On this the third weekend in January 2008, a month-and-a-half project to install new vinyl siding on my house was completed. The house now looks about as well as it did when I first purchased it just over 10 years ago. Oh all right, it doesn't look exactly as it did a decade ago, but the siding install looks very good, and the neighbors are surely happy, some of them believe each renovation project around here increases the value of their property. I have no empirical evidence to back up the scientific hypothesis of my neighbors, however.
On this the third weekend in January 2008, I am within three days of reaching the 3-month mark of no smoking. Thirty-five years of smoking cigarettes is behind me, I believe. I don't believe I will smoke again in my lifetime. I quit smoking! Also, on this the third weekend of January, 2008, Dr. Jeffrey Davenport's changes in my blood pressure medicine appear to be working as expected. Dr. Davenport's decision to slowly take me off Clonidine has ended the terrible drug side effects of attention loss and short episodes of falling asleep while sitting upright.
On the third weekend in January 2007, my mother suffered a severe cut to her leg that required hundreds of medical stitches from doctors at the Edmond Medical Center Emergency Room. Two weeks later, her alleged family physician Dr. Sherri Tucker totally freaked out over the dead skin on my mother's leg. Tucker ordered my mother immediately admitted to Integris Baptist Hospital in Oklahoma City for skin grafts on the leg. Although none of the doctors or nurses at Integris Hospital ever admitted it, on January 31st, 2007 Helen Jean Paxson Casey suffered a series of mini-strokes, or heart attacks or from the effects of general anesthesia or a combination of the three during the skin grafting procedures. My mother's quality of life essentially disappeared after the skin grafting procedure. For the remainder of her life, Jean Casey faced severe dementia that increased almost exponentially, total incontinence, and the inability to walk.
On the third weekend in January, 2003, Helen Jean Casey – depressed over the loss of her longtime walking partner and beloved Australian blue heeler "Gracie," along with impending central Oklahoma ice storms – moved back into her permanent residence in Arlington, Texas for three months. It turned out to be a wise move, as the ice storms were the some of the worst in central Oklahoma history. At least one student in all my classes that semester suffered from a broken limb attributed to an Oklahoma City ice storm episode.
On the third weekend in January, 1998, Helen Jean Casey agreed to come live with me in Edmond, Oklahoma on a temporary basis, following the death of her husband, George Lafayette Casey, in December, 1997. My mother's arrival in Edmond still ranks at the very top of the list of the best days of my lifetime. Helen Jean Casey essentially agreed to put her retirement on hold to take care of my house, my dog, my house and all my personal affairs while I taught school during the day at the University of Central Oklahoma and attended doctoral classes at night at Oklahoma State University during the evenings.
On the third weekend in January, 1993, at the request of my father, I made a rare weekend trip from my job at KAMC-TV in Lubbock, Texas to Pampa, Texas for what was termed as a birthday-related celebration.
Once I arrived in Pampa, my father – not my mother – offered me a substantial financial enticement to consider moving home to Pampa on a permanent basis after my TV news contract expired at the end of the February, 2003 ratings sweeps.
As part of the move to Pampa, we re-opened the home of my late paternal grandmother next door to my parent's home. Mama Casey's home had been locked up and the utilities disconnected for about four years, ever since her death.
My father had basically locked the house up as a shrine to his mother, but he was more than willing to re-open the house for me to use as I wished. While there was no gas or water to the house that weekend, the electricity was still connected. And that made for one of the strangest incidents that ever happened to me… ever. The telephone in Mama Casey's hallway was the oldest piece of communication equipment I had ever seen.
When I looked on the bottom of that telephone, I read the signature… "A. G. Bell." The serial number to that telephone was 0003 and there was a worn note on the bottom of the telephone stand from A. G. Bell wanting someone named Watson to do something, but I could not make out all the wording in the request. (OK, I am kidding a little… but not much!)
Anyway, as I was setting up plans on where I would be setting up electronic equipment following my move from Lubbock to Pampa, the telephone rang. I almost had a heart attack. No kidding.
Not only was the phone connected, it was functioning. One the fourth ring, I mustered the courage to pick up the receiver on Mama Casey's telephone. The call was long distance from Amarillo from the granddaughter of one of Mama Casey's longtime Pampa friends who had died about a decade earlier.
The woman had been calling that telephone number for years, looking to speak to Mama Casey, but no one had answered.
You want to know something? Four more people called long distance that weekend – wanting to speak to my grandmother, who had been dead for four years - before I left to return to Lubbock on Sunday afternoon of that weekend.