I ate Thanksgiving dinner in a Denny's somewhere in Missouri. At least it seemed like Missouri. This is not something I've made a habit of doing, but I was moving across the country at the time and I was hungry. And, shockingly, both McDonald's and Taco Bell were closed. When I stopped driving that night I was in Oklahoma and there I stay. For a while anyway. And, as I've never lived in Oklahoma, I suppose at least occasionally, I will chronicle the many things I have to get used to here in the dust bowl.
Not exactly trading up, a couple weeks ago I packed up my things in Philadelphia and carted them 1,500 miles west to budding metropolis that is Duncan, Oklahoma. I assume we’re all familiar with Duncan. You remember – the Texoma town somewhere between Oklahoma City and Dallas where you can find no fewer than three snow cone stands in town, a statue of Earl Halliburton, and an old train engine festively decked in half a string of Christmas lights and a wreath. It’s next to the mini tilt-a-whirl in the park. The next nearest town is 40 minutes away so if the Wal-Mart on Highway 81 doesn’t have what you need, you probably don’t need it. At any rate, you certainly can’t have it. The tallest building in town is four stories high and if you stand outside in the wind for long you’ll begin to understand why. Tiny tumbleweeds tumble down the sidewalks and there seems to be an inordinate amount of plaid and trucker hat mesh about. Breathe deep – that’s oil you smell. And probably cow. There might be some cow in there, too. (More later on how much I'm learning about cows.)
After living back east these last few years, being in Duncan is a bit of an odd adjustment. I was in the post office last week and the person in front of me in line turned around when I came in to smile and say hello. Everywhere I go people are looking at me in the eye for no good reason and trying to talk to me. I don’t know what they mean by behaving in such a way, but it’s unnatural. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a hundred times – quit looking at me and mind your own business.
At any rate, after the post office debacle I also made the two minute trek to the Duncan Public Library to acquire my very own library card. (Incidentally, I am pleased to announce that with my new Duncan card I now have five active library cards in four states. I wonder if there’s a record.) I think you can learn a lot about a town from spending some time in its library. What I learned about Duncan no library loving person should ever have to know.
This does not bode well.
Don't lie. You're jealous.
Ode to a Box, upon Moving
Oh noble Box of mighty tree’s descent,
Grant me again your organizing skills.
My underpaid and madcap soul laments,
And in the basement you wait to be filled.
With you and yourn I trust my worldly goods,
Faithful friends and worthy, come what may.
We’ll set off soon ‘cross yonder hill and wood
So I can find a nicer place to stay.
Protecting junk that should have been yard sold,
Lid awash in scribbled Sharpie black,
Crammed with clearly more than you should hold,
Ride shotgun proud and brace for railroad tracks.
Though some may wish to think outside you,
None make square look half as hip as you do.
Robbing My Past to Give to My Present
Despite the fact that neither Kevin Costner nor Christian Slater seem to care much for sounding English when playing English characters, I’ve always liked Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Morgan Freeman, Alan Rickman, and that ribald Friar Tuck – what’s not to like? And, though it has its doubtful moments, Robin Hood: Men in Tights is also a fairly enjoyable flick. (“We didn’t land on Sherwood Forest. Sherwood Forest landed on us!”) I have even quite enjoyed the several episodes I’ve seen of the recent BBC incarnation of Robin Hood. Richard Armitage stalking around a Olde English town in black leather and a scowl trying to catch Jonas Armstrong’s Robby H. – that’s just good television.
I have to confess, though, the version of the Robin Hood legend nearest and dearest to my heart is the underrated Disney classic featuring Baloo the bear from The Jungle Book as Little John. That film became the second reason for me to love Baloo the bear, the first reason for me to love Peter Ustinov, and the last reason I’d ever need to learn to climb that big tree in our back yard (to escape from the Sherriff’s men, of course). Though I did learn to scamper up that tree like a monkey, I will admit that I was never quite as graceful as a cartoon fox when I was about it.
As I got older I watched fewer cartoons and clearly discovered other Robins Hood, but every so often, however many years it may have been since last I watched the Sherriff bop Trigger and Nutsy, I would find myself humming one of my two favorite songs from the film. If I was feeling particularly cheerful, strains of “Ooh-de-lally, ooh-de-lally, golly what a day” might grace those fortunate enough to be near my happy self. But if I was feeling a little more solemn it would be the jail song, “Not in Nottingham.”
When I was eight I got a three octave Casio keyboard for my birthday. And, after “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” one of the first songs I plunked out was the jail song. “Every town [plunkplunkplunk plunkplunkplunk]/ has its ups and downs. [plunkplunkplunk plunkplunkplunk]/ Sometimes ups [plunkplunkplunk plunkplunkplunk]/ outnumber the downs. [plunkplunkplunk plunkplunkplunk]/ But not in Nottingham. [plunkplunkplunk plunk flourish plunk]” I don’t remember being a terribly melancholy child, but I really liked that song. “Ooh-de-lally” was more fun just to sing really fast. I could still sing either song (or a host of others) for you now, given the proper motivation. The proper motivation being, of course, a willing or at least tolerant audience.
I rewatched Robin Hood the other day and let myself slip again into the familiar rhythms of dialogue long ago memorized. Moments twenty years gone, people and places lost to the fickleness of childhood remembrance, drifted back to watch with me over my eight-year-old shoulder. Stick-on earrings from a friend, waiting for my dad to pick me up and hoping he’ll be just a little late, snow falling perfect for a snowman, my pink coat with the so-smooth buttons, and a Cam Jansen and an Encyclopedia Brown in my book bag.
And maybe that’s the reason I’ve never been able to get behind the Disney-Will-Steal-Your-Soul movement that’s so popular with the kids these days. Walt’s mammoth empire may have plenty of faults, but all those stories and songs have been inextricably wound through a thousand other bits and pieces pasted all over the insides of my memories of growing up. They’ve served as social adhesive, celebratory activities, gifts given and received, escapes into imagination and from worry. And now they’ve become triggers, springing dusty fragments of childhood out of forgotten crannies and into nostalgia. Like the song says, “Reminiscin’ this and that and having such a good time, / Ooh-de-lally, Ooh-de-lally, golly what a day.” And I can’t help but thank poor, dead, possibly cryogenically frozen Walt for that.
Next week I’m watching The Little Mermaid.
The Most Excellent Way
And now I will show you the most excellent way.
If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophecy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
I Corinthians 13
Wild Kingdom
So there I was, minding my own business, just walking down the sidewalk outside my building, when all of a sudden, with no warning to speak of, an unusually pointy acorn rocketed past my head, mere inches from several vital sensory organs! I can’t say for sure that it had been sharpened into a point, but I’ve never seen a nut grow that way in nature.
Well, the acorn cracked on the sidewalk at such an angle and with a level of force as to preclude any possibility of accident. Following the angle at which it had flown past my noodle, I whirled around to where it must have come from to face my apparent foe and was confronted with the glassily hostile stare of a squirrel, glaring down at me from a suspiciously convenient branch.
I would have retaliated, of course, giving that squirrel what it had coming, but just then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of another squirrel approaching from my left and I could hear a telltale rustle in the bush to my right. I backed slowly away down the sidewalk. Better to live to fight another day. When I got to my car I quickly got in and locked the doors. As I started to turn the car on I happened to glance out my windshield and what should confront me but the sinister gaze of another squirrel, perched calmly on the fence in front of my car. He shifted the abnormally pointy acorn he held in his tiny arms, implying the unspoken threat. His sinister eyes followed me out of the parking lot.
I wish I could say that this was the first time something like this has happened, but, unfortunately, the sidewalk outside my building bears the craterous scars of many such skirmishes. It’s almost impossible to walk down it in heels.
Philadelphia’s a tough town.
