You say tomato, I say Toyota...

The other night S caught me chuckling at a commercial airing between Olympic events on NBC.

The ad was a flashy corporate-made spot for Ford wherein the authoratatively-voiced announcer proudly stated that "Ford now matches quality with Toyota!"

Not better than. Not exceeds. Not even edges out by the slightest margin.

Ford "matches" Toyota.

Now, I'm not going to go into the study that revealed such figures, and truth be told, I couldn't care less whether the blue oval car and trucks of today rate higher or lower on the quality suckage meter than any other car or truck out there.

I'm currently po'd at Toyota because of their built-in obsolescent design of the front wheel bearings on the 5-year old model my Wife drives.

Without getting too technical, wheel bearings are one the many components on a modern consumer internal combustible motor vehicle that should be made serviceable by the average to above average shade tree mechanic. If greased often and correctly, wheel bearings should last 50-100K miles without incident.

Needless to say, when I started hearing the unmistakable sounds of a bearing starting to age on the passenger side front wheel on Wifey's ride, I jumped on the net only to find out the harsh truth of what it was going to take to switch the $25 culprit out.

In a nutshell...jack the car onto jackstands, remove tire, remove brake caliper, remove rotor, loosen steering tie rod, loosen strut, loosen control arm, remove steering knuckle/spindle, have machine shop press out old bearing/hubs, buy new bearings, have machine shop press in new bearings/hubs, replace all components, get front end aligned (for safety).

Or take it to a shop which has a special impact gun press kit that can remove and install the bearings into the steering knuckle on the car (negating the step of removing all the steering components, thus also negating the need for a realignment) but get charged out the wazoo for that convenience.

At dealer rates, we were talking about a $300 - $500 dollar job minimum. The regular mechanic we use (an honest to goodness honest mechanic) is swamped and couldn't fit us in for two-weeks - that's the problem with good/honest mechanics. Word gets out of their quality and honesty and suddenly the whole world is in line before you.

So, I was faced with spending an entire day or two (includes driving to the city for a machine shop that could do the pressing work and finding an alignment shop) doing an Fix-it-myself job, or finding a different shop.

In my time of need, I turned to a Honda specialist shop I had luck with before, knowing full well that they would probably not be able to help me directly, but could possibly point me in a well-informed direction.

First, a little background.

Back when I first moved to OK, I had decided to address the intermittent A/C issue that my Civic was experiencing and took it to one of the Honda dealers in the city. Their incompetence was the stuff that urban legends are made of, but luckily through the grapevine of online ricer message boards I found this place.

C'mon, a Honda shop O and O'd by a former NOPI XBOX Cup Champion (Pro 4 Cylinder), and Honda fac tech since the 90's, here in the middle of domestic car Machu Picchu.

Long story short, he fixed my Civic's A/C in one visit (the dealer techs were still scratching their sweaty bald heads after 4 trips to their shiny service bays), tuned the frack out my D16Z6 single OHC VTEC 4-banger, and gave me a list of parts he could find both new and slightly used that would help my little ricer in the handling and green-light-go department...(wink-wink) just in case I was interested.

Back to my Wife's Toy wheel bearing issue. A quick phone call to Matt at Alternative led to a friendly "bring it on it, we'll take care of it for 'ya," which then led to me dropping the car off that day, which finally led to my Wife happily humming down I-40 to work this morning in her car.

So in retrospect, I'm really not all that po'd at Toyota. Least they did the right thing by making their cars similar enough so that even a Honda mech tech can fix them.

"Can you dig it?"

The small Oklahoma town my wife grew up in was just a tad larger than my small town is now.

A few years back when we were on the hunt for a small town to call our own, we briefly toyed with the idea of looking at houses near where she grew up. However in the intervening 18 years since she had fled the panhandle state, her little town had sprawled to a staggering 12,000 townsfolk and no longer offered the small town experience that she now craved for our family unit.

Her childhood memory scrapbook is filled with swim lessons at the local park pool, tromping off to the "boondocks" with a piece of raw bacon tied to the end of string to catch crawdads down at the creek, and holiday parades where she knew just about everyone marching or riding a float.

And dance lessons at the Moose.

Moose lodge #1785 that is.

In the 23 years we've been together, I thought I had heard every painful (there were many) and triumphant (a few sprinkled in) tale to be generated from her pre-teen tap, jazz, and ballet dance classes at the Moose.

Not quite.

After cheering for, then screaming with the American men's 4x100 Freestyle relay team as they bested the trash-talkin' rival French team by 8/10ths of a second, S went to take a soak in a hot water filled clawfoot where she learned the news that Isaac Hayes had passed away (yes, we have a tv mounted within optimal viewing direction of the tub...don't ask). For reasons unknown to me at that moment, the news of the passing of the creator of the "Theme from Shaft," sent my wife into a quiet funk.

It was more than a few moments after hearing the news that I heard my wife break out into her own melancholy rendition of Mr. Haye's wonderful but lessor known, I just don't know what to do with myself."

Okay, what's the story here?

Turns out she had practiced and performed an emotional jazz routine to this song as an impressionable small-town dance student. Isaac's soulful lyrics and to-the-bone singing style must have resonated deep within her, for even 30-something years later, she did a total recall on the entire song, beginning to end.

When asked, she could only remember a few of the dance moves that went along with the song, but the lyrics were imprinted into the depths of her soul.

Now, I'm forever teasing my wife about what I've always considered her limited "soul for soul music," seeing as how the soundtrack of her formative youthful years was filled with REO Speedwagon and Journey.

Then out of the past comes the deep baritone voice announcing that perhaps there is some "soul for soul" in my Wife after all.

Rest in peace Isaac. Enjoy your jam session with Jimmy, Elvis, Buddy, John, George and all the others.

The politics of friendship

My Wife has never been very political in public, yet the true value of her friendship was on display a few days before this last round of local elections.

In 102 degree heat, she was out canvasing a far off neighborhood in support of a friends bid for an OK House Seat.

A friend, I might add, who was not a representative of her chosen political party.

Some may say she's a hypocrite. Some may cry foul for her blatant disregard for the sanctity of the multi-party political system. Some may even say she sold out for her own non-political but personal gain.

I say "shut up and go vote."

As if on cue, this article recently appeared in our local news rag that just oozes further proof that every vote counts, especially here in small town Oklahoma.



Deciding an election by pulling a name out of a hopper...what'll they think of next?

Who needs Nascar...we have GRASCAR!

It's too long and convoluted a story to tell how my Wife and I recently found ourselves at a relatively local lawn mower racing event, but there we were and here I am now to blog about it.

Lawn mower racing. Go ahead and say it, "Okay, here's a rednecky sport that had to be invented by a bunch of Coors Light swillin' good ol' boys not rich or talented enough to drive in Nascar."

You'd think so, but you'd be wrong.

Invented as a competitive motorsports event in Great Britain (of all places), it's grown in popularity in the States and even has a national governing body, the U.S. Lawn Mower Racing Association.

This particular GRASCAR event was held on a city owned lot on Route 66. Admission was free, they charged $10 to race, $5 for a pit pass, and a local burger joint had their mobile kitchen there to serve up sumptuous onion fried burgers to the hungry lawn mowing masses. It was a family friendly affair, no alcohol sold or served however there were quite a few tailgaters present that brought their own refreshments.

I'm not sure the event we attended was a sanctioned race by the USLMRA, but there were actual rules and categories/classes that were being adhered to, and the safety measures taken were respectful of the speeds that these ex-grass munchers could attain.

Don't believe me, check out this iMovie I cobbled together while at the event. It's about 17 megs, so be patient.

Oh, and pay special attention to the last few seconds of the video. That's S at the controls, participating in an actual race that evening in what they advertised as the "Powder Puff" lady's only race.

How someone talked her into strapping on that helmet and getting on the back of a mower was beyond me, but considering she had pushed a mower maybe 3 or 4 times in her life and had never ridden on a riding mower, let alone drive one, I thought she did pretty well. Okay, okay, the magic of editing has her taking the checkered flag, but she came in 4th place...same place she started.

The inevitable question being, is there possibly a GRASCAR overhead valve twin powered mowing racer in the works behind all those hot rods parts at the back of my garage?

Well, if I can't convince C to get into Junior Dragster racing anytime soon, then perhaps a few wins on the GRASCAR circuit may get her interested in learning how to drift her Daddy's El Camino and maybe find her way into road racing.

Hey, it could happen.

Flying bird kids spotted at the library

The kid was clutching two books against his chest as if they contained the key to all closed doors and the answers to all of life's questions.

He entered the inner double doors of the library, the sound of the cool climate controlled air rushing outward as he shuffled around the sensor towers and made his way to the back of the line at the check-out counter.

He was clean cut and appropriately dressed for a 13-year old boy in the midst of a hot summer in prairie land Oklahoma. His eyes reflected both the twinkle of excitement and fatigue of use as he placed both books on the counter in front of the teen-aged library page at the counter.

Unfortunately, the female page with emo-influenced fashion tendencies seemed more interested in moving the line along than sharing in the excited boys enthusiastic attempts at engaging her in a discussion on the books he was turning in.

When he queried the page on whether or not she knew if there were anymore books in the series he just read, she promptly pointed to the terminal nearest him and told him to look it up himself.

I was saddened.

Not by the page and her lack of literary compassion for the young reader. She had a job to do, a line of people to attend to, and probably received dozens of requests a day to engage in conversations on one book or another.

No, what saddened me was that I knew that the boy, who had obviously been enthralled with the series of books he was reading, would find no further books in the series.

The story in the books he returned and was now actively seeking to continue on his literary adventure was about a group of human-avian hybrid kids (known as the flock). That's right, flying kids. The series was James Patterson's award-winning and best selling Maximum Ride series.

Our library has all 4 books in the collection. The boy was returning the last two in the series, meaning his time flying with the flock had come to an end.

He had nowhere to turn for more adventures with the Flock. Nowhere to look for more danger and intrigue. Nowhere to go to continue his literary flight of fancy with Max, Fang, Nudge and the rest of the group.

I watched him walk over to the young adult section and zero in on the shelf location where the first and second Maximum Ride books were located. He picked the first one up and paged through it, hopeful to find some tidbit of text he had missed on his initial read, or perhaps the motivation to read again what he may have read several times over again.

He was floundering and I had to do something.

Recall that I was familiar with the Maximum Ride series and once I finished them way-back-when, I too sought out writings by the author who had created such a fun series. Turns out James Patterson actually created the flying kid characters in two earlier novels that were mega hits with his target reader audience - adults. It was the success of these two novels that inspired Patterson to recreate Max and her flock in a series of novels for young adult.

I went and plucked the two earlier novels off the shelf, recalling the moment I had discovered them some years ago, and the excitement I was feeling at that time.

Now, the weirdness of approaching strangers in my small town has worn off some, but all those years with my stranger radar up and humming hasn't quite shut down. However I had a bigger picture to think of, so I found myself walking over to the new fiction collection where I approached the woman whom I assumed was the kids Mom. I didn't know her, but after a few pleasantries she must have recognized me because she said, "Oh, you're PK's dad, aren't you?"

Children are our common bond between all men...and Soccer Mom's.

The ice broken, I proceeded to tell her about the first two books that Patterson had written (not for young adults) that involved a similar group of flying kids that her son may enjoy reading, now that he's finished the first four books.

She seemed thankful, although somewhat confused since I neglected to mention that I had been watching her son meander around the library since I spotted him in line with the Maximum Ride books -- seemed a little creepy and stalker-ratzi to me. I handed her the books and reminded her that unlike the young adult series, these two were written for adults, but that there was nothing in there worse than Harry Potter, only these kids swear in English, as opposed to Harry and Ron who swear...in English. The Queen's English that is.

Oh, shut it ya wanker.

Anyhow, I suggested she give them a quick glance over herself, or at least keep a close eye on the kid as he read them, in case something should come up he doesn't understand. To which she reassured me that her son understands more than she ever did at his age thanks to Wii and XBox 360.

Truth.

Later on, the kid sought me out and with a big sh*t-eatin' grin on his face and thanked me for telling him about these two books. As much as I was dying to have a sit-down gab-fest about the Max books with him, I could see he was anxious to get in the car and dive right in.

My parting words to him were that the young adult Max would return in about less than a year in a new novel, and there is a pretty good web presence for the novels if he had internet at home.

Should have mentioned the growing online fan fiction movement for the Max series. Could be I was looking at the next Hemingway?

Helping the "one" get through

Spotted this trailer pulling through town the other day and actually did a double-take when my brain thoroughly processed the graphic and text.


A trailer full of swine reproductive hope, that's what that is.

What have you spotted driving down Main Street in your town lately?

The art of lying

In St. Augustine of Hippo's book, "Of Lying," he divides lies into eight kinds, listed in order of descending severity:

* Lies in religious teaching.
* Lies that harm others and help no one.
* Lies that harm others and help someone.
* Lies told for the pleasure of lying.
* Lies told to "please others in smooth discourse."
* Lies that harm no one and that help someone.
* Lies that harm no one and that save someone's life.
* Lies that harm no one and that save someone's "purity."

Had I been sitting with the good Saint Auggie, I would have added a few footnotes to his scholarly thinking tome that included a few rules, such as the following:

Assume everyone knows you're lying.

If you believe it, it's not a lie (credit George Costanza for that one).

Try to know who you're lying to, before lying to them.

If caught lying, admit it with a disarming smile, then quickly move on.

Apparently, the Service Manager at Bob Howard Toyota in the big OKC, needs to brush up on his Big-L skills.

The other day my F-i-L went to drop off his pickup for a timing belt change at one of the mega-car dealerships near him. Ever the thrifty consumer, he had let his fingers do the walking and found that this particular Dealer was offering a special on major services (such as a timing belt R&R) so he went against his better judgment and took it to them, instead of to his usual mechanic.

The Service Manager acknowledged the phone quoted price and all seemed well and good as he handed the keys over and walked off, until he mentioned the dreaded, "vehicle safety inspection," the he'd be ordering performed on the truck..at no charge of course.

Of course.

Yep, it was the old Columbo fake-exit gotcha.

Long story short, the timing belt was changed out for the price as quoted, however the "free safety inspection" revealed over $2,000 in additional work that their certified mechanics strongly recommended be done based on their thorough 25-point look-see under and around my F-i-L's 12-year old pickup.

I don't think I'll be able to regurge in writing everything my F-i-L said they wanted done but somewhere in there was a transmission fluid flush, front brake pad replacement, rotor turning, rear brake adjustment, brake fluid flush, leaky valve cover gasket, fuel injector cleaning, a broken license plate bulb and a partridge in a pear tree. Additionally, they wanted his permission to remove the fuel rails and visually inspect the fuel injectors, "since a Tundra this old would surely have some "gunk" (their word, not mine) built up."

So, he pulls the Service Manager aside and asks to see a mechanic to go over the truck, point-by-point to discuss the estimate.

Not their policy, but in this case, he'd make an exception.

So, the mechanic comes over, and he apparently looks younger than the laptop I'm writing on right now. But he's got the ASE patches on his shirt sleeve to prove he's been fully trained and doesn't seem the least bit stressed about having to "face the customer."

They go over the points one by one, as the Service Manager nervously nods, thinking he's gonna make enough commission off of my F-i-L's pickup to pay his gym membership that month -- when things start to go terribly wrong.

The mechanic is actually so apathetic to the questioning about the "strongly recommended" services some other mechanic suggested, that he all but admits he thinks my F-i-L's T-100 is in great shape.

To which the Service Manager corrects him and says, "Uh, it's a Tundra."

To which the mechanic retorts, "That truck over there...is his truck, and it's a T-100."

To which the Service Manager does a double take and says, "A T-100...what's a T-100?"

Quoth St. Augustine, "rookie."

Winter view of my house courtesy of Google Maps

Last year, C's 2nd grade teacher made pretty good use of their in-classroom SmartBoards and Google Maps net tech and turned the combination into an exciting lesson in "the world is a small place and getting smaller every second due to the internet."

C came home fascinated by the technology that allowed us to see our house from a satellites p.o.v. and was even more marveled when I showed her that she could now see a streeside view pic of our actual house via Google Maps.

In case you haven't checked it out in awhile, type your own address into Google Maps and see what video grab of your house the Googly-eyed SUV driving personnel took of your humble abode. Heck, if they made it to my small town, they may have made it to yours as well.

Own own domestic square of small town Oklahoma appears to have been vid-grabbed sometime last winter, as the trees are bare, the grass is brown, and not a dropped leaf is in sight. At least it's a sunny day and the Elky is sitting proudly in the driveway, beckoning middle-aged muscle car aficionados traveling down our street to mutter to themselves, "I knew a guy who had one of those in high school..."

For obvious reasons I won't post the vid-grab of our house in this post, but I will gladly invade the privacy of the person living in our old house in So Cal and post their pic.

It looks to have been taken some time ago as well, since I know the construction going on at our old neighbors house has been completed for some time.

I do miss our palm trees out front, and the sound the dead, dried 26.5 lb. fronds would make as they broke loose and smashed to the ground in the middle of the night..sigh.

Another day, another year older

Yesterday, my 45th birthday ended with a phone call from some grad school buddies who were hanging out in the Big Apple where one of them teaches at NYU Film School, and the other was in town to shadow the show runner on one of the many Law and Order tv shows (I don't recall which one). He's directing a Cold Case (another show I've heard of but not seen) and was absorbing as much episodic TV / shoot 10-script-pages-a -day-mojo as he could before his tv drama directing debut in a few months. Meanwhile the NYU professor is off to Ethiopia to shoot a documentary he's been hired to make...helps that he's actually from Ethiopia.

Oh the glamour.

Earlier in the evening I cooked up a couple juicy ribeyes on the grill, bacon stir-fried some green beans (from our garden) and made a big pot of sticky rice for my birthday dinner with the family unit. Pepperidge farm coconut layer cake for dessert along with a single big ol' candle to blow out and wish upon. Big present from the girls was a crayon drawing of Lightning McQueen from PK (which looks suspiciously a lot like my El Camino - score), and a hand-sewn collage of the letters in my name on a felt cloth from C.

Actually, the best present from C wasn't a tangible gift, but a symbolic one -- earlier in the day she checked out and started reading the first book in the Maximum Ride series. Sure she's only 8.5 and this book is written for 10+ year olds, but she's been reading two levels above her grade all year now, and boy-oh-boy, what a great series to dive into. A proud papa-is-a-book-geek moment to be sure.

Oh the pride.

Let's see...before dinner and presents the girl's went with some friends to the local movie house (they saw Space Chimps, featuring Okie, Kristen Chenoweth). While they were munching popcorn, I mowed and edged the side and backyard. By the time they got home the temps were in the low 100's so I put away the mower and ran inside for a Powerade slush (nothing exotic, just stick a $.79 bottle of PowerAde in the freezer and let it sit for an hour).

Earlier still I woke up extremely late (burned some midnight oil on a project in the works) and took the girl's for a veggie omelette downtown followed by a trek over to the library for the last day of the kid's most excellent Oklahoma Summer Reading Program.

So that was how I transitioned to the next year of my life here in my small town.

A final note of triumph (or tragedy, depending on your point of view), my Wife called me today to remind me that the "country club" (be sure to say that with your best Thurston Howell the Third voice) where my in-laws are taking us to dinner tonight for a belated birthday celebration, is trousers mandatory. Meaning, no shorts in the dining room.

I have to wear long pants.

Oh the horror.

Impressions to shake a chopstick at

YASTM readers only interested in my impressions of small town life may want to skip this particular post. The original intent of this blog was to provide my daughter's with a journal of sorts written by their dear old Dad to keep and read back on in the waning days of their life when my wife and I are dearly departed and my grown girl's are in need of something to refer to when their grandkids are bouncing on their space-age aero beds and wanting to hear some tales of the good ol' days.

With that in mind, I sometimes take my own chunk of the blogosphere out for a spin and jot down some impressions of our trips beyond the confines of our small town -- this entry being one such endeavor.

Talk Story

You forget how hanging with this side of the family finds one embracing that hidden bohemian side. The thrill of thrift store shopping, the lure of locally grown produce, the morality of only eating the right fish grown and caught under the right conditions, all enter the realm of normal conversations as naturally as weather is discussed back in Oklahoma.

The theories behind recycling, everyone's passion for books and reading, the importance of restoring old homes, organic farming, holistic fitness, color blindness, financial planning -- are all approached in encouraging and nurturing ways.

As a family we commiserated over the tragic news, cheered over the good news, and dosed out some good nature ribbing to Uncle B who was the latest victim in a long line of clan members who have stubbed their toe on the flagstone platform on which Uncle T's wood burning heater fitfully rests.

The older ones are listened to. The younger ones are listened to. Luckily there aren't any teenagers in our midst at the moment either.

Motto tabenasai - eat more

We ate newly slaughtered lamb and ribeye steaks newly purchased from Whole Foods, cooked up on Pilot M's newly purchased grill in his newly constructed outdoor kitchen, next to his newly cobbled together fish pond made out of newly molded and poured quickrete blocks.

We ate pink mochi and inari (football) rice balls by the dozens, lovingly prepared and presented by Auntie K, as she has for the many years and multiple occasions our family manages to get together. I came home with several recipes from this trip, but the one I neglected to obtain was her miso/sesame dipping sauce for fresh veggies. Uncle T cooked up some mean and humongous shioyaki salmon steaks and veggies picked that morning form his garden.

Wifey (of all people) was craving some authentic J-food so we found a neighborhood S-bar/restaurant where the sushi chef took a liking to our raucous party and sent over a serving platter sized fried mochi-ice cream dessert to cleanse our palates with.

At the obon festival we feasted on freshly made sweet bean cakes and bowls of steaming udon noodles.

The family grows, and my brother loses use of his toe

We met Hawaii girl M's boyfriend, Perfect Joe. At least, that's what we're all calling him, and no Joe, you have no say in the matter. PJ is a soft spoken gent with a past worthy of a pulp fiction novel, yet he somehow managed to woo and win over our peace corp veteran Cousin M's heart and they are blissfully happy as a surfin', scuba diving Hawaiian couple of the new millennium. Not many places on the globe that PJ hasn't been, and after an extensive interview by yours truly and summation of his whereabouts for the last 10 years of his life, Joe didn't raise an eyebrow or protest one iota. Welcome to the flock PJ.

We met Baby Kai, the newest addition to the family (even though he's 3.5 years old - told you we were an oft-never gathering tribe), and also learned that Baby Kai (hmm, it's gonna be hard to stop calling him that) will soon be big brother Kai come January -- congrats to T and M.

Mom brought along her kinesiotape and wrapped any body part on anybody in particular who had a pain or swelling, or phantom ailment. She swears by this stuff and I've seen it work wonders on her as well. If it cures Uncle Y's gout swollen foot however, I'll be a convert.

We removed and left our shoes at the front entry way for the multiple dwellings we invaded. While this may be an uncommon site in most stateside homes (Hawaii excluded), my daughter's felt right at home with the custom (a rule in our home) and were overjoyed to see the mountains of footwear piling up at the doorway. C took this picture.

Road Trippin' in P-town

Took some time off from big family gatherings to pile my brood into our rented Honda Odyssey Soccer Mom mobile to see the sights and capture some local flavor.

Wifey and I spent an afternoon strolling the historic district (P-town is a good 50 years older than my small town) and got our kicks examining the details on the several square blocks of Victorian and Queen Anne homes. Took some pictures, stole some ideas, and germinated the seeds for our own exterior paint scheme when the time comes (purple is a victorian color, right?)

I showed the girl's where the Toad tried to buy some of the "hard stuff" for Debbie and where Curt was initiated into the Pharoah's by chaining the rear axle of Officer Holstein's car to the side of a building only to watch it get yanked out from under the accelerating patrol car.

We cruised the Main boulevard that Paul LeMat, Harrison Ford, Ron Howard and Charles Martin Smith cruised in their movie personas, Milner, Falfa, Steve Bolander and the Toad, respectively, while Wolfman Jack screeched from their AM radios.

With my Mom and my brother (call him Wounded toe), we downed omelettes and hot chai lattes at Original Marvin's in the village, drooled with anticipation at our upcoming double-double at the local In-n-Out (which thankfully made it up to NorCal sometime in the 90's), and found some great "hippie" outfits for the girls at a gigantic Goodwill (says S, holding up a skirt and shirt combination not soon sold at Wal-Mart or Target, "only in the Bay Area do kids dress like this...we'll take it.")

"And we danced, like a wave on the ocean..."

And, in the immortal words of Ren McCormick in the 80's film classic Footloose..."we danced" -- or more specifically, "we bon-odoried."

Cousin J (from the TarHeel side of the family) fully festooned in her lovely summer kimono, took right to the traditional circular line dancing and those that didn't dance thoroughly enjoyed watching those that did. The night time temps were on the cool side (Bay Area in the summer), and by 9:30 p.m. the only member of our clan still dancing, fanning, and katchi-katchi sticking was little soon-to-be-6th-grader J.

She was a sight to behold and made the rest of the family miss the rest of her family (still back in NC, awaiting Round 1 / Dose 1 of radiation) all the more.

The night ended with hugs and kisses and good-byes for some who had early morning flights, goodnights-and-see-you-tomorrows for the rest of us.

The girl's were asleep in the back of the import mini a few miles from the church, and not much later their own brightly colored summer kimonos were laying in rumpled clumps at the feet of their Best Western double beds.

Another unique memory made, another moment carved with care into the bark of our ever expanding and firmly rooted family tree.

Celebrate the living

A shroud of sadness enveloped the entire week of family festivities due to some unexpected and horrible medical news from a much beloved and important member of our family.

That "C" word has struck yet again in one of whom I share my DNA with, which explained the painful absence of an integral family in our expanding clan.

While all the members of our tribe that have or have had cancer are in various stages of recovery, the contemptible "C" that has invaded my beloved cousin's body is nothing to sneer and jeer at as just another bunch of tumors that can be chemo'd/radio'd away.

Our lovely Suz has a long road of recovery ahead of her, almost as tough will the trials and tribulations suffered through by her dedicated husband, kids and surrounding family.

But it's a road she will travel with the same organizational strength, conviction of self-preservation, and dedication of duty that she has possessed from an early age and carries with her today.

Don't fret S and K. Even in your absence your extended family was able to pull themselves together and enjoyed a wonderful obon, plentiful clan gatherings over food, games and talk, and multiple moments of reminiscent delight and good-hearted laughter at the jocular expense of others.

We did indeed celebrate the living by honoring dead.

Living = you, Suz.

Gambatte S & K, and thanks for sending J to us. She is the light.

Going back to Cali...I don't think so;

I know so.

Got my traveling shirt on. It's garish; it's green and white striped madras; it's 50's tv test pattern eye-popping. It's also what I wear whenever we're taking the girl's into large crowd-type situations.



It's easy to spot, easy to follow, and not easy to mistake for somebody else is a crowd. The girl's know it very well (although as of late the 8-year old is flexing her fashion wings and has verbally condemned my traveling shirt on many occasions) and in the chaos that can be the airport at rush hour, I claim it as just one of many safety precautions we take when out in the public with my small town daughter's.

The reason for our gettin'-near-the-end-o'-summer exodus is a big family reunion too-do back in the Golden State, only this time the family unit and I will be Bay Area boundin' for something called "obon."

Think Dio de los Muertos, only instead of street parades we have circular line dancing to the beat of a taiko drum and we replace the tiny dioramas of skeletons in daily life with sake baths for our dearly departed's tombstones. Also, no taco and carnitas...just bowls of udon, imagawayaki bean cakes and styrofoam cups full of hot green tea and saké.

I'm looking forward to catching up with oft-never-seen relatives and letting the girl's catch up on some much needed time with their other ethnic side.

Be back on the flipside of the weekend.

They still sell this stuff...Bazooka Joe

The gum in which this micro comic strip was wrapped around, was the treat of my childhood.

The pink substance we thought was bubble gum was hard to chew, lost it's flavor in a few masticating milliseconds, and probably contained more chemicals to make it taste sugary, than it did of actual sugar.

However since my brother and I didn't get sweets of any kind very often, nor did we even get real potato chips, pop, Little Debbie or Hostess treats in our 5-day a week lunch boxes, Bazooka Joe was the one treat we were given access to on a semi-regular basis, courtesy of our friendly neighborhood barbershop.

Imagine my surprise when C came up to me while making the rounds at our small town's Dollar General store (not to be confused with Dollar Tree, Dollar Store, $.99 Store, Family Dollar or Hollar Dollar -- okay, I made that last one up) with a multi-pack of the treat of my youth, and asked me if she could bring it home to "share" with her little sister (note, as of late, whenever my 8-year old wants something of questionable price and sugar content, turning it into a "shared" item makes it all the more appealing in her mind...clever girl).

I being the sucker for retro items from my youth, immediately grabbed it from her and thoroughly examined it for authenticity, aroma, and expiration date. We were at Dollar General after all.

Knowing that she had scored a major coup in finding a sweet consumable that both she and I were now jonesing for, my daughter covertly produced a second package from out of thin air with all the flair of David Copperfield and announced that she had procured another one for Mommy to share in.

There's that share word again.

Little did C realize that to consume the chewy pink bubble producing substance, she would have to endure me droning on and on and on about how Bazooka Joe bubble gum was a minor, yet important component in the happiness of my childhood and why the miniature comic printed on wax paper and carefully wrapped around each individual wad of gum was akin to the greatest fortune cookie fortune ever given.

Had she known there would be endless reminiscing and multiple tellings of Bazooka Joe tales, I think she would have gone for some Bubble Yum instead.

Oh wait, remember the rumor about spider eggs encased in the pioneering soft and chewy Bubble Yum...now that's a story. It all started back in 7th grade...

Go here and hit the History link for a quick trip down memory lane.

Note to readers post-bazookajoe.com visit...yeah, I know..."Tha Heights" are embarrassing, in a Katie-Couric-using-the-word-"bling" kinda way. But I chalk it up to just another bunch of adults trying to market to kids and failing, and hope they'll figure out that the old market for this stuff is a much more viable target for their advertising dollars.

Seattle to Oklahoma...or bust

Didja hear it?

The other day when money finally did all the talking and the path was cleared for the Seattle Supersonics NBA franchise to make the move to Oklahoma City, there was a stirring of the atmosphere unlike anything I've felt before.

It wasn't the excitement of the NBA bigwigs in finally settling the question of whether or not OKC deserved a pro team.

Nor was it the excitement of the 11,000 would-be fans who lined up and logged online within 24-hours of the announcement to buy season tickets.

It wasn't even the excitement of the Seattle fans to be rid of their beloved team whom they've lost much faith in these past few years.

No, it was definitely more in line with what Obi Wan felt on the fore deck of the Millennium Falcon when the Death Star was test fired on Alderaan and a billion or so Alderaanians were wiped out along with their planet...a great crying out of agony, followed by stunning silence.

I'm referring of course to the Seattle Supersonics staff and general office workers who learned they either had to move to Oklahoma, or lose their jobs.

A great crying out, then stunned silence.

I imagine this blog may be getting a few more search engine referral hits in the coming months as Seattilians contemplating the move may start googling for info on topics previously discussed here at YASTM.

As an uncooth and uncultured So Cal native, I say welcome oh' drinkers of fine coffees and originators of grunge rock. Come on in, the water is just fine...be sure to check for alligator snapping turtles though. And please don't try noodling with a Starbucks caramel macchioato on your breath...our channel catfish are more partial to Folgers crystals.

The wafting aroma of homemade bread

My Mom was a working Mom, a symbolic icon of her generation that carried the torch of Rosie the Riveter into the present by demanding to have it all - family, career, investment portfolio and pension plan with her social security # on it.

The only downside to her grand plan that I can see, looking back on it now, was that I almost never got to wake up to the "wafting aroma of homemade bread" permeating the house.

Don't mistake my total recall of my childhood...my Mom made bread, lot's of it. She just didn't make the baked kind all too often.

I can count on the phalanges on my right hand the number of times she pulled a loaf or two of the yeasty, soft and chewy good stuff out of the oven. Unlike her penchant for taking half of her toll house cookies and freezing them for later, she'd allow us to slice and butter the warm bread then and there, not waiting for an organized meal to consume it.

And consume it we did. With real butter. Lot's of it. Didn't matter that the stick of Land o' Lakes was rock hard out of the fridge, the heat of the bread and the steam stream rising from the just offed slices would melt the yellow pads in 1.08 second flat.

As fast as Mom could slice and butter, we'd consume.

Now, granted, I'm pretty sure very few of the kids that I grew up with had fresh, homemade bread cross their tables on a daily basis, so it's not like we weren't keeping up the Yamashiro's or Chang's down the block. But as an avid reader of books and avid viewer of the boob tube, those Rockwellian images of fresh bread loaves populating the "supper table," strike hard chords in the mind of an LA suburbanite and leave impressions so indelible that even today, they are as tangible to my mind as my first real fight and my first real kiss.

The smell of 3-cups of rice steaming up in the Sanyo 5-cup rice cooker, that's an aroma that brings it all home for me. And while my girl's will no doubt have sensory memories of our own rice cooker, I wanted to give them the benefit of that "wafting aroma of homemade bread" permeating the 2x4 studs and 113-year old plaster in the early morning hours of our own abode.

So, I turned to an expert, who luckily for me, works across the street at the donut shop.

Yes, the donut shop.

The resourceful couple who lost their donut shop to flooding last year, only to relocate and reopen their heavenly bakery of the round and long confections in an empty pizza joint mere months later, have now reopened their original donut shop (less all the flood damage) as a drive-through beer joint.

I've seen drive-through convenience stores before, but only in Oklahoma have I seen drive-through beer stores.

It's amazing there aren't a line of cops sitting across the street, their eyes trained on the pick-up drivers pulling out of the drive-through beer joint as they pop open the can nearest to the top of the sack and take a quick swig before heading down the road.

But I digress. At this drive-through beer joint, they also serve up homemade sandwiches.

Hmm, that doesn't seem to quite cut it as a descriptive element for these $4 concoctions named for the great Earl of Sandwich himself.

No, these are "crack-wiches," since there must be crack in them because they are so good and so addictive and had I been reincarnated as a chicken and come back to this earthly plane of existence, I would gladly sacrifice my feathered behind to become one with the epicurean delight known as the chicken salad at this joint.

It's that good.

Oh, and what puts these sandwiches over top of the heap of even the best dagwood you could make for yourself at home is the homemade bread they serve them on.

Homemade bread that is pulled fresh daily out of the ovens of the donut shop across the street.

On special days, donut eating patrons are treated to slices of "right out of the oven bread" to tempt them even further down the path of over-carb'd indulgence.

Slathered in butter and sliced twice as thick as mandated by the robotic loaf slicers at Wonder Bread, the old folk and young alike voraciously scooped the samples from the offered tray and almost immediately start waxing poetic about the bread their wives, or aunts or grandmas used to make and the healing qualities that the wonderful "wafting aroma of homemade bread" would offer.

All I know is, I'll be making bread this weekend. And if it turns out bad, we'll just walk across the street on Monday morning and get a few wafting aromas to go.

Why teenagers shouldn't be parents

My wife's grandmother was a twin, born to a 13-year old bride.

Life and responsibility for teenagers was just a tad different back in the day in rural Oklahoma when farm hands were needed by the buckboard full and the easiest way to acquire them was to marry and impregnate the nearest freckled face teenager.

Heck, even as a pre-teen, I recall reeling with horror when the beloved tv crush of my youth, Laura "Half-Pint" Ingalls was all fired up to be a June bride when she was barely 14 -- Pa wouldn't hear of it until she was at LEAST 16.

Then there are the teens of the type that C had the misfortune to run into while at Campfire Kids (previously known as Campfire Girls...don't get me started) Camp recently.

You know the type. Swarmy, know-it-all, why in the world would they be put in charge of little kids in the first place kind of teens.

Seems a conversation was begun and in the throes of discussion on the existence of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairie, when my little 8-year old believer happened upon the indepth conversation. Not having actually been there for the meeting of the pre-adult minds, I'm not exactly sure what transpired. I was, however, made fully aware of the result after picking up C and PK from camp that afternoon.

In the middle of a block of NPR filled silence, C blurts out, "When were you going to tell me that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny weren't real?"

To which my Wife and I slowly turned to each other - that look of abject fear in our faces - and quietly responded, "What are you talking about, sweetie?"

At that point, she proceeded to relay the meat of the conversation she had overhead between the group of irresponsible (my word) teen camp counselors and impressionable 5-8 year olds about the true existence of the fabled childhood characters.

We managed to retain our composure and come up with some lame-o answers about believing what you want to believe and the importance of not letting anyone else tell you what to believe.

Inside, I was slightly panicked, knowing that our 5-year old, a true believer to the nth power, had heard the entire exchange from the safety of her booster seat. To my right, Wifey was fuming with capital F & U.

We were always told that the moment the kids went off to school, the other kids would break the back of the childhood fantasy icons and we'd only have to deal with it at a secondary level. So we've been prepared for several years, sorta.

Somehow, our 8-year old has managed to hold onto her belief in St. Nick, the furried egg delivery guy, and the money-for-enamel exchanging fairie'd one, bringing her little sister along for the ride.

It's been parentally fun, but with this most recent "teen-verified" Santa debunking, convincing them to "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," we feared was going to prove fruitless.

Since the episode, however, we've yet to have another conversation about the topic, hoping that our lack of attention on the subject matter and wholesale dismissal (outwardly) of the ridiculousness of the claims would somehow diffuse the entire topic. At least, neither of the girls have brought it up.

Inwardly, Wifey is still fuming and as a member of the "surely there must be something I can fix" male species, I had to take some sort of action.

So, I wrote an email to the Senior Program Director of Camp Fire USA-Heart of Oklahoma Council. Here are a few excerpts......while I understand the importance of involving the youthful teens in supervising the campers, I find myself wondering why they found it necessary to engage in a conversation with my 8-year old on the existence of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

Surely this is an inappropriate topic for teenagers to be engaged in with impressionable youngsters who are looking for role models and mentors to emulate and trust.

Imagine the disappointment my wife and I felt when C asked us point blank on the drive home today, "Daddy...Mommy, when were you going to tell me that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny weren't real?" Today some kids told me so and both my Counselor and the Counselor Aide said they were right."

And all this in front of our 5-year old.

While we've been able to extend our 8-year old's childhood fantasy world to what some might consider a ripe old age, fending off "truth tellers" her own age is one thing.

But when a "big teenager" who seems wizened to the ways of the world in the eyes of an 8-year old, shatters their bedtime tales and holiday fantasies with an ignorant and arrogant flap of a teenage tongue, the battle for their belief system becomes a harder fight indeed.
Now, while many of you reading this may agree that 5 and 8 is plenty old to slough off the childhood fantasies of old and bring the kids into the world of reality and cold hard facts, and that the camp teens provided us with a relatively painless method to introduce the world where the red, round jolly one and his cohorts of while-your-slept present giving don't actually exist.

Who knows. It may come to pass that as the summer months wane and my favorite season of the year in Oklahoma approaches, when Halloween decorations start making their way into the Dollar General and Christmas lights begin doting the Main Street landscape, we find that our daughters are no longer believers in the commercially symbolic icons of the season.

I'll be fine with it, but I'm a guy. My Wife may have to go out and punch a few random teenagers to make her feel better.

A pair of firsts, on the 4th

PK was resplendent in her $8 blue with white polka dots Target dress and $7 red/white/and blue hair piece as she stood up on stage and belted out her version of "God bless America."

30 minutes later she was elated and honored to be crowed Miss Firecracker of our small towns 4th of July Parade festivities.

A first for her.

What makes these kinds of victories difficult is the small town conundrum -- your victory equals someones else's defeat -- someone you know and like and would normally be cheering for.

In this case, PK's only other competition were the daughters of two well liked and well respected couples in town. The first one being the daughter of C's first softball coach and a popular 4th grade teacher. The other was the lovely daughter of our local Fire Department Chief -- and nationally known for the totally YouTubed video of his hanging-off-a-helicopter-skid-while-pulling-people-to-safety heroics.

PK took the crown with pride and I'm sure in her mind, was promising to only use her power for good and to help solve world hunger

The resulting flurry of activity last night found her sitting 4 abreast on the rear deck of a vintage VW beetle with the three other little Firecracker-royalty during the annual 4th of July Downtown parade this morning.

Big sister was surprisingly supportive and excited for her younger sibling to be receiving the bulk of the attention for the evening, but I'm sure she'll more than make up for it when she takes to the parade route at the wheel of her decked out and bespangled Plasma Car, as she accompanies me in the parade.

Huh?

Apparently, someone nominated the walking trails non-profit board of directors I have served with for 3 years running, to be the Grand Marshal's of this years parade and wouldn't you know it, we got it.

My first parade as co-Grand Marshal.

3+ years from LA-immigrant to small town 4th of July Parade Grand Marshal. Scary to think what the next 3 years may bring?

Reading at dusk, rolling in the dirt

The other night I took the girls to a little poof of educational effort during the summertime hiatus known as "Lanterns for Literacy."

Sponsored and led by the litany of librarians from our public elementary school, a free hot dog, drink and cold treat await any and all school aged children who want to bring a blanket to a local park as the sun is setting and be read to by selected members of the community.

For "bigger" kids such as my 8.5-year old, it was merely a chance to hang out with buds in a safe and secure setting, get a few microns of outdoor time when we'd normally be indoors avoiding the biting bug rush at dusk.

However for pre-readers and the young-uggers that still dig a good readin'-to, it's a must attend event.

Unfortunately, July in OK means the sun doesn't completely set until sometime past 10 p.m., and the need for actual lanterns is nullified by the brilliant violet, gold and sienna sunsets of the season. But press on we would and read on they did.

After the books had all been read and the hot dogs were happily digesting in stomachs aflutter on the nearby playground equipment, the big people gathered in small clumps of parental pockets and discussed matters of heightened importance -- such as who the new elementary school principal would be, how your trip to Branson was with all the kids in the Suburban, and whether or not it's going to rain on the upcoming 4th of July celebration at the park.

Just another small town moment, I'm afraid.

Me? I excused myself from the gib and gabber to participate in a tried and true tradition whenever I get near a park with one of these whirling deathtraps of doom populates the playground.

While the chanting kids scream out their own name for the game, "MAKE US PUKE, MAKE US PUKE!", I've always called the tradition, Danger Roll.

See, as a kid, my Pop loved watching old war movies. John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Van Johnson, all grunts in black and white, shooting up a storm, storming up a beach, beaching a Normandy half track, and tracking the enemy wherever they lay.

Sure, guys still like watching old war movies, but unlike my Father, I don't really see myself sitting down with my pre-teen daughters and firing up a good afternoon viewing of The Longest Day, or the Sands of Iwo Jima anytime soon.

None-the-less, of all the life lessons those war movies taught me, the simple "roll away from danger" held fast to my psyche.

Out in the open and you start taking enemy fire, drop and roll away from danger.

Motar shells starts raining down at you, roll into a nearby fox hole...away from danger.

Parachute deploys too late and you are coming in for a hard landing, bend your knees and roll away from your drop zone...and away from danger.

Basically, there didn't seem to be a danger in war you couldn't roll away from, at least from my adolescent point-of-view.

I took that very same lesson to the playground as a kid, and it served me well, especially when I found myself flinging off the merry-go-rounds of death as they approached supersonic speed and massive negative g-effects.

As I was flung off the spinning apparatus, I would hit the ground and instinctively roll AWAY from the point of contact...away from danger. What may be common sense to most was a life lesson learned from hours of war movie viewings with my Dad and brother.

And as I attempted to explain to the kids on the merry-go-round that I was about to push, pull, and manhandle to supersonic speeds, the theory and practice behind "rolling away for danger" if they should happen to fall off, I realized that without the benefit of this most important lesson in common sense self-preservation, the resulting accidental injury could be life changing.

So instead, I gave the aging, decrepit go-round a few sturdy common sense pushes for good measure and walked away, amid jeering boos and hisses from the spinning crowd of go-rounding kidkins.

Who says men never really grow up.

While my status as a "fun Dad" may have taken a few hits for the sake of safety, the twisting motion of the few go-round pushes I did manage, had a surprising side effect of actually alleviating some of the back pain I've had these last few days.

Trim work and detail painting in the mudroom (almost finished and ready for the big reveal) always tweeks my back in the oddest places.

Nothing a few harried moments pushing an ancient off-kilter mild steel kiddie playgroud-go-round wouldn't fix right up.

And not one kid had to roll away from danger.

The House has one seat empty

Put the words "State House Representative" and "obituary" together and my SoCal born and bred brain conjures up images of gnarley 15 car pile ups on the 4-level interchange, death by law enforcement suicide, speed ball overdoses and chopper crashes in federally declared FEMA disaster areas -- hey, I'm from LA remember.

Then I move here and three years later something like this crosses my smog-clearing eyeballs...

I don't know anything about this guy, and couldn't care less about whatever political machinations he had in the works, however the fact that he was a duly elected official in one of the highest governmental bodies of the state...and he died while working his farm, well, that just blew me away.

A good portion of the population out here make their living working the land and living off of it's bounty and it seems they like people representing them who live and work in their muddy work boots right alongside them.

Reason # 4,892 why I'll never run for office here in my adopted home state. My credentials just don't hold up to the honorable Mr. Hyman.

Okay, the fact that he was a card carrying member of both the NRA and Democratic party kinda cracks me up as well.

Raising a geek for a daughter

Just returned from taking the girls to see Wall•E at our local theater.

Hopefully you'll dig it as much as they did. I dug it as they did, and then some.

Here's why.

A simple sound. This sound actually...or at least it's one of these sounds in the medley of Macintosh startup sounds...

During the flick, the little Johnny-5 inspired robot emits this particular sound when he recharges via his solar panels, or reboots from his overnight slumber. When my eldest daughter (8) first heard this sound emitting from Wall•E, she turned to me and gave me a knowing smile -- the one that instantly communicated to me that she recognized the sound and was smiling because she knew that I knew what the sound was.

This was my first brush with a "familiarity-of-shared-experience-while-watching-a-movie" type of moment between an offspring of mine and I and I'll treasure it always.

Thanks Wall•E.

Following are a few nerd herd wink-winks contained in the flick as gathered by a Times-Picayune critic.

"The bleeps-and-blips-heavy "voice" of robot WALL*E is provided by Oscar-winning sound designer Ben Burtt, who did the same for R2-D2 in the "Star Wars" films.

The art-history-flavored closing credits are as sit-throughable as they come, including a nod to impressionists, to 8-bit computer graphics, and to everything in between.

Paying tribute to the film's sci-fi inspirations, "Alien" actor Sigourney Weaver -- who dealt with an overzealous onboard computer in that sci-fi classic -- provides the voice for the ship's computer in "WALL*E."

In-house, Pixar animators referred to WALL*E's cockroach friend as "Hal, " a dual tribute to legendary comedy director Hal Roach and the computer in "2001: A Space Odyssey."

As always, Pixar's "good-luck charm, " John Ratzenberger, voices a role in "WALL*E, " that of a newly awakened human named, appropriately, John."

Bonus points for the faithful Mac-heads out there if you can pick out which Macintosh model line that Wall•E's start-up/reboot sound derives from. (Personally, my dineros on either Jake, Mr. B in NYC, or Kmodem on this one).

I am Paddle to the sea...not quite

Yet another summertime sojourn found myself and my family unit on a Friday evening down at Lake Hefner in the city hosted by the good folks at OKCKayak.

We opted for the quick start lesson only to discover that our 5-year old was suddenly channeling Nanook of the North and our 8-year old was bugging Dave (the ultra cool owner) to teach her how to Eskimo roll her plastic lake buggy.

Several times we had to stop and marvel at PK, both hands firmly gripping the two-paddled oar, twisting at her little waist (kayakers don't use their arms to paddle -- it's more of an upper body twisting motion), sunglasses hanging low on her nose bridge, as she maneuvered and steered her solo 8' kayak with the ease and grace of a veteran river rat.

C, whose been paddling a canoe around my in-laws Lake Eufaula boat dock since she could walk, was comfortable enough in the water, but took a few frustrating pre-teen rants to get used to the two bladed paddle. She finally resorted to using her entire upper body to paddle (as she was instructed in the lesson) when her arms grew weary after the first 30 minutes.

While the kayaks we were paddling about were boldly labeled as ocean-ready vessels, the thought of taking one of these sturdy by small Polyethylene Thermoplast rigs out where the waves are crashing, the sharks are circling, and the only thing between me and the long walk towards the water-logged light is my pathetic ability to tread water for a few seconds, I think I'll stick to paddling around a calm, Oklahoma lake in the summer.

And at $15 a hour for solo rentals, the sunset social paddles could become a nice way to wind down the week on a Friday evening, tossing together a bit of exercise, cashing of some sanity checks and paddling around for some good old fashion family fun time.

Ideally, the splendid evening would have ended with hot chocolate and snuggly bedtime reading of one of my favorite stories, Paddle-to-the-Sea.

But alas, the girls both fell asleep in the car on the 45-minute drive home, both Wifey and I were upper body sore, and it turns out I don't have a copy of the famed Caldecott award winning tome to begin with.

So, in the late night stillness of our century old house, in the middle of our small town on the Oklahoma prairie, I fired up YouTube and watched the Academy-Award nominated film version instead.

Please put me back in the water...I am Paddle-to-the-Sea.

Discoveryland USA!

Our quest to find edu-tational distractions for ourselves and our brood of two, recently led us here.

Habitual YASTM readers may recall our centennial brush with the musical named for our great panhandled state. My Wife had heard about this little gem of live musical theater out in the environs just west of Tulsa for years, but had never experienced it for herself.

Other than the fact that a nice Jewish girl form Florida was playing Laurey and a handsome canuck did the honors as Curley (both of whom were terrific and a joy to watch on stage) the production was first rate and so far beyond our expectations that we promised ourselves we'd return to partake of the Seven Brides for Seven Brothers production before the theater goes dark in the fall.

The pre-show activities were a nice distraction from the heat and humidity offered by the Sand Springs atmosphere, as was the ribeye sandwich cowboy supper offered up as part of a deluxe D-land USA package.

Yet amidst all the cowboy frontier revelry -- the Pony Express demonstration, the Native American dancer, mechanical bull ride (couldn't get PK off of this thing yelling, "faster, faster" to the operator), not to mention the play itself -- a tad of pre-teen modernism crept forward in the face of my 8-year old when asked by the Native American face painter if she wanted some authentic "Indian" markings on her face, to which she replied, "No thanks...what'd I'd really like is a big heart with the words, "Go Girl!" around it."

Sigh.

Winds of change motoring down Main Street

The model of car that my Wife drives is considered sporty.

At least, that's what the manufacturer labeled it. And by bolting on some aero body kits parts, front air dam, a rear spoiler and a few well placed and colorful badges, the car company was able to jack up the price in an attempt to capture both the youth market as well as the buyers who wanted an econo import sedan that didn't look so much like an Avis rental.

My Wife bought this car off the lot when we needed to replace our old family truckster that met it's demise at the hands of a 16-year old on Easter Sunday a few years back.

She's been giggly over the 42-mpg (highway) mileage she gets on her 100 mile-a-day commute, with her only complaint being the increasing number of people who almost daily ask her if she was interested in selling her car.

When gas prices started climbing in earnest a year or two ago, we even started seeing a few more of these sporty little sedans around our small town. The elementary school principal's wife bought one (California transplants, like us). The mother of PK's 4th grade reader/mentor at her school bought one (again, California transplants). Recently, another one showed up in the parking lot of the church 2 blocks down and around the corner from us...with Washington state plates on it.

Three years ago when we moved to our small town, I could count on my fingers and toes the number of small, econo boxes that I'd see buzzing around town...most of which were either Dodge Neons, Chevy Cavaliers or Pontiac Grand Am (2-doors). Trucks and SUV's outnumbered the small sedans by such a significant margin that it wasn't even worth mentioning.

That has slowly begun to change and I'm wondering what, oh what pray tell, could be the cause of such a transition.

Just this morning, an acquaintance of ours that works at one of the large Toyota dealerships in the city was telling us in confidence (so of course, I blog about it), that the local mandate from Toyota corporate has stated in no uncertain terms, that they are not, repeat, NOT to take in any domestic SUVs or Trucks as trade-ins.

Which may explain why we're seeing a lot more Trucks and SUVs with "For Sale" signs on them, parked in the "Off-Off-Broadway Used Car Lot" that is our now abandoned old school WalMart.

Heck, I even saw a couple Prius' motoring down Main Street...very quietly.

Tale of a mouse's tail

It was the night before we were to leave for what looked to be one of the most physically arduous and psychologically challenging weeks in my wife's recent memory.

We had dropped the girl's off at my in-laws and were flourishing the final checks on a myriad of leaving-for-a-week-and-camping-out-on-the-road check lists (house, garden, garage, car, camp stuff, cycling, video equipment, etc.)

A few ticks after the witching hour we felt confident enough in our trip preparation schematics and execution to retire, knowing we had an early morning drive followed by S doing a short 38-mile Day 0 ride from the start town (Marrieta, OK) to the Texas border and back -- see, it wouldn't be a true Texas to Kansas bike ride unless you actually started in Texas).

Enter the mouse's tail.

For some reason around wheat harvest time, the neighborhood cats are either overwhelmed by the sheer number of field mice running around town, or succumb to the heat and humidity in the atmosphere, as we always manage to shelter one or two mice during the running of the combines.

Past experience with what I've labeled, the "Cut Wheat Ralph Run" - named sympathetically for the infamous Mouse on a Motorcycle, Ralph S. Mouse has forced me to maintain vigil over a few traps set around the house, baited with peanut butter and cheese.

In the past three years, my varmint mini-WMD's have netted approximately 3 scores in the X column.

However, while we blissfully slept that pre-FreeWheel night, my snores drowning out the glass shattering winds buffeting our bedroom window while S dreamt of long downhills, 15 mph southeasterly tailwinds and endless water bottles filled with beef jerky flavored Gatorade (her two favorite road energy snacks), a fateful transaction was taking place at a mouse hole nearby.

The snap of the trap springing was barely enough to stir us from rem sleep. Nay, fear not for it was the systematic click-click-clatter-clatter sound that was organically motoring from one point to the next along the hardwood bedroom floor that finally aroused the sleeping giants from within.

When the unmistakable sound of the wooden and metal mouse trap being dragged along the floor finally ceased, only to be replaced by a periodic thunk --- thunk --- thunk --- thunk, that repeated with the regularity of a hard drives actuator arm stuck on a back disc sector, I knew our little visitor was stuck for good and ready to meet the master.

While S cowered under the covers...um, I mean fell back asleep to the soothing sounds of her husband politely evicting an unwanted tenant, it took me no time at all to find the subject of this weeks Ralph Run -- or at least I found the mouse trap being futilely pulled through a small hole beneath our bedroom's westerly pocket door.

Think large square peg in a small round hole. In this case, the square peg had snagged the middle of a mouse's tail.

As much as the girls would have loved to have kept this particular Ralph as a pet, I felt a more naturalistic demonstration of disposal to be appropriate, to which I donned my flip flops, carried trap and mouse outside, and promptly released the late night visitor in the tall grassy field at the end of the alley -- where the neighborhood feral cat gang regularly conduct their nightly furrapalooza.

Back in bed and looking at an alarm clock set to buzz a mere 20 minutes from that moment, I pondered the cruel hand of fate dealt to the field mouse, chased from the safety of the wheat fields and forced to seek shelter in the walls of my 113-year old house, only to find his favorite appendage snagged in the jaws of a spring loaded wooden and metal wonder, then released in the turf of his most rivaled gang.

I gave him 1 in 100.

Post-mortem of sorts, none of the traps we rigged were tripped upon our return from FreeWheel, so perhaps we've seen the end of this years "Cut Wheat Ralph Run." I am ever vigil.

"20 bucks on pump #2 and a maguro roll to go..."

Spotted on a rare trip to downtown OKC, to have lunch with Wifey.



Even I was not brave enough to follow the tempting red helvetica font letters of this sign into the Downtown Plaza Shell C-stop (in the shadow of some gold domed building) to sample their fresh, daily made sushi.

But who knows, someday, I just may be desperate enough.

Going back to my small town now, where such temptation is non-existent.

The road leads home...even on two wheels.

Oklahoma FreeWheel '08 is done.

Rather than go into a weekly, day-to-day, hour-by-hour breakdown of our week on the road (me in the 42 mpg import, chasing S down with a video camera on her LeMond road bike) I'm just going to adduce some observations and reflections.

Oklahoma is not flat, nor dry, dusty and barren.

If you think your town is a small town, hear me now, there are many, many towns that are much smaller than yours.

If all TV News Weather persons were cyclists, they may be a little less sensational with their forecasts.

Cyclists come in all shapes, sizes, skill levels, and sensibilities. You know that nearing-retirement guy standing behind you in line at the C-stop (cyclist speak for gas station/convenience store) with the truckers cap, a hard and solid beer gut, long beard and grubby stained dungarees? Well, picture him in spandex cycling shorts, a brightly colored jersey, streamline helmet, sunglasses and holding a sport bottle up to his mouth in-between pedal strokes and you've just met roughly a quarter of the male participants in OK FreeWheel.

Grandparents who looked more appropriate to be in line at the geriatric doctor's office than in biker's shorts and jerseys took up a good portion of the rides retinue, as did youngsters no older than my own two girls, family pets, and a good representation of father-daughter/father-son/mother-daughter/mother-son sets on tandems.

Basically, take the entire staff of the tv show, "The Office," (this includes Stanley, Bryan, and Phyllis) put them in cycling shorts and jerseys and you have the 800+ population of the Oklahoma FreeWheel in a nutshell...quirky personalities included.

S had several "moments of truth" moments while on the ride, the first one occurring during the day long 64-mile lightning and thunderstorm ride from Sulphur to Seminole (she rode the entire day).

Another screamed from within her while navigating the 10 and 12 percent graded hills on the 70-mile ride from Henryetta to Drumright (not once did she dismount and walk up a hill).

The most emotionally poignant moment came in the faces of the two young girls who were murdered in the small town of Weleetka (one of the rides final rest stops on Day 3) and in the faces of family and friends of the girls who were selling cookies and water to raise money for their funerals.

On a lighter note, my new can't-sleep-without-it tent camping item - my battery powered fan.

S' can't-go-to-the-bathroom-in-the-middle-of-the-night item - her noggin mounted headlight.

Finally, the can't-do-without item for anyone who camped next to our tent and couldn't deal with my snoring the way my wife can - foam earplugs.

There are several listings in the blogosphere with detailed accounts of the entire ride from Texas to Kansas, this being a decent one if you are at all interested (pics included). My take on laying out some heavy duty retrospection of the event is that it's one of those "you had to have been there," gigs.

Heck, I was there as a coat tailer myself with not a second of cycle seat time, so who am I to espouse "freewheelisms" so freely.

As a outsider observing the event through the lens of my video cameras and the filter that was my non-cyclist status, for me it was about the lives I was inventing for the people I would see on the journey or meet in the camp after the days long ride was over.

Like the young girl who we dubbed "Single-Speed April", that cruised along through life as she cruised through FreeWheel, on her own schedule, at her own pace -- seemingly always skirting the edge of deadlines but always making them none-the-less. A butterfly on the wind that managed to land on the right flower, not all that concerned with what flower it was, as long as she was out of harms way and near those who shared her interest in cycling.

There was the fella we all called "Forrest, Forrest Gump," the barely there, socially schitzophrenic, and borderline autistic savant character that pedaled his ancient, cobbled together Franken-cycle to the finish line every day, mumbled to himself for company, and cradled his new Camelbak water-filled backpack (presented to him by a king-hearted fellow cyclist) with the passion of a mother with her newborn.

We ran into "Lawton Jerry" several times on the road, at the rest stops and in camp, who had better luck with his cycles than he did with wife selection (4th wife, 2nd cycle). We bonded with "Prince Charming Barry" and his 14-year old daughter, "Princess Extremely Charming Lauren" from Phoenix, who were sharing a daddy/daughter bonding week on their Cannondale tandem cycle.

There were dozens more S cycle-bonded with on the road, dozens more we camp-bonded with at the end of the daily journey, and still dozens more we exchanged emails with in that final mile of the final day.

On the drive home from Kansas back to our small town, the LeMond happily secured to the trunk rack and the last of my stash of Cliff bars and G2 Gatorade being consumed by S and I, our thoughts and conversation soon left behind the talk of ordinary people doing extraordinary things and onto the weeks ahead filled with work assignments for her and girls of summer tasks for me.

Not quite willing to let go of this great thing that my mid-life wife had just done and the pride I was feeling for her completion of it, I asked her if she wanted to do it again next year, to which she replied, "It's kinda like pregnancy...ask me again in a month or so when I've forgotten how much of a pain it was to go through."

Meanwhile I'll be spending my Father's Day logging and digitizing 5 hours of miniDV footage and transferring 4, 16-gig SDHC memory cards worth of 1080i video - basically reliving the entire week all over again.

Report from the Oklahoma FreeWheel road

Hot, humid, got rained on for an entire day (lightning, thunder, headwind), spent one night on the floor at a Methodist Church in Seminole, OK., but OK FreeWheel is rockin' and S is a pedaling fool.

Longest day of riding was today (72 miles), but the southerly tail winds helped her along -- the 90+ degree heat didn't.

Partying in Drumright, OK tonight. More from the road if I can find a library that's open late in the next 3 towns on our tour.

And I haven't run over any bikers...yet.

We're OKFreeWheel bound

OKFreeWheel is a cross state week long mass bike ride from the Texas to Kansas border in the heat and humidity of the Oklahoma summer.

Nutso x 1000...I'm right there with you.


Even more nutso when my lovely 40-something wife announced that she was considering doing it, was using her birthday check present from my Mom to get a road bike, and wanted me to document the entire process on video for her, from bike purchase to final collapse at the Kansas border.

That was a mere 6 months ago. Since then, she's trained and rode and shopped (oops, I mean, "outfitted herself in the appropriate biking attire") and agonized and fought against the Oklahoma wind and shopped ("acquired the required biking gear,") and changed a flat and shopped (ibid) and attended most of the FreeWheel seminars and shopped and bitched about how fast the start day was approaching and sweat and shopped and well...shopped.

So here we are, on the eve of the start date. Her mind, body, and spirit may not be fully prepared for the onslaught of physical tediousness and tension, but her wardrobe is ready, her outfits are set, and she has every doohickey, tool, gadget, bag and bottle that she'll ever need, ever, ever again.

Macgyver should be so well prepared.

Her duffel bags are not packed, the tent has not been seam sealed, her bike has yet to be picked up from the shop where it is being tuned up, and the laundry room is running in overtime since we also have to pack the girls up for their 9 night stay at Club Grandparent.

But somehow we'll be ready. Somewhere we'll be set. And sometime she'll hopefully come to her senses.

Six months later, it still seems like a nutso x 1000 thing to do.

But do it she will, struggle she might, and following her in my car I'll be, documenting her journey with my 3-chip video camera, a wireless lavalier mic hanging on her lapel, and a custom mounted Sanyo HD micro video camera riding shotgun on her handlebars.

Needless to say, I won't be blogging during our journey, but I'm sure I'll have more small town moments to report on, as we travel through some of the smallest towns in the state, in a most unusual (at least for these parts) mode of transportation.

Gennie on standby

This time of the year in my small town (at least on the section of the locally owned and operated electrical grid where my house resides) is what we've coined the "bright-boom-dark-room" time of the year.

Seems that the utility pole that serves the 4 house block we live on is the favorite target of any and all lightning strikes that make their way down to terra firma Oklahoma.

That's right. Almost without fail, if there is a lightning storm within a 25 mile radius, our power goes out. I'm not saying our power grid is old and utterly vulnerable to the ravages of our weather, but at times it seems all it'd take to kill our power would be for an 18-wheeler on the highway to flash it's highbeams at us.

After the tenth or so instance of flash-boom-bang during our first spring/summer here, we're totally prepared with our flashlight/candle and matches routine.

Once the candles are glowing and the flickering of flames transports our 19th century home back into the days from whence it was originally built, I'll normally step out on the front porch, peer uptown and see if our historic downtown is powerless as well.

When it is, I rejoice knowing that the powerful powers that be that power and repair the power lines in our town will be powerfully motivated to get on the ball and up the power poles if more than one block (my block) is being affected by the "bright-boom-dark-room" event.

ETA for power restoration is about 20 minutes in this instance.

If, however, my porch view survey reveals that just our block is down, then I settle in for a good 45-60 minute wait.

Seeing as how the NOAA just announced Tornado Watch #462 (that's for 2008, thus far), I went out to the garage to test fire up my trusty old 5000 watt generator, run an extension cord from the generator to the house, and wait for the lights to go out.

Which in a wonky, roundabout way, brings me to the actual topic of this post.

For reasons I'm choosing not to reveal at this time (future post perhaps) I acquired a 5000 watt gas powered generator back in my grad school days. Gennie and I were quite popular and in-demand with the crowd I was running with at the time and she enjoyed many hours of use and abuse.

When I made the move out to the middle of the Oklahoma prairie, Gennie came with me -- even though it had literally been years since I had checked her oil, drained her gas tank, or fired her up. She however made the trip without complaint, being the trooper she was, and sat quietly in a corner of my garage for the 3 years since our arrival.

After the last several rounds of bright-boom-dark-room took out our power for the third night in a row, I decided to renew my past relationship with Gennie and see if she would see fit to service my electrical needs again, in times of power line failure and windless sorrow.

At first inspection, she wasn't a very pretty lady. The gas left in her tank and lines had turned to varnish. The needle valve in her carb was disintegrated, the float frozen in gunk and time, and the starter pull cord was frayed beyond repair.

She needed surgery, STAT.

Luckily, I live in the state of Oklahoma grace -- aka the lawn mowing lap of luxury, and found a crusty old dude sitting in a crusty old chair, repairing yet another crusty old lawn mower in the rear of the crusty old lawn mower repair shop.

Having spent a goodly amount of time and money in engine supply houses, I knew better than to question the total surety with which the shop owner plopped my needed parts on the counter, and the utter lack of hesitation with which he told me that the parts he gave me weren't for the Tecumseh powerplant at the heart of Gennie, but would work fine, "just the same."

Had he taken the time to look up the part numbers in a book, online database, or parts manual, I imagine my confidence might have been a little shaken. But in the time I've been around old dudes who have spent their lives working on things of a mechanical nature, I've only been burned once when handed a part that wasn't the exact part I needed and told it would work just fine.

True to my gut instincts and the Lawn Mower Shop dude, the parts worked fine, the carb rebuild went swimmingly, I flushed out the gunk, filled her up with some fresh ethanol free 87-octane,and got her fired up on the third pull of her brand new starter pull cord.

Gennie nows sits idly by, sporting a sexy blue nylon tarp secured by bungie cords of complimentary colors, waiting for the day when our power goes out for more than the requisite hour, and a few quick pulls brings extension corded light to our darkened abode on the prairie.

Sgt. Schultz was right...Deutsch Lebensmittel ist wunderbar!

On our way home from our recent harvest sojourn, we passed through the bustling town of Lawton, Oklahoma (population 93,000) - pretty huge and culturally diverse city by OK standards.

What this meant to my immediate situation was a chance for my family and I to dine on food of a more international menu -- something we took for granted back in our LA days, but look back on now with fondness and gastronomical desire.

As much as my wife and I were tempted to tempt fate and tempt our taste sensations with the tantalizing temptations awaiting us at any one of the dozen Korean Buffet Restaurants, our ever widening search parameters (and the handy dandy State of Oklahoma's Tourism Department travel guide) brought us to the front door of a little wonder called, The German Quick Stop Restaurant.

The little greasy spoon didn't offer much in the quaintness department from the outside. In fact, my slightly nearsighted eyes detected a KFC facade circa 1970's hiding beneath the eggshell white paint and red and white gingham tablecloths.

But the wafting smell of freshly prepared food that wasn't a grilled hamburger, chicken fried steak, or combination enchilada plate was both welcoming and gratifying, in a "I'll be leaving this place in an hour or so with a well earned smile of gluttonous satisfaction on my face," kind of way.

Stay with me now...while the girls opted to share a small wurstsalat with a cup of potato soup and cup of goulash between the two of them, wifey and I went for the platter of plenty known as the Grill Teller for Two.

I'm not sure in what dimension this impressive menu item we ordered would feed two people, but wherever it is, my stomach and I want to retire there. This teller for deux could easily fill the gullets of a family of four hungry homo sapiens, and in that family I'm including the most ravenous group of Oklahoman's and Hawaiian's (the biggest eaters I've ever witnessed) on the planet.

Needless to say, it was plenty of food.

On a layered 1" thick bed of German potato salad rested a large-diameter 160 gram frisbee-sized wiener schnitzel.

Joining the delicately thin, crispy and tender breaded patty was a huge bratwurst (bursting out of it's crispy grilled skin), an even girthier pair of knackwursts, several robust wienerles (Dodger Dogs only smaller and grilled), several huge slices of leberkaese (think Spam only meatier and the size of a softball glove), a wurstbroetchen (some sort of sausage wrapped in puff pastry -- help me), accompanied by ridiculously generous family-style portions of al dente spaetzles, sassy sauerkraut with caraway seeds and enormous capers, and a sublimely spicy red cabbage salad, that effectively rounded out the meal and put the final touches on our perfect international meal.

The only disappointing moment in our meal came at the end when the pleasant waitress with the calves more muscular than mine asked us which type of strudel we'd like to try,"...apple, apple and cheese, blueberry, blueberry and cheese, cherry, cherry and cheese, mixed berry, mixed berry and cheese, or just plain honey...or honey and cheese."

Alas, we had left not a smidgen of stomach space for dessert. Double-dog-drat.

Our doggie bags were so full of food that any casual observer spotting us exiting the joint would have to assume that we had ordered take-out and were carting the food home to feed a small harvesting convention of combine operators and their families.

The bill was uber-reasonable, especially considering we had several full "leftover" meals from the styrofoam lunch wagon.

When in Lawton, I say go dutch. Or Deutsch rather.