Now, everyone knows what beautiful country that is around Pineville, beautiful water and beautiful hills. Everyway you look there is beauty, but there comes a time that you can't live on beauty alone. Well, when that happened to us, Dad went out and traded something for a molasses mill and made molasses on the half. Then he had molasses to sell and molasses to eat so we got along pretty well. After the molasses season was over, Dad always saved part of the last batch of molasses to make taffy. The whole community was invited to the Taffy Pull and party and just about everyone in the community came. Dad was an expert at making molasses and taffy. His taffy wasn't just taffy-it was taffy Candy. After everybody got tired of pulling taffy, then the party started. Those Hill People knew more party games than I ever heard of, such as: "OL DAN TUCKER WAS A FINE OLD MAN, HE WASHED HIS FACE IN A FRYING PAN, COMBED HIS HAIR WITH THE WAGON WHEEL, AND DIED WITH THE TOOTHACHE IN HIS HEEL. LOOK OUT, LOOK OUT FOR OL DAN TUCKER, HE'S TOO LATE TO GET HIS SUPPER. SUPPER'S OVER AND BREAKFASTS COOKIN, OLE DAN TUCKER JUST STANDS THERE LOOKIN'-- The boys got to hold hands with the girls a lot and that the best kind of games. Everybody had a good time and were sorry the molasses season was over...Before another molasses season, we were back in Oklahoma and Dad was working in the oil fields and he never went back to farming.....Elmer and I were 17 years old. Elmer was hauling pipe in the oil fields and I was working some, too, helping where there was somebody sick in a home or where they had a new baby. Well, I guess we thought now we were old enough to go with somebody besides each other like we always had done. I went wherever he went and he went wherever I went when we were going to parties. This girl he was going with was as ugly as a mud fence but she had an apricot tree in her yard and Elmer liked apricots so he just kept going back and when we walked to church, about one mile away, they walked together and I walked with her brother. I wouldn't call him handsom, but he was nice. It wasn't long before Elmer was going with one of those girls that lived in the big white house and Elsea was heart-broken so she wrote Elmer a long letter but she didn't dare let her mother know about it, so she folded it up and put it in her shoe, so the letter was in pretty bad shape by the time Elmer got it. He left it on the dresser in his room and Jessie and I read it. Jessie was Lewis's wife. We thought he would have a fit about it-he knew we had read it and he said, "What would her mom do about it if she knew about it?" Well, I knew what that old woman would do, she would just about have killed her, that's what. Well, for a few years there we just went with the boys and girls of our community, then Elmer began to drift farther away from home. Sometimes he would be gone two weeks at a time working, then the oil company put him on a pumping job and he was away most of the time and I wondered why I was missing him so much. I had never missed him like that before and when he would come home I was so glad to see him. One Saturday he cam home and we decided this must be love and we began to think about when and where.Of course, we were at War with Germany and everybody was going to camp, but Elmer had been rejected because of a heart murmur thought to be caused from him having meningitis as a child and, no way would they take him. So we rode the train from Belin into Muskogee and got married. Then in a short time Elmer was drafted into the Army and sent to Camp Pike,Arkansas. At that time, the flu epidemic had taken over the Camp, so he and a few other men who had not taken the flu kept busy carrying out the dead soldiers and training the few who were left. But, Thank the Lord, in just four months the War was over and my loved one came home on Christmas Day. Etna, Uncle Bob's wife, and I had spent Christmas Day with Emma, Pat and Robert and when Mother called us that Elmer was home, we lost no time in getting home. Our little pony just couldn't go fast enough, and when Elmer saw us coming, he ran and jumped every rod line on the way to get to us. That was just the best Christmas I ever had.....We stayed at Mother and Dad's until after our first child was born, which was about three months. A beautiful little blue-eyed girl. She is still a beautiful blue-eyed girl although she is about 70 years old and not little, but she is so good, everybody loves Verna. We were soon in our own home again. The oil company put Elmer back to work where he left off when he went to Camp, and in about two years we had another little girl, a pretty little blue-eyed girl to be a happy little girl, kind of a special little girl. We called her our little Peace-Maker. When there were things for the other children to do and they didn't want to go right on and do them, she would always say, "I will do it". And she would. Well, we were having our now family but we needed a boy, so the very next one was a big long blond boy. He was a handsom little boy, smart and a good worker. Well, he was our pride and joy, and always will be...the Lord took our special little girl to Heaven when she was l3 years old. That was the first big sorrow of our life--Little Vera Mae.......When Paul was twenty years old he married a dear little girl who lived in our community and we have loved her like a daughter and always will. They had three wonderful boys. Well, if I start bragging on my grandchildren, I am going to run out of notebook, so I will just tell you how many I have and, of course, they are all the best grandchildren in the world. We have five grandchildren, fourteen great grandchildren and eight great-great granchildren, and I know I will have one more great because he is on the way. LITTLE THINGS I REMEMBER....ELMER, ME AND THE WATERMELON PATCH............Well, out back of our house in the big garden we had several rows of nice watermelon vines. They were just setting on little melons when the hot days and hot winds decided to come through our part of Oklahoma and you know what that can do to nice tender melon vines. We watched them wilt down for a few days and then Elmer said, " We have got to do something or we will have no melons". The first things we did-we went out there in the woods to our trash pile and found all the tin cans and syrup buckets we could find, then we went to our neighbor's trash pile and found all they had then he took a good-sized nail and made two holes in each can about a half inch from the bottom and set a can at each plant so it wouldn't fall over, then we filled each can with water that run out right over the roots of the plants, then we started over again and filled them again the second time. Well, we did this until the showers started. Of course, we didn't carry all this water. In those days nearly every farmer had a big water barrel fixed on a sled and it was pulled by a horse, All farmers hauled water from the farm pond to keep water in the hog pens for the hogs to wallow in to keep cool. Our neighbors thought we were putting out a lot work for nothing, but the results were lots of good melons and lots of evening company from the neighbors to eat watermelon. Elmer was never one to stand back and watch something just dry up and do nothing about it... Grandmother died in 1989. She was very special to us and we miss her very much. My life has been so easy compared to her's. I would someday like to visit Ward's Grove Cemetery and try and locate the tombstones of my ancestors that are buried there. Appreciate any help. Larry Gosnell larrygosnell@worldnet.att.net