Out of Red Dirt (and Up Cowbell Hill)
Author Sue Nell Phillips was born in the red dirt, amidst the waving wheat, and near the water mocassins of the Ole Cimarron river in Oklahoma, the only girl after four sons. Her brothers often remind her that her arrival ruined the family's all-male basketball team.
Until age twelve, she learned the courtesies and manners of a young lady, with Emily Post as her text and the Sunday night card parties of her grandparents, Mayor Allen Morgan and Mrs. (Allen Morgan) Mary Erma McElhiney Street as her practicum. She wore kid gloves and shiny patent leathers to Westminster Presbyterian Church, or occasionally to the Combo Room at the Oklahoma City Golf and Country Club. There, she listened with her parents to their favorite tune, "Tea for Two." Sue Nell always made the request.
But she preferred trips to Lula's farm, Lula being the family's maid, swimming in the Ole Cimarron with friends and the water mocassins, as long as the latter remained downstream, and summers at the Old Cabin on Cowbell Hill in Allenspark, Colorado. She traded her gloves for a tattered Stetson, her Mary Jane's for cowboy boots, and sipping tea for an afternoon of "good ole mountain dew" on the trails of Wild Basin.
When Sue Nell turned twelve, her father sold the family funeral business and moved near the cabin of their summers in Allenspark. They continued to hike up Big Rock, fish with the worms they dug on Rock Creek, and go "just around the next bend," even if it meant into a raging Ouzel Lake forest fire.
After graduating from Estes Park High School in 1974, Sue Nell joined other pioneers heading further west to Lewis and Clark College. After two years, she married Jose Bernardo Phillips and joined him at the University of Washington where she graduated with a B.A. in Spanish and a thirteen-month-old baby in August of 1978. Thirty-seven years, four children, and two perfect grandchildren later, Jose and Sue Nell are still married and living in Oregon. Along with raising four children, swimming in the Umpqua river, fly-fishing on the Deschutes, climbing many peaks on several continents, and building homes in Guatemala with Habitat for Humanity, she has taught Spanish to pre-schoolers through college and is currently a state certified judicial interpreter. Oh, and she writes; mostly memoir, mostly short stories, but occasionally essays and other creative non-fiction.
Sue Nell is currently deeply indebted to the members of her writing group: Richard, Beth, JT, and Linda. For every comma in the correct place, they get the credit. For all the others...Sue Nell accepts complete responsbility.
Until age twelve, she learned the courtesies and manners of a young lady, with Emily Post as her text and the Sunday night card parties of her grandparents, Mayor Allen Morgan and Mrs. (Allen Morgan) Mary Erma McElhiney Street as her practicum. She wore kid gloves and shiny patent leathers to Westminster Presbyterian Church, or occasionally to the Combo Room at the Oklahoma City Golf and Country Club. There, she listened with her parents to their favorite tune, "Tea for Two." Sue Nell always made the request.
But she preferred trips to Lula's farm, Lula being the family's maid, swimming in the Ole Cimarron with friends and the water mocassins, as long as the latter remained downstream, and summers at the Old Cabin on Cowbell Hill in Allenspark, Colorado. She traded her gloves for a tattered Stetson, her Mary Jane's for cowboy boots, and sipping tea for an afternoon of "good ole mountain dew" on the trails of Wild Basin.
When Sue Nell turned twelve, her father sold the family funeral business and moved near the cabin of their summers in Allenspark. They continued to hike up Big Rock, fish with the worms they dug on Rock Creek, and go "just around the next bend," even if it meant into a raging Ouzel Lake forest fire.
After graduating from Estes Park High School in 1974, Sue Nell joined other pioneers heading further west to Lewis and Clark College. After two years, she married Jose Bernardo Phillips and joined him at the University of Washington where she graduated with a B.A. in Spanish and a thirteen-month-old baby in August of 1978. Thirty-seven years, four children, and two perfect grandchildren later, Jose and Sue Nell are still married and living in Oregon. Along with raising four children, swimming in the Umpqua river, fly-fishing on the Deschutes, climbing many peaks on several continents, and building homes in Guatemala with Habitat for Humanity, she has taught Spanish to pre-schoolers through college and is currently a state certified judicial interpreter. Oh, and she writes; mostly memoir, mostly short stories, but occasionally essays and other creative non-fiction.
Sue Nell is currently deeply indebted to the members of her writing group: Richard, Beth, JT, and Linda. For every comma in the correct place, they get the credit. For all the others...Sue Nell accepts complete responsbility.