Stephanie was even on the basketball court this month. She seems to be wearing the number 4 or 24. Her folks, Steve and Carol, are very very proud of this young lady.

We lost a member of the family very suddenly on February 13th. She was taken to the hospital in Muskogee by her daughter early  morning on the 13th after throwing up blood and suffering abdominal pain. This was the same problem she had last summer when she was hospitalized in Tulsa.

We went to Muskogee and spent a few hours with her before returning to Tulsa. She was resting when we left. Around 5PM she went code blue and could not be resesitated.

Evelyn was the oldest of the 4 Taylor kids.  Paul came next followed by Marie and Dick. In 1995 the Taylor kids decided to have an annual get together at a state park here in Oklahoma. Annually 35 to 45 people are in attendence. Evelyn was known as the “slime” lady because she always made slime for the younger children to play with. She will be greatly missed.

Marie and Evelyn were very close and spent a great amount of time together prior to Evelyn moving to Muskogee late last year. They went everywhere together.

I’ve known Evelyn since 1957, as Dave, her husband, hired me to go to work for Commercial Credit Corporation in Topeka Kansas. I was out of college and could not find a job and my dad owed CCC money. I worked the eastern part of Kansas collecting buck and repo’ing all sorts of stuff. I was transfered to Tulsa and later hooked up with the Albrights as they were from Muskogee. Evelyn’s sister Marie, I met by hooking up with the Albrights on a visit to Muskogee.

Even Skiatook had snow, in fact they had more snow than we did. Lucky for the people in this area, most of them had 4 wheel drive vehicle’s. These are some of the pictures taken at Steve’s and Laura’s place during and after the storm.

Dustin liked playing in the snow.

More new snow last night which requires cleaning off the drive and sidewalks again. All walks and the drive will be cleaned by the end of the day. It looks like we may be able to get the truck out tomorrow but not the cars. The snow in the streets is to high and high centers the cars. Maybe it will get warmer next week and we can possibly get out.

We had just completed a dry 5 to 6 months in this part of Oklahoma, well as for much of Oklahoma and then the month of February came along. Within a week we had 26 inches of snow and very cold temperatures. Usually it snow and then 60 degrees and everything melts. Not the case this time.

Lucky we were prepared for this week as we had purchased food. We already had snow shovels so we were prepared. But not for the volumes we received. 16 inches the first day, followed by 6 inches the next storm a day and a half later to be followed by another 4 inch a couple of days later.  26 inches of snow and heavy winds. What didn’t fall from the sky just drifted as the wind just ranked the landscape.

We did manage to keep the driveway almost clean (at times). We had a walk way cleared on day two but that really did do any good. No one, the paper guy, the mailman or the guys picking up trash even made it out themselves. Our neighbor did get out day two as he had a 4 wheeled drive pick-up. He at least had made tracks.

On day four we got a paper and it was a week before the trash guys got around. The city is not prepared for this type of snow. They don’t have the plows or other equipment to clear things up. It was over a week before school got back into session mainly because you couldn’t use the street getting to the schools.

We finally got out on the weekend after getting struck as the pick-up was tossed into the curb. I had the shovels with me but I got out of the cab and locked the keys in the cab. Marie and our grandson Matthew saved me by bringing (walking) an extra set of keys to me.

This was all an experience we won’t forget very soon.

I’ll first show you some of the pictures Matt took at his place. He is really out in the country and they are probably subject to a lot more wind than we are here in Tulsa.

The pictures I’m going to show are based around shovelling the driveway and side walks. Always out in Scott City that was the first thing Dad did or had us do, get the sidewalks cleared so people could get around. I guess that notion has stayed with me.

1st Day – First five pictures are from Matt’s Place. The rest are from ours.