The Navy Saved Me

The anniversary of the date that I raised my right hand and swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States of America and became a seventeen year old sailor in the United States Navy is March 9th. This is 2023 and that was 62 years ago and I am now 79 years of age. But I wouldn't be here without the navy. I quit school in my junior year, just after the return from the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. My girlfriend and I had had a terrible breakup, almost like a divorce, the summer before, and I was terribly hurt. And I had to see her every day in band during the school week. In every sense that I understood at that age and time, I was deeply in love with her. And I was dying inside. My grades were declining, I was driving fast, drinking beer, and with the wrong friends for me. I was in a downward spiral and headed for trouble. My grandmother, Louise Lessert, who had raised me, was dying from lung cancer and was constantly hospitalized. A friend joined the navy and Jess Paul Tomey, the big Indian, as we called him, and I went to Ponca City with Charlie Edgar just to keep him company while he completed his papers. That introduced Jess and me to the recruiter. The navy was in the back of my mind while I struggled with everything that was going on. Also, the girl and I couldn't completely separate in spite of the bad break up. I got my mother's permission to enlist and I quit school and enlisted. The discipline required of me to survive boot camp, to go on to six months in radar "A" school, and then go aboard the USS Point Defiance (LSD-31) and serve there for three years, gave me the tools I needed to survive my broken heart and screwed up life. So, the navy doesn't owe me. I owe the navy. I owe the navy a debit I can never repay. I love to hear, "Thank you for your service." But then I feel guilty because it wasn't service, it was a giant life raft that saved my life and allowed me to have so many wonderful things in my life instead of becoming the eighteen year old kid killed while driving too fast because he didn't care about living. The navy saved my life and I am so grateful that it did.

Confessions of a Cigarette Addict

 Addict. When we hear that word, we think the worst. An addict is a worn out man crawling through the streets, dirty and disheveled, seeking any means to feed his addiction. Only rescue organizations, a few friends--if any are left--police, emergency responders, and the undertaker will deal with him from now on. That’s an example, yes, and one I grew up with because the schools told us that if we tried any drug, we would become addicts and that would be our future, It’s only one in a giant collection of examples. An addict is someone who has an addiction. An addiction to what? It can be anything. It certainly is often illicit drugs, but I’d venture that it is more normally and more generally to alcohol. Also cigarettes and other tobacco products. I was addicted to cigarettes so did that make me an addict? Yes. It made me an addict. I was then, from age about 15 to age 34 an addict, unable to stop. I did stop, several times, even up to a year one time, and then made the mistake of smoking one cigarette at a New Year’s party, and soon--I was bumming, then buying, one pack at a time, then a carton (10 packs at a time). And I hated myself for the weakness that was eating me up. One time I had quit for six months and my then wife made such an earth shattering announcement that I went for a walk, and picked up a pack of Winstons (a more healthy cigarette than the strong Camels I had smoked when I was younger). She and I got through that, but it took me six months to stop that time. Something was happening though. The periods of smoking were getting shorter and the times not smoking were getting longer between lapses. I fell off of the wagon. We used to say that. And what happens when you fall off of the wagon? The wagon keeps on going---without me--without you. What’s on the wagon? Life. On the wagon are our friends, mother and father, children, brothers and sisters (I don’t like to say siblings because it’s impersonal), job, career, clean smelling clothes, clean air to breath. Also on the wagon are the grandchildren we may never get to see. The grandchildren that we will teach to be addicts may also be there, but don’t worry because they will soon join you as they fall off of the wagon in their turn. What’s not on the wagon along with you? Smoke filled clothing, hacking coughs, green or yellow mucus that we cough up and spit out first thing of the morning, COPD, lung cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer. Don’t worry though, because a cigarette will help you get past that, and you can’t have your first cup of coffee without the cigarette. I’ve known men who woke up and had the first cigarette of the day before they were even out of the bedroom. Oh wait, I’ve done that, too. It’s 49 years--yep, quit January 1, 1977-- since I smoked that last cigarette and I no longer have any urge to smoke one. But I’m so allergic to them that just brief exposure to cigarette smoke causes my nasal passages to close, and I can’t breathe. Some perfumes do that to me also, but the cigarette smoke exposure is more common. It’s more common because the addicts walk out of Quiktrip and light up before their first step is fully out of the door l, and I am caught by it. I’ve been considering having a T-shirt printed with “I have a lung disease (second line), Please don’t smoke near me”. I do have a lung disease, and whether it was caused by cigarettes or not is debatable. My last boss at Phillips Petroleum Company told me at least once a week that “there is absolutely no statistical proof that smoking cigarettes contributes to lung cancer or death.” I grieved for him when his wife died. He was addicted, she was addicted, I was addicted, and my son was addicted. Cigarettes didn’t kill him, not all by themselves, but they weakened his already diabetically challenged body and assisted in his death. He used other drugs, and he was an addict. Diabetes killed him. Everything else just contributed to it. No one wants to be an addict. There is no award for it at Commencement. No parent ever introduces their son with “This is our son John and he’s an addict. We’re very proud of that.” Why do I write this nonsense? It’s because I haven’t been courageous enough in my life. Writing, especially revealing ourselves, revealing myself to a wide audience, and to wide criticism is a desperate act in an attempt to do something courageous. When I was eighteen, I believed I could change the world. No, I didn’t, but we’re supposed to say that because we are older and we want the world to believe we had our best intentions toward it. I am 81 now, for a little while still, and I don’t know how much longer I will be here but if through deliberately frank and sometimes painful writing I can change one person, then I will have done something good. The one I want to change is you, if you smoke, if you are thinking about trying it. What can one cigarette hurt? Before you light that first cigarette, you are already an addict. The first cigarette just confirms it.

"I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything; but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. " Edward Everett Hale

Stevie Joe Payne 

How Oklahoma Women Are Represented Compared to Men

 Females make up 50.45% of the Oklahoma population while males comprise 49.55%. The Oklahoma House of Representatives consists of 101 members and is the larger chamber of the bicameral Oklahoma Legislature. Women currently constitute approximately 21% of Oklahoma's legislature, a very low proportion compared to other U.S. states. (Apr 19, 2022). There are 48 seats in the Oklahoma state senate, 9 are held by women making up 19% of the Oklahoma State Senate. Females make up 50% of the population and are only 20% represented in the state legislature. Men make up 80% of the representation held in the oklahoma legislature. These are facts I have collected from Google and Wikipedia. Oklahoma is listed as a state with some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the United States. When the legislature was deciding these laws, how many women were called as witnesses to talk about women's health? How many women were interviewed who had experienced an ectopic pregnancy? How many were interviewed who lost a child during pregnancy and the dead fetus had to be surgically removed to save the woman's life? There are a combined 149 members in the Oklahoma state legislature, 30 of them, 20%, are all that ever had a uterus. Twenty percent of the Oklahoma State legislature made draconian laws that directly affect only women. Men are affected only indirectly. A male with rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, IBS, etc can be prescribed methotrexate to control these diseases. A female can not be prescribed this medication, which is also used in higher dosages in cancer treatment because it may contribute to a spontaneous abortion.

 END

 Stevie Joe Payne.

The Secret

 My first wife Connie was raised as a catholic and her mother railed against abortion. When we lost what would have been our second child, Connie's mother decided to come clean and tell her the truth. I have been promised to secrecy but everybody's dead now anyway except for a few in my generation. About 1943, Connie's mother became pregnant by her boyfriend, Bill Walling. Mary was a pregnant, unmarried catholic girl and desperate so she had an abortion. Then she became pregnant by Bill Walling a second time and they married and Mike Walling was born in 1944, a few days before my birthday. Mike and I were friends. For 35 years Mary kept that secret from everyone while preaching all the evils of abortion to her daughters. It is possible one of the sisters had an abortion but I don't know that. But Mary poisoned the minds of her daughters with religious rules that she had not followed herself and she never told the other sisters. I tell that story for one reason only. I wanted to point out the huge hypocrisy of many religious zealots who say one life while living another. Did Connie's mother's mother know about the abortion? I suspect she did because Mary and Bill didn't have the resources to accomplish it. But many war girlfriends became pregnant and were forced to have dangerous abortions because of the attitudes of society then and because a lot of these young fathers were shipped overseas and killed before they could get married.

Bettie Louise Harris

 

My mother was born out of wedlock in 1922 and adopted by Jew Max Harris and his Kaw-Osage wife Louisa Victoria Hardy. Mom was raised as a Jew until she was about 11 when Max and Louisa divorced. I never understood my mother's religious feelings until I finally understood some of her Jewish childhood in Oklahoma City. With DNA and records search I have learned that my birth grandfather was George Dewey Dye Sr. and my birth grandmother was 14 year old Nettie Rutherford. I have since been in contact with both sides of my birth grandparents' families. I began using Dye in my name, only on Facebook. I wish I could incorporate my Rutherford name too but that's impractical. I favor and support adoption because I wouldn't be here without it but it's not the only path open. Over my lifetime I've had friends who were adopted and had a miserable experience because the parents who adopted them had no business having children. So everything is ultimately a gamble. My mother had a reasonably good life but with a lot of craziness in it. A man in Pawhuska once told my brother that at one time my mother was struggling so badly that he had to buy food for us. But my mom was a great mom and hung on through all the struggles of a single mother. Remember that a single woman couldn't even get a credit card in her own name until 1974? I wish my mother were here for this mother's day because there is much left unsaid. I wish you a happy mother's day.

Letter to Ronnie

 Sometimes I listen to, or pull up and read the lyrics, of Janis Ian's great song "At Seventeen," and I regret how some kids were treated and I participated. Even if I didn't participate actively,  I stood aside and said nothing. I think of Peggy Candreia and the friendship I had with her in high school. I knew about her and it didn't bother me because I knew her, not the image of I thought a person was, or is. Sometimes I mourn over how some kids were treated, sometimes I've even cried over it. I was so marginalized myself for my eccentric life that I didn't have energy, or courage, left over to defend anyone else. But I regret not being stronger. There are few things in life that  I regret, but that is one. I think about white privilege and how it just fell upon us and how we accepted it. Never one time did we have to fight for places at the movies, in a restaurant, in a store. Never once were we told to leave because we were white. "At Seventeen" is an anthem for girls who weren't as pretty and I think about girls I didn't ask out because they weren't as pretty as Carol, Pam, Janis, Sue Nan. I also think about the girls whom I didn't feel equal to and I was afraid to ask out because I was sure they wouldn't go with me. After my divorce from Connie, I dated many women. My sales training had taught me that a rejection allowed me to move on to the next customer so I never let "no" stop me from asking women out. I began to use dating services because I wanted to avoid smokers and drinkers, so in the eight years between marriages I dated around 80 women. I actually got really tired of dating and I stopped. Charlotte and I were just friends and we expected nothing more. But I have that shallow value that I did tend to like pretty to beautiful women. So, I regret that I may have hurt a girl in school by my selfishness and every time I hear Janis Ian sing "At Seventeen" I am reminded of it, and I am punished for it.

Men Are the Problem

 I had a friend who worked at Dillard's in Bartlesville. One night she came out after her work was done, carrying Christmas packages.  A white van was parked next to her Cadillac and had she not been exhausted she would have caught the warning signs. It was parked so that once she opened her driver's door she created a trap on that side and the man pulled her into his van, held her for three days and raped her repeatedly. He let her go and she notified police.  He was convicted and sentenced to prison. She went to a different kind of prison.  She was trapped inside of her own fears of it happening again. She learned everything she could about protecting herself for the future but her life was never the same after that. I was our safety director. I set up a special meeting for her with just the women in my company unit and we invited wives, daughters, friends, all women. There were no men present. She sat and spoke softly, told them everything, answered any and all questions for the women.  My boss's 17 year old daughter stopped by my office, still in horrified shock, and thanked me for inviting her. Her mother was in the meeting with her. Many women go to meetings like this after they have been assaulted. Few go before, possibly because they just don't believe it can or will happen to them. Men don't appear with big warning flags. There's no way you can tell which man might assault a woman. More rapes, to my knowledge, are committed by someone the woman knows, not by a stranger. Men are the problem. I told the story of my friend who was raped as she left work before Christmas eve. I did not state her age. Everyone forms their own mental picture of a story and the people in it. I know some saw a 20 year old attractive blonde.  She was 50, a mother and grandmother. She was a woman who dressed well and she was attractive but certainly not a knock out like some of you pictured. She was not what many may think of as the woman men rape. He carefully planned it, observed her, knew her habits and her work schedule. Women and girls have to have a constant awareness of their surroundings to protect themselves from assault by men. Every man is a potential threat because we don't come with warning flags. No woman can tell just by looking at a man if he will assault her.  Consider Brock Allen Turner, nice looking, well groomed, clean-cut Stanford swimming team athlete. How would anyone know that he would rape a woman? Every woman can't carry a Glock 19. When would she have used it on Brock Turner? At the party? In the alley behind the dumpster as he tore her clothing away? When is a woman supposed to defend herself from assault by a man?

This part is for the men. How many of you have a story you can share about how you had to look over your shoulder walking out to the parking lot at [insert shopping mall, store here] because you were afraid of being sexually assaulted? The event occurred in 1992. That it is an old story changes nothing. For every woman who tells her story there are more who have never told anyone and they suffer inside their silent prisons.