A coming-of-age story set in 1951 rural Oklahoma:
My Mother, Mae Bevans, grew up on a farm located deep in rural Oklahoma where the dirt was red and thick as clay. The homestead was claimed in the Land Run, and no one had ever lived on the property but the Bevans and American Indians.
She was a country girl and she married a town boy, Bert Rawlins. I didn’t come along until 1945. Mother said it took the Japanese two days to find out I had been born, and when they heard the news, they surrendered. For awhile when I was growing up, I believed I singlehandedly ended World War II! Later on, I started to think I may have actually started it – not giving thought to the fact that I wasn’t even born yet! After all, I got in trouble for everything else – well, not everything – but when I was 6 years old, it sure felt like it. And if I really did start the war, boy, was I in big trouble.
It was 1951 and the Bevans family had Sunday meals together every week at my grandparents’ farm, and I figured whoever gave out punishment for starting a world war wouldn’t be able to find me way out in the country. And I believed with all my heart, if they did come out there looking for me, my Grandpa would give them a snake necktie!