Spring Morning along the Muddy Boggy. 72 x 90.

Before the Sooners, in about 1880, the Choctaws opened some coal mines
south of Coalgate near Lehigh. My grandfather brought his hungry
family—short from Ireland—up from Texas to work at the mines and
live as tenants there. My father was born there in 1883, and my
grandmother, whom I never knew, lies with the honeysuckle surrounding
her in the Lehigh cemetery. While there in the spring the low clouds
were racing northeast and the sun was swinging great shafts of light
across the shadowed land. One burst of light washed over a field of
yellow flowers like an all-forgiving and comforting blessing, an
affirmation of how beautiful Oklahoma is.

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