Why Don't We Just...?: An Oklahoma Childhood

A story of girlhood friendships, Why Don't We Just...? is a look backward to a decade that began over sixty years ago.



Janet Ruth and I were born towards the end of World War II. We tip-toed through the Korean War, came of age during the Eisenhower years, participated in the beginnings of school integration, sowed seeds of a lifetime friendship through girlhood antics, and were both married with a child by the end of that decade.




In those ten years, as unmarried women, we missed Title IX, birth control pills, the Sexual-Revolution, the Civil Rights movement, the Women's Movement, legalized abortion, and drugs, (well, we did try diet pills). We adopted our parent's generation faster than what was to follow us.




With no organized girls' sports and a lot of energy, ideas and freedom to wander, Janet Ruth and I, along with other friends, got busy creating the adventures and misadventures of these stories. We were privileged not so much with the wealth of means, but with the wealth of belonging, and built a lifetime of memories together. As Janet Ruth once wrote me,




"We were our childhoods. I cannot remember mine without recalling yours."