Posted by Barbara Tilley on 6/15/2017
to
News
When I try to think back to what started my love of jewelry,
it brings me to a very specific memory.
Our family trip to Mexico.
I grew up in Oklahoma.
My father was in the military and while stationed in Germany, met and
married my mother. When my German
relatives would come for a visit, we would have to really show them the Wild,
Wild West. On the agenda would be any
rodeo or pow-wow within driving distance.
Our town was about 20 minutes from the Wichita Mountains Wild
Life Refuge. Trips included
sightings of long horn cattle, buffalo and prairie dogs. We would take a picnic lunch and ride up our
little mountain, Mount Scott, which rises to the glorious height of 2,464 feet. We would stop at the strange little souvenir
store at the base of the mountain to see the real live rattle snakes in a box
with a plexiglass front. There were
holes drilled in the plexiglass. The
holes could have been for air, but I think they did it so you could hear the
snakes shake their rattles as you walked by.
We would find a picnic table and make sure that there weren’t any rattle
snakes nearby. My mother would “set the
table” with paper and plastic wear. We
would then spend the rest of our meal trying to hold down the paper napkin and
paper plate and paper cup in the whipping wind that never seems to stop in
Oklahoma.