Baker's Branch

           Men and women do not react to happiness the same way. Women cry over things that make them happy. Men don't do that. A movie with a happy ending will make a woman cry. So will a graduation, hers or someone else's. A gift card, with no money in it? Oh, yes. A wedding? Holy mackerel. The list is practically endless.         Once I became aware of this significant difference (I was maybe eighteen, thereabouts) I began to employ it to my benefit, and never looked back.         When my wife and I married (Wewoka First Baptist), older women all over the sanctuary, older women she had known for years, broke into tears, recalling no doubt her earlier promise (substantial), and, now, right in front of them, the reality of the fine catch she had made. There it was, me, standing up there beside her for all of them to see. At some point during the ceremony, I heard a sob or two behind ...

My wife is a good cook. Not me. I have to cheat. Somewhere around Memorial day is when you are most likely to catch me. I’m pretty good at it. I’m probably doing it as you read this. I watched over my father’s shoulder the first chicken he ever charcoal grilled. It was up in Nebraska where we were visiting my grandpa Harry between dad’s naval service moves. He hated growing up on that farm, but somehow always managed to pull us into that muddy drive just north of the milk barn for “leave” between the two coasts. Remembering his parents, he wanted to visit with them, farm or not. If we were to stay a week, Dad would get bored somewhere around the third day in, and start doing the farm chores he joined the Navy to get away from. Mowing alfalfa to be baled, he would jump down off the tractor and run down baby jacks and cottontails fleeing the side-mower blades. I said, “run them down”. It didn’t seem possible, but he would bring them to me in a cardboard box to play with. Once he brought ...

    Author's Note:     I married above my station in life, but not blindly. Of course the girl was nice looking, but her dad had to be a fisherman, and he was. Her mother had to be a good cook, a good housekeeper, and in every other way have her life in order, and she did, and then some. Such had been the men and women in my life, and I was just barely smart enough to see the advantages of that lifestyle. On the other hand, the girl had plenty of options of her own. There were two Division 1 football players in her life; two or three young men Hollywood handsome, and a future millionaire or two. She picked me. The Lord works in mysterious ways.         Fiftieth wedding anniversaries, you know, the "Golden" ones, grew on her family tree like ripe figs on a biblical tree. There were summers that seemed as if all we did was go to the big celebrations; hours spent eating white cake with sickening pure sugar icing, small plates of cashews and ...

  Editor’s Note: I was assigned to the US Army Headquarters for all of Europe located in Heidelberg, Germany in August 1985. A few months after arriving I  was promoted to major. Having never been to Europe it was an exciting adventure for all of us. This article was a response to a letter I sent Conrad soon after my promotion. Dear Vernon: Got your letter yesterday, and it sure was good to hear from you. Congratulations on the promotion. Making Major in today’s army is no mean feat. Sorry to hear the raise in pay falls considerably short of matching the newly acquired status. Major Vollertsen: it has a ring to it. Nancy’s bound to be proud. I know Dad is. I feel certain that it was no coincidence your letter arrived at the height of the hunting season as it did. It must be nice living in Germany, and touring all of Europe in your free time, but did I read a note of whimsy between the lines? What could be better than a covey rise off the side of a plum thicketed hillside...

            Linda Hladik taught me how many potatoes it took to feed company. Solomon Ballantyne, a full blood Cree, taught me how to cook those potatoes in a driving rainstorm while he whipped up a shore lunch for three, lightning in the air, up on the wild Churchill River in northern Saskatchewan.      Linda's lesson, yea these many years gone, was one of the most important I ever learned. Linda was a wonderful cook, and practical. She knew all kinds of simple tricks I had never heard of, and wanted to learn. One was the proper number of potatoes to feed the crowd, one to one hundred. I remember the day, honest.      It was at Linda and Dave's house, another one of many fabulous home cooked meals Pam and I ate there over the years. The dinner had been "packed away", and we were in that quiet conversational interlude between great meal and dessert, to be followed by time to clear the table and wash dishe...

We like dogs out here on the Branch. They're buried all over the place. Most of them by me, but not all of them. The last two were buried by friends, right out there in back with all the others. I showed them where to dig so as not to dig into one of the others. There's that many. Jeeminy Christmas, it'd be hard for me to count them all up. I'm not going to try. I can tell you the different breeds easier. Poodles, Schnauzers, Beagles, Chessies, Labs (God's gift to dogdom), German Shepherds, two or three mutts, Airedales (great dogs), but, surprisingly, no bird dogs. Not out here; in town, yes. I owned a beautiful white and orange ticked English Setter for two days somebody abandoned out here at the end of our dead end street. Rather than have it impounded, I called my plumber, the quail hunter, told him what I had, and years later he told me it was one of the best dogs he ever owned. No discount on the plumbing. I changed plumbe...

                        I'm a simple man. Tomorrow's a holiday. I will baste and roast a rack of baby back ribs. Pam will make scalloped potatoes, lot's of cheese, and fix a nice mixed green salad, but it's not necessary. I have gotten by on less, on purpose, when I had far and away more sumptuous choices.         For years I did a ton of my hunting and fishing out of the back of my pickup camper shell. Where the sun went down, so did I, and started fixing supper in red sunsets with coyote music and owl hoots piped in. In that camper shell was a medium-sized ice chest with cold milk, a jug of orange juice, eggs, link sausage, and various selections of frozen-hard red meat; steaks, pork chops and such that thawed as the trip progressed and helped keep the milk and juice cold, saving on ice miles from any. One night I'd eat a rib-eye. Next night maybe a pork chop. Then maybe a t-bone....