Road Trip!

Last Thursday afternoon, I commenced on a 5-hour drive down south to Oklahoma: my hometown of Pryor Creek. "Creek" is not on the maps anymore, but it should be. Nathaniel Hale Pryor was the sergeant for whom Pryor Creek was named. There used to be signs saying such on the outskirts of town, back in my childhood. Hmm...there were also signs on the outskirts of town, back in the 60s, which said something about negroes having to leave the city limits before sundown. But that is, thankfully, another chapter, and one into which I will not delve now, and maybe never.

I left Pryor Creek in 1978, when I went to college at OSU. And met a boyfriend. And the rest of that is history, and also current events. Yes: we are still here, the two of us, 27 years and three children later.

Friday morning I awoke fairly early, and after a couple of cups of coffee, hopped on my bike and took a ride through Pryor Creek. My childhood, from the time I got a bike, consisted of riding with friends all over town, and riding to the city pool every day in summer. Walking or riding my bike to friends' homes, to the library every Saturday morning, to the dime store (after the library). My friends nowadays often express wonder at my cycling activity; I suppose it is just a variation on a childhood theme.

My ride took me one and one quarter of an hour. It would have taken longer, if I could have found the Southern Passage through to my brother Jerry's house. But apparently there are only two north-south through-ways in Pryor Creek, and neither was cycle-worthy. But the fun fun fun aspect of my bike ride was riding through the streets of my old hometown. I saw homes and houses that I was once intimately familiar with. A birthday party here, a sleepover there, selling Girl Scout cookies along there...there were a lot of houses that I recognized as having been in; they were no doubt the homes to whom I delivered the local paper from my bike, and collected for the paper.

Lots of things have changed. Our phone numbers are no longer VA5-0000 or whatever. I remember memorizing our own number: Valley Five 2346. Some things haven't changed. I saw a turtle crawling across a street, and apparently some kid had already claimed it as his/her own this spring, by painting the initial "G" on its back. We used to do that when I was a kid.

My mother reminisces that in our neighborhood, one of the mothers several houses down the street would blow a whistle at 6:00 pm, and that meant that we kids had to go to our respective homes and have dinner. This weekend Mom and I went across the street to visit a neighbor, whom I have never met. But I do knew her tornado cellar very well as a kid, and the three of us laughed when I brought it up. One tornadic episode brought forth 20-something children and adults into this teeny, tiny cellar. We were all saved from the impending tornado, but a week or so later, the children in the neighborhood all began coming down with mumps. (I was one of those lucky ducks.)

My Hometown

More to come...