Growing up and then graduating in 1942 from Choctaw High School in rural Oklahoma was as normal to me as growing up on Main Street, USA was for others.

It is a lovely day. I just took my banana nut bread out of the oven. I am just sitting here at my worktable and the sun is shining through the window. It is a perfect setting for day dreaming about many years ago when I was a young girl growing up on a farm. I have a lot of memories of the fun our family had on the farm and I would like to share them with you.

In Ben and Neva's family, Jolene was the oldest of 6 children. As a very impressionable 10 year old she moved to an 80 acre farm where the family had to learn about farming and caring for animals. They made pets of the cows and calves, and all the animals had names. The family also learned about planting a garden, growing and picking fruit and vegetables for the family dinners and many other farming tasks. Follow along as Jolene remembers family farm life with fields of peanuts and watermelons, rows and rows of pecan trees, and watching the apple trees in bloom, then watching the little apples grow big and bright red. Why, growing up in rural America with 80 acres to investigate and a creek that never dried up running through the back forty, they made every chore a game.