Seven Generations Of Family In Western Oklahoma

This is an enhanced version of a note I wrote to one of my granddaughters on the eve of her wedding this past June.

I consider it an honor and a prvilege that I have been blessed to personally know seven generations of my family - from three great-grandparents to two wonderful great-grandchildren, wide-eyed and in wonder of their exciting world.

Before the days of television it was my joy and pleasure to ask my ancestors to tell me what life was like when they were young.

I learned my great-grandfather homesteaded in the late 1890s and that my grandmother, Lura, was born in a dugout on that property in western Oklahoma in July of 1898. What I can remember very well is a two story white frame house, built with lumber hauled from El Reno - 90 miles away - by horse and wagon, probably fording rivers without any bridges.

My two great-grandmothers were quite different in countenance and temperament, one being very proper and dressed up, one of more casual attire. These ancestors regaled me with what I considered to be very interesting stories. One such story was that my grandmother and her brothers were walking down a dusty country road one day when a big black monster, roaring and snorting, approached them. The moster turned out to be a Modeal A or Model T Ford car, their first one to ever view.

The next several decades after 1900, farms were cleared and cultivated, crops and children raised, dust storms braved - my grandmother hung wet sheets over doors and windows to retard the dust. Many descendants of farm families will identify with this time period, having heard such stories from their ancestors.

By the mid-1940s electricity had begun to come to the farms. I remember well when electricity was installed on my grandparents’ farm. A few years later telephones were installed. Also, the 1940s brought us the World War II years, with the requisite rationing of gasoline, sugar, rubber, etc...

My generation went to country schools where we still had prayer and the pledge of allegiance daily. My family did not buy a television set until I was a sophomore in high school, but we were taught values and morals at school, home, and churches we attended.

My generation, for the most part, married young and left rural life for towns and cities. We obtained college degrees and we tried hard to teach our families empathy, values, and to be good citizens.

I believe that my ancestors would be shocked to see educated and well-traveled descendants, as in physicians, lawyers, geologists, executives, and teachers.

It is my hope that future generations of my family will be bright, wellversed, and skilled, but also be good people who display integrity and empathy to others. Beware that the “me generation” and “look out for number one” is a futile way to live, in my opinion.

Greed and selfishness won’t hold up so well to scrutiny over the long haul, but if we live with decorum, good taste, and good manners we will have fewer regrets. If we so live, we may have many more years of democracy and freedom so that we may add to our 243 years of independence that we just celebrated in July.