Wild and Free

Have you ever had your perception of something turned on its head?

Many moons ago I saw a tattoo that I REALLY wanted.  It was a butterfly, or at least the shape of a butterfly, but the wings looked like a cutout of a tiger's face.  The eyes filled the top part of the wings and at the bottom the wings turned into its whiskers.  It was beautiful!  Excuse my paltry description of it; I assure you, I've not done it justice.  On each side I wanted a symbol for "wild" and "free".  I never got the tattoos, but my heart has always remained wild and free.  I do not like to be constrained in any way, shape, or form - literally and figuratively.  Even as a baby I hated to be swaddled.  Grandma Lois loved to tell the story of how she would wrap me up only to have me wiggle and wriggle until I'd freed myself and was going over her shoulder - even at just a few weeks old.  Everyone has a different definition of what personal freedom means to them, and I've always felt that if I were going to be fenced in, it would be by fences of my own making, not someone else's.  In my mind I always envisioned "wild and free" with the face of a tiger, and I've been known to be bold and fierce, so I thought the tiger was fitting.

Until two days ago.

Mom and I were at Hobby Lobby and I saw a piece of art that spoke to me in such a profound manner that I went back to the store the next day to buy it because I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Okay, so I"m sure it's obvious why the "wild and free" part grabbed my eye, but the cacti is what held my attention.  First, let me say that I am not a fan of the cactus plant.  When I was 3 of 4 years old I fell into one and, in case you didn't know, that hurts.  A lot.  Like, a lot, a lot.  My aunt and cousins were leaving after a visit to our house and I was running after them, waving goodbye, when I fell into the cactus plant at the end of our driveway.  My hand was covered in needles and it felt like it took my mom and aunt 3 years to get them all out and I screamed hysterically the entire time.  Needless to say, the cactus and I are not on friendly terms.  Yet, here I stood in the middle of a store on a Thursday afternoon unable to look away from this picture of cacti.  The longer I stood there, the more it spoke to me and the more I realized that I am a cactus, not a tiger.

The cactus is a remarkable plant.  It grows where few things grow.  It holds life-giving water.  It protects itself.  It's not afraid to grow alone.  And that's the end of my kindergarten knowledge of the cactus.  It is, in fact, wild and free.  But, here's what really struck me - it's still rooted.  What?!  Free and rooted?  It sounds like an oxymoron.  No way!  I always thought of freedom as equating to the ability to roam, but no, I was wrong.  The cactus is free, but it has roots.  This is me.  And I'm a little bit prickly to some people, so yeah, I'm a cactus.  This is also my son.  He is a wild boy and we often refer to him as the Tiny Tornado.  He looks like his daddy, but he acts a lot like his mama.  Life should be real fun during his teenage years.  So, I had to buy this for his room.  It doesn't really fit with the theme of our room, but I can live vicariously through this picture while it hangs in his.  And maybe it will remind me to give him some grace and mercy as he figures out how to be wild and free, but still rooted.

Small Towns

Today, we laid to rest another cousin; a good, hard working man who loved Jesus and raised good kids.  Mom, my uncle Tom, and I traveled to western Oklahoma to the small town of Harmon, and when I say small, I mean small.  Do you remember the song Midnight Girl by The Sweethearts of the Rodeo?

And there is one stop light blinking on and off

Everyone knows when the neighbors cough

They roll up the streets when the sun goes down

Harmon is smaller than that.  No stop light.  Blink your eyes and you'll miss the whole town.  When my cousin sent me the information about the service I asked which church it would be in - there's only one church in Harmon.  I believe it is now considered an unincorporated community.  Grandpa Homer once owned a mechanic shop in Harmon and his brother, Daniel, owned a boot shop in the area.  Many of my family are buried in the local cemetery or one of the cemeteries in nearby towns.  Sometimes, it seems like cemeteries are all that's left of some small towns.  It's sad that so many small towns seem to be dying, literally and figuratively, right before our eyes, as the young people leave for other opportunities.  Bright lights, big city, here I come!  As the Sweethearts said,

It never even entered their minds

I might not want to stay

But I'm young, I've still got time

I've got to get away

I love to travel through small towns and see the remnants of their heydays and imagine how it looked in its prime.  I often imagine having endless wealth and using it to rejuvenate small towns.  I used to always drive on road trips, but I've learned over the years that if I ride and let someone else drive, I can take pictures along the way!  Here's a few pics from our travels today:

This is a corner store, or what's left of it, in Canton, OK.  Newspapers cover the windows and doors, and the mural is fading. 

This is a store front in Vici, OK - it is pronounced Vie-sie, not Vicky.  No k, see?  It's a grammatical difference in Oklahoma.  I am sure it's in an Okie dictionary or an encyclopedia of how to pronounce the names of towns in Oklahoma.  I love these painted patchwork squares; it's so quaint and makes me imagine a bunch of grandmas and great-aunts sitting around stitching and talking and laughing.  There was also an American Flag patchwork painted on the side of a building on the east side of town.  Speaking of quilts, have you ever read any of the Quilter's Series by Jennifer Chiaverini?  I highly recommend them.

Look at the detail on this hot plate!  Cross stitch and weaving!  What?!

Check out these handmade hotplates!  I love these because they are unique and I know that someone put in a lot of time to make them.  Sometimes, when you are in a larger community, small details like this can get lost.  Instead of handmade hotplates, someone buys some generic ones at Walmart.  Grandma Lois had some similar to these.  If you have never made a piece of art by hand, let me assure you that a lot of time and hard work goes into each piece.  It's also a good way to slow yourself down and focus on one thing that you can control and not worry about everything that you can't.  I started doing cross stitch to help relieve stress and it works!  A lot of love goes into those stitches!

And this is the food that a group of small town ladies fixed for the very large group of family!  And I didn't even get a picture of all the desserts!  Someone made an angel food cake with a maple frosting that was good enough to make you pass out from sheer bliss.  This plate of food was probably only about half of what they made - I simply ran out of room on my plate. 

P.S.  See the bowl of BBQ sausage links and beans?  It made me think about pork-n-beans and every time I think about pork-n-beans I think about Steel Magnolias and I imagine Miss Clairee shopping with Ouiser and as she loads numerous cans of pork-n-beans into the shopping cart she says, "Drum loves poke-n-beans.  He eats 'em with everaythang."  Use your best southern drawl as you read that; it will make more sense, and ignore the fact that I just used an excruciatingly long run-on sentence.

Also, over the course of lunch we discovered that one of the ladies is a relative from the other side of the family!  Her great-grandfather and mine were brothers!  These are the things you learn when you love genealogy and history!  It is a small world, at least it is around Harmon, OK.

On our way out of town, we decided to stop and try to find Grandma and Grandpa's original homestead.  We turned north off the highway onto an old dirt road and drove a little more than half a mile, and as we drove past a brick home Mom said she thought that was the property.  We pulled up to the gate of a pasture and could see a small, dilapidated square building with a pyramid style roof and thought that might be it.  I walked up to the front door of the brick house and rang the doorbell.  The older woman who answered the door invited me right in and I told her who I was and what I was looking for.  She wasn't sure if that building was it or not, but her husband came in and sure enough, we had found it.  His name was Flakey Wilson and he said they bought the property from Guy Douglas who bought it from Homer Hixson, my grandpa.  He said the house originally sat across the road and up the hill, but he had moved it a few years after they bought the property.  Their oldest son was also born in that tiny house.  He offered to drive me around to the house, so I climbed into his Towncar and off we went, with Mom and Tom following.  Flakey told me they owned about 1,000 acres and that his health had not allowed him to keep up with it the way he wanted.  Five years ago he had an experimental heart procedure that had been amazing, but he is getting older and keeping up with the property like he had in the past is getting harder.  We drove across a cattle guard and past farm equipment and around a barn and found the small structure.

Looking at it now, it's hard to believe that someone ever lived in it.  On the left side of the house are what's left of the red shingles Grandma and Grandpa put on the house.  They lived in it from 1943 - 1947.  I traipsed around, trying to avoid the cow patties, and took as many pictures as I could.  You should also know that there had been a skunk in there and when I got to the south side of the house, I dang near threw up from the smell.  You should also know that I did not avoid all of the cow patties and ended up with a nice smashed patty and a decent amount of grass on my left boot.  Then Flakey drove me up the road to the top of the hill to show me where the house originally sat.

This was the view Grandma and Grandpa had every day when they woke up - minus the windmills, of course.  And there were probably fewer trees.  Dang those cedar trees!  But, wow.  Just wow.  Oklahoma is an absolutely breathtaking sight to see!  God did good when He made Oklahoma!

Flakey said you could see for 13 miles from where the house sat on the top of the hill.  It's too small to see in the picture, but the Vici, not Vicky, (we're all going to know that Vicky is incorrect before I'm finished here) grain elevator could be seen in the distance.

This is the well where they pumped water; it sat on the east side of the house.

This is what is left of a tank that held carbide gas.  Flakey said you could buy the gas in Vici (remember Vie-sie, not Vicky) and it was used as a heating fuel.  Tom and I had never heard of carbide gas before, and I was sure that Tom knew of pretty much everything farm related.  I guess we can all still learn something new every day.

I absolutely love to see elevators like this!  For the non-rural folks, this is a storage facility for grain or other crops before it gets sent to a processing plant to become the bread that you eat.  This one is in Canton, OK and is small compared to others I've seen.  There are some monster elevators east of Enid, OK on US412, if you ever want to see some.

This elevator in Vici (not Vicky) is a little bit bigger.  They are just beautiful and amazing to look at.

This last one is in Okeene and it's the largest of the three.  The top photo gives a little perspective of how large the facility is; all three of the large structures are part of the site.  These elevators are just majestic!  I cannot tell you how much I LOVE looking at them!

And now, here I am at the end of the day thinking about my family and the days they have before them as they pick up the pieces and move forward.  My own dad has been gone for 33 years now, and there are still tough days.  I am all too familiar with the road they will have to walk.  Our loved ones are now memories, just like the heydays of little towns along a loud, bumpy old highway in Oklahoma.  But, we can share those memories proudly like the painted patchworks on an old store front, hold on to them even as time fades the colors, trust that they are woven into our lives with strong, loving stitches, move them with us from one place to the next, and rise up majestically against the elements like an old grain elevator in the middle of nowhere and we will stand the test of time.  We will carry on and be here for the next generation to look to and someday, they will say the same about us.

Carmichael's Pumpkin Patch

On Saturday I took the boy and Nana Lana to Bixby to Carmichael's Pumpkin Patch - the one I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. 

It was a beautiful fall morning when we got there about 10am with a light, cool breeze. They had a petting zoo, butterfly house, live carousel, camel rides, corn maze, dark maze, a hayride, and PUMPKINS!

Look at all of them! And this is just a small section of them! They were everywhere!

Look at all of the colors and textures. Some of them look like they're covered in barnacles. 

And these? I'm not sure what happened here. It looks like a regular pumpkin and a green gourd got together and had a baby. But, they're pretty and interesting to look at, nonetheless. 

I call these ghost pumpkins. It looks like Bunnicula has been here. Yes, Bunnicula is a real word and a real literary character. Your childhood must have sucked if you never read the books. My condolences. 

There were scarecrows...

and bushels of corn stalks,

and butterflies! They had a large mesh tent and gave us Q-tips with "butterfly food" that I'm guessing was mushed up apple pulp. I don't know. I'm not a butterfly wrangler, so I'm just guessing.  We held our Q-tips down by their feet and then they would climb on. We held them on our fingers and held them up so they could latch onto the mesh walls. 

Rocco was a natural!  Like a butterfly whisperer or a butterfly cowboy!  He also got to ride one of the ponies on the live carousel and loved it. He loves animals and tries to get me to stop and buy goats every time we see one. 

Love his smiling face!

We took a hayride after that. It was short, but the boy had fun and that's really what matters. 

Then we rode a camel! This was a first for me. Not having stirrups for my feet felt a little strange, and it felt like we were 20 feet off the ground. This camel was over 7 feet tall and had quite a pungent smell. I'm going to guess that it's possibly because pee just runs down their legs and coats their hair. Disgusting. But, it was a fun ride, anyway. 

They also had a large selection of mums and Rocco had to smell all of them. 

We also got up close and personal with some llamas. Or are these alpacas? I'm not sure. I don't actually know the difference between the two. I'm not a llama or alpaca farmer. Anyhoo, the one on the right pinned its ears back and looked like it was considering spitting on us, so we walked away.  Spit...yuck. 

There were also baby pot-bellied pigs. They were shy and this was the best picture I could get. They were so tiny!  The rabbits were also uncooperative and I wasn't able to get a picture of them, either. 

The water buffalo calf was quiet and sleeping, as was the porcupine, who hid in his shelter while we were there.  He smelled just as bad as he did two weeks ago. 

The owner said these are some kind of African goat. We saw them a couple of weeks ago and they have the tiniest, and I mean the tiniest, legs. And the horns are sharp. Hands off. 

We had a great time and Rocco said he had a lot of fun. I don't think he stopped smiling the whole time we were there. Great memories made with two of my favorite people. If you live within reasonable driving distance of Bixby, Oklahoma, I highly recommend Carmichael's Pumpkin Patch southeast of town. It wasn't overcrowded and we didn't have to wait in line for anything. Admission is free, but you do have to pay for rides, if you want to ride them. But, they weren't expensive; I think we spent about $20 total for all three of us.  You won't be disappointed!

Conversations

After picking Rocco up from our Life Group childcare on Sunday, we weren't even out of the parking lot when he said, "I want to watch Thomas (the train) on you phone." I feel the need to clarify here that this threenager is not allowed to watch Thomas on our phones all the time. He asks - ALL THE TIME - but he is routinely told no, especially if his attitude has been threenagerish. On those occasions when he's been told that his attitude needs adjusting he will say, "I sowwy I was angwy, Mama. Can I watch Thomas on you phone now? I behaving now. I'm a happy boy," and then he smiles. He's mastered the manipulation maneuver. Still, it's the first thing he asks as soon as we get in the car. And it's not the cartoons he wants to watch. Nope, he likes to watch videos of random people showing their Thomas toys and tracks. It's in French, Chinese, or Spanish? He doesn't care. He just wants to watch people playing with their Thomas and Friends toys. I told him no and that I wanted him to tell me what he did at church that evening.

"Den I can watch Thomas on you phone?"

"Maybe. We'll talk about it. Now, tell me what you did tonight. Did you have fun? Did you play with other kids?"

He answered about four questions and then declared, "Okay, we done talking now. I need to watch Thomas on you phone now."

I'm not sure where he gets the bossiness from. I blame his father. 

A couple of days later, Nana K was taking Rocco to Chick-fil-A for lunch after school and she had turned down the wrong street. When she got to the light she told him that she didn't see the restaurant. "It's over dere. You need to turn wight and go dat way and take me to Chip-fehway, Nana K." He routinely likes to tell us where to go and how to get there. Honestly, though, he's good with directions after we've been somewhere once. He knows street names and landmarks and likes to draw maps. It's probably because he heard me giving out directions at work while he was still cooking in my belly. At least I know he'll never get lost. 

Later in the week, during his bath, he was drawing a map in the condensation on the wall, talking to himself, when suddenly he exclaimed, "Dat's da way to da White House (his preschool)! And da door is wocked! And I can't get in! It's cwosed today! And dat's not good! Miss Twaci wocked me out wiss da bwue key! And dat's not good!"

Imagine saying all of that in your sharpest tone of voice. Now stand rigidly, and for emphasis, squeeze your eyes shut tightly, throw your hands down, and jerk your legs straight at the end of each sentence. And when you're finished, give out one last long, low growl, just so we all know how disgusted you really are about your imaginary experience of being locked out of school. 

Last night we stopped at GNC and Rocco and Daddy waited for me in the car. After I got out Rocco said, "Daddy, we need to go to Atwoods."

"We have to wait on Mama first."

"No, we weave her here and we go by ourselves."

.........................hmm

One last conversational nugget came from the boy's father, aka my dude. We were coming home from dinner, having a nice drive through the country, windows down, the sweet smell that IS the country blowing in through the windows (sorry if you're not familiar with the smell, it sucks to be you), 80's country on the radio - you know, just having a nice peaceful ride while the boy watched Thomas on my phone in the back seat. We got on the highway and we were singing some old song when he blurted out, "You bought that sandpaper toilet paper again."

I won't tell you what his next sentence was, but just know that I laughed and laughed and laughed. I'll be honest, it is like sandpaper. I had forgotten that this particular jumbo roll package is somehow different than the double roll package by the same brand. Ouchy. Scratchy. Not what you want in your TP. He told me to burn the rest of the package. If you've ever read any old posts from my blog, this conversation shouldn't surprise you; toilet paper is probably a topic of conversation in our house every day. AND, AND, AND it should always roll off the top, not the bottom. Learn this, people. 

In other news, it's Friday and my husband's 25 year high school reunion is tonight. I've been awake since 4:30 am. Yay, me! The laundry has piled up again, I have homework to finish, and fall has officially begun - never mind that it was 90-some-odd degrees yesterday. But, a cold front is coming and bringing rain with it. Right now though, I think I need a nap. 

The week in pictures

A whole lot of nothing happened this week. A whole lot of nothing but normal, that is.

We worked.

We played. 

We ate. 

We slept. 

We hugged. 

We kissed. 

We went to school. 

We went for evening walks. 

We went to Bixby to buy farm fresh produce. 

Okay, so the last one was out of the ordinary. Bixby is about an hour away and I would normally buy from the Farmer's Market in Stillwater, but it's only open two mornings per week, and I had to work one of those days, and today was the OSU vs. Pitt game and I wasn't going anywhere near Stillwater because I didn't want to deal with the traffic nightmare known as Game Day. 

Rocco, Derek, and I walked most evenings this week because it was nice outside and we had the opportunity. Rocco likes to stop and draw maps to the pet store in the dirt. Our walks probably consist of a few things that city folks don't have - like rusted old whatchamacallits. 

(Side note: every time I say "city folk" I start singing the farmersonly.com song.)

And twisted old pieces of metal. 

And dust hanging in the air - the result of a passing truck and no wind. 

And gates protecting old farmhouses and arenas grown over with weeds and brush. 

And wild sunflowers growing everywhere. Stopping for a quick sniff is the rule when you're three years old. 

And wide open sunsets. 

And cows. Mooooooo!

I may have to print that last picture on canvas and hang it up in our house. It's moooootyful! Get it? Never mind. 

And a dead calf laying in the ditch that stunk to high heaven. No photo included because, well, it was just nasty. No one wants to see that. I dry heaved for several minutes when I saw it, more because of the stench than the sight, though. It wasn't the worst I've ever smelled (that would have been when Marilyn rolled in the sludge of a dead armadillo; I may tell that story later), but it was bad. Awful. Horrible. I'm gagging a little now just thinking about it. I don't know what happened to that poor little white calf, but he was DRT (dead right there - it's a technical Okie term). You're welcome for not taking a picture of it. Our friendship can remain in tact. 

For the end of the week Rocco, Nana Lana, and I took a little drive to Bixby for some fresh produce and they had pumpkins!

And twisty gourds!

And a gigantic turtle!

And a baby water buffalo!

And the man who I assume is the owner based on his apparent age, knowledge, and because he talked like he'd owned it for a long, long time told us about their free pumpkin patch that opens next weekend. We drove down to the patch so we'd know where it was and we saw this magnificent barn. 

Isn't she beautiful? Beauty-full? I stood outside the fence to admire her and the empty, uncovered silos. I love old barns. LOVE THEM! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE THEM! Did I say that I LOVE them? I usually stop to take pictures when I see one that I think my Aunt Eileen would enjoy sketching. I haven't sent her this picture yet; I want to see if she reads this or not. 😉 

On the way home Rocco fell asleep 15 minutes from home. Boo on that. This necessitated a little backroad driving to let him sleep a little longer. Backroads never disappoint. This is a sign in the neighboring county, about half a mile north of our house. 

Either someone was really po'd at that sign or it has a bad case of teen acne. I'm not sure why there's even a speed limit sign on this road; most of the time it's rutted out and if you drove 40 mph you'd probably lose your transmission. And the traffic is minimal and there are no houses on that road. But, I digress.  

This is a county road about 3 miles from our house. I'm going to venture a guess that it doesn't get a lot of traffic. 

In other news, we have five kittens that will be going to new homes in the next few days. I took them for their first shots this morning and came home and gave them worm-preventer like a pro. I pinned those babies down and shoved that goop down their throats. Okay, maybe it wasn't quite like that, but I did "git-r-done" like a pro. I guess learning how to worm animals when I was little came in handy today. I even managed to get some in the mama kitty - her name is Hocat. That's another story for another day. She didn't like the medicine and thought about throwing a royal fit, but I had the last word of the argument. This is Sam (the only boy), Queenie (short for Queenie Peavy from the book by Robert Burch), Tabby (short for Tabitha), Grayton, and Honey.

They were all conked out until Hocat came back with a dead mouse in her mouth. There was a sixth kitten, Callie (the calico), and she was the sweetest of the bunch, very calm and snuggly, and she had the prettiest little face. She disappeared one day and we don't know if she was attacked by a predator or was stolen. We have been very sad about it and Rocco makes up stories about where he thinks she is and what she's doing. Today he said she was in Tulsa. That little Callie cat gets around, according to him. 

And that's our week in a nutshell. My second college course starts this week and it's a philosophy class - lots of reading and writing - time consuming stuff. Wish me luck!