August 25, 1949

It was really hot, no breeze. I sat cross-legged on the double bed next to the screen of the tent. We had eaten at noon and Jay and Bud Rivoire, our only neighbor, had gone back to the corn gathering. Bud was using his corn picker and tractor. There was also a little Alice combine sitting stationary near a small granary. Bud unloaded from the corn picker in front of the combine. Joyce Pace, the local day help, was helping out. He was on the tractor which powered the belt to the combine for the shelling. Jay scooped the ears onto the canvas. The reel carried them to the cylinder and the separator and conveyed the shelled corn into the bin.

The tractor whined in the distance. I had some new, engraved stationery and had started a letter to my dear friend, Doris, who had stood up with us at our wedding. That was just three weeks ago. We had had a lot of fun coming to Texas from Midwest City, where the Christian Church minister had read our vows. I had been in summer school at Oklahoma A&M and finished finals in time to go out to Cooperton in western Oklahoma to see my folks before getting married in the city on August 5, 1949.

We drove down rough, eastern Oklahoma roads from Tulsa in a little old '40 coupe, which proved somewhat reliable. We reached our Texas destination, hot and dusty, traveling the last twenty-five miles into a wilderness. I kept looking for some semblance of habitation or civilization.

I guess we were crazy, or crazy in love, to end up in such a jungle and undeveloped area as the Red River bottom, Warrens Bend. But Jay said that all the time he was stationed in the Adak, serving his marine time, he'd dreamed of having some land, running some cattle, and finding a wife, probably in that order.

The Texas bottomland where we were going to build our homestead was some that the US Government had requisitioned for use for an army training camp. Camp Howze was established in 1942, covering 56,000 acres of land and removing families from about one third of Cooke County in North Texas. His dad had owned the 474 acre farm that was purchased by the government with the ultimatum to move out in thirty days.

At the end of the war, the former owners were given the option to buy it back if they chose to. The U.S. government began dismantling the army camp in 1946 and 1947. Jay had just gotten out of the Marines. His dad pointed out that there were no houses, no barns nor fences. In the five years of army use, the vegetation had become a jungle. As for himself, he said he was just was too old to start over again. But if Jay wanted to tackle it, he'd buy it back and help him get started. They knew all the homes and improvements in the outlying infantry training area had been cleared. Those friends and neighbors had been forced to leave their farms for the Camp Howze installation. They had made a wartime sacrifice for the training of the vast number of soldiers who would end up in Europe, for the defense of our nation and the culmination of World War II. Not many opted to move back. The rebuilding appeared too difficult.

Jay told his Dad that he really wanted to farm in the Warrens Bend valley, but that he also wanted to get in on some of the GI Bill college time. Jerd Pybas agreed to help out and would buy the 474 acres back from the Government and get started on the fencing. As a beginning, Jay acquired a few cows and plowed and planted a small number of acres getting it back in cultivation, hence the corn crop.

We met at Oklahoma A&M University and that is another story. We crammed all the education we could get into two and a half years. Jay worked hard on the farm a couple of summers and went to class in the winter, but his dad kept reminding him that education was neither his project nor livelihood and that he better get focused on the farm. So we just decided to get married and get with it. He and his father had built one room of cement blocks, a start on a house, self enclosed with a small fireplace (the winter home?). They had also constructed a temporary tent, screened on all sides, large enough for an elegant Daisy wood stove with enamel warming oven and large water reservoir. There was a table and chairs, shelves, a double bed, and several footlockers used for utensils and foodstuffs (the summer home?)

The Daisy wasn't the first stove. The first was a pitiful four hole cast iron monkey stove, chinked with mud to keep the smoke from escaping. And on that one that I canned lots of tomatoes those first two weeks from the prolific August tomato patch, (planted by his father) using a Presto cooker and open kettle method.

We had the drawn house plans and had found a carpenter who was about ready to begin. They had staked the foundation and put up the lines as the markers. I was thinking and planning and wishing and hoping, wondering if we could get it built by cold weather. There were piles of sand from the Red River sandbar, several pick-up loads, to use for foundation cement. And although we were going to build in the river bottom, looking upward to the hills, Jay had an old-timer show him the high water marks from long past floods on ole Red. By using a transit and finding a high spot, we felt good about our location.

We'd go to the river every evening to swim and had some lines in hoping we'd catch a few catfish. There was just a trail through the tall brush and grasses and we'd try to take a look for the cattle on the way. The actual danger was from rattlesnakes and copperheads. Jay killed one or two every day and boasted of a cigar box full of rattles. He made fun of my fear and nonchalantly told me, "You just watch out for them."

On that afternoon, I was just sort of dreaming or thinking or sitting when I heard the most awful scream and yelling and cursing and I dashed out the door and ran toward the machinery as fast as I could. Jay was yelling in great pain, "Stop the tractor, stop it, kill it!" He was hollering to Joyce who was on the tractor. Joyce was frantically trying to figure out how to stop the machine.

Jay had stepped up on the platform of the combine, then a second step onto the cover over the whirring cylinder. A stick was caught under the reel so that it stopped the corn ears from being carried to the cylinder. Jay held a scoop reaching to dislodge the obstruction. Without warning, the cover gave way and dropped his leg into the cylinder that was running full speed. He was pinned there, screaming in agony, while the machine ground off his foot. He still yelled at Joyce, who was so scared he couldn't function or think how to shut off the tractor. So Jay commanded, "Let out on the clutch!" Joyce finally understood, raised his foot and it choked down the tractor and killed it. It was awful, and I could tell the pain was horrible.

But even then, Jay took control and told Joyce to go get Bud, out in the field. And he told me to run get a crow bar and see if we could pry his leg out. It seemed like it took a long time, and I wasn't really stout enough to move the cylinder, but Bud succeeded. A metal brace that supported the cover over the cylinder was gone, lost or destroyed. Jay had made the same step many times. But this one produced a terrible accident.

There wasn't all that much blood. It looked like the cylinder had chewed, crushed and seared the blood vessels. Jay had on a new pair of rough-out leather cowboy boots but there wasn't much left of the right one. The men helped him down off the combine while I ran to get the car, and we didn't stop for anything, we just knew we had to get to a doctor.

We had to lift Jay into our little old '40 coupe and Bud drove and I crouched in the middle. Jay was totally wet with sweat and pain and blood but he never did lose consciousness in the hour it took to get to Gainesville Memorial Hospital over the roughest, washboard, gravel roads imaginable. I was terrified but nobody said anything, just gritted our teeth and Bud fought the steering wheel and tried to go as fast as he could. When we got in the emergency room the nurses started cutting Jay's clothes off and the doctor gave him a shot to knock him out after he saw what a terrible injury he had to take care of.

It seemed like forever, several hours, almost dark, before Dr. Cirone came out and said they had done about everything they could for now. As it turned out, he had done just about everything wrong, because after he had cleaned up what was left of the foot, he slapped a big plaster cast on it as he said the ankle was also broken.

Bud came back to the hospital and asked me if there was anybody I could call. Well, we hadn't even been in Texas long enough for me to meet many persons, or make any real friends and there wasn't any family around. I thought of Perse and Dora Wilson who had driven out from Gainesville to see us. Perse had worked for Jay's dad for years before the war. He was even born in Warren's Bend. So I got in the coupe and went to find them. They got me coffee and something to eat and we sat at their kitchen table and tried to figure out what to do. Perse had been in the army but was one of the older guys and was about forty-five when he got back and found Little Dode, Dora Bibbie, who had been married before but was just the perfect match for him. I went back to the hospital and stayed most of the night but neither one of us slept much, even though the nurses kept giving Jay shots that were supposed to put him to sleep. I returned to the Wilson's about daylight and Dora made me take a bath and sleep a little. She found a dress with an elastic waist that I could wear, although she was about six inches shorter and that much wider than me. My clothes were the same ones I that had on when Jay got hurt.

I couldn't get a hold of Jay's folks because as soon as we married, they started on their travels. His dad put on his hat and said, "Well, there it is, kids, sink or swim." They had driven to California and were visiting some of the relatives near Los Angeles. But I did think of Uncle Arthur. Arthur Richards. He was Mammy's only brother and a road contractor, who lived in Oklahoma City. I found he was on a paving job out of Antlers, Oklahoma. So, I managed to get hold of him and he said he'd come early in the morning, a four or five hour drive from Antlers.

The next morning, Arthur got there about the time the doctor did. Dr. Cirone said that he thought it best if they sent Jay on over to the Veteran's Hospital at McKinney, Texas. That was on Saturday and it took awhile to get the admittance and permission granted. It was a couple of days later that they shipped him in an ambulance. Uncle Arthur and I went in his car. I didn't know where Jay's discharge was so I had to call a friend at Oklahoma City, who was a judge, Mike Foster. His wife, Libbie, worked in his law office and got the copy from the Oklahoma County courthouse and had it sent immediately to the hospital at McKinney for Jay to be admitted.

I was really beholden to Uncle Arthur. He took me to a little hotel on Main Street in the little town of McKinney where he got rooms. I can still remember that clerk smirking when Arthur said that I was his niece. He asked the second time if he was sure we needed two rooms. Uncle Arthur helped me get a hold of Jay's folks in California and we told them it was a really serious accident.

By the time Jay got to the Veterans Hospital at McKinney, Texas he was really hurting. And it didn't get any better. He was put in a room with three or four other guys, not in the big ward where he spent time later. They didn't let any visitors in until 1:00 in afternoon and I was sick with not knowing what was going to happen. Uncle Arthur said he had to go back to the job but would come back the next day. On the second day at the hospital, the pain was getting unbearable. There was a rod suspended above Jay's hospital bed, and he'd just hold onto it and grit his teeth and groan until the time a nurse could give him some more morphine. They ran the visitors out at 3:00 p.m. so they could give the patients their supper. But I was back at 6:00 and could only stay until 9:00. We couldn't talk much and he didn't even want me holding on to him.

Jay told me about a physician from the Southwestern Medical School coming on the rounds on Wednesday morning. By then the medication was effective only a little while. He was sweating and trying to keep from yelling for the three hours it took so that he could have another shot. The doctor took one look at Jay's remaining stub protruding from the plaster cast and said, "Who did this job?" The flesh was virtually black. So they rushed him to the examining room and started cutting off the cast and found that gangrene had begun and the flesh was decomposing. Jay said that doctors rarely denounce the work of another doctor's medical treatment or decision. However, this University surgeon was ranting about the botched job and the sorry medical procedure that had been used.

I hung around the hospital from noon on hoping I could get in to see him when he was brought back to the ward. And to my surprise and relief, Jay's parents walked in. They had driven all the way from California in three days. Their brand new Oldsmobile was really a godsend. They had not been able to see Jay, yet. As we waited the doctor came out and told us that we could come in the private room. He then explained to us all the things that he had already told Jay. The diagnosis was that Jay's limb had to be amputated, that the poison from the gangrene was already invading his body and that there was no medical way to stop it. The doctor also told us that the best amputation was a below-knee stump. The new prostheses were already developed and being used by many wartime patients with much the same injury. From the diagnosis, the doctor had already scheduled the surgery for three that afternoon.

My in-laws and I left and decided to get a motel room, which was closer to the hospital. They were nearly exhausted and distraught from the news about their only son. It was a cruel blow. We rushed to check out of the hotel to get my things. In the confusion, I left a small box that contained every little piece of jewelry that I owned, a locket, the earrings Jay had given me and some non valuables. Fortunately, I was wearing my engagement and wedding rings.

His dad lay down to rest, but there was no way we could get at ease. I locked myself in the tiny bathroom and cried for a long time, just because I was so glad someone was with me and could sympathize with us both. About five, we went back to the hospital to wait. The doctor had told us about how long he thought it would take. It still was a couple of hours before a nurse came to get us and said that we could see him now. The light made a soft glow at the head of his bed. The rod and the rope were not there. Jay was smiling a little, and said, "Whew, I'm glad that's over... You know, I think I'm hungry." The pain was gone. We even hugged and kissed and he said, "How are you, Dad?" but his father, too moved to even speak, turned and left the room. I asked him what he'd like to eat and he said, "How about some canned tomatoes!"

Uncle Arthur and Rainey and Helene Pybas showed up. Rainey, a cousin of sorts, was the superintendent on the road construction the Richards Construction Company was building out of Antlers, Oklahoma and Helene was staying there at Antlers with him. They'd only been married two or three years and we always had fun with them, had even stopped by there on our wedding trip to Texas! Early on, Rainey had worked for Jay's dad, even before his long service time in the South Pacific, Leyte and New Guinea. Helene had been in the service, too. We all went back to the hospital for the 6:00 to 9:00 evening visiting hours.

But we couldn't all go in the ward at the same time. And Jay was so tired and recuperating and really ill from the ordeal. So some stayed in the yard and in the foyer and maybe one by his bedside. Jay's father was so distressed and sorrowful and hurting, he just went out on the slope, a grassy knoll, which extended from the hospital grounds to the street, lay down on his side and was crying uncontrollably. Finally, Rainey went out to him, gave him orders to get up and straighten up. "Jerd", he told him, "Just be thankful that Jay's alive." Rainy said he had seen injuries lots worse than this. The straight man to man instruction took effect and finally Jay's dad got up in control, with a grip and focus to face the tragedy.

September 25, 1949

We soon began to get in sort of a routine. It was going to be about four months stay at the Veterans hospital. Jay's mother and I looked in the newspaper and found a place to stay. A little widow had divided her small house with one side for rent. There were two rooms with a shared bath. It did have a stove and table and chairs and old-fashioned cupboard. The bedroom was small, with windows looking over the little porch to the street. Mrs. B., as we called her, was over seventy, very modest and clean and didn't want us to see her in the mornings before she had put her powder on. She had also been touched by a farm accident as her son had lost an arm.

I stayed part of the time, and Jay's mother and dad stayed some, but we could only see him in the afternoon. There were no morning visiting hours. Things had to be looked after at home. The carpenter was ready to begin the foundation on the house and Jerd was to get several acres ready to plant alfalfa and some of the cows were going to calve. It seemed like lots to do. And we didn't know the time would stretch out until Christmas.

Jay was soon feeling fine, but his stump was stubborn and continued to drain so the doctors wouldn't release him. By now he was in a big ward of about thirty beds in the bone ward. There were other wards for internal patients and the kick-off ward for the really serious ones. So there were lots of veterans to get acquainted with and joke with and they seemed to be making the best of bad situations. Some were in pain, but many of them were just waiting for the healing. Jay soon was an expert on crutches and went to the dining hall. He had a hearty appetite and even befriended a Seventh Day Adventist who wasn't allowed to eat meat and gladly gave him all the pork chops and beef stew he wanted.

One sidekick was named Elms. I can't even remember his first name. Elms had been in a motorcycle accident near Odessa, and had lost his left leg. He even made the gory story about the long ambulance trip across the miles to McKinney Veterans Hospital seem funny. He was hurting but really wanted a cigarette, so the driver handed him one that was already lit. His hands were all skinned up, too and he dropped the cigarette on his chest. He had a luxuriant amount of chest hair that immediately caught on fire. He said he thought he was going to burn to death instead of dying in the motorcycle accident.

Jay had lost his right leg. The boys were issued Canadian crutches, with clamps around the forearm and grips to carry most weight. Soon they were doing acrobatics on the way to the mess hall, sometimes with one pair of crutches, arms around each other. They also could see who could kick the highest, even touch the heating pipes, ducts which lined halls on the way to the dining area, balancing on the crutches, using their one good leg. Even though there were many severe injuries in the bone ward, the camaraderie was high in most instances. When one patient, a constant whiner and complainer, was in an assigned a bed, finally, the nurses put Elms on one side and Jay on the other. With their taunting and belittling remarks and giving him derogatory names, the patient finally demanded his clothes and left the hospital.

So the boys in the ward were almost a unit, getting to know each other as the months passed and even though they made the best of it, they were all eager to leave. One night several of the boys decided to sneak out and go to Dallas to get a beer. Usually, all their clothes and keys were locked up but Smitty had kept his car keys and his car was parked in the hospital lot. Unfortunately, Smitty was in a long cast for a severely broken leg, which came almost to his waist. Then there were Jay and Elms in their pajamas and crutches. They got inside the Dallas County line and found a beer joint. The patrons welcomed them in and treated them, poor unfortunate veterans they were, until they had all they could drink and Smitty, probably too much.

On the way back to McKinney, the road made an S-curve under a railroad overpass. Smitty was hampered in his movement and equilibrium and didn't make the curve. The car rolled and came to rest on its side. Cars were stopping to help, and one trucker was first on the scene. Elms had managed to get the window open and flung his stump out and the trucker said, "Oh, God damn!" Then Jay managed to get up and the trucker saw that he was minus a leg, also. He was almost ready to faint, saying, "Ohh.. God damn!"

About the third car which stopped was a nurse, Dolly Lenertz, who was one of the favorites of the bone ward. She ran to the wreck, and was astonished to see her patients.

She screamed, "Pybas... Elms... Smitty! What do you all think you are doing? You'll be kicked out for this." But Dolly relented. She said she couldn't do anything about Smitty, who had to stay with the car. But she pushed Elms and Jay into her little car and drove swiftly to the back door of the ward, which had an outside entrance. She even had her keys. It was already dark and after visiting hours and the lights out had already been called. Jay said he made one jump and found his bed, but Elms had a few more steps to go. Suddenly, there was a loud crash. The arm brace had been broken off Elm's crutch in the wreck. He had landed in a heap on the floor. The lights flashed on. A nurse came running to see what had happened. Elms said he was just on the way to the head.

October 25, 1949

When I was staying in McKinney, I had nothing to do but make myself beautiful for my afternoon visits to the hospital. I brought my high heels and prettiest dresses. I soon became acquainted along the ward and joked and flirted and enjoyed the wolf whistles, making my way to Jay's bedside. Sometimes he used a wheelchair and we moved out onto the wooden step outside the exit of the bone ward for some sunshine. We were surely needing some together time and privacy and passionate release. Jay had figured out how to get behind a hedge next to the foundation of the building. After dark when the evening visitor hours were under way, we'd slip out and hide and I was always sure we'd be found out or exposed.

A few times we'd go to the apartment, but it was difficult to get the car close enough to leave without being seen, and it required some adept maneuvering with his crutches since the patients weren't supposed to leave the grounds. Little Mrs. B. was always very sympathetic and concerned, knowing my husband was in the Veterans Hospital. But she had never met him. One afternoon we were trying to sneak in when she came to the first door on the shed porch, which ran across the front of the little house. Both doors opened onto the porch. So we made the best of it and Jay stood there in his pajamas and he charmed her and listened to her tell about her son. Our love tryst was thwarted that afternoon. Later, she told me, "Why, I didn't know he was so young. He looks too young for you." I never did figure that one out.

Most of the patients were young veterans, in 1949, not many years after the war. And by now most of them in the bone ward were from other injuries than the service connected ones. There was little Fletcher, a Bataan survivor, who had come home weighing only 85 pounds, who had gone to Lake Texhoma and dived out of a boat and broke his neck! He was in a full body cast which came down to his hips. He could walk around if someone stood him up, and he peered out of a plaster oval which extended to the top of his head. And Blackie, a giant of a man, stuffing cookies one after one in his mouth from the shoe box-full I had brought. He said he was in an unfortunate accident at the bus station in Waco, mouthed off to a sheriff who told him to leave....and the sheriff shot him. And two of the guys, bedfast with multiple casts, who would get the nurses to push their beds together with a night table between and play pinochole all day. Until they had a terrible fight, one accused the other of cheating, they began throwing whatever they could lay their hands on, books, spit trays, urine ducts, screaming at each other until the whole ward was making bets on the winner.

And big Roger, two hundred and fifty pounds, was encased and bedfast in a body cast after back surgery. His bed was the last one in the ward as I was leaving. He'd call me to stop, to talk to him, and would compliment me and proposition me and hold onto my hand. No danger there. But I think Jay might have been a bit jealous, as he showed up in his wheel chair before Roger let me leave and told him that I was his property.

I was traveling back and forth from our river bottom in Cooke County, Texas, to the Veterans Hospital at McKinney. The doctors still didn't think it was time to release Jay although we had a weekend or two away on pass. One time we drove to Stillwater to the Oklahoma A&M Homecoming game. Jay was managing well on Canadian crutches and I was a good driver. A few of the students we knew were still enrolled. We found the little diner and beer hall we had enjoyed with those friends was not there. It had been enlarged and renovated into a regular nightclub with mirrors and dance floor. The owners, Madge and O.D. were good friends and took some credit for our courtship and engagement. We congratulated them on their expansion and advancement. Madge was all dressed up and serving as the hostess and found a table for us and the friends around us. But soon she disappeared and was not around for some minutes. Finally, she returned and said, "Barbara, I just had to leave and have a good cry. I had to get over the shock of Jay with just one leg."

November 25, 1949

At Thanksgiving, Jay's mother told us that she was to have surgery the first week of December. So it was decided that I should go to their home near Oklahoma City to help take care of her. She was diabetic and had been on insulin for some time and was a large woman and the doctor said it would be necessary to have a very exacting diet and recuperation for a successful recovery. A niece, Edith Smythe, a registered nurse, who lived in California, flew in to assist in the operating room. She was a tiny, funny woman, head of the nursing staff in her hospital. On the morning of the surgery she was ready to go to the hospital in her uniform but asked, "Barbara, do you have a coat I could wear?" She had left warm California without a wrap, but did bring a fur coat knowing Oklahoma can be very cold in December. She declared, "I'm just not going to march into a new hospital wearing a fur coat over my uniform." I loaned her my navy gabardine, three-quarter coat, which was none too clean but was the best I could do. It was full length on her tiny frame.

Mammy came from the hospital after a week. It was a serious surgery for a uterine tumor the size of a grapefruit. We put a hospital bed in the den on the ground floor, which became her recuperation area, quite cozy with a fire in the fireplace. While she would still spend much of the time in bed, I was busily following the instructions in preparing and weighing all the food, testing the urine samples for the sugar reading, charting everything as Edith had instructed before her return to California.

The time was flying by and Christmas was approaching. Jay and I exchanged letters and a few phone calls from McKinney. He was getting his new leg and learning to use it and expected to be released by Christmas. I put up a small Christmas tree with festive lights and began making Christmas candy and fruitcake for gift boxes. Uncle Arthur had finished his construction project in southern Oklahoma. His home was in Oklahoma City and he often came to see us. He laughed about all the different kinds of candy I had made and stored, fudge, divinity, penuche, pralines, and called me the Candy Making Kid.

December 24, 1949

Jay was to arrive at Oklahoma City on the Texas Chief from Dallas on Christmas Eve. I didn't seem to get everything done that I had planned, with cooking, cleaning and caring for his mother, although I was excited and eager for his coming. It had been a long month away from each other. It was quite cold and I had a new plum colored long coat and cloche hat and I got dressed to go to the train station for the 6:30 p.m. train. It was only twelve miles away and this time I drove the Pybas's new Oldsmobile. But, I was too late. The train had already come in. The lights were glowing softly at the top of the steps at the station. There was a parking space on the street. So I would have to go inside to find Jay. It looked as if everyone had gone. There was only one guy at the top of the steps, quite good looking, in a tweed overcoat and suit and tie. As I was collecting myself to get out, he hurried down the steps and pecked on the frosty window on the passenger side. "How about a date, good lookin'?", he said, smiling and teasing.

I was astonished, amazed and speechless when I realized it was my husband. He had no crutches, no cane, no limp. No wooden leg? Yes, he did have a prosthesis but had already mastered its use. He got in and I started the car and the heater, and we just hugged and kissed and laughed and were filled with the Christmas Spirit.

There was an obscure, little beer joint a block down from the station. Jay motioned, "Let's stop here." We could see our breath in the cold air as we walked to the blinking lights and dark door. We happily settled at a booth at the edge of a tiny dance floor. After we were warmed up and had ordered a beer, Jay fished out some dimes for the jukebox. There were only two or three persons in the place besides the bartender. After all, it was Christmas Eve.

Then Jay said, "Do you want to see if we can dance?" He stood, reached for my hand, we moved together, just swayed, almost afraid to take a step. But suddenly the music was talking to us, "I'll Be Home for Chri--st--mas, Yooou Can Count on Meeeee, Please have Snow and Mistletoe, and Presents on the Tree." And we started dancing, mostly with my moving backward and Jay trying out his new leg. But we knew it was a good omen. Things were going to be all right. It had been only four months to Christmas.

Barbara Pybas calls herself a "bonafide Texan," having been "imported" from western Oklahoma by a handsome ex-Marine that she met at Oklahoma A&M and married in 1949. They now live on a cattle ranch, twenty miles from town, which borders the Red River. Barbara has six children and eleven grandchildren, and she says they're all "smarter and more accomplished than me, but I'm catching up!"

Barbara's writing credetentials are bonafide, too. She writes articles for newspapers and magazines and generally prefers to focus on Texas history. She has contributed stories for "Cooke County History: Past and Present" (Curtis Media Publications, Dallas) and has been published several times in the annual "April Perennial," in which she has won in both short story and poetry contests. Barbara is also the author of "High Flying Times" (TwinOaks Publishing) and has contributed several vignettes for the 2003 publication of the Texas Folklore Society, "The Family Saga" (North Texas University Press), which be available in hardback in October, 2003.

Image: "Bottom of the Garden" Goodman Jean Edward Seago (1910-1975)

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