Oklahoma Dreaming: Shawnee Lake
by Donna Schoenkopf
It’s 5:30 on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.
It’s that perfect time of day when the light is lovely and the shadows are alive.
Son John and I have decided to drive out to Shawnee Lake and for me that means a trip down Memory Lane.
We drive out onto Killer Highway 177, turn off to pick up a Gatorade and a Rockstar (the drink, not the person) at the only grocery story in Tecumseh. It’s the Firelake Convenience Store. For a while Tecumseh had NO grocery store, only the Love’s gas station for bread and milk, cigarettes and candy. But Rocky, our favorite chief of the Potawatomi Indians, has provided us with sustenance out here in the sticks.
Drinks in hand, we proceed up the 177, get off on Farrall Street, turn onto Kickapoo Street, and then, on the corner of Benedict Street where St. Benedict’s Catholic Church stands, where I went to church every Sunday for ten years, where I went to catechism all the way through my senior year of high school, learning the fine points of Catholic thought such as the ends not justifying the means, where I married my first husband and consequently annulled that marriage, there, THERE is where we turn left.
(I told you it was a trip down Memory Lane.)
We pass the Benedict Street Marketplace where, on the third Thursday of the month, poetry readings take place, where once I read my poem entitled “Pee Poem” about my leaky bladder. It shocked the audience.
We pass the Knights of Columbus house/building. Jeez, sure are a lot of Catholic things around this neighborhood, considering Oklahoma is only 3 per cent Catholic.
Benedict Street is narrow, two-laned. The houses are 20s and 30s bungalows. It’s a lower middle class neighborhood. Sad and friendly at the same time.
Westward we travel, the sun sinking in the sky hitting us full in the face. It feels good.
We pass the old Thiokol Chemical Corporation building, all boarded up, with broken windows everywhere. I worked there in my young adulthood as a secretary to Mr. Corbin, a kind and sweet man, who had the patience of Job. I once asked him what was the worst thing I could do and he told me misfile something.
And, of course, that is what I did. I could not get my act together. Finally, in the middle of one emotional crisis after another with husband number one, I fell apart at work and sobbed at my desk, head in my hands, because I had just misfiled one more item and I did SO want to please Mr. Corbin, gentle Mr. Corbin, and my life was in ruins and I just couldn’t take it any more.
Mr. Corbin looked at me with confusion mixed with compassion and said these words, “Maybe you just aren’t cut out for this kind of work.”
I quit that day. He was sympathetic. And he was right.
The road climbs a little and curves a little and on the right there is the old original Taron house. It’s made of Oklahoma red rock. The original Tarons, French mère and père, came here long ago and brought French grapevines with them. Those vines STILL grow behind the house. These days there are many, many Tarons in town. They are among the very important, the capable, the hard-working citizens of Shawnee and surrounds. My hero, the man who carved my house out of the wilderness, Peewee, is among them. They are all, at least in my recollection, Catholics.
We cross a bridge over a river. I’ve never known its name. It’s a wide river, not a dinky little creek. Lots of sand on the banks and broken limbs of trees. Jim taught me how to shoot a gun down there when I was nineteen and beautiful. It was a sexy day.
The road rolls along, straight now, and the world opens up. We are driving straight and true across a vast plain of agriculture. Huge round bales of hay lie on the land, casting surreal shadows. The radio talks. The sun creates a green you only see at exactly that degree of sunset. It is a green so deep and true and rich that it seems it’s in another dimension.
We climb a gentle hill. A steel building housing a church, neatly yarded mobile homes, a homestead over there on the right with its steel outbuilding that John hates because it’s beige instead of being multi-colored.
On we go. The radio tells us about words Washington invented. (Wha?? Washington coined words???? I’ve always thought of him as being kind of mute.) Here is a partial list: off duty, indoors, parole, hatchet man, bakery. Bakery! What a wonderful word to invent.
The landscape is becoming more wooded. We cross Killer Highway 102, me silently holding my breath, and continue on. The woods are all oaks, and are becoming thicker. An estate occasionally here and there with spacious lawns studded with straight and perfect trees, creating a canopy over the lushness of the grass.
And finally, the lake.
It’s large and curves around islands. It is glorious, sparkling in the setting sun.
Some governmental entity or other has created a tiny picnic area alongside the water.
(I love governmental entities. I am sick and tired of people complaining about how evil government is. Here is this lovely little park, with picnic tables of stone and wood, under lovely trees, with barbecues and grass. I mean, how nice is THAT?
Evil, my ass.)
We climb out of the car and walk to the water’s edge. The one and only couple there get into their blue pickup and drive away.
Was it a rendezvous? They were middle-aged. Ah, but that’s when hanky-panky can start. If you dare.
We are alone with the lake. The sun is at its most perfect setting. There are symmetrical buoys marking the swimming area for little kids, long gone. There are red rocks, sandstone, along the shore, with people’s names and designs carved into them. There are no curse words. No anger. Just love and beauty.
Some golden grasses’ tasseled heads rise above the water, the sunlight catching drops of water on their leaves.
Wavelets lap the shore.
Breezes blow the first brown and yellow leaves off the trees.
We don’t stay long. It was mostly the journey, not the destination, that was important.
Back into the car and back to our Gatorade and Rockstar. The radio’s back on. We listen to an account of an Amazonian Indian tribe’s language. It had no system of counting, no words for colors, no creationist stories, no words for left and right, no embedding of phrases in other phrases (for example, John’s father’s son). Instead, simple sentences which build stories. And they tell no stories unless there are living witnesses to those stories. And the White American Christian Guy who was relating his whole experience with them (he was there to learn their language so that he could translate the New Testament for them) could not tell them of Jesus because no one was alive who knew him personally. They called White American Christian Guy a liar when they found out that he didn’t know Jesus personally. And I mean PERSONALLY. In the flesh, as it were.
John and I are mesmerized by this series of words about words.
And we roll home, back through the woods, across the plain, past the Tarons’ homestead, the river, the Thiokol Chemical Building, the Catholic Church, down Kickapoo, to the store, where we buy two bags of crimson red seedless grapes that pop in your mouth with sweetness and a package of Keebler’s fudge sticks.
Mmmmm, mmmm, good.
donna@fourstory.org
Comments
One of your better stories for the old folks. Great memories - the Lake Road is one good story. Seems like going west on Benedict was always a good escape from Shawnee. As a small kid my dad used to drive us out that way to Fergunson’s turkey farm. Was that on the Lake Road?
The river you mention crossing I believe is the North Canadian.
Don got the random word “church”, my word is “return”.
Keep on writing - memories are good.
That lane called “Memory” has varied scenery. The Thiokol plant was, in my teenageship, the Sylvania plant, one of Shawnee’s first important industries. Benedict Street, and the north/south streets intersecting it, was a Catholic ghetto. Shorty Carter lived just north of the Thiokol plant; so did the Ackermans. And my best grade school friend, Martha Ann Martin, lived a block from Shorty. Her widowed mother used to lock us out of the house when she entertained her boyfriend. West on Benedict, which, after the curve, we referred to as The Lake Road, across the road from the Tarons, lived Dr. Bob Barker and his wife (Catholics, too, and poker friends of my parents), a popular veterinarian. Halfway to the lake, on the south side of the road, is a native stone country church (Baptist, I believe) with an attached cemetery where my best high school friend’s baby brother is buried. The lake itself is the repository of many memories that involve your first husband, whose parents owned a nice cabin that we frequented, especially when they weren’t using it!
2009-10-20 by BetsyI miss Dr Barker the vet. You’ll have to admit, Barker is the perfect name for a Vet. We have a Doctor here named Butcher too.
I think the prettiest part of the lake is the channel between the old and new ones. Here’s a link to a photo of it. http://www.shawneetwinlakes.org
2009-10-20 by Jo DavisTecumseh doesn’t have a grocery store? Not so much as a Dollar General or a Piggly Wiggly? The burg I live in is half the size and has both. I suppose its too close to Shawnee.
2009-10-20 by Gary RichardThis is really a very splendid piece, Donna. Never been near Shawnee but I could visualize it all. Most, most excellent. And LOVED the story about the Amazon tribe. That rule of thumb would save us all a lot of grief—gotta know your “god” personally. Ho hoho ho ho!
2009-10-21 by Ann Calhounthank you all for your wonderful comments and memories and philosophies.
you enrich my life.
and MY word is “old”.
do things seem spooky to you with these words? hmmmmmmmmmmm?
2009-10-21 by Donna SchoenkopfSuch wonderful writing, we called it Lake Road until in the 70s and our address was Rural Route #4. I raised my children on Benedict St. just East of the river bridge. Awwwwwwww memories, how sweet they are. Thank you dear girl.
2009-10-21 by Janice WoodI enjoyed reading your account of a drive and a walk both of which I have done many times, with my father as a child, with my wife as we were dating, with my children as they grew, and soon, I hope, with my grandchildren.
I am a member of that Catholic Church, St. Benedict’s and of the Knights of Columbus Hall a block west. Benedictine monks had much to do with settling Oklahoma. Sacred Heart Mission near Konawa, a few miles south of Shawnee was begun by OSB Monks about 1870. These wonderful men cared much about educating the American Natives in this area. They established a number of schools supported by the Mission, one of which is St. Gregory University in Shawnee, the oldest university in Oklahoma.
We can thank their work for the concentration of Catholics in this area, for families like the Tarons, French Catholic emigrants who as you said are hard working wonderful people, for my own family of Schanzenbach/Johnson, German Catholic emigrants, Polish and Czech Catholic emigrants like the Blochowiak and Block family, many Irish Catholic emigrants like the O’Connors and more recently, many wonderful families of Mexican Catholic emigrants.
I wish I could take you up the bell tower of St. Benedict’s church where you could see a 2000 lb Bronze Bell (one of few such in the whole state) with the inscription; ANGELUS DOMINI NUNCIAVIT MARIAE or “The Angel of the Lord announced to Mary”.
A few minutes before each Mass, this massive bell lets all of the Shawnee area know what is going on there with it’s wonderful “Ringing” back and forth on it’s pivot, being powered by small alter boys, pulling a rope far below, each weighing a small fraction of the bell’s weight. It is a common sight in our church to see two such boys being pulled way off the floor by the momentum of this joyous process which has continued since it’s installation in 1911.
On other days, a different rope is pulled to strike the “Toll” hammer against this same bell, but making a much sadder sound. Slow tolls can be heard announcing a death or other very sad occurrence.
You mentioned the curves in the lake road, but didn’t mention the rail road which crosses overhead. That is the old Rock Island line and navigating these two turns and passing under this bridge should be done at a careful speed. Further out, as you cross the open plain of farm land, you used to cross another rail road at a steep angle. That was the famous “KATY” line. Those rails were taken out about 1960. When they were there, it was great fun if dad would go pretty fast because the sudden rise and fall would give a little kid like me goose bumps.
Many don’t know that at one time, Shawnee had three freight rail road depots, three passenger depots and a passenger depot for a small interurban trolley which connected Shawnee and Tecumseh passing by the wonderful “Benson Park” between the two towns. That’s a lot of rail roads and is part of the reason Shawnee was one of three cities considered to be the State’s Capitol.
Another commenter, before me, mentioned the canal connecting the TWO Shawnee lakes. This is another rarity in Oklahoma. Boaters can actually navigate two separate bodies of water, and travel between them on a canal. This makes the activities on Shawnee Lake all that much more enjoyable.
Bill Johnson
Shawnee’n
what a bunch of wonderful, interesting, personal comments…what fun, Donna!!!I LOVE You!!!!
Carole
Donna,I was born in Shawnee in 1953 but my family moved before I was two years old. I have never been back. Thank you for the tour of my birthplace—beautifully written.
2009-10-25 by Leah McKellips RukebergI enjoyed your memories of Shawnee Lake area. Fifty-six years ago my daughter, Leah McKellips Ruekberg was born in Shawnee, the closest hospital to where we lived next to the Union United Methodist Church, our first pastorate. Now we pastor in Tulsa and recently returned to the Shawnee area with the Asbury Singing Ambassadors to sing in a concert especially for the Methodist Sojourners who were there for mission work in the area. The bus drive on Creek Turnpide, exiting onto Highway 18 near Wellston toward rural Shawnee was reminescent, somehow, of the September day in 1953 when we left the parsonage in Jacktown (McLoud postal route) and headed for the hospital to give birth to Leah who is a writer/storyteller in Pittsford, New York. She loves words like you have written. God bless you both.
Shirley McKellips
2009-10-28 by shirley mckellips
Memory Lane is a very long road, with a lot of interesting stops along the way. (I followed along with Google Maps set to satellite view.) Thanks for the guided tour of this backroads mile.
I also find it amusing that the random code word from fourstory, which I must enter in order to submit this note, is “church”!
Hugs.
2009-10-20 by Don