Notes for Joyce Blanche Cupp: This is for my Mother, Joyce Cupp, Armstrong. Mom was a woman that everyone, but some of my ex-wives liked. She fed half the racetrack rats, and anyone else that needed a meal. I can honestly say, anyone who has been pleasured to sit at my Mother's table, never left dissatisfied. She was an amazing cook and could do it with the least assortment of wares. I have seen her climb out of the back of a horse trailer where the whole family spent the night waiting to see Scott City Girl win the Petroleum Preakness at Liberal Kansas Fair , and cook biscuits and gravy and fried eggs, and bacon, not to mention coffee for every one else in the family who happened to show up, and all this was done on a two burner hot plate with a metal fold open oven. You really can't imagine how good that tasted on a cool fall morning, just before school started in Scott City Kansas. We lived most of my younger days in a little basement house that my Uncle Harlan Ward built. It was a neat place to grow up. Harlan built it during the war days as were many that were built during that time to be added onto above ground when the war was over. It was warm in the winter with a big wood stove, and cool in the hot Kansas summers. Somehow it never got added on to, but we did add a bathroom a little while before we moved to Elk City Oklahoma. Mom never complained about the long walks to the out house or the frosty baths in the well house just before you came down the stairs to the house. She washed our clothes and took us to school and took over the farm choirs when my Dad was in Oklahoma buying wheat pasture cattle to sell in Kansas. She fried chicken and made that wonderful gravy to be poured over a heaping pile of mashed potatoes on Sunday when the Neelys came to visit, and sing. Lordy could they sing. They gathered around the old piano that sat in the corner of the living room, and soon the air was full of gospels. Me and Davy Neely could hear their voices as we played basketball in the hayloft of my Dad's big Racehorse barn. I can still hear those voices in perfect harmony , when I listen to the past. Mom sang alto, and Dad sang base, and Ruby and Clyde joined with perfect pitch soprano and tenor. I guess it was all perfect pitch because it sure sounded that way back then. Speakin of that barn with the basketball court upstairs...that is where my Mother took me to show me why she had a chance to play on a women's traveling pro team when she was young, and I would be better at pitching quarters at a line like my Father. To say she embarrassed me would be an understatement. My Mom and her cooking made the good old days really good and made the best out of some of my Father's business deals that went a-rye, seem almost a good deal, like the time he and my Uncle Clyde Cupp went into the hog business. They bought a bunch of piggy sows, and with the help of a Kansas elevator that burned, leaving tons of grain that was good for nothing but pig food, and that could be bought for a song, they were soon knee deep in baby pigs. The barn was divided into little stalls and the area was heated with a large wood stove, and the Armstrong Cupp pig farm was in full swing. Things were good and it looked like we would be rolling in the dough, until time to sell the first bunch. When my Father returned from the sale, he barely had enough to pay the commission on the ones he sold. He and my Uncle butchered all those pigs and cured the meat and hung the hams, bacons and shoulders in the top of the barn and rendered lard for days. True to my Mothers expert cookin prowess, she found 99 different ways to cook pork, and keep us kids from refusing to eat another bite of it ever. My Mother was a unique person and I loved her very much. To quote a friend of mine , Dal Shannon,"she was a neat lady". She will be remembered by all who ever sat at her table, and a few who found out that you didn't say anything about her children, no matter how wrong they were. She would defend us fiercely and then merit out punishment with a plastic belt when she got you back to the house. I guess it all worked because I have never spent a night in jail nor has my sister, and I miss my Mother very much. I love you Mom and I wish I had told you many times before now. God bless you. Dannie
More About Joyce Blanche Cupp: Burial: September 01, 2001, Sayre Doxie Cem. Sayre Oklahoma.
More About Joyce Blanche Cupp and Dan Cyrus Armstrong: Marriage: May 25, 1935, Sayre Okla..
Children of Joyce Blanche Cupp and Dan Cyrus Armstrong are:
Joyce Blanche Cupp (b. September 27, 1917, d. August 30, 2001)
Notes for Joyce Blanche Cupp: