What was I going to say?

My daughter popped down to say goodnight, and I absolutely forgot my train of thought.

I was telling her a tale, earlier, in agreement with a point Mrs. Montgomery was making in Rainbow Valley, that my mother and grandmother told me about my great-grandmother's first wedding night.

Yes, she had two.

She sewed herself into a "union suit" and spent the night running away from her new husband. She was thirteen. He was twice her age. She got married to get away from her mother.

I believe the marriage was annulled within a month, but I'd be delighted to be corrected on that score.

Somebody's got to ask Grandma for elaboration on that story. I want to know everything she knows about her mother... and I especially want to know what she knows about her grandparents.

What I do know for sure about the former story, is that there was no progeny from it. (At least I've never heard of any.)

My Grandma married at sixteen to get away from her mother. She gave birth to my mother. Then, after her divorce, my Grandpa (sadly, not my direct ancestor - my mother never saw a difference in treatment between her and the other children, and you see that I call him Grandpa--I could use those genes) saw her riding on a wagon into Vian, Oklahoma, holding my mother, and said to his friends, "There's my wife!"

Vian is pronounced "Vy-Ann", btw. That's the first time I ever considered the possibility that strangers wouldn't know how to pronounce that. Come to think of it, what was Grandpa doing there then, considering that he was born in Northeastern Arkansas? I seem to remember him telling me and even looking up his birthplace on the map, but I can't remember how he ended up there in Vian in the late Thirties.

If you want to see what Vian looks like, buy or rent the movie

Where the Red Fern Grows

. It was filmed there in the late '70s. The area where the boys fight was mowed to look like a park, but otherwise it still looks just like that.

The movie is wonderful for many reasons other than that. If you liked Old Yeller, you'll like Where the Red Fern Grows.

I used to spend my summers eight miles from there, 1/2 a mile from Lake Tenkiller (an Indian name that's a story in itself), and within spittin' distance of Blackgum School. Grandmother actually lived on the grounds of that school, and I know the vandals who tore that house down--hint: one of the bunch uses an alias with the initials O.W. Hey! I was a little kid! My uncle said it would be all right!

His inits are JVB. But that doesn't come as any surprise to the inheritors of the property.

Yes, I still feel guilty.

But, the place was a s**thole. Thank God Grandma had compassion and moved her into a trailer on her own property.

Did I ever mention that Grandmother once felt the need to push a Revenuer into a well?