Wearing skirts and sandals to work came to a halt when I first got a taste of community journalism in June 1978. Especially when it came to an uncontrolled control burn west of Hennessey while I climbed over a barbed wire fence to take photos.

It was at a lovegrass fire where I met Jack Choate Jr., but not the last time he ticked me off.

Jack was running the hose on the rural truck and turned it on me.

I was drenched, but saved the camera.

Then Ronnie Roberts or Jodie Streck, or maybe it was Jack, yelled at me to get out.

“The fire has you surrounded on three sides!”

Jack later said he tried to get my attention before he doused me, but once I got to know him, I thought it was just the 12-year-old boy in him having fun.

Why else would he turn my pencil cup upside down on my desk each time he came in?

He said I’d never notice it because my desk was so messy.

One day I saw Jack walk by my office door. He went straight to my husband’s office.

“What was that about?” I asked Bill after Jack left.

“He told me to get my wife in line,” Bill said.

I’d written a column that week and referred to Pioneer as a Mickey Mouse Telephone Company because I couldn’t place calls to OKC during the work week between 3-5 p.m.

“Jack’s father is on the Pioneer board,” Bill said.

I marched ... across the street to Choate Insurance, and asked, “Where is he?”

They pointed.

My Daddy’s curse words filled the air.

I told Jack if he ever had a problem with anything I wrote, or with me, he’d better take it up with me, not my husband.

I went on about him being a chauvinistic pig then saw him laugh.

He asked me to sit down.

I stood.

He told me how lucky

we were in Hennessey to have phone service, but all I heard was blah-blah-blah-blah.

I never expected that run-in to start our friendship, but it did.

We lost Jack a few years ago.

I miss him every time I want to tell him something that only he would appreciate, and especially ask his all-too-honest opinion.

We never discussed Pioneer Telephone again, and I didn’t tease him too much that his clean desk was a sign that he didn’t use it much.