The old pickup never cared much about destinations.
It simply wanted to be useful.
The Old Truck
It remembers before trucks became statements.
Before they became symbols.
Before every scratch needed repairing and every dent required an explanation.
Its dents were stories.
The scrape on the passenger door came from helping a neighbor move a freezer.
The worn spot on the tailgate came from hauling hay every Saturday.
The faded paint came from years of sitting beneath the same Oklahoma and Arizona suns while waiting for someone who was running “just one more minute.”
The old pickup never complained.
It understood something that newer things sometimes forget.
Being useful is more important than looking perfect.
It hauled children to Little League games.
It carried lumber for a stranger whose car couldn’t.
It pulled neighbors out of muddy ditches.
It hauled Christmas trees.
It transported dogs that insisted on riding with their heads out the window.
Sometimes it carried nothing more than two friends driving country roads with nowhere particular to be.
Those were good trips too.
The pickup never asked whether the journey was important.
If someone needed it…
It went.
Today it sits quietly beneath a shade tree.
The engine isn’t quite as eager.
The paint has surrendered to time.
Its tires no longer travel every morning.
Yet if someone walked over, slipped the key into the ignition, and said,
“I need your help…”
The old pickup would still try.
Because usefulness was never something it did.
It was who it became.
Perhaps people aren’t remembered for how shiny they once looked.
Perhaps they’re remembered for the loads they helped carry.
Tomorrow…
The Old Pickup Wonders Why Nobody Waves Anymore.
Look around your home. Every ordinary thing has a story. Sometimes, it’s really about us.
They Were The Favorite Thing To See When She Returned To Olney.
-Olney White Squirrels – An Illinois Favorite
My grandmother, Florence Lula McElroy Groff, loved visiting Olney, Illinois.
She always said there was one thing she looked forward to most:
“The white squirrels.”
She carried photographs of them and showed them to me when I was a boy. She was certain that one day my father would take me there during the annual summer exchange of family visits.
The tradition began long before I was born.
The Squirrels she had seen, were what she talked of most.
The Groffs had roots stretching from Switzerland to Illinois and eventually to Oklahoma. My great-grandfather, Benjamin Harrison Groff, was born in Illinois in 1892, the son of Ulrich L. Groff, who had emigrated from Wengen, Bern, Switzerland. Ulrich and his brother Michael helped establish the family’s roots in Illinois before later generations, including Benjamin and his brother Otis, sought opportunity on the rich farmland of Oklahoma.
By 1930, Benjamin and Florence owned their farm west of Eakly, Oklahoma, near Cobb Creek. The census records describe a family of modest means but great determination: a farm, three children, and a life built through hard work.
Yet the most valuable thing they built was not the farm.
It was the tradition.
Each summer, relatives would travel hundreds of miles to remain connected. Groffs married McElroys. Dowtys married Groffs. McLemores became family. Neighbors became family too.
I remember Delmar Groff, Laura, Darlene, Walker Groff, and his sister Cleo coming from Illinois. By the time I was old enough to appreciate the visits, my grandparents no longer made the trip north. But the Illinois folks still came.
Every year.
I didn’t realize it then, but I was witnessing something extraordinary.
A family choosing, year after year, not to drift apart.
Today, as I prepare to spend time with the Folks from Oklahoma, I think about my grandmother and those white squirrels of Olney.
I think about the roads traveled.
I think about the stories carried.
Some day, I still wish to go see the Squirrels!
And I realize that perhaps the greatest inheritance our families passed down was not land, photographs, or old census records.
It was the understanding that distance is no excuse to stop loving one another.
Some Roads Lead Home. Others Keep A Family Together.
For the next few days, I will be spending time on the road with “The Folks from Oklahoma.”
That phrase carries a special meaning in our family.
The Folks From Oklahoma – It’s A Family Tradition
Long before social media, before interstate highways, and before keeping up with relatives was as easy as a text message, my grandparents, Benjamin Harrison Groff and Florence Lula McElroy Groff, helped continue a family tradition that stretched back generations.
One summer the Oklahoma families would travel north to Olney, Illinois. The next, the Illinois families would make their way south to Oklahoma. The Groffs, McLemores, Dowtys, Littles, McElroys, and many others took part. The purpose was simple: family should remain family.
I grew up hearing stories of these visits and later experienced them myself. The Folks from Illinois arrived every summer. Their visits were anticipated all year long.
So for a few days, I will be away from the keyboard and on the road, carrying on a tradition older than I am.
This piece is dedicated to my mother, Marjorie Bernice (McWhirter) Groff — one of countless mothers whose sacrifices slowly faded into the background of family history. Though often overlooked by many whose lives she helped shape, she remained deeply loved and remembered by her daughter Twila and by me, Benjamin Groff. Her kindness, endurance, creativity, and quiet strength remain part of the foundation upon which our lives were built. My sister sent me a writing that deeply reflects these sentiments.
There are mothers whose names will never appear in history books.
Mothers Whose Dedication And Love Is Forgotten
No statues will be built in their honor.
No documentaries will celebrate their sacrifices.
No crowds will gather to remember what they carried through the long years of raising families, stretching paychecks, and trying to hold homes together while the world outside kept changing.
Yet millions of us exist because of them.
They were the women who quietly gave up pieces of themselves so their children could have a little more.
A little more food.
A little more confidence.
A little more hope.
A little more time to dream.
Many worked jobs nobody respected.
Others stayed home and performed labor that was never considered “real work” by the standards of modern society, despite the fact that their days began before sunrise and often ended long after everyone else had gone to sleep.
They cooked meals while bills piled up on kitchen counters.
They sewed buttons back onto school shirts.
They patched blue jeans.
They planted flowers beside homes that weren’t fancy but somehow always felt welcoming.
They stretched hamburger meat into meals for six people and somehow made it feel normal.
They worried silently so their children would not have to.
And many of them did all of it without ever hearing the words:
“Thank you.”
What is strange about life is that children rarely understand these things while growing up.
As kids, we remember bicycles, baseball gloves, birthday cakes, and Christmas mornings.
We remember rules we disliked.
Groundings.
Arguments.
Embarrassing moments.
But later, often decades later, the mind begins returning to smaller things.
A mother carrying groceries in from the car.
Her placing a purse on the trunk before tossing a few basketballs with her child in the driveway.
The smell of face cream before church.
Mother Playing Ball.
The sound of a washing machine late at night. A woman standing at the kitchen sink looking exhausted while still asking everybody else if they were hungry.
The sound of the vacuum sweeper running on a Saturday morning when all you wanted to do was sleep late. Only later do you realize it was the only time she had to get it done.
Small moments.
Ordinary moments.
The kind that seemed invisible at the time.
Many of those women came from generations that were taught not to complain.
They endured hardships quietly.
Some lived through wars, recessions, alcoholism, infidelity, illness, and disappointments they never fully spoke about.
Many buried dreams they once had because survival became more important than ambition.
And then age arrived.
One by one, society moved on from them.
The world became faster.
Technology replaced conversations.
Families spread apart.
Visits became shorter.
Phone calls became less frequent.
And somewhere along the way, many mothers who once held entire families together slowly became background figures in the very lives they helped create.
Some now sit in nursing homes.
Some live alone in quiet houses.
Some stare through windows waiting for visitors who seldom come.
Some have already passed away, leaving behind closets full of recipes, photographs, sewing kits, and handwritten notes nobody quite knows what to do with.
Yet after they are gone, strange things begin happening.
A certain perfume suddenly breaks a grown man’s heart in the middle of a grocery store.
A recipe becomes impossible to duplicate because “it never tastes like hers.”
A flower garden reminds someone of childhood.
A song from the radio decades ago causes tears nobody expected.
And people slowly begin realizing something they missed while rushing through life:
Those women were never ordinary.
They were the glue.
The emotional architecture of entire families.
The steady hand behind countless lives that succeeded because someone quietly kept the world from falling apart at home.
Not perfect.
No parent ever is.
But far more important than many of us understood at the time.
Maybe the forgotten mothers are not truly forgotten after all.
Maybe they continue living in the habits they taught us.
The kindness we show others.
The recipes we still cook.
The gardens we plant.
The way we comfort our children.
The way we try to survive difficult times with dignity because we once watched them do the same.
And maybe tonight, somewhere, someone reading these words will stop for a moment and remember a woman who spent most of her life making sure others felt loved… even while much of the world overlooked her.
If so, perhaps that memory itself is a form of gratitude long overdue.
