Jon Stalnaker
The Studebaker Dude
Let me introduce myself to those that have not read my stories in the Sapulpa Times. I am a retired postmaster from California who moved to Oklahoma a little over a year ago with my wife Carlene, her mother Yae, and our dog, Sally. My daughter Jillian moved to Oklahoma before us and told us how nice it is here in Green Country. We started looking at houses and before long, we were packing up and leaving California behind. Life is a little bit different here and so far, we are liking it. We miss a few things about California, and we left behind many friends and relatives, but it’s not difficult to make new friends here.
As you may have noticed, I call myself the Studebaker Dude because I like Studebakers and I have immersed myself into that world. I own two of them and you may have seen them around town. I am retired and like to write stories to keep my brain active. I write about things I have done, things that interest me, and often times just plain silly stuff. Obviously Studebakers are a favorite subject of mine as are classic cars in general. I spent 13 years as a docent for the California Auto Museum in Sacramento and was the instructor for the Studebaker and Avanti portion of the annual docent training. I had a 36-year career with the Postal Service, and I had many opportunities to do some interesting special assignments. I may talk about that from time to time.
What I won’t talk about are negative things or politics, so if you like reading that kind of stuff, you will have to find another source. I wrote a similar column for my hometown newspaper in California for nearly six years. At the end of the five-year mark, I categorized all my stories and counted them up just for curiosity. I separated the titles into 12 different categories and divided nearly 260 stories into one of them. The categories with single digit clusters are non-Studebaker car stuff, sports, travel (non-Studebaker), my dog Sally, music, and weather. The rest of the stories I will address separately from least to most.
I wrote at least 20 health and fitness stories. As you might expect, those subjects are a big part of my retirement years and I have had my share of problems and achievements. Reminiscing is another thing old people do and I wrote 22 stories that fit that category. I couldn’t call myself the Studebaker Dude if I didn’t frequently write about Studebakers. Surprisingly, that was not the top in the subject matter categories. I wrote about Studebaker events, adventures, history, and miscellaneous stuff. I did about 27 stories related to Studebaker. I also wrote a lot about family. 32 of my stories were full of relative content (pun intended). Since my target audience is local people, I wrote 39 stories about people and places in the small town of Dixon, where I lived. That seemed fair. Now, to be honest, this last category with the most content at 57 stories, could also be included in some of the other categories. But these stories are at least a little bit, and sometimes predominately, on the silly side. I suppose that is because my brain seems to trend in that direction. Someone in that town commented that she didn’t always agree with what I said but she enjoyed reading my work. I warned her and let me warn anyone else that reads my stuff, more than one fifth of my stories are considered silly by my own admission. That means I am either pulling your leg, making a joke, or writing with my tongue firmly pressed inside my cheek. I may be attempting to pull a fast one or just plain trying to be funny. I do this for fun and those that know me well, know not to take everything I say to the bank. That’s the way I think, and that’s the way I talk, and that’s the way I write. I only hope you enjoy it.
I hope to get to know the people of Sapulpa as this is my home now. My activities have slowed down, but I have 70 plus years of life to share that I hope you won’t find boring. I try to keep my stories at around 750 words, so that shouldn’t take up too much of your time.
