Topeka Daily Capital
October 1960
The death of a man like Clark Gable makes you remember some of the entertaining moments he gave you, and others gave you. It makes you wish you could see and hear them again, even though you know you can’t, or at least probably never will.
Just once more , for example, I’d like to see Clark Gable on the witness stand, telling off the lawyer questioning him in “Boomtown.” And I’d go again to see him get poured on the bus in “It Happened One Night.”
There are a lot of things I’d like to see again … How about taking me back to the theater in Washington, D. C., and let me see the houselights dim and the footlights go up as the curtain parts and Glenn Miller’s band plays “Moonlight Serenade.” … Let me stay in the same place long enough to hear Tommy Dorsey play and introduce his new vocalist, Frank Sinatra …
I’d settle for just a flash of Carl Hubbell looking in from the mound and delivering a screwball… And of Pepper Martin stealing third, sliding in on his stomach …
And, please, give me one more triple dip of Black Walnut ice cream from Doc SnIder’s Drug Store …
Let me see once more my first pup, a Fox Terrier named Sparky, slip and skid on the slick linoleum of the kitchen in the house in Britton, Okla., after my mother says “Go get the dog’s can.” … Give me another evening in the backyard there, and an onion and tomato sandwich – on homemade bread …
Put me, just for a few minutes, back in the theater in New York so I can hear Robert Preston, The Music Man, sing about the “Trouble – Right Here in River City” and about “The Sadder But Wiser Girl,” … And let me hear the medicine man on Britton’s Main Street sell one more bottle of Tay-Jo Tonic …
Give me Eddie Crowder, faking to the fullback hiding the ball on his hip as he fades, and then passing for another Oklahoma touchdown … Take me back to 1952 and let me see the Sooners whip Kansas and lose to Notre Dame in the two best college football games I ever saw …
Sit me in a hotel room again with J. V. Sikes and Ears Whitworth and let me listen to them tell how they recruited football players for Georgia …
Once more, let me stand in line to be introduced to J Edgar Hoover … Let me look at the 1953 Kansas basketball team putting on the Porcupine Press , and let me interview Phog Allen when it’s over …
Give me another night out with the sportswriters gathered for the All-Star game in Chicago, and let us watch the sun come up over Calumet City … Put me back on the first tee at Valle Alto in Monterrey, Mexico …
Hit one more fly ball over Butch Niemon’s head in center and let him run for it … Deal me another hand in the poker game in the barracks of the Naval Air Station in Norman … Let Moon Mullins tell his stories again about Knute Rockne …
Give me a dime so I can pay my way into the theater again to see Tom Mix or Buck Jones or Ken Maynard … Tune in another Fred Allen show on the radio for me … Let me hear Ted Husing announce again Notre Dame’s victory over Ohio State in 1935 …
Once more, take me back to Tulsa and let me hear Bob Wills and Tommy Duncan play and sing “Take me back to Tulsa” … Let me stand beside my dad and listen to him yell when old Sock Johnson or Roy Easterling hits one out of the park for Oklahoma City …
Let me hear Amos ‘n Andy paint the taxicab again … Put me in Bud Wilkinson’s kitchen and let me listen … Let me hear Monsignor Connor give a Christmas sermon from the pulpit at Our Ladies … Take me up again in that old Aeronca for my first airplane ride … Show me another Wisconsin blizzard, and give me another summer night on the West Texas plains … Let me have one more piece of my mother’s lemon pie, and serve me family style at the antlers in Nuevo Laredo …
Put me back in the press box for one more baseball game with Stu Dunbar … Have Link Norris get mad at the umpires again … Let me see Amy as we win the battle to housebreak her… Just one more time, let me fly into the dawn over the Atlantic and think what a perfect world this is …