Saturday morning at the farmer’s market
Saturday morning is my favorite time of the week. April through August (and later if football cooperates), I try to hit the Farmer’s Market at the Cleveland County Fairgrounds.
The rewards are many. The market is not a flea market, like you hit some places. This is a real farmer’s market. Table after table of tomatoes and peppers and corn and onions and okra and green beans. I always come home with arms full of fresh-grown vegetables, then try to talk my wife or my mom or someone into cooking it, although I’ve been experimenting with the peppers.
I also love the market because my granddaughter likes to go. My daughter and 2-year-old granddaughter are living with us while my son-in-law is deployed in Iraq. This morning, Rileybird got up early, so I sent her mom back to bed, grabbed some yogurt and we set out. She ate her yogurt on the front porch in what might be the greatest weather morning in Oklahoma history. It was about 62 degrees, a tiny mist, and mid-August. Stunning.
Then we hopped in the Mazda, picked up my mom and went to the market. Rileybird likes to see the horses, because the fairgrounds often has a horse show brewing on Saturday morning. No such luck today. But she has a high time walking around and talking to anyone who will talk back and seeing the dogs and the strollers and dancing and sticking her face in front of the huge electric fans that cool off the indoor portion of the market.
My other favorite part of the market is seeing people I don’t always get to see. Last week was rich. I saw all kinds of people, notably Sid and Jan Burton. Jan Burton worked many years in the OU athletic department as an editor of their publications, then she worked at the Norman Transcript in my last years there. Jan is one of the most passionate people I’ve ever known; crazy about her family and her friends and Barry Switzer and the Cubs. About in that order. Jan is one of the all-time great literary editors; she keeps me straight via email on grammar and such things. Attitude, too.
This week, we got to see an aunt I hadn’t seen in awhile, and for a bonus, I ran into Robert Griswold, one of my history professors at OU. Professor Griswold taught Women in Modern America, a thoroughly fascinating class, which frankly, most of my classes were. I was a double major, English and history, and I can count on one hand the number of boring history or English classes I had.
But Professor Griswold was great because he was a sports fan, which meant we had a connection. Excluding two classes I took the summer I graduated high school, I didn’t start at OU until I was 26. I was already writing for the Norman Transcript, so I got to know many of my professors on non-academic levels.
Professor Griswold was a big soccer fan — his daughter played — and he played tennis and was just a sports fan in general. He went to Iowa undergrad and got his Ph.D. from Stanford. And the story I’ll always remember is from the 1989 Final Four. That’s the spring I took his class, and he told us the story of the Seton Hall-Michigan final. Griswold taped the game on his VCR (remember those?) because he had a class or something, then went home and started watching. He got to the end of the game — remember, that’s the game that went overtime — and his tape ran out. He didn’t get to see Rumeal Robinson’s foul shots that won the NCAA title.
When the OSU crowd claims I’m an OU homer because I went to school there, I laugh at them inside. Yes, I have a soft spot in my heart for OU. But it has nothing to do with Bob Stoops or Billy Tubbs or Barry Switzer. It has everything to do with James Yoch and William Savage and Professor Goldsmith and a bunch of great teachers. Including Robert Griswold.
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Berry:
Absolutely love your blog. Love the little snippets you reveal in every entry.
But I think I’ve got you beat tonight. It’s our 11th anniversary and my mother-in-law was supposed to be coming to stay with our 3-year-old (who is nursing a broken arm, broken in two places last week).
As mother-in-law’s often do, she’s claiming she has a headache and can’t stay with them. So me, the wife and Bradley are headed to Ruth’s Chris for an early dinner. Should be interesting.
Take care and check my blog sometime.
Tim