When we arrived in Altus, Oklahoma in 1973, our next station in the U.S. Air Force, we had just buried my dad. We were weary from travel. We had left Spain in June and it was now the middle of July in Oklahoma and hot. We hadn't had a home for over a month and were eager to settle down in a comfortable, air conditioned house. We rented a house across the street from one of the several Baptist churches in town, in a quiet neighborhood, two blocks from the local elementary school.
Jennifer was three years old, a pudgy little girl with wispy blond hair. She was very talkative and friendly and not afraid of a living soul. She was certainly no "shrinking violet". I remember saying in exasperation after a shopping trip with her, "I have tried and tried to teach this child not to talk to strangers and she just can't seem to learn it!" Joel said, "Mom, that's because she's never met a stranger!" He was right, and because of that she became "famous" in Altus, Oklahoma. After all our furniture and belongings were delivered by the movers, the other children registered in school, and Ted tucked away at Altus Air Force Base, I went to work unpacking boxes and trying to set up our home. I was so busy in fact, that I'm afraid I ignored three year old Jennifer. I'd feed and dress her then stick her in the back bedroom with her toys and hope she'd leave me alone so I could chip away at the enormous task.
One day as I unpacked dishes in the kitchen, there was a knock on my door. I went to the door and there stood two large policemen. I was immediately alarmed. The thought ran through my head that something had happened to one of the kids. I knew it wasn't Ted because these were local policemen, not Air policemen. I'm sure I went pale when I saw them because they very quickly started speaking to me.
"Mamm, do you have a little girl named Jennifer?" began the big, burly one.
"Yes." I answered, now really confused because Jennifer was in her bedroom playing. "What has she done?" I asked.
"Do you know where she is?" asked the other policeman.
"Of course I do...she's three! I replied, trying the keep the irritation out of my voice.
"Where is she?" he asked.
"She's in her bedroom playing." said I, who had no intention of allowing them to interrogate my three year old daughter, no matter what crime she might have committed.
"Well, you'd better go check on her!" said Big Burly, "...because she's been on the phone with the police dispatcher for thirty minutes. We keep trying to get her to hang up, but she won't. The dispatcher finally got her name, she said, "It's Jennifer Gehrke" then she was asked "Where do you live?" and your daughter said, "Across the street from the Baptist church."
"Well there are several Baptist churches in town and so far we have been to four. We were sent out to find her and get her off the phone. She can't be tying up the police line. Will you please go check on her?"
I ran to the back bedroom remembering that there was a phone hooked up back there because the previous occupants had used it as the master bedroom since it was the largest. We hadn't had a chance to move it yet. When I arrived I found my daughter chatting happily to the police dispatcher who had tried to hang up on her twice and she kept hitting redial and reconnecting. I grabbed the phone and said, "Hello," and without waiting for an answer I added, "...we'll be hanging up now."
That was Altus, Oklahoma's introduction to Jennifer. Fortunately, neither one of us were arrested that day.
We attended a large Baptist church in town that held well over a thousand people. One Sunday morning the pastor wanted to use a child to illustrate something in his sermon, so he said, "Let's see... what child could I call up here that wouldn't be afraid to answer my questions? I know! I'll call Jennifer Gehrke!" (He knew her well by then.) She marched right up, he handed her a mike and off they went with the illustration. Never mind that a thousand sets of eyes and ears were staring at her and listening to her. It was as if she were standing in her own living room.
We had a good friend, Sonny Tims, who was the town undertaker. Ted used to go to the funeral home and have coffee with him on his days off. They would talk football or golf or theology for hours on his coffee breaks. Sometimes Ted would take Jennifer with him. Sonny soon introduced her to some of his "customers" and explained to her that their bodies were just the empty tents they used to live in, but now their spirits had moved on to heaven. He said it was his job to make the tents as pretty as possible so their families and friends could say good by at the funerals.
That was good enough for Jennifer so from that time on, when her dad took her to the funeral home, she'd ask to see the new "tents" that Sonny had in the back room. He of course obliged her by walking her past each one and telling her who they were and where they lived and what church they attended etc. etc. So one of Jennifer's weekly activities became viewing the dead of Altus, Oklahoma. One time I asked Ted, "Do you think this is healthy?" He said, "She probably accepts death better than you and I."
One day a little black Cocker Spaniel dog followed Tim home from school. We made him take her back to the neighborhood he walked through and go door to door until he found her owner. Finally he found her and the lady who answered the door, asked if he wanted to keep her. Of course he wanted to keep her! So that's how we acquired Sissy.
Jennifer loved Sissy and Sissy loved her. They bonded quickly and became each other's playmates. When Jennifer cried, Sissy cried and when Jennifer was happy, so was Sissy.
One day Jennifer, now four years old, was playing across the street with neighborhood kids. Their mother had assured me that she would watch them closely, so I allowed her to go and of course she took Sissy with her. What I didn't know was that close to their house, in the back alley, was an old abandoned well. It was covered with wooden planks nailed together and weighed down by a large rock.
When Jennifer had been there about an hour, I heard sirens screaming down our street and I ran to the front door to see where they were going. I was shocked when I saw them stopping in the alley behind the house where Jennifer was playing in the yard.
My heart almost stopped. I ran across the street and into the alley where the firemen and rescue squad were surrounding a hole in the ground. I started yelling, "Jennifer!" Then I saw her standing between two of the men, instructing them how to do whatever they were doing. I ran to her, then looked down into the hole.
Jennifer said, "Mom, Sissy is in the well. The little boy threw her down there!" She was crying and very upset. I could see Sissy at the bottom of the well. Her little front paws were up on the wall and she was up to her stomach in water, whining pitifully. A fireman was already descending a ladder, to rescue her.
I found out later that it was Jennifer's idea to call the fire department. The neighbor lady, (mother of the culprit who had thrown the dog into the well) said that Jennifer ran into her house screaming so loudly that she thought a child had fallen into the well. Then she realized what she was screaming, "Call the fire department, he threw my dog into the well...call the fire department! Call the fire department!" So she did.
Who knows where she had learned that. She was four! Thinking back on it, it was probably her dad. He was the "safety" officer of our house and he had probably instructed her that if she ever got into trouble and he wasn't around she should call the fire department!
That afternoon when the kids got home from school and we told them the story, Joel said, "Oh great, now the fire department knows our name!"
Ted and I attended college in Altus. It was the home of Western Oklahoma State College. We began attending classes together three nights a week. We were only gone from home a couple hours at a time, so we left Jennifer with the older kids. Joel was seventeen, Kelly in Jr. High, and Tim was at least twelve. We never worried about them. They were responsible kids who could be left alone for a couple hours at a time.
One night while we were gone, Jennifer decided she wanted to go out and play. We had instructed them not to let her go out alone because she was defiantly not to be trusted alone.
Joel was doing homework and the other two kids were watching T.V. so no one wanted to be bothered watching Jennifer play outside. They had locked both doors so she couldn't get out, but the front door had a chain lock on it that allowed the door to be opened about 5 or 6 inches. She was busy opening it and closing it and peeking outside through the opening when all of a sudden, the kids heard her scream. They ran into the living room and saw that she had wedged her head into the opening and it was stuck so tightly that if she moved, it not only pulled hair out, but scraped her scalp.
They tried for a while to get her out but she was screaming so loudly and her head was now bleeding and seemed to be swelling with the effort. Joel thought of taking the hinges off the door but decided it would take too long and the weight of the door might crush her skull. Nothing they did seemed to work, so Joel said, "Let's call the fire department!"
She then started screaming, "No, don't call the fire department!" I guess she knew it was really scary if they, CALLED THE FIRE DEPARTMENT! Joel tried to calm her and convince her that it was the right thing to do. Finally he said, "If they come out here, they'll give you a sucker." So she calmed down and said, "Okay."
They called them. The rescue squad came screaming once again down our street, up to our house. They got Jennifer's head unstuck but didn't bring her a sucker. She's still bitter about that.
The following morning, right under the banner name of the local newspaper (The Altus Times Democrat) were these words in fine script type, "Altus, Oklahoma, Home of Jennifer Gehrke!" Below that, on the front page, was the whole story of how the brave men of the rescue squad had saved little Jennifer Gehrke from crushing her skull in a door.
Joel's editorial upon reading the story was, "Oh great, now everyone in school will know how dumb my little sister is!"
Last but not least, one evening we came home from school to find that Jennifer had been hiding in Tim's closet for over an hour. The kids couldn't get her to come out and they were worried.
Ted went in and fished her out, then we found out the reason she was hiding. The front of her hair, (right where her bangs should have been) was cut down to the scalp! She was crying, so we calmed her down then asked her to explain it. She said, "I wanted my hair to look like Daddy's but instead it looks like Timmy's!"
To explain that, Ted was balding in front. He had a few little wispy, blond hairs left that he kept neatly combed back. Timmy always had a "flat top" haircut. So her hair really did look like Timmy's... only much shorter.
I was shocked by her answer so I again asked her, "why?" To which she replied, "Daddy's hair is so pretty! I want my hair to be like his!"
That's one I've never understood because her hair was like his, only she actually had hair in the front... but then I guess in the end we understood very little of what made Jennifer, Jennifer.
My theme song for her was, How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria, from The Sound of Music. I'll try to condense a few lines of it for you.
"How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you solve a problem like Maria?
...a flibbertigibbet!...a will-o-the-wisp!...a clown!
How do you make her stay, and listen to all you say,
How do you keep a wave upon the sand?
O, how do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?
Unpredictable as the weather, she's as flighty as a feather,
She's a darling! She's a demon! She's a lamb!
She'd out pester any pest, drive a hornet from it's nest.
She could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl!
She is gentle! She is wild! She a riddle! She's a child!
She's a headache! She's an angel! She's a girl!
O, how do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you hold
a moonbeam in your hand!
No comments:
Post a Comment