Showing results by author "Stan Paregien" in All Categories

This is a collection of our memories and photos from our vacation in Lincoln County, New Mexico during June 1-6 of 2022. Peggy and I were joined by our son and his wife, Becky & Stan Paregien, JR (Lt. Col. USAF, retired). It shows the breath-taking beauty of the mountains and forests. We flew into El Paso, and drove straight to the Dona Ana County, New Mexico towns of Mesilla and Las Cruces. We spent most of our time in Ruidoso. We toured the nearby impressive Inn of the Mountain Gods. And we traveled to Alto for the dinner and cowboy music show at the Flying J Ranch. Later, we saw the ...

This new book, Author, Musicologist & Folklorist: Guy W. Logsdon of Oklahoma, (Revised Ebook Edition), tells the compelling story of the life and career of Dr. Guy W. Logsdon of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was a modern renaissance man with credentials and wide experiences as an educator, a musicologist, an author, a historian, a storyteller, and as a musician and singer. Guy W. Logsdon grew up in Ada, OK. He graduated from Ada High School, from East Central State University, and worked in two of the family businesses in Ada ( a furniture store and a Western wear store) before becoming the owner of ...

Volume 1 of this life-time collection has a wide variety of quotations on 52 topics. And it is full of quotes that will be of particular interest to writers, speakers, teachers, and anyone else with an inquisitive mind. I am not apologizing for that emphasis, just explaining it. I am, after all, an Anglo male who is older than grass but younger than dirt. And I am a Christian who is also fairly conservative on social issues and politics. So this collection of quotes, my personal stash, naturally leans in that direction. But there are plenty of remarkable ideas here for everyone. My ...

This biography is the very first in-depth telling of the life of New Mexico’s celebrated cowboy poet, S. Omar Barker. He was an amazing man who became not only widely known but greatly admired and loved. He managed to achieve that status even though he seldom left his beloved retreat in the mountains of northern New Mexico. His secret was that he made his living through his mailbox. Writing in virtual isolation, Omar sold his poetry, articles and novels to many different publishers. That was from 1926 until his death in 1985. This biography contains 50 complete poems of his, but it is ...

Why write a humorous history book? Well, I've always enjoyed reading history. And I liked telling stories and jokes in my sermons and public speeches. When I did a morning talk show on KSNY radio in Snyder, Texas, I told many jokes each day, and I enjoyed the audience reaction. But it was when I got into writing and publicly reciting my cowboy poetry and stories face-to-face, before live audiences that I was reminded of how good it makes a person feel to bring cheer into another person's heart. In addition, there is now scientific proof that laughter is truly good medicine. It helps to put ...

Stan Paregien tells about life as it really was for people in the United States and for our military men and women who served not only in the U.S. but on war fronts around the globe. And it includes 87 photos and 58 graphics. It is all about real life, the tide that sends waves rushing high on the shore only to retreat, regenerate, and rush headlong, again. Get ready for a unique journey through time with a veteran storyteller. The contents of this book have, well, an “unusual” organization. Stan explains it this way: “It doesn’t sound radical to say the events described here are ...

This book documents how Woody Guthrie was born and reared in the hardest of times. But as he became an adult, he took advantage of America’s eagerness to mythologize the working man into a grassroots hero (as in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath). He adopted the persona—the music, the speech, the look, and the habits--of the poor working class he observed in his travels. He hardly ever stepped out from behind that myth, though he was in fact an intellectual with a gift for writing poetry, novels, and songs that connected with the young and the old, the educated elite and the nearly...

The author, Stan Paregien, has had an interest in Jim Shoulders’ career for many years. He actually interviewed Shoulders at the family home in Henryetta, OK., not once but twice (late 2006 and early 2007 – just 3 months before his death from heart issues). He finally wrote a very short biography of him in 2013 (an eBook, only). This time around, he started from scratch and found out all he could about this man who won a phenomenal 16 World Champion Cowboy awards for his skill in riding rank bulls and saddle broncs and bareback broncs with attitudes. Stan also pulled together as many ...

This book is a trip down nostalgia lane. When spending a few months with our son in Waterloo, Illinois, we had two friends approach us about leading them on a little trip. That idea was to drive to and by the famous old haunts of America's Highway, old Route 66. In our case, we would start with them in St. Louis and see the sights all across Missouri. Then we would detour, as ol' Route 66 did, up and through both Galena and Baxter Springs, Kansas, then south to enter Oklahoma at Vinita. Now, these close friends of ours -- Michael and Penny Letichevsky -- had never seen much of Oklahoma. So ...

This book tells the story of Stroud, Oklahoma and the county in which it is located: Lincoln County, Oklahoma. The reader needs to know this ain't your grandpa's dry and boring history book. As the author, I took the unusual path of telling this remarkable story in the "first person" style, grammatically. I dug way down deep in my own memories and my photo albums to illustrate many of the "bones" of my book. There are nearly 100 photos and a whole gaggle of graphics (over 120). Yep, the book is doggoned well-illustrated. And it is just flat easy-to-read, too. That is so in two ways: I try ...

This book, the 46th of Stan’s career, tells about the exciting adventure they had in the enchanting nation of Costa Rica. That was courtesy of their long-time friends Larry and Linda Seng. Back in 2017, they were living in Costa Rica several months of each year. The rest of the time they lived in Oklahoma City, OK and worked in the oil industry. Stan and Peggy were guests of the Sengs at their home in La Garita. They were kind enough to act as chauffeurs and guides. The Sengs took them to such interesting towns as San José (the Capital city), Alajuela, San Ramón, Monteverde, Atenas, ...

Clark Luper: the Mother of Oklahoma's Civil Rights Movement is a book about a woman, recently deceased, who grew up being stifled and restricted by Oklahoma's "Jim Crow" (anti-Black) laws and social customs. By profession a teacher and motivator of students, in 1958 she led a group of Black students into the Katz Drug Store in downtown Oklahoma City. The store would had a food counter but would not serve Blacks. So these young people sat down on the counter stools and asked to be served, then when refused they just sat there--peacefully and pacifly--making their point and preventing other ...

The Austin Chronicles, Book 2: The Abilene Trail (Approximately 185 pages and 73,880 words) is the second in a series of novels about the Austin family and how they coped with the unique challenges of living in the West just after the end of America's Civil War in 1865. The main characters in this book are young Daniel Austin, his younger brother David and his grouchy but tough-as-steel uncle named Frank Austin. This book marks the start of their adventure traveling from Arkansas west to Oregon. While crossing the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, the trio is robbed by a Frenchman ...

The Austin Chronicles, Book 1: Boggy Depot Shootout is the first in a series of novels about the Austin family (Approximately 187 pages and 71,340 words). Long-time residents of Tennessee, the Austins had to cope with the unique challenges of living in the wild West just after the end of America's Civil War in 1865. The main character in this novel is young Daniel Austin. Both he and his father Henry had served in the Army of the Confederacy for just over a year when the war ended. As war-weary veterans, they returned home to Tennessee only to find their way of life destroyed by a renegade ...

You know many of Woody Guthrie’s songs: “This Land Is Your Land,” “Oklahoma Hills,” “The Sinking of the Reuben James,” “So Long It’s Been Good to Know Yuh,” “Roll On, Columbia,” “Union Maid,” “This Train Is Bound for Glory,” “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” and on and on. Now author Stan Paregien Sr makes it easy to learn more about the man himself and his philosophy, and to perhaps dispel a myth or two about him. This Kindle e-book is a carefully researched yet highly readable story of the diverse influences upon singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie and...

My new book, AMAZING ARIZONA: SEDONA & MORE, is a pictorial diary and a guide to adventures galore. Peggy and I made three wonderful trips to Sedona. The first was a brief one in 2015 on our own. The 2nd (2017) and 3rd (2019) times were as guests of Florida friends Don and Judy Betts in their condo right next to a golf course. Don and Judy made a dozen trips to Sedona before we joined them, so they helped us discover and appreciate the glorious sunsets, sunrises, mountains, creeks, canyons, cliffs, restaurants, the Tlaquepaque shopping district, a cowboy dinner show and music in Cottonwood,...

Stan Paregien and his wife, Peggy Paregien, co-authored this book in which they tell the story of their first meeting, first date, and deepening romance. They married in 1962 and moved to a foreign land – i.e., Nashville, TN. Peggy worked while Stan earned his B.A. from Lipscomb University in 1965. Then they did the same thing in Albuquerque, where Stan earned his M.A. degree in1968 at the University of New Mexico. This autobiography tells about Stan’s work as a sales person, a newspaper reporter and editor, a church minister, a radio talk show host, a freelance magazine writer, an ...

Stan Paregien's "Oklahoma Almanac of Facts & Humor: Part 2 - Okarche to Zafra" contains lots of historical information about the state of Oklahoma and its people. Part 1 covers the towns of Achilee to Nowata. Be sure to download both Parts. However, this ain't your grandpa's dry, boring history book. No, siree. The author tells the unique stories of Oklahoma's cities and towns and villages (148 of them, in both Parts). All of the towns which are county seats in Oklahoma's 77 counties are covered in the 2 Parts, plus 71 others. And he writes about each town with a conversational style which ...

Stan Paregien began collecting family history and photos in about 1970. He and his wife, Peggy, became frequent visitors to county court houses, history centers, and cemeteries in Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Then, as he acquired home computers and better access to internet resources, he spent countless hours of the day and night doing genealogical research far and wide. He published his work in 1974. That was a 118 page collection titled, A Paregien History. Thirty-two years after that, having collected a mass of information and photos, he self-published Paregien ...

Jerry Russell Paregien had a good life, in fact, a really good life. He and I, as cousins in Ventura County, Calif., grew up among immigrants from Oklahoma. That would include his father, Marvin and his wife Wanda, and my father Harold and my mother Evelyn, who all grew up as children of dirt poor sharecroppers who lived lives of desperation due to the worn-out, poor soil. By 1942, they and most of their kin had moved to California for steady checks and electricity. They were still poor, by their neighbors’ standards, but were honest and happy folks. That was the situation when Jerry was ...