AUNT MILDRED'S SHOVEL
She was the only truly interesting person in our family. We loved her. She was independent in a day when that was unknown in most women and especially in Oklahoma Farm Women. She was smart, she was not afraid and she loved with all her being the man who became our Uncle Earl. After his death is when I think I really began to know her or it may have been when our mother was dying from cancer. She seemed to be the strong one we could lean on. I still miss her to this day.
When she passed away, we went back to Mangum, Okla home to lay her to rest beside her true love.
I never knew her to step foot in a Church building except for the couple of times she went with us when visiting in Texas but truthfully that was only to appease our Mother. But she clothed and fed the poor and watched after her neighbor and did all the good things that a Christian should do. She just preferred to do them her way.
After the burial we went back to the house and began to load her belongins to bring them back to Texas. All of our kids were there and since we were the only heirs, there was no hesitation in dividing things even then. It wasn't like vultures, it was something that had to be done. We would later make other trips to Mangum to finish up the estate.
One item that we brought back was a "grain" shovel. Shiny aluminum, sort of a short handle and not needed or really wanted by any of us. But for some reason and some way Mate and I ended up with the shiny shovel. It hung in the garage on Dunbar for at least ten years. We joked about it and the fact that since I was the oldest I got all the good stuff like the "shovel".
When we sold the Dunbar house and moved to the lake near Tyler, the shovel went with us and hung in the garage there. Again not to be used. We laughed about dusting it. Then we moved in town in Tyler and on Pam Street, the shovel hung on the wall, still shiny and still needing dusting. Again never to be used.
Then the time came to move back to Wichita Falls into the house in Edgecliff and it hung in our garage here, still shiny and still needing dusting for 13 more years, until the big blizzard during Christmas a few years ago. My niece, husband and two kids from Fort Gibson stayed at our house while we were in California and if you remember people could not get down residential streets. Our nephew by marriage got the shovel and cleaned out the cul d sac. The only time the shovel served its purpose.
Today, Aunt Mildred would be happy knowing that the shiny aluminum grain shovel rests with someone or several someones in a devastated small town in Oklahoma, where it will never suffer the embarrassment of having to be dusted. It is now doing what shovels should do. Its shoveling like it was mean to do and this time, serving the Lord.
