Four
years ago, almost fifty years to the day after my father died, I got big royalty
check from British Petroleum. The check was my part of four
years of royalties from the sale of natural gas from wells drilled on the land my
father bought during World War Two.
With
winnings from poker games aboard ship when he was in the navy in the South
Pacific, my father and his father, Carter Southard, bought up almost 700 acres
in Southeastern Oklahoma. My two brothers and I along with my mother all got a
share when he died. When she died, we three brothers got her share too.
Yesterday,
I got another monthly royalty check from BP, and my younger brother called to
say he thought the checks would keep coming and probably get bigger over time. He
said one day all the cars and trucks would be converted over to natural gas.
For a second I wanted to be rich, but why? At 71 my wish list was very short.
The
royalty check reminded me that my father was only 45 when he died. We buried
him on a bright sunny spring day. My mother’s ashes and her stone are at the
foot of his grave which is next the graves of my Oklahoma grandparents.
One
hundred and sixty miles south of Tulsa sits the town of Quinton, Oklahoma. East
of town is the Quinton Cemetery. We boys, my brothers and I, and our mother
stood beside the freshly dug hole in the ground. My grandparents from Illinois,
my father’s two sisters and their families stood with us and watched the casket
lowered into the grave. The backhoe and two grave diggers in overalls waited a
short distance away.
From
his grave, my father’s ghost would have a perfect view of the Sans
Bois Mountain Range and
Tucker’s Knob eight miles away. Shaped like a volcano, Tucker’s Knob was
the highest peak in the state. He’d been born at the foot of that peak. My
father was a long way from Chicago and Aurora, Illinois where he’d died five
days ago.
We
all gathered at my aunt’s house after the burial for a lunch of fried chicken,
mashed potatoes, sweet iced tea, and all the other stuff that goes with
southern funeral cooking. Her house was on the same street and five blocks
north of the First Christian Church. The church was a low single story long
white framed building with a steeple. Inside it smelled of furniture polish.
From time to time guest preachers came, tried to save the few souls that remained
in Quinton and baptized innocent children and last minute repenters hoping for a
reprieve and a chance at heaven.
One
of my father’s brothers-in-law was a lay preacher. He did the honors at my
father’s funeral. He did a good job. My cousin sung the hymn Be Not Afraid. I didn’t remember my
father ever stepping inside a church, but it didn’t matter. His funeral was not
for him; it was for all the rest of us.
My
mother and we older sons did not speak of the future after the funeral. I only
thought about getting back to football practice and making the University of
Oklahoma football team. I was in my second year, and we were in the middle of
spring practice. I had dreams of playing in the fall.
After
my father’s death, my mother sold everything and moved to the ranch in Oklahoma,
but I was an uptown guy and couldn’t imagine not living in the Chicago area.
Oklahoma had a great football team, but what about putting on a suit and taking
a girl out to dinner and to the theater or a jazz club, or going to a White sox
baseball game, or the Chicago Bears and Lake Michigan? I couldn’t imagine not
living in my Chi-Town world.
After
classes at Oklahoma University let out in May, I packed up and headed north. I
had a job for the summer waiting for me in Chicago. At first, I got a room at
the Y in downtown Aurora and drove into Chicago to work.
Another
college kid, who was working like me for Geneva Construction, was staying at a
Frat House at Northwestern University in Evanston. Most of the members of the
fraternity were gone for the summer, and they had rooms to rent. I went with
him one day after work and got a bed there too. Thirty days later, I celebrated
my birthday with a girl I met. I was nineteen-years old and on my own in
Chicago.
