The Lookout Clubhouse and an Explanation

When I was a kid, we lived about 20 miles from the nearest town, in a place called Lookout, Oklahoma. Lookout's population would have been, I guess, 3 - Dad, Mom, and me (my brother and sisters were grown and gone from home by the time I started 1st grade.) Mom was the postmaster of Lookout and the post office was in a little room in our house. There weren't any other businesses in Lookout, just a country church about a mile and a half away, so I guess we three were the whole population.

The social life wasn't really all that bad - of course, in the country and in small communities most of the time your best friends are also your cousins. It's like, you could have your best friend over for supper on Saturday night, and sit with your sister at church on Sunday, and it's the same person.

Going to church at the Lookout Union Church was kind of like that. It was mostly farmer's wives and their kids who attended regularly. My Aunt Jean taught Sunday school. My Aunt Vera sat one row behind where Mom did. Before Mom married Dad, she worked for Iona, who sit in the row in front of us. Pauline and Goldie, who lived south of us with their husbands, sang "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" and while it might not have been a sound like the angels singing, you could definitely say they were loud and proud. Sometimes the husbands came, and some were at church pretty regularly, but mostly it seemed to be just a church for the farm women. And probably once a month, these same farm women had their monthly "Lookout Club" meeting.

Club meetings usually involved planning for upcoming events within the Lookout community - showers if somebody was getting married or having a baby, that kind of thing. But they always involved REFRESHMENTS! That picture above is of the ladies having some pie and lemonade on our patio, also known as my basketball court.


Another thing they always planned and hosted was the Saturday Night "Card Party". The Card Parties were the grand prize of the club, held probably once a month. They took place in a old building that was once a school, setting out by itself on the edge of a pasture. I remember it as being pretty big but when I see what's left of it, I'm surprised that so many people could get in there to play cards. Anyway, all the adults played Pitch - not for money, but for gifts like the "Traveler" (for the person who lost and won and lost and won and so moved from table to table) ,"High Score", i.e., Big Winner, and "Low Score", i.e., Biggest Loser. Everybody brought some sandwiches, some dessert, and drinks like coffee, tea, and pop were provided by the club. Kids got to play outside when the weather was nice, and hung around and bugged the crap out of the adults when it wasn't.

The clubhouse consisted of a walk-through entryway-mudroom-coat closet, the main room, and an elevated strip kitchen with a serving bar on the main room side. Outside was a storm cellar that scared me to death because I'd been told it was full of rats (it might have been but I tend to think that was a story told to us kids by our parents to keep us out of it) and quite possibly full of snakes too (I don't know, might have been, remember, I'm not opening the door).....
Another time, it must have been shortly after Christmas because I'd got a "Baby Tender Love" doll....

and I was soooo proud. I took the doll to the Card Party, and after I showed it to every adult there, I went outside with her and decided to sit in the car. For some reason, that crazy doll threw the car in reverse and it rolled down the hill, through the grader ditch, across the road, and into the other ditch! Damn Baby Tender Love!!

Lucky for her, the car wasn't wrecked, in fact didn't have a scratch on it, but that baby's mama was feared for her life! Especially when her dad came running outside because one of the other kids ratted me out! Actually though, he just got in the car and drove it out of the ditch, across the road, through the ditch, and back up to its original parking place. Then he got out, got me out, and I had to spend the rest of the evening doing some quiet time with a coloring book.


So that explains the picture on my blog header. It's the clubhouse.

Updated: since I changed the blog header, I'm adding the picture here.