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This is the way that rumors get started

By Barb Walter, The Kingfisher Times & Free Press

Small towns are notorious for rumors, and ours isn’t any different. 

So when I heard that my 87-year-old friend was rushed to the hospital for a heart attack I thought it could be true, but questioned it. 

After all, I am a jaded reporter, and I’ve also learned there is usually a little truth in every rumor I hear. 

She was taken by ambulance, I was told by a good source, but as it turned out, that was the only true part of the story. 

My friend, who I’ll protect with anonymity, told me what really happened. 

I will say that this person was in need of a hip, knee, elbow surgery, and in pain all the time. 

The meds her doctor prescribed weren’t touching her pain. 

Her caring husband went into what he thought was a CBD store to get her some pain relief. He came out of the store with a small baggie of a shiny powdery substance, she told me. 

He told her to take a teaspoon of it when they got home. 

She did, but got no relief. So she took the rest of it, she said. 

Later she couldn’t stand up without falling, and that’s why the ambulance was called. 

When she left the hospital, and looked at the reason for her treatment, she said it listed: “marijuana overdose.” 

You can’t make this stuff up, and John Lovell, one of my Facebook friends knows this more than anyone.

Yes, I’m putting his name out there because his story was on FB. So it must be true. Right? 

This poem, along with a photo of a Navy pilot, was on John’s site: 

“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; 

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth 

of sun-split clouds, and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and…" 

There was much more of the poem, but most people didn’t read it to the end, and most offered their condolences to John’s Lovell’s family, and said: “He was a great guy... I didn’t know he’d been ill.” 

It turned out that the photo was of John’s uncle, John Bullard, who was a navy pilot in the 1950s. Yes, that pilot’s uniform should have given it away since John Lovell, a 1976 HHS grad, is not that old, but it didn’t. 

Sadly, we did lose John Bullard, 90, on February 18. He was a former Hennessey mayor, and a great guy with a dry sense of humor. I’m sure the Lt. Commander got a laugh out of what happened. 

RIP John Bullard. 

Disclaimer: If there are any inaccuracies in these, or future rumor stories, please FB me. Don’t send to my editor.