Oklahoma Dreaming: Tidbits Once More (With Feeling)
by Donna Schoenkopf
It has been cloudy or raining for two months.
I’ve been told (more than once) that this is the wettest Fall ever, here in Oklahoma.
Is it because the 13,000 year Ice Age cycle has begun as the scientists say it has?
Is it because of the enormous amounts of particulates in the air that scientists say shades the earth and keeps temperatures down?
Rosie the Cat has returned after a two week absence.
She left for the usual reason ... fear and angst ... which are associated in her little mind with human beings who come into the house.
I had thought, again, that she was dead. This time I thought she was dead because one night several days ago, quite late, I heard the screeching of a large bird just down the hill from my house, maybe 30 feet away. The screeching startled Che the Cat and he dashed toward the sliding glass door, intensely interested in whatever had happened. Focused like a laser beam, he was. I let him out. He stayed on the deck.
In MY little mind, an owl had gotten her.
Now that she’s returned, which happened at midnight two days ago, I have kept her indoors. Even bought cat litter and resurrected the litter box from the shed. This is all because I want her to get used to the idea of another human being inside the house.
Son John is here. So we’re acclimating her to human activity.
She has taken up residence under my bed. I put a red woven rug under there for her comfort. (She was parked on a corner of Diego the Dog’s blanket, which stuck under the bed a few inches.) She likes her new red rug.
When things are calm she comes out from under the bed and nestles with me. She is starting to feel calmer.
This morning she meowed at several sliding doors, wanting out. I was sure it was because she hadn’t moved her bowels or emptied her bladder in two days.
She finally used her litter box.
Good girl.
I saved the apple trees. Just in time for winter. One tree is covered with apple blossoms, due to, I’m sure, all the Miracle-Gro I gave it as a last resort.
The other apple tree is covered with deep green luscious leaves. Same reason.
So now those little dear trees will have trusted the Universe only to have their metaphorical rug pulled out from under them by impending cold.
I hope they’ll survive my efforts at trying to save them.
Lynn, my dear sister-in-law, widow of my brother Davey, came out to see if she could plot her strategy in bringing in her pop-up camping trailer, complete with air conditioning and all the finer things of life, to a site on the propiddy, so John can have a bedroom.
It’s a swell contraption.
I told Lynn we’d do all the putting up and storing of her stuff, but as we talked out of our car windows, parked side-by-side on the long driveway before the turnoff to my house, the cold, gray day brisking along, she looked at me with a small smile and said, after a little preamble, that actually, she kind of wanted to do it because she was thinking that MAYBE Dave had left her a note in the camper.
She told me of their last camping trip together. He had just been diagnosed with esophageal cancer. They went camping, with the unspoken thought that this would be their last trip together.
They went to Lake Tenkiller. He watched her swim as he sat on the shore.
He had had a lot of pain and she had to do the driving on the way back home.
The camper is a repository of sweet memories and dear mementos.
It made me sad to invade it with our mortal lives. I would have liked to have kept it holy and sanctified.
So I told her that John and I were fine, and to please not bother about it.
She smiled and said that she really wanted to do it. Including how to park the camper in a complicated backing-up pattern. Something Dave had been an expert at.
“He could park on a dime,” she said with a smile.
I almost got killed (again) on Killer Highway 177.
I was going to the Y to pick up John, traveling north behind an old geezer going 55 mph. I was being patient, because if you’re not, you could get yourself killed! So, lah de dah, down the highway we moseyed, and as we began to drive past a couple of cars going the opposite direction, the second car made a move from HELL, pulling out from behind HIS old geezer, just as he was passing me from the opposite direction, coming so close to me, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
I watched him in my rear view mirror, gunning it up the hill behind me.
I hated him with all my heart.
The fucking bastard.
Nephews Tom and Mike came over yesterday. They were excited about seeing John.
We ate spaghetti and Mike said, with the sweetest smile, that it was maybe the best dinner he had ever eaten in his life.
No one has ever said that to me before.
I shall never forget it.
Later the boys, nay, MEN, decided to take a hike. Diego the Dog went with them, question mark tail in the air as he led the way.
They walked down the hill, past the pond, which meant beating a path through brambles and chest-high shrubbery (I TOLD you it’s been raining for two months!) and then through the woods, over a barbed wire fence, to the vast and beautiful bottom land, stretching for miles in all directions, bordered by pretty hills.
It is verdant and open. It has cows. Diego chased some, giving the men a good laugh. Then that dog began annoying a calf and some cows meandered over to the action and encircled the calf, protecting it from Diego.
(One night, a year ago last spring, when calving was going on, I heard coyotes howling and yipping down in that vast valley and the dreadful mooing of a cow, either in labor with coyotes surrounding it, or being brought down and eaten by the coyotes.
It went on for a long time. Being pitch dark and there being no trail, and the hill I’d have to climb down was full of brambles AND how the hell was I going to scare off a pack of coyotes ANYWAY, I let Nature take its course.)
Son John thinks there’s a correlation between being smart and being bad at football.
UCLA (his favorite college football team) has academic requirements which other schools don’t have and they have not had a good year for a long time. Last time they were on the doorstep of something big was ’98.
His theory about intelligence making you a bad football player goes like this:
If you’re smart, you’re thinking about the situation, your mind is running through a million things ... watching the tight end to see if he’s gonna give away something, for example ... while the dumb guy just hears the whistle and goes.
UCLA always starts the season with a record like 4 and 0 and ends up the season at 6 and 6.
Yesterday we searched for a place to watch the UCLA/Oregon game. It wasn’t on the ABC station. OU/Baylor was playing here in Oklahoma instead.
So the hunt began.
John called “Knuckles,” the local sports bar in Shawnee, but nobody ever answered the phone. (No wonder they don’t have much business. They don’t even open their doors in time to watch the college games on Saturday.)
Then we went to Garfields. Nope.
We ended up doing a pay-for-view on television, which cost a pretty penny, I might add.
The game was a romp for Oregon. 24 to 10.
It was then John declared that he was sick of rooting for a losing team. I asked him if he felt like a Cubs fan. He just looked at me.
All’s quiet and peaceful right now. Diego is nestled in his grass nest next to the cottonwood tree.
Rosie is under the bed on her red rug.
Che is outside, either napping in the shed on the duffle bag in the corner, or stalking grasshoppers.
John is watching the Denver/New England game and cooking. He says he can sense the lackadaisical mind set, the lack of caring by the players, who just coast by on their paychecks. There is so much parity that the teams, he says, are pretty much evenly matched.
He finds pro ball boring.
As we talk, he is cutting up the broccoli for the chicken and broccoli dinner tonight.
Already smells good.
It’s getting better all the time.
donna@fourstory.org
Comments
The next time you find yourself behind an old geezer going 55 mph, just remember that we ARE old geezers… except we’re still driving 75 mph.
Last week I had to tailgate an old-er geezer to read his bumper sticker, no doubt making him nervous. I backed off only when I could finally read the bumper sticker: “Wag more, bark less”.
Such is the price of knowledge.
2009-10-13 by StanDelightful reading, as always, enjoy your visit with your child.
2009-10-13 by Janice Wood
Again, love your writing about your day to day adventures at Chigger lake and surroundings. It’s like talking to you, so real and true to who you are. Sounds like you and Jon are getting along. Is he staying long?
2009-10-13 by margoWe are happy to be home languishing naked in the warm balmy breezes after freezing in Vermont and New York.
Love, Margo