Intro to Stories with Grandma

For those of you who don't know, the first 50 years of Keith's life has been an adventure. From birth, Keith has never been boring! We all love to hear Keith's Mom, Norma, my Grandma tell stories about all of her kids. She is an amazing mom, and grandmother and a great story-teller. I asked to jot down some of the stories about raising Keith that came to her mind. I ended up tying five pages worth that she wrote and I know that that barely scratched the surface of stories about her son, Keith.

Thanks for writing them down, Grandma and thanks for giving birth to my dad, Keith. We love you so much!

Jennifer

PS- I sure wish we could hear Grandpa Jack's version of these stories! Oh how we miss him!

Stories from Grandma IV- The Stories are Never ending...

These are most of the things that come to mind up to Keith’s teenage years. There are many, many, more stories to tell. In recent years when I start telling my version or hear Keith and Kent telling about some of the things they did, I am finding out that I did not always hear all of the stories… so our versions are different.

I cannot imagine my life without Keith and all of the joys he has brought our family! Those include your wonderful wife Lisa, six precious grandchildren and almost four beautiful great-grandchildren.

Life goes on and the stories and never ending!

Thank God for Keith!

Love, Mom

Stories from Grandma V- Keith at Thirteen... DRIVING!

When Keith was 13, Jack was in Southeast Asia. All year Keith had been begging for a motorcycle for his birthday. (Not a full sized one, but a smaller one.) He begged and I said, “NO, NO, NO!” Well, I think Jack felt guilty about being away from home and how it bothered Keith so much he thought we should let him have it. You had to be 13 to get a license for it. Bless our hearts! I was so nervous about it! He seemed so small to be riding that bike! SO, I followed him everywhere he went for three weeks until he could handle it pretty well. When we bought insurance for it Melvin Mourton helped me feel a little better about talking to Keith about how to roll off it if he got into a situation. He rode it for maybe a year until he wrecked it one day coming to our shop at the airport. He got into some loose gravel and couldn’t control it. He ended up with a broken arm!

At 17 years old, Keith got his first car and drove all the way to Fort Sumner, New Mexico in one day all by himself!

Stories from Grandma IV- And then he started school...

Then, Keith started to school! Mrs. Rainwater was his first grade teacher. She had 1st grade and half of the 2nd grade class. Keith was in her half of the 2nd grade class. This was Mrs. Jones 1st year to teach. Keith was constantly telling her how to do things. She told me that he was a really big help, even though she wanted to scream! She said sometimes she would start a sentence and Keith would finish it. Keith started to school in 1965 and I started working at the school the same year. Rose Varner and I were Cub Scout leaders for a while.

In 1968, Keith was in the 4th grade. We had moved into Grandpa Algie’s house in the spring. The school had a Halloween Carnival every year. I was working first in 1965 as the High School Secretary. Curtis Pharr was the Superintendent back then, Keith’s little girl friend was Jan Pharr was Curtis’ daughter. At Christmas that year Keith drew her name. We went shopping; he picked a beautiful dress which would not do because they had a $1 limit to spend for gifts. (We couldn’t afford to buy the dress anyway!) I had a hard time convincing Keith that we couldn’t buy the dress so he picked out a $.10 cent doll instead. We finally agreed on a more appropriate gift.

In October of 1968, I was teacher’s aide and one of my responsibilities was planning activities such as assembly programs and the Halloween Carnival. This included going to local stores to gather donations and prizes for the costume parade. Early in October, I asked Keith and Kent how they wanted to dress up. They said they weren’t interested. So, I bought a few things that Brenda wanted and that I thought they might need including costume makeup. They had gotten into the make-up and by Halloween all the black was gone. I was very busy helping with the carnival over all. Well, Keith was not going to dress up until the last minute. While I was rushing around Keith decided he wanted to be Aunt Jemima. The black make-up was all gone, SO I got soot out of the fireplace and mixed it with cold cream and covered his face! We stuffed pillows around him and put a read and white polka dotted skirt, fully gathered skirt, a white shirt and a red bandana on his head! We had to get to town early enough for the PTA Chili Supper and he went trick or treating with some other kids. By the time the costume contest came around, his make up was all smeared. He was quite a sight! He did not want to be in the costume parade, but after all that effort; I insisted that he inter it. He ended up winning a prize for his category!

I always had fun dressing them in costumes!

When Keith was 10 he went to Church Camp at Christ Forty acres in Hornobia, OK. While there he was saved and they were having a baptismal service in the Kaimichi River with the preacher’s holding the camp. Keith would not let any of them baptize him, but wanted Bro. Tom Moore to baptize him. Bro. Tom was our pastor at First Christian Mena and he drove over there to baptize him.

Stories from Grandma III- Keith at 5 Years Old

We came home from Dallas to visit often. I would try to have everything ready to leave when Jack came home from work on Friday evenings, but it would always be 10pm when we got to Hatfield. Keith had a little friend who lived down the street who was five years old. His grandparents live in Oklahoma. The little boys name was George David. One night the kids were asleep when we were traveling, Keith woke up and said,” Daddy, are we in Arkansas yet?” Jack said, “No, son we’re in Oklahoma.” Keith said, “Well, that’s George David’s Arkansas.” (Because that was where his grandparents lived and he loved to go to Oklahoma maybe as much as Keith loved to come to Arkansas.

One day when Kent was just a few weeks old, Keith was playing in the back yard. We had a large yard with a chain link fence. I tied the gate to keep from opening, but while I was taking care of Kent, Keith climbed over the gate. After about twenty minutes when I looked out, Keith was gone! Brenda and I started looking for him. She went up the street and I went down by George David’s house. There was no one home, so I looked in their back yard where he often played in a boat. We couldn’t find Keith anywhere! Finally, I went back to George David’s house and tried the front door, it opened and there was Keith lying on a pillow on the floor with a book beside him asleep. I picked him up and asked him why he had gone in their house when they were not home. He said, “Well, I was just waiting for George David to come home.” That was one of the worst scares he ever gave me!!

Keith loved to help Mother in the garden. One day when Keith was about five, Mother was cooking dinner and Keith came in with green onions and told her that he pulled them for dinner. Mother went outside and he had pulled up almost an entire row of green onions. Mother set them back out, but I don’t know if they lived.

We moved back to Mena from Dallas when Keith was five. There were no decent, affordable rent houses so we moved into Uncle Earl Varner’s house north of Hatfield. There was no indoor bathroom and Keith and Kent got a kick out of the “out house.” They had so much fun “roughing it” and playing with their dogs. That was in July and the next spring we were able to move into Mrs. Griffin’s rent house directly across the street from Hatfield Elementary School. She had a barn behind the house that was only used for storage. One day when Keith & Kent were playing in the barn, someone knocked on my door and said that the “barn was on fire!” I ran to the back yard and found the boys running toward the house. Keith was screaming hysterically! Soon after, the place was covered with trying to put out the fire, but the barn could not be saved. I stayed in the house trying to console Keith. Different people said, “I’ll bet he got in BIG trouble for that!” I think the scare was punishment enough and both the boys learned a good lesson! We paid Mrs. Griffin about $30.00, her estimate of what her things that were lost were worth and seemed to be glad that the barn was gone!

This is also where we lived when learned to ride a bicycle and had his first wreck!

Stories from Grandma II- Toddler & Preschool

When Keith was about two years old he talked so plain. My Mother described his speech as being “brickle” We belonged to North Dallas Christian Church. A lot of adults liked to get Keith talking to them, but he was especially fond of Lester Chambers, who was an elder in the Church. One Sunday we all got in the car and with a flash Keith was out of the car running back to the Church. Jack started after him and when he caught up with him Keith, said” I have to shake hands with Lester.” Jack had to find Lester before Keith would give up.



Lester’s wife, Sue taught Keith in Sunday school when he was almost three years old. She told me that they couldn’t find Keith’s little story leaflet a few minutes after she had handed them out. She asked Keith what happened to it and he said, “I ate it.” Sue had to tell me that over and over.



Our friends DeWayne & Barbara Wright had a little girl the same age as Keith. When they were one year old they were in the nursery and they bit each other. Keith had her teeth marks on his cheek and she had his on the corner of her mouth and check.



Barbara was another one of Keith’s teacher when he was three. We took him and Brenda over to Verna & Wayne’s on a Sunday not too long before Kent was born. On the way, Keith was sitting on the front seat with my sunglasses on. One of us asked him what his Sunday school lesson was about. He told us in detail... almost word for word the colorful way Barbara would have told the story of Adam and Eve. At the end he said, “God told Eve she would have babies and He told Adam he would have to work fort a living and “shaking his finger” he said that God told that old serpent he would have to crawl on his belly in the dust the rest of his days!” I wished so much that I had a movie camera to record it, but in my mind I can see and hear him so clearly it doesn’t seem possible that it was over 47 years ago.



Keith was a cowboy at heart and he rode endless miles on his stick horse around the house when he was three and four. With the record played blaring out “Onward Christian Soldiers” while he rode. Of course he kept up the Cowboy life through High School and beyond riding in the Junior Rodeo in Mena and another rodeo in New Mexico. Everytime he rode, I wished I had never encouraged him to be a cowboy when he was little, but thank God he was never seriously hurt!

Stories from Grandma I - Birth

Jonathan Keith Rose born October 14th, 1958, 6 weeks early, 5.5 lbs and as healthy as he could be. His left foot had been folded up sort of against the front of his leg apparently throughout the pregnancy so his ankle just sort of tapered down. The doctor told me he would probably have to wear corrective shoes and maybe sleep in braces. But he told me to massage his ankles every time I changed his diaper (with cloth diapers that was a lot of times) I did and by the time he started walking the foot was ok and never had a problem with it. Most of the times that little foot was massaged it was prayed over so all the credit goes to GOD!

Lillie Mae (his Aunt Lillie) came to stay with us when Keith was born. Her husband Melvin was in the army at that time stationed in Germany. Jack worked five days a week and was not able to take Lillie Mae to Ft Worth to get her passport she needed to get to Germany. I had my Arkansas Driver's License, but not my Texas license so while I fed Keith at all hours of the day and night I studied my driver' book and passed the test when it was time. So, we learned the trip to Ft. Worth well by the time Lillie Mae went to Germany in May.

I called Keith my “little baby man.”