From Donna

[Alastair]

Hi, I am Donna Flood's daughter, she wanted me to email this to you to put on a community forum:

Howdy y'all "insert here smiley face for a bit of levity". Don't we all need some fun at this day of March 2020 during the virus pandemic. By the way I am told I am high risk at age 84, but as the kids would say, "oh well".

Here on Quail Ridge, on the Rhonda Lou, all is the same with us. Dialysis has already made me nuts, so what else is new? Meanwhile back on this many a dream ranch, I look out over a landscape while I remember the view in front of the old Jones' place ranch being a visual expanse stretching out so that I can see forever, and I'm happy. So what if this is a tiny replica in my mind only.

Good, true friends bring me food, love, and joy. They remind me to stay committed to my original dedication, not to medicine, but the healing art of the pen and art itself.

Keep your chin up during these heavy days we have been warned about with a promise of relief in Revelations 21 Christian scriptures.

So long, hopefully not goodbye, from Oklahoma.

Donna and Rhonda Flood

PS You might want to check out https://www.jw.org as they have good stuff for Kids


Kay Bojorquez, MEd.
7th Grade English Language Arts
West Middle School
bojork@pcps.us

[swiftest]

Re: From Donna

Not sure why I am replying, perhaps because no one else has. I don't know Donna Flood or Rhonda. Quail Ridge and Rhonda Lou will require a bit of a search but I am curious. And Oklahoma, always thought one of my favourite singers, (Guy Mitchell) was from Oklahoma but perhaps he simply owned a ranch there. Kaye Vaughn, football player who played for the Ottawa Rough Riders in the late fifties, early sixties was, almost definitely from Oklahoma.
I was actually looking for posts by "The Observer", enjoyed his posts in the past but have not been a constant visitor to this site. And I am 82, maybe my age sees a little wistfulness in the post.

[Alastair]

Re: From Donna

Donna has her own section on Electric Scotland... see http://www.electricscotland.com/history/america/donna/

Alastair

[Alastair]

Re: From Donna

Donna's 2020 April 17

At the virus shut in do you feel like you are losing your mind, balance, and good behavior? Do like we did - take a drive through the Osage Highlands. Be careful, a person can get hopelessly lost on roads leading to nowhere but cattle feeding lots and in a few hours a mind will be brought to a higher plane where it tells of the creator's work. These rolling azure hills and the horizon where the great links of prairie blue stem grass reign. Angus cattle dot the hills like bits of licorice drops. A thousand herd of cattle goes for $1000 a head - which comes to a million dollars, that, and the landscape, take our breath away.

"The man upstairs," as Dad referred to his creator, "Must have been having fun when he created the Osage."

My memories of the rock columns with tiny fossils remind me that this surely must have been an ocean.

We drove past my brother Paul Jones' ranch, the ranch that he and his wife Billie, built with their own hands with a beautiful rambling house.

"We bought hay from a rich rancher that had his own airplane," a friend told me.

"That was my brother," I had to chuckle. "If he was rich, it was because he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps," I told my friend.

We drove on by and I was sad to not be able to see my nephew now living in the old home place, where a winding tree lined road led up to the front door and I knew there was once an indoor swimming pool.

We drove past the former Lohman Ranch which has changed hands a number of times. My daughter pointed out the tall water tower.

The ranchers were burning old pastures so new growth without weeds might give winter cattle fresh, green grass.

For a moment we are removed from the worries of the killer virus in the towns.

"I feel at home," my eldest daughter remembered her childhood home. "I love the wind and clean air," she went on.

"You know we all could have been here, but for my family did not get along, there was not enough laws for the land or each other. Love is so powerful and can unite. At any rate, all Dad's hard work has been destroyed - only the rock porch Dad and Burt Peters built remains."

"All is lost," Dad often almost tearfully told.

I just wish he could see all these giant windmills, how pleased he would have been.

No one in the car mentioned the virus all day.