We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
JIM GARNER continued
No one is more pleased with Jims success than his friends and relations in Norman, Okla., who want to share him with the world
didn't have anybody of his very own ... no mother, that is!"
But Uncle John wasn't quite so sparing of the rod. He claims that he probably gave Jim the only spanking he ever got in his life.
"The girls," he explains, "had to wash the dishes every night after supper, and they kept complaining it wasn't fair . . . that Jim ought to do something.
"So I told him to dry the dishes. He was mad anyway and didn't do it."
At this point, Aunt Leone interrupted.
"He was mad because we'd had turnips for supper, wasn't he?" she asked. "James never did like vegetables, just meat and potatoes and bread, and I believe that was the night he was mad because I tried to make him eat turnips."
"Well, yes," Uncle John agreed, "we did try to balance his diet, but the real trouble was that he wouldn't dry the dishes. Finally. I lost patience and whipped him. I think that's the only time anybody ever did."
Uncle John, with six children of his own, was a man of remarkable patience with all the youngsters and took great pride in their accomplishments.
"Jim's accomplishment was shooting," he said. "When he wasn't more than six years old, I took him dove hunting."
Uncle John recalls the occasion.
It was a chilly, gusty afternoon with soggy clouds overlaying the sun. Jim and Uncle John stood in a field, ready for the great male adventure. . .hunting.
'.'You're going to let me shoot? Really?" Jim wanted to know impatiently, eyeing his uncle's gun.
"That's right," Uncle John said. "Just stand here quietly, and in a minute you can try."
The uncle hefted the gun to his shoulder and sighted experimentally along the muzzle.
"Now, Jim," he said, "you look right the way I'm pointing, and when you see the bird fly between the corner of the barn and the fence post you fire."
"I had him," Uncle John recounts, "out where he couldn't hurt anything no matter what he hit. I had no idea he'd hit a dove. But, you know, with the first shot he got one. And it wasn't luck, either. He was just a natural with a gun. He always shot that way."
In other departments, though, Jim was no great shakes.
"He never cared a thing about school," Uncle John recalls. "He was a smart boy but lazy. In high school, he'd go to sleep in classes. But he was a good athlete."
Aunt Leone shakes her head and smiles, remembering Jim as a child.
"I don't think he had any trouble in school," she says.
continued on page 61
ON STEPS of Norman City Hall, Jim receives plaque honoring him as outstanding citizen. His grandparents were Oklahoma pioneers.