- 

 

G: --Back there. I thought they were going to suffocate and thought, “Oh what am I gonna do?” But we got there.   

 

M: And we stayed there for a week Laurie and I. We went riding every day and had a wonderful time. We set up hay bales and obstacle courses and jumped the horses and jumped over propane tanks [G whistles]. I mean smaller ones, not the big ones [G laughs]. It was enough. Just all kinds of things; it was really fun. 

 

S: Did he like the water? [All three chuckle; they know the answer] 

 

M: No. Epic had a few things about him that were unique and one of them was that he didn’t like to get his feet wet, so if he could jump over the water he would. I found that out really early on. When I first got him I couldn’t reach the stirrups, so I was on a saddle, but I was kind of hanging on the saddle horn. We were out riding. My brother, Don, was on Gubens, which was a big black horse down at the farm. It was my grandfather’s horse. My cousin Bart was on his pony, and I was on Epic. They crossed over this little creek and kind of stopped and looked back to watch me cross over the creek. I think they knew what was going to happen. Of course, Epic—I thought he’d just walk right across like the other horses did. But he got up to the creek and he just jumped straight in the air and landed straight down. We noticed his legs locked and I just flew off his back, the first time I ever fell off of him, and landed in this big patch of grass. Of course, my brother was laughing hysterically. I fell off Epic a lot of times. That was just the first time. Every time, he would stop, put his head down, and look at me like, “Get up.” He never ran off. Even he was running full blast and I fell off he’d stop and turn around and come and wait for me to get back up. He was really good that way. I don’t think he tried to knock you off. He just had his little quirky ideas about some things. But he was a great horse. I rode him in a rodeo one time, like a little local rodeo.  

 

S: Where was that? 

 

G: [G and M talk over each other here] Yukon, I think it was in Yukon 

 

M: It was around Yukon. Yeah, he did really terrible too [G laughs].   

 

S: What was your event or whatever? 

 

M: Let’s see, I was in a couple of them. One of them was like a western riding event. We just go in a circle. They tell you to trot, to canter, to turn around and do the same thing. He just didn’t do anything right at all [laughs]. He just messed up completely the whole time. It was fun, some little local rodeo. He wasn’t cut out for that, I guess. But yeah, we had some good times. 

 

S: And you learned to ride him bareback. 

 

M: I did because he was so big, and I was young, and I couldn’t pick up that big saddle. So, I learned to ride him bareback and that’s how I rode him all the time usually. To get on him I learned how to jump on his back by parking him a guess down below hill and just run down the hill and you just take a flying leap. [all laugh] Vault right up on to him. Pretty soon I could just get right on him. But to get up there first I had to learn how to jump on. And I tried doing the old John Wayne style where they come up over the back end of them, but it made me too nervous. I tried it a couple times and he kind of picked up his back feel a little bit [All three of them kind of cringe at this]. 

 

S: I saw you come from the side. I remember you taught me—it was a long time ago one summer. 

 

M: To get on bareback. [S confirms] Okay. 

 

S: So from the side. And we rode him upside down once didn’t we? What was that story? 

 

M: A couple times. I’ve rode him upside down a few times. One was with you, and that was Laurie’s horse I think we were riding. Someone else was riding Epic. We were moving the horses, riding them one day, and her horse spooked. You and I were on her horse. You were behind me and the saddle wasn’t tight enough. We hadn’t gotten it tight enough, and the saddle slipped over and we basically fell off her that time. And she ran off kicking the saddle towards 23rd Street in Bethany. I think she did that in the middle of the street, actually. And all these cars stopped. And we had to go get her. She was kind of a spooky horse; things spooked her. I think a plastic bag or something flew by. But with Epic, there was another incident where I rode him upside down for a while. That was at the farm that week we were at the farm when Laurie took the horses down there. Our cousin, Catherine-Ann, was visiting from California and she was riding behind me on Epic. Laurie was out there with Misty, her horse--her horse did everything right, like her horse was really good in the rodeo [everyone laughs]. 

 

G: Unless there were plastic bags in the vicinity. 

 

M: Right. Yeah, one thing about Epic is that he wasn’t spooked or anything, but she [Laurie’s horse] minded really well. She’d do all these flying lead changes and all this great stuff. So Catherine was really watching Laurie do all this stuff with her horse and Epic and I are running along. Catherine is not paying attention; she’s watching Laurie but she’s bouncing a lot. She starts kind of bouncing me out of the saddle. I’m yelling at her to stop doing that. But she wasn’t listening to me, she was watching Laurie. So next thing you know she’s really bounced me. I still to this day do not know how she hung on, but she bounced completely out of the saddle and I was hanging on Epic’s neck. I was hanging on and the reigns are flying at this point; they’re loose. They’re flying and I’m hanging on to his neck and I look, and I can see his hooves. He’s still running. He hasn’t stopped. All I can see is these hooves coming right at my head and I think if I let go he’s going to run right over me, so I couldn’t. Catherine’s hanging on somehow, and she finally turns around and she says, “Maria…Maria.” She’s looking for me and then she sees me hanging on to his neck and she says, “Maria, what are you doing down there?” Like she’s scolding me. And I’m yelling, “stop the horse. Grab the reigns. Stop the horse.” And meanwhile I’m yelling at Epic, “whoa, whoa, whoa.” But he’s not listening to me. Finally, she stops and the horse and I slump to the ground. I thought it was something I made up, but Catherine remembers it too. So it really did happen, and I have no idea how we both survived that one. That was crazy. So yeah, we had some crazy times; it was fun. 

 

S: So you graduated from high school a year early right? You were sixteen, I guess, when you started college.  

 

M: I was. I graduated when I was sixteen. I think I was seventeen when I started college. 

 

S: So you graduated from Northeast High School? 

 

M: I did. I graduated a year early. I went to night school and summer school to get out of my junior year.  

 

S: We were there during the teacher strikes when students were kind of wandering in and out of the windows. We picketed with the teachers. 

 

M: Yeah, that was a crazy school. We picketed with the teachers. I think some students’ parents came in and tried to teach some of the classes, but we didn’t really go to any of those classes. 

 

S: This would have been…1979, ‘80? 

 

M: Right around there, because I think I graduated in ‘81. So probably I think it was our sophomore year, but my sophomore year, your freshman year maybe. Yeah, I went to the classes where some of the teachers didn’t picket. Some of them still taught and I went to those classes. And I had some really good teachers at Northeast, actually. I had some really good math teachers, a really good biology teacher, and a really good English teacher. I learned a lot there. But it was crazy, school. I remember sitting in class one day and the windows were open. It was an old school so the windows opened, and I’m listening to someone talk. Suddenly this student just runs through the room, jumps out the window, and we all run to the window because we’re on the second floor [G audibly gasps] and all that’s below us is just a big cement driveway. He’s gone. And then the next thing you know, a policeman comes running through chasing him [G whistles]. That was kind of a typical day. 

 

S: Did the policeman follow him out the window? 

 

G: He didn’t jump out the window, did he? 

 

M: No, he didn’t jump out the window. We just told him, “He went that way.” There was a lot of things like that at Northeast. I think a lot of energy was spent on disciplining students. Fights in the hall every day, that’s what I remember. You can’t get through the hallways to class because there’s so many fights in the hallways. 

 

S: I remember a band playing in the hallways. That’s the first time I saw Edgar Cruz play. He came and played with some band from Northeast. They came and played Styx and Journey and whatever was big, you know. 

 

M: Right, REO Speedwagon or something.  

 

S: It was a fun atmosphere as well, I guess. A mixed bag. 

 

M: It was fun. I mean, I had a semester where I decided I wasn’t going to wear shoes at all. You couldn’t do that very many places. There I did. I just went barefoot the whole semester. I’d get yelled at once in a while when someone noticed it, but they really didn’t follow through. One of the teachers did. It really bothered him a lot [laughs]. I’d go to his class—it was out in the annex. I’d go to his class and I sit down and kick my feet up on the chair in front me with no shoes on, and he took offense to that. I think he gave me an F for like the first nine weeks because I didn’t have my shoes on. That’s what he told me. He decided I needed an F. 

 

S: And you continued to not wear your shoes?  

 

M: I would in his class because I was about to flunk out of that class. It was street law [all three laugh, and continue laughing through the next several lines]. 

 

G and S: “Street law?” 

 

M: That was a nightly class. 

 

S: Your standard high school. 

 

M: I had an A in it to begin with, but I got an F because I didn’t wear shoes. 

 

S: Did the teachers ever get what they wanted? What they struck for? And did things return to pretty well managed after that?  

 

M: Oh, I think they were on strike for well, about a month, maybe longer. They went back to classes. I really didn’t pay a lot of attention to what they were striking for.  

 

S: More money or benefits? 

 

M: Probably. My guess is that they did. I don’t know if all public schools were on strike, or just ours.  

 

S: Just that one school. 

 

M: I hope they got what they wanted. 

 

S: [Addressing G] You had three kids in. 

 

G: That’s right.  

 

S: Well what did you do after you left Northeast? 

 

M: I went one semester at a junior college here in Oklahoma City. It was called South Oklahoma City Junior College at the time. 

 

S: Is that OCCC now? [Transcriber’s Note: She says ‘O’-triple ‘C,’ here and M will repeat that] 

 

M: It’s OCCC now. Then I went to OU, the University of Oklahoma for my undergraduate and then I stayed there for my master’s degree. I did a lot of work down at Lake Texoma at the biological station during my master’s degree. So, I basically lived down there for about three years, which was really nice too. Right on the lake at the field station, I did my research down there. Then I left Oklahoma in ’93, I think, and went to Alabama. Did graduate school there for…I was probably there for about three years. 

 

S: And got your doctorate in Aquatic Entomology, is that right? 

 

M: It’s in freshwater ecology, kind of a general area. In Alabama I did a lot of work; I researched on wetlands. And in Oklahoma I did a lot of research on streams systems. Disturbances in stream systems and how that affects invertebrate communities. You get a lot of flashy floods and droughts and stuff in Oklahoma, so that is kind of what I researched here. It’s fun. 

 

S: Well you had, I think, maybe one semester that was really kind of a bomb at OU. Your freshman year is that right. 

 

M: Ah my undergraduate, yes. I just didn’t go to any of my finals one year one semester. Is that what you’re talking about? 

 

S: You’d just been ‘nose to the grindstone’ for so long and just… 

 

M: Probably. I dropped out for about a year-and-a-half after that and— 

 

S: Worked. 

 

M: Waited tables, probably five or six years in Norman. 

 

S: Home of the ‘Denco Darlin, with a side of grease?’ [The tone here suggests this is intended as a light ribbing; this dish was located at Denco’s Café.] 

 

M: Yeah, I did. Denco’s was the first place I ever waited tables. They had a dish called the ‘Denco Darlin’ that they were pretty proud of. It was kind of a remnant of the diner that was there, before it was brought by Interurban. So now it’s kind of this nicer restaurant, but they kept some of the dishes and the ‘Denco Darlin’ was one of them. It was basically elbow noodles and chili and cheese and then they’d just pour extra grease on it. So it was just brimming in grease. And if you really wanted, you could have eggs on top of it and an enchilada stuck in the middle of it. 

 

G: I’m feeling kind of… 

 

M: They served it with a little salad [All three burst into laughter]. 

 

S: Iceberg lettuce. 

 

M: It was just iceberg lettuce and some carrots and green goddess dressing and thousand island dressing. And people would put all of that on top of it, put chips on it and salsa and mix it all up and eat it. And usually the thing was, Denco’s was a big hang out for college students from around nine-o-clock at night to about two. It turned from a nice restaurant to more of a bar atmosphere. And so, they’d all come in and drink beer and eat these Darlins. And I distinctly remember them doing backflips down the aisles of the restaurant. Having to stand at the door. I had a table one night of a bunch of guys in a certain fraternity, I can’t remember what it was now, but it was a big table. And one by one they slipped out the door right, until there was only one of them left and a big tab. So, I remember standing at the door and I wouldn’t let him out. He said, “You gotta let me go. I can’t pay for it myself.” And I said, ‘I’m not paying for it; you’re going to have to pay for it.” Finally, I had a friend who was in the same fraternity who was older, and he came up and saw what was going on and made the kid pay for it. It got really crazy there at night. That was pretty interesting. Let’s see, I worked at the Mont, which is another classic place in Norman that’s still here. I think it was there when Mom and Dad were in college.  

 

G: Yes it was. 

 

S: Where was it you carried like fifty-pound trays on each arm? 

 

M: That was Denco’s. Big trays. And I guess there’s one pretty good story. A big party came in one night, a really rich man. I don’t know who he was, but he was throwing a really big birthday party for his daughter. There was probably forty or fifty people, and they all came in and they all ordered all this food, right. Things are going fine, and their food all comes up. Big huge trays of food coming out. He wanted to get his daughter—she ordered something normal, but he also wanted to get her this Darlin’. And he said, ‘I want it to be really, really greasy.” So it was? As it came out, we had these big huge trays coming out with six entrees apiece, and we had them all lined up on trays out there. All this food was ready to go. And I bring out this Darlin,’ and this little piece of grease falls on the floor. And he says, “you know you better wipe that up; someone’s going to slip.” And I said, ‘yeah I’ll be right back to get that.” Well before I could get back to it, I’m in the kitchen, I hear ‘bam!’ this huge noise. and I remember thinking, I’m glad that wasn’t me. [M and G laugh] And sure enough, next thing I know, I’m still standing back there. My manager walks back and he’s got lettuce hanging from his head; he’s got salsa down his front; he’s got food all over him. His face is purple, he’s so mad. He just looked at me and said, “Maria, did you drop grease on the floor?” I said, “yeah I did.” He goes, “that’s what I thought.” And he turned around and walked out. And I walked out there and all that food, I’m talking forty entrees are on the floor. There’s a pile of food that is three feet high. And the kitchen, they have to make all that food all over again. Not only that, but they didn’t fire all those people. I didn’t get fired for that. 

 

G: The manager did it. How dramatic that must have been. 

 

M: But it wasn’t his fault. [All three begin speaking over one another and laughing] 

 

G: It wasn’t his fault, but he’s the one that-- 

 

S: Maria dropped the grease. 

 

M: I dropped the one little drop of grease on the floor. He found it, slipped, and knocked over every other tray of food out there. 

 

S: [Calming down] Ah okay, so after that fun you went back to school. Was it kind of like being in the pasture with the cows for a winter? [the laughter resumes] 

 

M: Yeah, I didn’t see a lot of future in waiting tables, so I decided to get back to school and I realized I only needed a year or something left. So I went back and did fine. I think I had straight four points when I went back. I wouldn’t recommend that to anybody. But— 

 

S: You can’t make up those bad grades. 

 

M: You can’t bring your GPA back up. In fact, I was under probation during my master’s and my PHD. They said, “well you’re on semester probation because of my undergraduate GPA.” Because of that one semester. But that’s okay, I still graduated. 

 

S: Gained much valuable insight, I’m sure. You spent a lot of time in Lake Texoma and you brought home some chambered nautilus and ammonites and cool fossils. 

 

M: Yeah one of the creeks I worked in was just loaded with fossils. And so all kinds of sea urchins and big ammonites and all pieces of kinds of different fossils that we collected. I found a shark’s tooth out there one time. Just all kinds of little— 

 

S: Now is that Texas or Oklahoma. 

 

M: That’s the Oklahoma side. That whole area has a lot of fossils, but that particular creek I was in was just loaded. I was out there a lot for every time there was a big rain and the creek bed washed out you’d find new fossils. So I brought home several of the big ammonites. One of them was—what, seventy pounds or something, it was a big one. And then some smaller ones. So I still have a lot of those. It’s pretty neat. 

 

G: You said at first that felt bad about picking them up, but then you realized that wasn’t a pasture and that cattle would destroy them, so you’re saving them.  

 

M: Right. That’s what I thought too. At first I thought I should leave them there. Then I’d come back and find ones that I left that were now broken in half and I thought you might as well just pick them up because they’re just getting destroyed out there. So over the years that I worked out there I found quite a few really nice little urchins and big ammonites and some other kinds of fossils, remnants of fossilized clams, that kind of thing. So that was really fun to do. 

 

S: Saltwater creatures.  

 

M: Yeah, from when Oklahoma was underwater in the ocean. Kind of neat. I can’t remember how old they are now. We were trying to figure that out last night. Cretaceous Period is what I’m thinking.  

 

G: That I don’t know but I remember this man said he thought my ammonite was 65 million years old.  

 

S: 65 million years old. 

 

G: So probably 65 to 100 million years. They probably had ammonites. 

 

S: Makes you feel young. You drove the boat around a lot at Lake Texoma?  

 

M: I did. 

 

S: Any other things you want to share about Lake Texoma? 

 

M: There were a lot of experiences. We were in boats a lot; I loved it. I learned a lot about how to handle boats and trailers and we were out on the lake a lot. For about two years I was out there about four or five days a week, throughout the winter and the summer and we would do some studies. Like we’d go out before dawn and some of those studies—we were doing a telemetry study. We were tracking striped bass movements on a daily basis and then on a seasonal basis. So we’d be out there, and we’d do these dusk till dawn tracks. We’d have to be on the water when the sun came up and we couldn’t get off the water till the sun went down. It was really neat to be out there when the sun came up, although it was hard getting out there that early. One of the things I noticed being out there is that when the birds would start waking up, it was always certain species that would wake up first. It was the same pattern each time, ones that got up first and then second and then third. So that was kind of neat. We got caught in some pretty bad storms a few times out there. But other than that I can’t think of anything in particular. There’s a few stories, but---it was a great experience.  

 

S: Wasn’t there a story about watching a storm from a porch? 

 

M: Oh we watched a tornado come in one time. Actually I was—There was a big storm coming in and I had a bunch of samplers out in one of the creeks so I had to run out there real quick and pull them up. I was afraid there were going to get washed down the creek if it flooded. So I ran out there to get them and I realized later that I didn’t tell anyone where I was going I just got into one of the Suburbans and ran out there and I’m trying to pile the stuff in the truck and the sky is turning kind of green and yellow you know that kind of color the sky gets when a tornado is coming. And then it started hailing so I decided it was time to get back to the station. I get back to the station and a tornado had actually come through already and hit one of the small towns nearby. Then we sat up on the balcony and you could see tornado was kind of forming up in the sky and curling back up and coming back down again. Oh yeah, we used to sit out there on the point because we were right on the lake, and watch lightning strike the lake. Big storms would come in and sometimes we’d be out sampling and see big storms coming in. The good thing about Oklahoma is you can see them coming from a long ways away. We’d know there was a big storm coming and we’d wait until it got close enough and then we’d get off the water. You could see it coming you know for hours so that was nice. Yeah we saw some great storms out there. That’s one thing I loved about Oklahoma, was the big thunderstorms. 

 

S: How did you choose the school that you went to for your doctorate? 

 

M: I applied to probably four or five schools that were known for their aquatic biology programs and then and I interviewed at—I got a few offers from some of them. Some of them -- they varied. Some of them said you can teach and be TA and they’ll help cover your tuition and give you a monthly stipend for teaching or doing research. Some of them had teaching position open and some of them had research positions open. Alabama actually had a research position open, so the first two years I was there I didn’t have to teach. I could just do my research. So that’s why I chose Alabama, one of the reasons. And then my professor that I worked with, Art Benke (Transcriber’s Note: Possibly Arthur Benke. He was Marine Biology professor with the University of Alabama who got his PhD in 1972.) is very well known in that area of Aquatic Biology. He was a really good person to work with, he had nice big labs and a lot of space. Some of the other places had positions open but really small laboratories. It just seemed like the best option of the ones I looked at. I think it was a good choice.  

 

S: Did you study under a professor ‘Lemke’ while you were there? Was he one of your teachers? [M indicates ‘no’]. How did you meet Mike Lemke? 

 

M: Mike was working on a postdoc in Alabama when I started my Ph.D. He was working under another well known limnologist whose name was Robert Wetzel. We met at a function that first fall. Every October or something they have a big function where all the new students get together. So we met at that. I didn’t know anybody there but he kind of walked up to me and started talking to me. He asked me if I wanted to go fishing with him. He and his buddies were going fishing that weekend. I didn’t know who he was, and I said, ‘No, I don’t want to go fishing with you.’ 

 

S: You and your buddies. [The three of them laugh] 

 

M: Yeah, they used to go up to the Smokeys a lot because it was only about a four-hour drive. Very beautiful to go fishing up there and (unintelligible) the river systems up there. I said no.  

 

S: “No to you and I don’t want to go fishing with you and your buddies.” 

 

M: And then the guy I was dating walked up and I introduced Mike to the guy I was dating. Said, “This is my boyfriend.” Mike said, “Oh, it’s really nice to meet you.” Then he looked at me again and said, “Are you going to go fishing with us this weekend or not?” [Everyone chuckles] My boyfriend was stunned. 

 

S: Now who was that boyfriend? 

 

M: His name was Jeff Stewart, but he moved back to Oklahoma and then Mike and I started dating.  

 

S: Okay so wrapping it up here, you finished your doctorate there and married Mike and moved to Illinois— 

 

M: Moved to Ohio where he was doing his post doc, and then we moved to New York for a couple of years where he taught at a university there, and then we moved to Illinois. So we’ve been in Illinois now since 1999, so about eight years. 

 

S: And he’s a professor of biology at the University of Illinois, Springfield. [M confirms] And you are doing what?  

 

M: I am working as a biologist for the Nature Conservancy Illinois chapter, and I work on a big wetland restoration project on the Illinois river. 

 

S: Why is it important to restore the wetlands? 

 

M: Well a lot of Illinois, the central parts of it especially, are agricultural lands. 

 

S: Corn and soybeans. 

 

M: Right. A lot of the work I do has to do with trying to work with landowners and just the farming techniques, conserving freshwater systems in that agricultural landscape, without reducing their production very much. Working with them to conserve freshwater. One of the things that has happened in the last eighty, or hundred years in the Illinois River area and a lot of the Midwest is that they’ve levied off the rivers from their floodplains. Rivers typically have this big flood pulse in the spring, and sometimes in the fall, where they flood and spread out over the land. It’s become more known over the last ten or twenty years that this is a really important function. It connects the river system with the land. The nutrients are dispersed. Rich sediments are laid out on the floodplain and habitats for nursery fishes and invertebrates and all kinds of things. So there’s a real connection there that’s been lost with these levies. They’ve levied off the rivers and straightened them out, in many instances, and then they’ve farmed the floodplains because of that rich soil. What we’re finding is that our rivers now are more conduits. It’s more of a transport system, not only for barges but also huge amounts of nutrients are being washed out of these farmlands through these river systems. Instead of getting spread out over the land and taken up by plants and natural processes, it’s not getting reduced very much at all. Of course, it’s hitting the Mississippi River system and then you’ve heard of the gulf hypoxia problem down in the gulf. 

 

S: I’ve heard just a little bit about that, gulf hypoxia. 

 

M: Well it’s kind of a natural phenomenon anyway, but it’s much more exaggerated than it should be. What happens is you have freshwater coming in the salt water where the Mississippi comes into the gulf. Typically, river systems have a higher nutrient load, especially in nitrogen, than oceans do. It’s natural when highly nutrient-rich water hits water that’s not nutrient-rich to have a lot of algae bloom, and you have a lot of things that take up that nutrients right in that transition zone. That’s a natural phenomenon. What happens is you’ll have this big algal bloom, they die, sink to the bottom, bacteria decomposes, all that. To do that decomposing, that bacteria takes up all of the oxygen, so then you get this big area with no oxygen. Anything that can move will move out of the system, and anything that can’t dies. So what happens when you have increased nutrients come through the rivers like we do now, much, much higher levels than are natural, you get this dead zone that just grows bigger and bigger. There’s a big problem with that right now, and it’s not just in the gulf. It’s happening all over the world wherever you see freshwater hitting oceans. So anyway, Illinois has been pinpointed as one of the major sources of these high nutrient loads. So one of the things we’re working on is trying to restore some of the natural functions of this landscape. One of them trying to reconnect some of these floodplains with the river system. That’s one of the projects that the conservancy is doing along the Illinois River. Another thing we’re doing is working with farmers and landowners to try and put in wetlands and these kinds of thing that will hold back some of that water from their fields, because now they drain the fields directly into these creeks, which means the high nutrient loads are going into the creek systems. What we’re trying to do is put in some of these practices that will retain water on the land a little bit longer and allow those nutrients to be metabolized by bacteria or taken up by plants to reduce the overall nutrient loading into the water ways. So that’s a lot of the things that I do. 

 

S: And you’ve gotten to go to Japan with Nature Conservancy, do a fair amount of travel. 

 

M: Yeah, it was really more with university that we went to Japan for about ten days and presented some of our work to the university there and the Ashikaga Institute and talked about ‘Emiquan,’ our floodplain restoration project on the Illinois River. We also went to Brazil for, I think, ten days again and worked with some scientists down there on their floodplains on the Paraná River. We’re trying to do some collaborative floodplain studies. The Conservancy is working a lot with Brazil on the Paraná River also because they’re now starting to raise more and more soybeans and we’re trying to prevent some of the problems that we have now from occurring over there. So there is a lot of collaboration and communication between different countries. The Conservatory is also working in Africa and China. So, there are some options and opportunities for travel, but those are the two main places I think I’ve been so far. 

 

S: And you’re living in a lovely historic neighborhood in Petersburg, Illinois. Just quickly, are there any hobbies that you and Mike like to share? I know you’ve done a little bit of bicycling. I think you’ve tried roller blading together, is that right? 

 

M: Well yes. You always try and find something that you can share together, have some kind of hobbies that you can share. I tried roller blading, and I‘ll tell you a story. I am not very good at roller blading. I can roller blade okay, I just can’t stop very well. I’ve tried different methods to learn how to stop, but it never really works [S and M both laugh]. I started learning in Ohio. It was pretty flat; and that was okay. Then we moved to New York and it was a little rollier there and hillier. The way I stopped was by mostly I just kind of fell down, and each time I fell it started getting worse and worse. I finally realized that maybe I shouldn’t be doing this. I think the final straw was, I was roller blading at a university campus on a Sunday. There was nobody around, so I thought I was pretty safe. I was rolling down this hill and getting up a lot of speed and the hill went back up on the other side. So I thought I’ll just roll back up the other side and that’s how I’ll stop. So at the bottom of the hill was this stop sign and this man had pulled up at the stop sign and rolled down the window, so I knew that he was stopping to ask me a question. I thought, well I’ll just grab that stop sign. That way I can stop. So I did. He rolled down is window and was waiting. I rolled down the hill and grabbed that stop sign. But it’d had been a long time since I had physics so I started swirling around this stop sign and as I swirled around it I kind of sank lower and lower to the ground. And each time I came by this guy his eyes would get bigger and bigger. And so finally I ended up on the ground with my arm around the stop sign, bruised all up rolling around the stop sign and this guy is just stunned. I’m sitting on the ground and I looked up at him and I said, “Can I help you?” [All parties laugh]. And he just looked at me and said, “I am so sorry.” I said, “That’s okay. What can I do for you?” He asked me where some building was on campus. And I said, “You know, I don’t even go to school here; I have no idea where that building is. There’s probably a map over there.” That was pretty close to my last roller blading experience. I think I had one more experience and then I gave my skates away. Actually, I gave them to your son. And he said, “Oh goodie! I’m going to go roller blade.” And I said, [in a dramatic voice] “It’s very dangerous; wait for your mom.” Trying to scare him. I just thought I’m really getting too old for this, I’m really going to hurt myself one of these days, and so that didn’t work out. 

 

S: So I’m thinking now you garden together right? That’s worked out pretty well? 

 

M: It’s a lot safer. 

 

S: He plows or whatever and you put the stuff in. 

 

M: Yeah, pretty much. 

 

S: Alright, anything anybody wants to say in conclusion? 

 

G: And we all eat it.  

 

S: And we do our part. 

 

G: We eat the good stuff out of that garden, that’s right. 

 

S: Eat pickled beets. 

 

M: Yeah, I enjoy that 

 

S: Well thanks. 

 

G and M: Thank you. 

 

[Interview ends]