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APPENDIX B WHAT MEETING WITH OKLAHOMA, TEXAS, KANSAS, AND ARKANSAS, FARMERS AND THEIR FAMILIES HELPED ME ACCOMPLISH: o Id never driven much, only to work or to the store and back. I was afraid to drive in Tulsa. That job put me through the ordeal of driving country roads in the dead of night all alone. I learned independence. I became fearless. I felt a real comradeship with the little preteen boys and girls I saw bravely driving tractors and mowers and other huge machines in their fathers’ fields. I learned that if they could Alter ta alia which I learned to handle on my own. o Farmers restored my faith in humanity. I felt a whole new and wonderful world opened up to me. It was as if I had, for the first time in my life, been given hundreds of new grandfathers, grandmothers, mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles. Nearly every customer became like family to me, even those who weren’t able to or didn’t want to buy my painting of their farm, were like family with very few exceptions. oe rs coat wed au o Iwas filled with love for the children and teenagers whom I saw being responsible and taking their share of all the work on the farm. That made me wish that Bob and I were raising our girls in the country on a farm. oI saw the history and beginnings of our American culture laid out within the families on those farms. o I found out that farmers as a group had seen many UFOs. They gave me truthful confirmation of sightings and mutilations in specific areas. Especially in the Durant, Oklahoma area there were so many men and women who had experienced these things. These country people were 185 do it I could do it. I was sometimes put into frightening situations