WAUTHENA -
EARLENE'S OLDER SISTER
by Cynthia Brown

24" high x 8" wide x 7" deep
Mixed media and other clay pieces

Best known around these parts as “Earlene’s older sister”, Wauthena decided early on to take the polite and proper road to success using Emily Post as her first role model. As a youngster she thought it her mission in life to reform Earlene constantly scolding people, “Please, do not pay any attention to her, training a child is like training a puppy, a little heedless inattention and it is out of hand immediately.”
 
When she wasn’t minding everyone’s ‘p’s and ‘q’s, she’d nestle in the big old sofa by the water cooler watching her favorite soap operas. She especially loved “As the World Turns” and the “Edge of Night”. During commercials she would spy on little Earlene in her leather chaps coaxing her pony around the barrels practicing for the fall rodeo.
 
To earn extra money she started taking in ironing from the neighbor’s up-the-hill, at 50 cents a dozen for matching short sets and shifts. On summer afternoons as the old rusty gauge popped the 100 degree mark, she closed the blinds and turned on the soaps,
she thought herself clever as she ironed and calculated her college education would be paid for by her junior year.
 
Given these circumstances, it became front porch talk for the entire summer when Wauthena started packing a gun and calling herself Annie. She’d get a crazy look out of the corner of her eye and her mouth would start twitchin’ furiously anytime someone started to form a W.
 
It can’t be proven but it was said by folks that had more sense than most that she’d gone bust over crazy for little Ricky Joe who broke her heart by takin’ Shirlene Tibbetts to the Bob Wills parade in Tulsa. Swearing revenge she dropped Ms. Post for her new found heroine Annie Oakley. When she disappeared from Fork in the Road it was said that she had gone to Vinita, though it could just as easily have been Hollywood.
 
 

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