By Benjamin GroffMedia© | benandsteve.com | 2025 Truth Endures©

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Summer Roads to Oklahoma to Visit Uncle Ben and Aunt Florence

By Benjamin Groff II

Every summer—without fail—a car would ease out of the driveway in Olney, Illinois. It was packed tight with suitcases and ham sandwiches. Kids pressed against window glass. Stories were waiting to be lived again. The road ahead led straight to Cordell, Oklahoma. Uncle Ben and Aunt Florence kept the porch swept. They also kept the table set.

Olney was a quiet place, best known for something that always fascinated me as a child: white squirrels. My grandmother told me about them as if they were magical creatures. They were rare and watchful, darting through yards and city parks. I always hoped I’d see one myself, but somehow we always left too early or came back too late. Still, the idea of them stuck in my imagination like a bright stone in the pocket.

But the real adventure was always in Oklahoma.

Uncle Ben and Aunt Florence lived in a modest home in Cordell. There, the wind blew with purpose. Time slowed enough to sit and stay a while. The cousins from Caddo and Washita Counties began to arrive shortly after us. Many of them had been raised alongside the Illinois kin during the lean years of the 1920s and ’30s.

The car would keep rolling through Binger, Carnegie, Weatherford, and Colony. It traced out a web of family ties that never wore thin. There were hugs that lasted too long and pies that didn’t last long enough. Kids ran barefoot through the same red dirt that had once dusted our grandparents’ boots. The grownups told stories from both sides of the Dust Bowl.

“You remember when that storm blacked out the sky?”
“Your mama used to chase us out of the cellar with a broom!”

And everyone laughed, even if the memories came with a tear or two.

The trips began in the early 1960s. They stretched well into the 1980s. Each summer became a soft echo of the one before. Faces aged, but names stayed familiar. Porch swings creaked. Tin-roof rain was still the best music at night.

Eventually, the trips grew fewer, as the elders passed and the younger ones built lives farther away. But in my mind, a stretch of two-lane highway still runs from the white-squirrel town of Olney. It continues to the wide-open sky of Oklahoma. It’s a road paved with memory and love that survives distance, time, and even silence.

And one day, I still hope to see one of those white squirrels.

One cousin wrote a memory down in a letter to another -––

The tires hummed low against the highway as we crossed into Oklahoma, and I felt it—the shift. Not just in geography, but in memory. It had been years since we’d made this drive from Olney, Illinois. However, the road still felt familiar. It was like an old hymn you didn’t realize you remembered until you started humming along.

I leaned my head against the window, watching the land roll out in shades of tan and green. My thoughts rolled back too. I remembered the summers of my childhood. We’d pile into the car every year and head south to visit Uncle Ben and Aunt Florence in Cordell.

They were waiting when we arrived back then—porch light on, arms wide, iced tea already sweating on the kitchen table. The smell of fried chicken greeted us. We could hear the sound of someone laughing from the backyard before our feet ever hit the ground.

We’d stay for a week or more, using Cordell as home base. Then we’d branch out, visiting cousins scattered across Caddo and Washita Counties—Binger, Carnegie, Gotebo. Some were practically siblings. They were raised alongside our parents during the hard years of the 1920s and ’30s. Those were times when everyone shared everything. The stories from those days came freely over pie and coffee. They were told with the kind of clarity that only comes from having truly lived it.

But this trip—this time—was different.

There were no porch lights waiting. No tea glasses on the counter. Uncle Ben had been gone for years now. Aunt Florence too. And many of the cousins had passed, their homes quiet or sold. This time, we came to remember—not just to visit.

We stopped by the old places. Some were still standing, others just foundations and memories. We drove to the Cordell, Eakly, Colony and Alfalfa, cemeteries. I stood at the resting place of our folks I could remember seeing as if it was yesterday. I could still hear their voices in my head. I spoke softly, unsure if the wind could carry my words back to them, but I tried anyway.

Later that evening, we drove out to Binger. One of the cousins—now gray-haired and slow-moving—met us on the porch with a smile that hadn’t changed in 40 years.

“I didn’t think anyone remembered to come back,” she said.

“We never forgot,” I told her.

And we hadn’t.
Because the roots ran deep.
Deeper than distance.
Deeper than time.

So we returned to Oklahoma—not just to see the land or the gravestones, but to feel that presence again. To walk the same dusty paths, sit under the same wide skies, and remember who we are—and who we loved.

Some journeys are round trips.
Others are returns.
This was both.

As always time came when we had to return. And it always seemed longer going back to Illinois. It was sad to leave. Who would not be here next time we came to visit? Who on our crew would not make the trip next time? Uncle Ben always choked up when he said goodbye. He knew it could be the last time he saw us. Eventually, he was right.