A fast girl in the fast lane

Back to the interstate running through my front yard, the other day I happened to catch up with a fellow Golden Stater who appeared to be on the move to points beyond the land of Eureka!

On first glance I wasn't too sure about trying to strike up a conversation, but a quick appraisal of how she was outfitted and the quality of the company she was traveling with made me feel easier about approaching a total stranger.

She was obviously from California, in ways that only a fellow left-coaster can spot with a particular ornamental badge on her backside stating her roots as an authentico Cali-girl.

Her vintage was a tad younger than my own, born around the time of the Tet Offensive, RFK entering the Presidential race and Hair opening on Broadway - 1968. I have to say that she looked pretty darn good for her age and was probably making somebody very happy at home.

After doing my Cro-Magnon manly duty of checking out her chassis, her curves, and all of her attributes that would make any fella with a hankering for some extra-marital fun and adventure whip out their checkbook and yell, "how much?", I recalled what I had waiting for me at home and came to my senses.

I did manage to get a few shots of her with my handy dandy digital camera that I keep with me. Scroll down...if you dare to witness what sort of stranger on the road can make me think such uncharacteristically naughty thoughts...

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I give you, a pristine, 1968 Plymouth GTX, California plates, headed for somewhere north/east,

...where I hope she finds a climate controlled garage, 92 octane fuel, and cases upon cases of Royal Purple synthetic 10W40 waiting for her at the end of her journey.

Little pink houses on the intestate

"He's got an interstate runnin' through his front yard
You know, he think, that he's got it so good."
John Mellencamp, Pink HousesI've truthfully admitted before that I'm very glad to have transitioned from the "big city" to my small town by finding a house with a 4-lane interstate running up and down at the end of our driveway.

True, it's noisy at times.

Truer still that everyone driving by can tell you exactly what funny logo was on my t-shirt when I stepped out to get the mail this morning.

Sadly true that we can't let the dog run around the front yard unfettered for fear that she may end up stuck between the front grill of Mr. Peterbilt hauling the north half of a doublewide on an early Monday morning.

But to a person like me...

...who spent his childhood looking 150' down a hill at the end of our backyard onto the 10 freeway where it transitions with the 710,
...who lived his early adult years in a condo a mere 100' from the $1 million-a-mile sound-barrier beige cinder block wall that was built along the San Bernardino freeway,
...who carried his blushing bride and two newborn daughters over the threshold of a single-story Spanish-influenced 40's ranch home two blocks from a major offramp of the San Berdo,

...having the sound of traveling vehicles fill the sometimes eerie quiet of my small town is sanity-bringing relief to my citified ears.

How much for that big'un there?

Spotted on a stretch of 4-lane highway south of my small town.

I asked. Kid told me it wasn't for sale then stated with all the authority of a Special Forces trainee, that it wouldn't do me any good without the launcher anyway.

Good to know.

Not the "craw..." "Da Craw....DA CRAW!"

In keeping with the eclectic-restoration themed decor of our 100-year old home, no ordinary bathtub would have fit the bill for our bathroom build-out extravaganza.

Luckily, there seemed to be a penchant a few years back to take old clawfoot bathtubs, paint them either OU red or OSU orange, stick them in elementary school classrooms to be used as book storage, comfy pillow filled reading sleds, seasonal decor and maybe even a humiliating time-out penalty box of sorts.

The one my F-i-Law found at a garage sale had several coats of OSU orange roller painted on the outside. It took several hours of sweat equity and 4 - 60 grit 4 1/2" flap discs to get all the paint off, but after the sanding. some bondo word, two coats of HVLP shot automotive primer and a coat of mildew-resistant laced latex, I think it's looking pretty sano.

The interior of the tub was in relatively decent shape for a bathroom fixture that's almost as old as our house. There are only two rust spots where the patina has eaten through the porcelin paint, both of which are miniscule and easily repairable using a myriad of supplies I keep in my garage for automotive repair, paint, and touch-up.

The claw feet are cast iron depictions of some sort of raptor appendage clutching an orb of unknown origin. They are detailed enough for me to want to strip the coats of OSU orange tinted latex off of them, get a coat of protective rustoleum over their craggy surfaces, and maybe hit it with some fine brush detailing -- time and patience permitting.

This particular clawfoot wonder of the bath taking arts was picked up by my F-i-L at a garage sale for $25 and included the faucet and drainage hardware. Another tub in similar condition, but painted OU crimson, was bid on, won and paid for by S at an auction last year.

No, we aren't planning on giving our "new" old tubs a collegiate hue of any sorts, instead opting to get several coats of bright white on the exteriors of the tub twins.

And even if we did, deep down I probably still bleed Bruin Blue and Gold -- hey, a blue tub with bright gold-leafed claw foots....that's a look I may be able to deal with.




BTW, the title of this post will only be groked by the most die hard "Get Smart" fans. For all others, all I have to say is..."you missed it by that much."

Beyond the Haunted Mansion's windows

Growing up in SoCal, trips to Disneyland are such frequent outings that by the time you reach teendom, you start straying off the designated paths and begin exploring the nether regions of the park and it's environs.

More than once my friends and I were busted and threatened with park expulsion by Mickey's Private Army for breaking one of the sacred edits of Disneydom - "Pay no attention to that man behind the green curtain."

One such incident involved sticking my head behind and around a wall facade in the Haunted Mansion. Upon exiting the "hanging corpse elevator" you are ushered down a long hallway, with a thunder and lightning storm raging outside the windows. As a kid growing up in LA, I remember chuckling at the frequency of the lightning strikes illuminating the wall a few feet behind the fake window.

I mean, come on, real lightning storms don't look like that...at least not in LA. But here in Oklahoma however...

Here's a short vidclip I shot the other night during an approaching thunderstorm. It's nothing special here, just another early summer light show in the sky courtesy of this wacky weather pattern that's been plaguing our state since Spring Break.

It's a short clip, but the light show went on like this for a good 20 minutes. I shot it with my trusty old Sony Digital8 using the infrared Nightshot feature.

No sound, music, or effects accompany the vidclip. If you really need some audio to fill the void, imagine the sounds of dozens of tourists excitedly strolling down a Haunted Mansion hallway, gawking at the spooky pictures on the wall and holding tight to their sweetie's sweaty palms.

Small town marketing

Seems folks out here haven't forgotten the finer points in calling a horse and horse and naming a business after what it aims to sell or service.

From this weeks classifieds in our small town's newspaper...

Today I got carded

The stages of "Showing your ID-dom"

Pre-legal
My generation was probably the last one to be able to pull off an amateur fake ID job. Computer technology has all but rendered the days of the "exacto-knife / rub-on-letters" driver's license birth date manipulation obsolete. Funny how the prospect of getting "carded" as a pre-legal citizen was such a palm-sweat inducing threat.

Barely-legal
You were cocky and relished the moments when barmaids, casino workers, club doormen, and the occasional 7-11 clerk would ask to see your ID.

Way-past-legal
You're humored when asked to produce your proof of age and genuinely flattered when the waitress at Outback requests it. Your head stays swelled until your wife tells you that the restaurant policy requires everyone ordering alcohol to be carded, regardless of outward appearance.

So-past-legal, you're almost illegal
Now you'll get carded to verify that you do indeed qualify for the Senior Citizen blue plate special. "Gimme back my gol'durn driver's license you young cus and bring me and my wife a couple Arnold Palmer's with no ice."

The State of Oklahoma has found a new reason to ask any and everyone for their ID, witnessed by myself first hand yesterday when I tried to buy a package of Advil Cold and Sinus at the local Walmart pharmacy.Oklahoma was the first state to restrict the availability of pseudoephedrine, a decongestant crucial in making meth, by moving certain non-prescription cold tablets such as Sinutab and Sudafed behind the pharmacy counter. Shoppers in Oklahoma are limited in how many packets of the medication containing pseudoephedrine they can buy at one time and must show ID and sign for the tablets.
Amazing that in the 2+ years I've lived here, that this was the first time I've had to purchase a product containing this meth ingredient.

I need brake fluid. Guess I should have my ID ready for the clerk at Napa as well.

Carpetbaggers beware in my small town

There's a backyard full of puppies a few blocks walk from our house that the girl's absolutely MUST visit on a daily basis. That a classmate of C's resides in the house of little fuzzy furballs only adds to the positive elements surrounding a quick trek up and over for a visit.

Not long ago, while approaching the pupperoni house, I noticed a "stranger" talking to the Lady of the house on the front porch. He was dressed in a shirt and tie, was carrying a briefcase and a sales sample satchel of some sort.

A door-to-door salesman.
The solicitor general of the flim flam family.
Sir Carpetbagger, hocking his wares the old fashion way.
An original cold caller.

I thought these fellas had gone the way of Crystal Pepsi and Windoze users who thought Microsoft made a bug free operating system.

The last time a door-to-door sales pitch was made at me, was back in LA, made by a string of kids with large vinyl containers full of peanut brittle, caramel nut cluster candy, candles and coloring books. Any one item for $5 each and for the good cause of winning the saleskid a trip to Magic Mountain -- all in an effort to keep him off the streets and out of the gangster lifestyle.

Or I could refuse to buy something and have the kid kick my potted azalea plant over today, and maybe have to face him down at a street corner a few years down the road when he's a full fledged member of the local street gang.

I usually bought the peanut brittle.

Back to my small town...

D-2-D man and his potential customer appeared to be having a jocular conversation with each other, so I just waved to the Lady and continued our puppy trek.

At the end of the block, we approached the backyard to the house we've labeled as the "Rock Wall" house, due to the large artificial climbing wall that the owners have built for their kids to play on. Rock Wall house was full of girls, ages 5-12, who gathered around Franny for an extended session of "pet the pooch." One of the girls was Jayme, a softball teammate of C's.

I mentioned the "Stranger" I had seen down the block and inquired whether or not he had been by their house earlier. Immediately I was deluged by every stray fact (and some theory) that the slew of Nancy Drew's had gathered in their recognizance of the stranger."He asked where our parents were..."
"He was selling educational software..."
"His car had an Oklahoma tag on it, but there was a Georgia Tech sticker on the rear windown..."
"He seemed kinda creepy..."
"He was pretty tall, had brown hair and brown eyes..."
"I think he looked kinda like Will Gotchalk, don't you think he did kinda?"
"He said that even our Sheriff bought some software from him..."
"Was he wearing glasses....I don't remember if he was wearing glasses or not?"
"He was carrying a suitcase of some sort..."
"I told him that I lived here, and that our folks had just run to Braum's and would be back in a few minutes or so..."Have to admit, I was pretty impressed at how thorough their investigatory skills were.

The eldest of the gaggle seemed to have things well in hand and they knew what to do and who to call if anything looked out of sorts, so we walked home, thinking not much more about the Stranger.

Then this article comes out in the local paper...



A small town nut can have a hard shell to crack.

Rubbing the mastondon's member

The video doc I've been working on for the past year or so involves a local artist who was commissioned by the Oklahoma Centennial committee to sculpt a 16 ft. tall bronze of a relatively famous Oklahoman.

The intended placement of the final work of art is to be at a main crossroads in our small town's historic downtown.

From the conception stage on, I've been pushing for the Artist to include one part of the figure that was easily accessible from ground level.

My reason for this request was simple enough. People like to touch sculptures.

Witness Lincoln's shiny proboscis on his bust that sits watch at his tomb in Springfield, or John Harvard's gleaming shoe shod foot at the base of his statue on the Ivy League campus in Cambridge.

Throughout my limited travels here and abroad, I typically become an all-out tourist and in an attempt to feel more a part of the monument, burial location, sculpture garden, or attraction I'm visiting, I like to make innocent (and non-sexual...c'mon people, clean up your minds) physical contact with whatever it is I'm posing in front of for a digital snapshot.

Good to know that I'm not unique in this fetish and that some traditions, however silly they may be, would be a continued part of my sculptural visitation rituals.

Until today that is.

While C was at her art camp downtown making abstract art from recycled materials, I took PK down to the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History, where I encountered this bronze of mammoth proportions...literally.

If you're already theorizing which body part of the bronzed pleistocenic beast was rubbed shiny and clean by thousands of visitor's hands, let me make it perfectly clear, that this was a MALE mammoth.

I have a perfectly innocent picture of my perfectly innocent daughter standing under the perfectly innocent shiny gold member, but for perfectly innocent reasons I won't include it here.

Had I been involved from the get-go on this project, I wonder what discussions I might have had with the artist regarding this odd, but perfectly innocent touching -of-the-artwork tradition.

Maybe being an artist gives them the luxury of not worrying about such things.

Perhaps MC Hammer was the one and only artist that was able to say with any authority, "You can't touch this."

Thus endeth the season

C's softball season ended last night with a rousing double header victory.

Her team of 7/8-year old, coach pitched, 11" Incrediball hitting local girls completed their season with a resounding 7 and 1 record.

The solitary loss came at the beginning of the game rotation. That one loss, however, was redeemed in spades last Monday night as our girls pulled off a solid trouncing of their old nemesis. It was a sweet victory.

As Assistant Coach, I was duly proud of the solid game play and improved skills demonstrated by just about every member of the 9-girl team.

Above all, they all seemed to be having fun, which was supposed to be the entire point of the exercise.

We rotated the girls so they got to play every position they wanted, even though some had definite strengths in certain positions, the Head Coach and I felt that fairness would lead to a higher level of enjoyment of the game, and win or lose, that was the intended goal of the league from the get go.

Amidst all the drama of parents wanting their kids to win, kids wanting to get a hit or make a play, coaches trying to squeeze every last ounce of performance from their players, and frogs trying to avoid being squished beneath the cleated feet of two teams of softball players, a modern day family drama unfolded before my eyes.

You recall "Jayme" with the two Moms. Well, Jayme was seriously distracted for the first few innings of our first game of the evening with news that her Dad was driving up from Texas to watch her play. Every other word out of her mouth involved her Dad, the last time she saw her Dad, what she was planning to do with her Dad, how she hoped he showed up soon, and how proud he'd be if she played really well.

The level of distraction grew even worse after he arrived, as every move she made, was followed by a glance his way to see if he was indeed watching every move she made.

The pressure on this little girl to perform for her Dad whom she hadn't seen for 2-months must have been extremely heightened, as her game play was sub-par to her normal level.

A particularly disastrous turn at bat occurred when Jayme overheard her older sister giggling with joy at the onset of being tickled by their Father. You could see the agony of sibling jealously seeping to the surface with each swing of her bat. Combined with her offspring'd desire to "get a hit" for her frequently absent father's attention, and you can well predict the disappointing outing she had at home plate.

Between inning changes when the other girls were downing gatorade, getting face spritzes from battery powered spray bottle fans, and suiting up for either offensive or defensive play, Jayme would be out trying to noodle into her Dad's lap out in the bleachers.

Eventually, because if was a double header and the girls got to play twice as much as during a single game, Jayme got a few hits, scored some runs, and made a decent outfield play.

A celebratory season ending pizza party at the local Pizza Hut followed, with many player's family members in tow, including Jayme's neo-nuclear extended family - minus one Mom for whatever reason. Jayme's Dad encouraged her to sit with the other girls , perhaps aware of the importance for her to bond with her teammates in a social setting.

She protested at first, but eventually ended up downing air baked pepperoni pies, sipping Dr. Pepper from paper cups, and watching an animated flick on the big screens situated around the hut with the rest of the blue jersey'd girl's of the team.

Much later, as I was tucking C into bed for a well deserved nighty-night, she told me that she was glad that Jayme's Dad came to the game, cuz "it was all she was talking about so it must have been important to her."

Kid's are darn observant.

She then told me she thought it was "pretty neat that I helped coach the team" and that was that.

All the thanks an inept asst. father/coach of his daughter's small town pee-wee softball team could want.

Is man dog's best friend?

Last night Franny and I stumbled upon a stranded canine compadre.

She was about 10 blocks from our house, attached to a 30' long leash with a broken hook at the end. Not much larger than Franny, but with much shorter legs and more salt than pepper fur, she was probably enjoying her bout of freedom until her leash decided to wrap itself around a gas meter several times, all but condemning her to an evening of intimacy with a cast steel contraption.

Until we stumbled upon her.

She was friendly and relatively calm considering the 9-month old schnoodle at the end of my leash that was yelping and performing all 3 acts of Cirque de Soleil in her face.

I surveyed the situation and figured it was too late to go knocking on doors (10:40 p.m. in my small town means that most of the townsfolk have turned off Jay Leno and gone to bed) to find the pooches owner. So Franny and I escorted the well behaved terrier mix home, gave her some kibble and water, a soft mat to sleep on, with the promise of deliverance on the morrow.

After breakfast this morning, PK and I led the stray pooch back to the scene of the crime, figuring to ding-dong some doors in an attempt to locate a home that was missing it's dog. I was feeling pretty good about our chances of finding at least some neighbor who would recognize the pooch and point us in the right direction.

Decent plan. Human intellect at work. Elementary, my dear.

However, as we approached the gas meter in question, the dog started pulling on the leash, which, until that point, hadn't been an issue. I stopped her for a second, did a couple turns in order to disorient her, but again, she immediately started pulling in a specific westerly direction.

For half a block, she pulled us on her own personal iditarod, until we found ourselves in front of what had to be her home. I took a chance, let her off the leash and watched gleefully as she pounced around the front yard, ran around the back, and through a doggy door into the garage.

Human intellect indeed. Had I just turned her loose last night, she would have ran straight for home and not have had to spend the night with strangers.

Well, at least she might have a little more appreciation for home, cuz nothing makes you miss home more than being away from it.

The Snow Cone Club...with apologies to John Hughes

I had ordered an amaretto flavored shaved ice with a sweet cream chaser, while PK was working on a dubba-bubba pink and blue bubble gum combo, when three lanky teenage boys sauntered up to the window, ordered their poison and planted themselves at the opposite end of the resin picnic table we were sitting at.

They were dressed in the appropriately distressed mode, faded jeans, logo'd tees, sneaks, with a token trucker hat on the noggin of the smallest of the trio.

I imagined they were tempering whatever foul language they may have had in their vocabulary as they engaged PK in a conversation about her hot pink cast and how she broke her arm. From there, the ice broken and the snow cones slowly disappearing down our gullets, the talk turned to back and forth questions about who they/we were, where they/we lived, and what flavor snow cone they/we were enjoying.

These boys were hard to categorize or place into a clique and I was amused at myself for trying to place their social standing amongst their peers, merely because it would have been easier for me to relate to them if only I could fit them into one of "The Breakfast Club" stereotypes.

Problem is, I'm not up on what cliques exist here in my small town, evidenced by my total lack of ability to call the shots on where these kids either fit in, or didn't.

Just where do the FFA kids with their cool blue jackets and award pins up the wazoo fit into the social ladder of teendom? Certainly not with the Napoleon Dynamite's and Pedro's of the town...

The jocks we constantly read about in the newspaper are also the ones who frequently are up for academic scholarships when heading for college, so that stereotype falls by the sidelines.

And the band kids don't seem to be the most dysfunctional group at social gatherings either. At the last football game I attended, when the band marched out on the field, most of the people in the bleachers actually sat quietly and listened to them play.

It seems to me then, that because of the relatively small size of the school system, the kids must overlap their activities, and not choose to specialize in one subject over another. Without this relentless mind meld of social, academic, farm based, and extracurricular activities, many of these enterprises would cease to exist.

I'm sure I'll ponder this issue more as my girls get older and start socially interacting more with their peer group, but at the moment, the conversation with the 3 snow cone snarfing teens turned to a topic more on par with what I was thinking about as a pre-driving teenager -- cars.

More on the interesting hairpin and high bank turns that this conversation drove towards, and the revealing window to my past that it uncovered, in a future post.

Summer heat heaven in 40 flavors

My small town is fortunate to have what I call a "Snowcone Shack."


Put enough miles on your car driving around this state and you'll see a variant of these little family run crunched ice eateries on just about every Main Street in just about every small town in Oklahoma.

I think ours is one of the classier establishments of this summer seasonal cool treat industry. It has an actual cement foundation, a roof, sealed sliding service window, wall mounted A/C unit (no one likes to buy a snow cone from a sweaty snow cone maker), city power (those gas generators are pretty loud), and a menu board that is printed instead of handwritten by the owner's 4th grade remedial speller.

Others I've spotted in various small towns near and far included the following:

A converted 5th wheel travel trailer that was parked on cement blocks

A recently retired SWAT van with 3 flat tires, painted white and permanently positioned at the edge of a WalMart parking lot

A long abandoned Fotomat shack (remember those?)

A Tuff Shed tool shed, that appeared to have been dragged 115 miles from someones backyard to it's present location.

The owner's of our local artificially flavored pummeled frozen water shack offer such flavors as Malibu Barbie (pink and blue bubble gum), Spiderman (black cherry and strawberry), and Hawaiian Eye (coconut/pineapple with a black cherry center), along with the classical (strawberry, lime, watermelon, and rainbow) and modern (Fuzzy Navel, Pina Colada, Margarita) flavors, for a complete tongue-color changing menu.

They also included a flavor which was obviously named after their daughter, Caster (Vanilla and Strawberry Cheesecake).

Wonder if they had had a son, would they have named him Camber...or Toe-In.

Sorry, car guy inside joke. Move along.

Doggie stylin' for an Okie summer

The summer heat has finally arrived in my small town, bringing with it the combines to harvest the wheat, the june bugs who nightly commit suicide on the sidewalks, and Franny's panting pinkish-hued tongue hanging out on a more regular basis.

Franny before
Her black curly coat is not what any respectable desert bedouin would choose for summer attire, so we decided it was time to give the pooch a haircut (Schnoodles, like poodles have hair, not fur) better suited to the rising daytime temps.

Franny after
My wife simply stated, "We paid to have this done to her?"

In defense of the groomer, Franny's hair was pretty matted and tangled, so it was I who sadistically instructed the doggy cutter to give our little pooch the Marine buzz -- but to keep the eyebrows for some retinal coverup.

I've gotten used to her like this, but the consensus among the family is that we'll let her curly locks grow back to "before photo" status.

On a positive note, she seems a lot more comfortable during her sunstroked walks and the girls have been treating her like she's a different dog entirely, being a lot more patient and attentive.

Maybe we should all shave our entire bodies and walk around to see if those who interact with us on a daily basis would indeed treat us with more of the good stuff.

Moccasins don't have padded soles

Representatives from 100 American Indian nations entering the floor of the Cox Convention center in full tribal dance regalia for the opening of The Red Earth Festival completely and totally blew us away.

And that was only the beginning, but the Grand Entrance was worth the trip downtown all on it's own.

Coined the largest gathering of it's kind in the world, the Red Earth Festival is a unique event celebrating the diversity and culture of both Northern and Southern Native American nations.

A few impressions from the big-city-moved-to-small-Okie-town peanut gallery...

There was an impossibly long line at the single food vendor selling "Indian Tacos," a dish that is common at fairs and festivals around the state, but is questionably (at least in my mind) of Native American Indian origin -- okay, the fry bread I'll give to you).

Why then, did only 1 vendor show up serving this "authentically themed dish" yet I had my choice of hot dogs, bratwurst, sub sandwich, and Dippin' Dots vendors to spend my money at?

True to form, even for a culture as in tune with nature as the Native American's are, just as in nature, the boys get the best, brightest, most colorful regalia to adorn themselves in. The girls get brown with a few muted token colors tossed into the mix.

Even though my wife claims to have inklings of Choctaw and Chickasaw blood in her, during the competition, we found ourselves cheering on our local Cheyenne/Arapaho "family members" from our small town instead. Blood may be thicker than water, but small town neighbors rate pretty high when they're dancing and chanting ancient tribal tomes.

One of the more interesting vendor booths we stumbled on was a company that offered a DNA ancestry search service to find your tribal roots. The two bespectacled Caucasian geeks running the booth were an attempt to instill confidence in the technology behind the process, but they unfortunately stood out like Custer's troopers amidst the other Native vendors.

Walking around the convention center, the ever present rhythmic drumming emanating from the arena floor, echoed off and around the concrete catacombs of the corporate center. At times I couldn't help thinking how that very sound heard by a Union Trooper or stagecoach driving settler more than 100-years ago in this very state, elicited a very different reaction than the head-bobbing, feet shuffling joy I was experiencing.

Finally, the dancing and walking for long periods of time on the hardened cement floors of the arena must have been taking it's toll on the plantar and extensor muscles of some of the Red Earth participants as we overheard a young man tell his stroller pushing wife that he wished his moccasins had padded soles.

My Sketchers were a little sore from walking as well.

To say, or not to say, that is the question

Let's end this week with two quotes of note that may, or may not, illicit a chuckle.

The first, uttered by PK when she woke up from being gassed for her surgery to fix her broken arm. The nurse asked her how she was feeling, if she wanted to throw up...typical post-op questions. It was when I asked her what the gas mask smelled like that she uttered..."It smelled like feet."It was nice to see the nursing staff bust a gut so heartily after hearing that.

Next, an acquaintance of my wife's in the film biz who was supposed to arrive in OKC was several hours late for his morning production meeting scheduled for today.

His delay was caused by the confusion surrounding the confiscation of his luggage, the detainment of his person, and the checking of his background - which included a call to my wife as a point of contact at his planned destination - by a dedicated Homeland Security Agent at his departing airport.

When asked by the Airline Ticket Agent what he was flying to OKC for, he innocently answered in Hollywood-speak.."I'm going there to shoot a pilot."

Bet he makes the evening news.

Waiting for a knuckle sandwich

I've been anticipating a sucker punch in the kisser ever since gas stroked above $3 a gallon here in what was normally considered, "Oklahoma - land of the sub-$3-a-gallon gas prices."

The right-left combination that I've been expecting (to be delivered by the fella next to me in his Chevy Avalanche/Ford Expedition/H3/et. al) would be to wipe the smug look off my face as I zipped into a Conoco, filled up my Civic for about $27, and zipped out again, waving buh-bye and muttering, "see you in a few weeks or so..." as I drove off.

Quite often I've felt somewhat emasculated and out-of-the-loop - vehicle wise - while puttering around my small town in my 2-door import (made in Canada, btw).

It's almost as if people stare at me and wonder why...1) I'm not driving a Pickup (you are a man, aren't ya?) or 2) Since I'm driving such a small car, why am I not driving a Neon (Dodge), Grand Am (Pontiac), Cavalier (Chevy), or Escort (Ford).

I'm not saying that in my small town of 4380 people, the two ricers in our garage are the only out-of-towner's in town. My rough guestimates would put the ratio to about 10-15% import (European and Asian both), the remaining 85-90% made of Detroit guts and a mixture of American/Canadian/Mexican labor. Heck, even my Wife's Toyota was made in Mexico.

So pardon me if I let creep a little smugness when I fill my tank and get on my merry way at 30-32 miles per gallon. Sure, it may not be the most patriotic approach to the issue at hand, but as a compromise, I propose the following.

If you, in your gas guzzler feel the need to take a swing at me to vent some of your Exxonized frustration, I'll take one on the chin for the good of my country and the cause of keeping one less road rage incident off the road...

But don't go screaming to the authorities when I jump into my El Camino, fire all of her hi-po 8-cylinders up and hunt you down Mad Max style...getting 10-12 miles per gallon while I do it.

The stigma of summer school

C told me that her 1st grade teacher will be teaching 3rd grade summer school in a few weeks.

My Wife immediately sighed and said, "I hope our girls will never have to go to summer school."

When did summer school become being all about remedial learning and playing catch up from lessons missed during the regular school year? Not so from my experiences of summer learning.

In my elementary summer school, classes were offered in subjects that were virtually unheard of in a regular curriculum. I seem to recall that perhaps some remedial classes were offered, but for the most part, we just hung out with our friends, made kites, played kickball, shot caroms, ate 50-50 ice cream bars and read a ton of Encyclopedia Brown mysteries.

For myself and just about everyone I knew, high school level summer school was never about playing "catch up" either. It was always about "getting ahead."

Say I take English Lit 1 for 20 hours this summer, which successfully frees up a period next fall so I can take two back-to-back periods of auto shop class.

Or how about taking junior level American Government from June to July, enabling me to not have a final period, meaning I get out of classes that much earlier.

Hey, I'd gladly spend a few sunny morning hours taking World History over the break, all so I can get two lunch periods next year -- enough to drive downtown to make a Tommy's run for lunch.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't always about getting ahead as much as it was playing the system to test out the waters of the freewheeling adulthood we would soon be facing.

But there were the more than occasional wunderkind who would take Algebra in summer school, so they could take Geometry in their freshman year, Trig in their sophomore year, Calculus in their Junior year, and College math or something really fun...like physics or physical science as a Senior (seriously, I knew people who did this, and they're all doctors and scientist and what not now.)

For the most part, it was always about trying to stay one step ahead of everyone else -- problem was, everyone else was staying one step ahead as well, so you ended up being status quo.

Therein lies the pressure of what my Wife calls the "Good student conundrum." If we're all struggling to do what we can to stay ahead, yet everyone is undergoing the same struggle, are we really proceeding to the head of the class and staying ahead of the curve, or have we just recurved the curve to really f*ck ourselves over.

Regardless, Wifey says that attending summer school here in Okie land labels you with a lifelong stigma...kinda like a black mark going on your "permanent record" we were all so threatened with as grade schoolers.

Check writers, unite!

I've had the same black, leather checkbook since I opened my first checking account as a 15-year old part time Courtesy Clerk (Box boy/buggy runner) at the Alpha Beta Supermarket in Monterey Park, CA.

It's seen me through both rare upturns and all too frequent downward spirals of my checking/savings account balances, always ready to spew forth another pre-perforated generic blue-green 2.75" x 6" paper representative of the moolah in my account.

Combined with my eelskin wallet, my black leather dayrunner, vibrating pager and bowtie logo'd pewter keychain, I was a stylin' fool for much of the 80's and 90's.

My wallet has since become a rubber band, my organizer is a series of post-it notes on the 800' x 4-story tall dry erase marker board in our mudroom hallway, my pager sits at the bottom of a closet junk box, replaced many times over by a series of amazingly shrinking cell phones, and my keychain is now a black-bi-buttoned plastic keyfob that has more memory on it's miniscule circuit board than Apollo 9's onboard computer.

My checkbook, full of checks and ready to be swept up and pocketed for a fun filled foray of excessive shopping and consumerizing, remains the only member of my pocket worthy personal property tribe to have survived.

Sadly, ever since the advent of online bill paying and check / debit cards, I've been severely neglecting my old friend in check writing crime.

I fear it will only get worse for him and checkbooks everywhere, for yesterday, while waiting in line at the WalMart Supercenter checkout stand #4, we witnessed what could be the beginning of the end of the check writing society we've all come to know as a familiar method of paying for things we want but don't really need.

My wife and I listened intently as the blue-smocked clerk with rounded off corners and spectacles hanging by a bright gold chain, explained to an elderly farmer why she was handing him back his check. Seems Walmart has recently instigated the high-tech policy of treating written checks as check debit cards, with the funds instantly transferring out of a consumer's account and into Walmart's.

Since the check is no longer required as proof of payment to the bookeepers and bankers who so vigilantly hung onto them for 2-3 weeks in the past, it is simply handed back to the customer with thanks and gratitude.

The old dude didn't get it right off.

After a few frustrating attempts by the Clerk to explain the money-saving and ultra-convenient process, I stepped in and explained to the overall clad fella that "Walmart is just cutting the bank out of the whole process and by running your check through that little doohickey behind the checkstand, the Clerk cleared it and is giving it back to you -- same as the bank does at the end of every month."

He seemed satisfied with that explanation, expressed a polite "thank you young fella" to me and took his check with him out of the bright white sodium vapored lighted environment of the store.

My wife commented that Okie's love their check writing, and that people here use checks for everything from paying bills to buying gas to getting pizza delivery. Even with the introduction of all the higher tech methods of paying for goods and services, Okie's have steadfastly held onto the security blanket of their checkbooks and the gospel that "my check is as good as my word."

While we were checking out and using our debit card to purchase the water softener salt and combo spray bottle/battery-operated fan for C to keep herself cool at an upcoming softball game, I glanced down at the now obsolete and irrelevant sign on the counter warning of the $35 returned check fee that would be charged to all deadbeat checks.

Perhaps they'll leave it on the counter for old time sake...and as a force fed reminder to folks that these here are indeed the "good old days" for Walmart shoppers.

Man with a full plate

So there we were sitting at the surgery center, sipping down a cup of complimentary Cain's hot cocoa and watching the Weather Stud on the huge flat panel on the waiting room wall warn us about the intense thunderstorm we had just driven 27 miles through to make our 6 a.m. appointment (whew), when nearby us plants a docile looking couple on the sofa catty corner to ours.

The Man (we'll call him Edgar) pulls out a ceramic mug adorned with the logo of a tractor dealership on the outside and a well earned ring-around-the-rim coffee stain on the inside, and pours himself some coffee from a gleaming stainless steel thermos.

His actions are thoughtful and practiced and not a drop of the hot rust colored liquid finds it way onto the wall-to-wall plush beneath our feet.

Edgar eyes me doting lackadaisically on my syrofoam cup, swallows his sip and says,
E - You a coffee drinker?
Me - Not an addict by any means, but I enjoy a cup now and again.
E - This is my own blend. I grind it myself. Took awhile to find the right combination of beans and the right amount, but I finally got it the way I like it and now it's all I drink.
Me - You carry that thermos with you everywhere?
E - Yep, even when we go out to eat. Gets some funny looks from the waiters.
Me - I'll bet. You ever walk into Starbucks carrying your own coffee you'll probably get arrested.
E - Yeah, I tried their beans once...wasn't all that happy. This here is a mixture of Dunkin Donuts Original Blend, Biff's Columbian Supremo - they're an outfit in Arkansas, but you can buy them here in town at United, and some good Okie Cain's. We got this machine that grinds the beans, cooks it up and keeps it warm for us.
At this point he offered me his sacred thermos, which I hesitantly but graciously declined, citing some obscure nonsensical reason having to do with the half drunk cup of packaged cocoa I was still working on and my desire to remain coffee free for the duration of our daughter's surgery.

Having written all this down now, in hindsight, I should have scrambled to get a new cup and taken up Edgar on his offer -- for a lot more reasons that my desire to just have a good cup of coffee.

After a few more stanzas of lively conversation, we found out that Edgar had a full time gig at the local Air Force Base, was owner and operator of an heat and air business, and ran about 50 head of cows on his property.

He seemed a little tickled when I asked him how he managed to wear all those hats and still find time to watch American Idol (another tidbit of trivial revealed during his 2nd cupful).

Edgar took another satisfying sip of his special blend, sighed and said, "Long as what goes in comes out, I figure there's not much else I should be frettin' about."

And no, I never did find out what Edgar and his wife were there at the surgery center for. I turned down a cup of the man's coffee -- I wasn't about to ask him what they were in for.