My daughter, Katie, called me this morning and we talked about our memories of holidays. She rembered that I had written some thoughts several years ago about my childhood and the very different way that holidays and Sundays were spent in mid-century Oklahoma. She asked me to add a couple of these stories to Safe Harbor Pathways.
Hitchita Decoration Day…1950’s
Memorial Day is celebrated, primarily, to honor those that have given their lives for our country. While this was certainly true in Hitchita, Memorial Day was, in the 1950’s, known as “Decoration Day”. On this day, “the folks” would come from near and far and gather at the Hitchita Cemetery, on the outskirts of Hitchita. Sprays, wreathes, flowers in vases and wildflowers picked by the kids were placed on the graves of those who had “left this vail of tears” as Aunt Minnie would say.
During the years that I attended Hitchita Decoration Day in the 1950’s, we would spend the morning at the cemetery and then move to either Aunt Minnie’s or Aunt Lela’s house for an afternoon lunch. Renee (my sister) said that she remembers having picnics on the grounds of the cemetery in later years…this was in the years after I had attended. From my perspective, probably the most notable memory is the continual fascination that I had with the grave of my grandmother, Elizabeth (Lizzy) Lippard. The grave was actually a crypt that was covered with a concrete slab, about three feet wide and about 6 feet long. It was actually one of the largest structures in the cemetery. While I never met Lizzy, she passed away from Tuberculosis at a sanitarium in eastern Oklahoma around 1936, the sheer size of her grave meant that she must have been an important person…at least as my grade school brain reconciled the person with the grave.
After the flowers were placed on the graves, “the folks” gathered under a tent that was constructed for the possibility of poor weather and to house the inevitable prayer meeting and hymn singing…actually appropriate for an occasion like Decoration Day. For the kids, this day had several dimensions. The first, and most memorable, was the sheer morbidity of the day…death…celebrated, and consecrated. In the mind of a child, the fact that a large group of people would gather to “celebrate” and “remember” death was normal in a strange sort of way. “Decoration Day” had a somber overtone that a child…me… would not comprehend until years later… I really was uncomfortable on that day, but I did like it…in some not-well-understood way. The other clear memory of “Decoration Day” was the adults were so engrossed in “adult things” that we, the kids, had a lot of freedom to disappear. We did that very well! Without adult supervision, we went where we wanted and had adventures on the streets and hills in central Oklahoma in the mid-fifties.
Sunday visits to Hitchita
Most small rural American communities have cultures that are, in part, based on the gathering of families, immediate and extended, for the ritual of sharing meals. Sharing meals on Sunday and on holiday like “Decoration Day” was a Hitchita tradition that was a constant in a world of mid-twentieth century change. In this post war era, the world was becoming a very dangerous place. Nuclear weapons were proliferating…the communists had replaced the Axis powers as the great threat to the survival of our world. Small rural communities were bastions of normalcy in a world that seemed to be spinning out of control. After church services on Sunday, “the folks”, the euphemism for the extended family consisting of the Lippards, Colemans and Allens, would gather…most often at Aunt Minnie’s and Uncle Jake’s house in the middle of town.
Rachel was a Larimore and Minnie and Lela were Allen sisters. They each married and lived their adult lives within the confines of Hitchita. Each sister had family and extended family…our cousins…once, twice or three times “removed”. The children and grandchildren of “the folks” would make their way down “mile lane” to partake in the weekly ritual of Sunday lunch. Lunch would be “pot luck”…everyone brought dishes to which their reputations as cooks were tied. There was no need to label the dishes because Aunt Minnie recognized the dishes of everyone in the family. Lunch was spread out on “side tables”, buffet style. There would always be fried chicken, salads…green and fruit, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, green beans and fresh churned soft butter that was served in a chipped china bowl covered in roses. The butter was especially memorable because it was liberally applied by everyone to the ubiquitous soda biscuits. The iced tea was always sweet…without lemon. Dessert was usually watermelon in the summer. In the winter, dessert would typically be some type of lemon cake or pound cake with fruit preserves…canned in the previous summer by the aunts.
“The folks” would “make a plate” and proceed to the several tables scattered around the kitchen and living room, or they would head for the wooden bench swing on the front porch. After everyone had eaten (women at the tables gossiping, men in the living room and on the front porch, talking about the events of the day, beef prices and the “damned heat”), the leftover food would be covered with sheets to combat the potential for an invasion of flies and left out on the side tables for afternoon snacking. The men would all move to the porch and perch on the swing or on the edge of the porch with legs dangling. They would all smoke. Meanwhile the “ladies” would move to the bedroom where they would continue the “gossip” as the men called their conversations. They would “make themselves comfortable” by “undoing stays” or by putting cool wet clothes on their arms in order to more comfortably survive the hot Oklahoma summer afternoons. The kids would be FREE! Free to roam all over Hitchita. Free to explore the ruins of the old bank (some said it was robbed in the early part of the century) or free to kick rocks down the dirt streets.
Sunday afternoons were times of high adventures for “the cousins”. As evening approached, “the folks” would begin to amble to the side tables and have “a few bites”. The dishes would be gathered by the respective owners and loaded into the waiting cars. “The folks” would begin their migration back to the middle of the twentieth century…to jobs, schools, responsibilities and “life”. This migration was accompanied by goodbyes and the assurance that “we’ll be seein’ ya next week”. The long drives past the gin mill at the end of “mile lane” and on to the northeast to Claremore were memorable because it was the marker for the end of something pure and precious…only to be reconvened the next time my parents “could make it down to see the folks”.
bill@safeharborpathways.com
Safe Harbor Pathways 
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