Aunt Mari Zinn who has helped me so much with this book wrote me this story and I wanted to share the story as written by her. In reading this little trip down memory lane brings back so many memories of this simple but loving couple that was our Grandparents. I remember going to their home so many times and how much fun it was. I can just see them both and it causes me to smile and remember where our roots came from. I can read this story and see much of our mother in Grandpa Zinn. Mother was a firm believer in “if you can’t say something good about someone then don’t say anything at all”. She lived by that rule her entire life and we see by this story that she must have learned it from her Dad.
Story as written by my Aunt Mari:
Janice, I was thinking about what it was like eating at Grandmother and Grandad Zinn's table and I wondered if you remembered it too. It was always the same - the table against the south wall of the dining room with the black telephone just above (number 802). Dad sat at the west end and Mom at the east end near the kitchen - that is if there were only a few there. If there was a large crowd, she rarely sat at all. Dad liked and expected breakfast, dinner and supper on the table at a certain time. For those kids visiting, there was always an early morning call from Dad, "Breakfast is ready". Of course, it wasn't but by the time we got up and in there it was. Dinner (not lunch) was on the dot of 12 noon and you could set your clock by it. When the gin whistle blew we would be sitting down to eat. Dad's prayer was always the same and it would be nice if you could include it in your book. Sunday dinner was always roast - often pork roast with sweet potatoes baked with it. Any left over roast became ground sandwiches for supper. I don't remember Mom using recipes - by the time I came along, she didn't need them. Dad did the shopping and Mom did the cooking and we all did the dishes! As we look at our kitchens now, we would do well to remember that tiny kitchen Mom used all those years - just big enough for the long sink and a cabinet on either side, the cook stove, a tiny table big enough for 2, the refrigerator and the cart with the roaster oven on it. And don't forget that one window on the north - not too cool in the summer time. My favorite dish of Mom's was her macaroni and cheese always fixed in the loaf pan and in the words of our grand daughter Gena "Dee-lith-shus! Later when she was alone I remember seeing her cook 2 okra pods for herself and she liked hers boiled whole. Gathering in the back yard for a watermelon was a special event there as in most homes of the time. If you want a taste of Grandmother's green beans, just order some at Cracker Barrel where they cook them a long time with just the right seasonings - none of that crispy crunchy stuff. Oh, it is good to gather again around the table in memory lane. Remember when all the uncles came home from the war and everyone came "home" and there were so many we set up tables in the yard on the south side of the house? Dad just loved to eat and nothing made you feel better than he did when he ate at your house because he enjoyed it so. His favorite comment was "Now that was laripin". I have no idea where that word came from and have never heard it from anyone else but there was no doubt what he meant. Grandad originated the warm fuzzy for cooks! Taking him to a cafeteria was a real experience since he took such delight in food that he wanted one of everything. But then your Grandad Zinn loved everything and everybody. I never once, after I came in the family at 17, heard him say a bad word about anything or anyone. I have heard him say on more than one occasion, "If you can't say something good about somebody, don't say anything". Of money and material things, they had little; but of the things that matter, they left us all with not only wonderful memories but a great legacy of dignity and honor and integrity and just the joy of living a good, simple life. Weren't we all blessed! I have always felt that true communion takes place around a table with shared food and shared time. I want to thank you for planning it so we can be a part of that again. Love, A. Mari
Note: by Janice (McConnell) Cowan
This is a special story given to me by Aunt Mari Zinn to use in my book of memories. Just to read this story make me smile and my heart happy with memories of a true loving family that did not have a lot in material things as said in this story but so rich in family love and values. This is something that each and everyone of us can and should be proud of. I have had much joy in gathering the stories and putting this book of memories together for our children and their children to read and know where their roots are in this life. Life is what we make it and if we could just follow the pattern set down by our grandparents and their parents wouldn’t this life be so much more than what we make of it. Life was based on the simple truths of love of God and Family what better pattern could we follow. Truly “Memories Last Forever”.
Another thing that comes to my mind about Grandpa Zinn was that at Christmas time he always bought these really large peppermint sticks. Now to a child they were gaint ones and I remember the peppermint sticks that he gave to me just as if it were today. I would make that peppermint stick last for days and days. We looked forward to getting this wonderful gift of candy from our Grandpa Zinn each year. I also remember picking up Black Walnuts in the yard behind his house. We would pick them up and he would help us crack them with a hammer and a brick. Boy they were tough to crack but so good to eat. I think that is one reason I love Black Walnut ice cream to this day. Memories just last forever.
I remember spending so many days at this little white frame house where my grandparents spent so many years. I myself spent time there when I worked as a teenager during the summer and stayed in this home. I worked for a short time at Gains Drug Store in downtown Hobart. I think about those times each time I drink a milk shake or eat ice cream. I remember the day I learned to make a Chocolate Soda at that soda fountain. Just part of the memories of my childhood that are special to me.
I think that most people have good memories of visiting Grandma and Grandpa’s house in their childhood. I know that in our family and it was a large family with lots of aunts, uncles, cousins, we had so many good times together. Most family get together meant food and we always had lots of good food.
When the 19th century turned into the 20th century and Wylie Potts Zinn and Rosa Jane Ward had not yet become wed, things were much the same as they had been at the turn of the last century and the one before that and before that. Even the new inventions and beginnings of change in the big cities meant little to a mostly rural community in Indian Territory. People still lived in sod houses and warmed themselves by wood or coal stoves and tried to push away the night with lamps filled with coal oil. Few people traveled far from their place of birth and if they did it was by foot or horseback or wagon or for the privileged few a carriage. The fields were still plowed walking behind teams of mules.
But the turn of this century seemed to be propelled by progress. Soon to come were cars and tractors and electric lights and houses made of wood in little towns throughout this new state. Henry Ford became benefactor of the open door. Through his Model T people could now travel from town to town and even state to state.
World War I, the war to end all wars, came and went. One room schools dotted the country side and churches not much bigger sprung up on the corners of the towns. The machine age came into full swing with cars, cars, cars. And trucks and now that unthinkable - the airplane. But still the country home remained little changed. Often it was a four room bungalow with a cistern out back and now if one was lucky the coal oil lamp was supplemented by an Aladdin lamp with its bright white light and fragile mantles. The toilet was still outdoors at the end of the path. And so it remained until the late l940s when Rural Electrification came to rural Oklahoma. Then came the depression and as if to punctuate the misery, the Dust Bowl. Only another World War brought prosperity and with it came change out of the genie’’s bottle. The returning soldiers had seen the world and pain and grew up in the process and few returned home. The far sighted government had anticipated the return of large numbers of young men with no employment and had in place job training and the GI Bill so millions could be educated and employed in the new industries.
And now a new century, the 21st!, has come and we look back on more changes for the human race than in all centuries combined. Because it has been so rapid people have had too little time to adapt to the drastic change. The artificial world of movies, TV and now computers interject us into an unreal world and their values have blurred the age old values of home and family and integrity. Charles Dickens, if here in 2001, would surely say again, ““These are the best of times and the worst of times””. This then is our opportunity, and our burden, the new century is ours to make. Like the old Girl Scout song, we must make new friends but keep the old. Can you imagine if Rose and Wylie had a crystal ball in that Beaver County sod house what they would have seen for their 9 children and their children and their children too? I like to think that in it all they would still see the love and values shared and instilled in that family and to them we would say, ““Well done””.
No school building remains from my 17 years - not Fairview, Prospect View or Emerson or the two story High School at the end of Main Street. Little is the same on Main Street - only Booth Drug occupies the same place and location. Gone too are the distinguished Mr. Booth, crabby Newt Guthrie and Louis Webber. The fountain remains. Next door, the empty shell of the gathering place Gains Drug - gives little evidence of the wondrous place it was to us. Where Mrs. Gaines and Mrs. Snodgrass ran their separate worlds of prescriptions and cosmetics. Neither was of much concern to us. The fountain was - with its stools where we waited for Walking Sundaes - ice cream in a paper cup swimming in chocolate syrup and pecans all for 10 cents. Best al all were the tall dark wood booths in the back alcove where we gathered for cokes and fun. The tables were carved with initials and names not ours of course. Here was our private teenage world the Sonic of our day. No adults usurped our place for there were only 3 precious spots. If Mrs. Gaines ever frowned on our being there we never knew it. I never remember being frowned on by towns people but other than laughter and talk there was no reason to be. Good behavior was just simply the norm, no imposed or restricted, just the way things were.
Men gathered in two’s and three’s on the Kiowa show block of town to visit and discuss farm news for these were all farmers come to town on Saturday, the day you bought groceries, ate a hamburger or plate lunch and watched people. The parking places on Main from Booth’s to Spot’s Grocery were the choice ones with the half block from the Barber shop, Kiowa, Baker’s News Stand, Anthony’s, the Pool Hall, Nye’s Bakery, a once exclusive café, the Bon Ton, the stairway to Dr. Braun’s office and Booth’s to the corner. There were prime spots for which we arrive early or double park to wait for some one to leave. In my earliest childhood people often sat in anyone’s car. It was nothing unusual to come back to the car and find a family sitting in it watching the people go by. Usually we would know them but that was not important. We never rolled up a window or locked a door. The north block on Main was a little more exclusive, more uptown. First National Bank held down the corner next to the Dixie Store. The Slaners our Jewish family, had a quality Department Store. You instantly knew this as you came in the tiny white/black tiled entrance with the unusual center show window flanked by two angle windows leading in to the big double doors. Just outside stood the huge weight machine with its fortunes and weights for a penny. The smell of well oiled floors and hushed sounds invited you in with reserve. Women’s on the south, men’s on the north, Earl Ream’s shoe department two steps up in the back. Here, too, in the south side back past materials and hosiery was an elevator! (The only one in town) Upstairs was ladies’ wear where Nellie and I bought Easter dresses. I remember mine so well - blue and white print, dropped fitted waist, soft like silk hardly like the closets of clothes of today’s girls.
Next to the Dixie was Grinnell’s Drug and Jewelry Store with its gift section in the rear. Then the most important store of my childhood, Gosslin’s which become the TG&Y. What wonderful things in all the little divided spots on the counter. Among the beckoning trinkets I longed for a necklace. I finally got one for my birthday, a tiny heart locket. Daddy got it for me and it may not have cost more than a dime but certainly no more than 98 cents at the most which would have been $1.00 even. It might have cost a thousand, I could not have been more thrilled and it wouldn’t have been harder to come by than the dime in the thirties. Here too I came with my quarter to get “my” Christmas tree which I always put on the library table and, oh, yes the Evening in Paris blue bottle of perfume for Aunt Eula.
Next came the Office Supply where the tables of new books waited each fall for the beginning of school. Oh, the smell and excitement of those books. It never seemed to be contagious to the Linn Boleses who solemnly sold these treasures.
The last real “store” that counted was the Oklahoman show ruled over by Mrs. James who knew no one’s name but everyone’s age. Dare not try to pass off young, she knew! This stern lady must have liked somebody, she was aunt to the Mahones, but she never betrayed the secret. Here the A movies showed, Mrs. Miniver; Gone With The Wind and Saturdays spent with Dan Daily and Betty Grable. The Kiowa had a Saturday night preview which started at 10 at night. Saturdays were filled with double features and cowboy shows, the Little Rascals, the Three Stooges and Our Eye on the World News Reels giving the latest war news.
How sad to see boarded up buildings that used to throb with community. And how could the Democrat Chief be in a hole in the wall on Main instead of the free standing yellow brick on 2nd street between Washington and Broadway. It held magic on election night when huge tally boards ere mounted on truck beds and new numbers put up as people gathered and stayed until the returns were in.
As I look back there were two Hobarts, the one occupied by the residents and the one visited by the outlying farm families. All the memories written here were through the eyes of a little tenant farmer girl. A self convinced college history professor shocked my world by his teachings about the oppressive tenant farmer conditions. Nothing could have been further from our truth. We were privileged to live on and operate the farm of Mrs. W.W. Rowland and Miss Stella, her daughter. IT was Mrs. Roland’s goal that each of her renters be able to own his own land which is precisely what we did.
How could it be 50 years gone? But still the church remains. And we are even recognized by some who shared the ties. When I can see Joe Hancock and D.B.Burns and the twinkle in Eva Brooks, dancing eyes, I have only to close my eyes to be again in a warm, friendly town a community where I grew up - Hobart, Oklahoma pop 5,186.
