In 1948, when I was 4 years old, my mom and dad took me to Henryetta, Oklahoma, where my dad and other Arkansas coal miners had temporary jobs in the mines around Henryetta.  All kinds of terrible things happened to me while we were were there.  No day passed without some unspeakable horror occurring.

   It was winter and I was freezing the whole time we were in Henryetta.  We lived at the edge of town in a little 2-room shack that was said to have once been a hotdog stand.  The hotdog stand's only source of heat was a monstrously primitive gas heater that somehow managed to lick industrial-strength tongues of flame out into the room while providing no warmth at all unless you stood dangerously near it, which of course my mother warned me not to do and which I did any time she was not looking.

   The previous occupants of the hotdog stand had also been Arkansas coal miners; in fact they were our neighbors back home.  They were the mom and dad and their kid about my age, named Tommy Dale Lovell.  I think Tommy Dale's dad had been injured in the mine and they returned to Arkansas, with my dad taking Tommy Dale's dad's job and our staying in what had formerly been their quarters in the hotdog stand.  Tommy Dale knew how to draw a nifty cartoon pig and he’d drawn pigs all over the wall beside the bunk bed where he (and later I) slept.  One time I got real sick, and I guess I had a fever because I was babbling insanely, talking to those cartoon pigs Tommy Dale had drawn on the wall.  My mom went hysterical because I was behaving strangely; she screamed, "He's out of his head!"  I thought she meant my head had actually come off, so I shrieked in fright and ran to a mirror to see what I looked like with no head.  But I saw in the mirror that my head was there as usual, and I thought, how could my mother play such a cruel trick as to say my head was off when it was not?  I recovered from my illness; my sanity, such as it was to begin with, returned.

   A sizeable ditch, or canal, ran past the lot at the back of the hotdog stand.  In dry weather, dirty water oozed in a gelatinous trickle along the bottom of the canal.  But when it rained the canal became a raging torrential flood.  Someone had cleverly placed a log across the stream to serve as a footbridge.  Occasionally I’d see men or older boys stepping with effortless, ballet-like grace along the log to cross the stream.  My mother warned me repeatedly to stay off the log, since I was sure to fall into the water and be swept far downstream and drown.  So at the first opportunity, which coincided with a raging torrent, I tried stepping with effortless, ballet-like grace across the log.  At mid-point along the log I realized that the men and older boys I'd seen using the log had made it look easy, and it was not.  The rush of water below me had a dizzying effect that caused me to begin losing my balance, my arms whirling involuntarily in windmill motions.  I fell into the canal, paralyzed immediately by the rushing water's shocking chill, and was swept downstream a distance that seemed a thousand miles, almost drowning several times, eventually washing ashore battered and shivering and exhausted but otherwise intact except for losing my shoes.  I made my way back upstream to the hotdog stand, arriving around dusk, frozen beyond pain and into numbness.  Approaching the hotdog stand I heard wails of despair, which I realized emanated from my mother, who was convinced I was dead and who would have killed me except that she was so glad to see me alive.  I can't think why.

   Right away another bad thing happened.  My mother bought me a beautiful cowboy shirt that I loved.  One night in the hotdog stand while freezing as usual I stood near the dragon-breath gas heater and my cowboy shirt exploded like a flash grenade.  This of course was before flame retardant clothing.  I was burned superficially but painfully.  My beautiful cowboy shirt was incinerated to little more than a couple of scorched threads.  My mother bought me another cowboy shirt, but allowed me to wear it only under strict parental supervision.

   Saturday nights in Henryetta were exciting because the big people would go to the beer joints and movies and whatnot, many taking along their kids as my parents took me.  One such night we were walking up the street and, as usual, excitement and activity teemed all along the street.  We came upon a pickup truck parked at the curb.  Chained by its neck in the bed of the truck was a huge ape, jumping around on its knuckles while snarling and growling ferociously.  Of course it was probably just a guy in an ape suit, but I didn't know that; I thought it was an actual ape.  As we stood there watching, the ape lunged violently toward me, baring its teeth and screaming and making menacing gestures, scaring me to within an inch of death.

   All in all, I enjoyed Henryetta, Oklahoma immensely.