All Wet in Oklahoma

Oklahoma has more man-made lakes than any other state and has over one million surface acres of water.

Back when I was a kid growing up, I think we visited a fair amount of lakes in Oklahoma when we went on vacation.  My dad used to say Oklahoma spent more money on their lakes and state parks than they did their roads.  I don't know about that, but the lakes certainly were better - and far outnumbered - the lakes in the Texas Panhandle.

Dad used to tell a story of going fishing in Oklahoma with some of his buddies;  this was in the days of being able to drink and drive (as long as you weren't drunk and even then it wasn't as big of a deal as it is now).  They were all sunburned and tired, fish in a cooler and what was left of the beer in another.  One guy rolled down his window to throw out an empty beer can and the driver yelled "Don't do that!  There's a highway patrol right behind us!"

The guys figured they'd get pulled over, but the cop just stayed behind them and they thought he hadn't seen the beer can being tossed.  It was only ten/fifteen miles to the Texas line and the police cruiser stayed behind them but not pulling them over.  The men thought they were really lucky, but about a mile from the state line the cop turned on his lights and pulled up right on their bumper and motioned for them to pull over, so they did.

As the officer got out of his car and walked up to theirs, they wondered why they were being stopped.  They certainly hadn't been speeding and no one was drunk (and having a cop follow you for miles probably did a good job of sobering them up).  The state trooper asked for the driver's license, glanced at it and started up some small talk.

"Been fishing?" asked the officer.  "Yessir." said the driver. "Had any luck?" came the next question.  The driver allowed that they had done all right.  The cop looked at everyone in the car and back to the license, then handed it back.  The men were relieved until the trooper said:

"Say, I saw that you threw out a beer can several miles back."  The driver knew it would do no good to lie, so he admitted they had.  "Didn't you want it?" asked the cop.  The driver said no, they didn't.

"Well, the state of Oklahoma doesn't want it, either.  What say we go back and you pick it up and take it back to Texas with you?"

So, they turned around and drove back the other way and when they got to the place where they had littered, the cop flashed his lights and they stopped and picked up a beer can.  It wasn't even the brand they were drinking, but it satisfied the cop and he waved them on their way. 

The Last Picture Show

One of my favorite movies. The movie takes place around the time I was born, but I can identify with the characters growing up in a small Texas town.



I haven't been to the movies in years, not since Titanic. (the movie, not the actual voyage) I love movies,though, and have a fairly large collection of DVDs, mostly being my favorite movies which I gleaned from the Wal Mart bargain bin. The majority of them are still in the wrappers, unopened and I'm saving them for a rainy day. Or when I don't have Internet. Or forget to pay the cable bill.

When I was a kid, my two older sisters and I used to go to the movies fairly often, nearly every Saturday. Our folks would drop us off there on a Saturday afternoon and go do Lord only knows what, but they'd be gone a long time and we'd not only watch the movie once, but sometimes sit through it a second time waiting on our parents. Even then, concession prices were outrageous so we'd smuggle candy in and use whatever money was left over from buying tickets to get soft drinks. We'd usually have a big carton of Whoppers malted milk balls, my oldest sister's favorite candy. My other sister still says my big sis would dole them out: "One for you, one for you and two for me....one for you, one for you, two for me." I don't remember it quite that way and I'm sure my sis gave me more than my share to keep me from fidgeting and whining. At that time, there were two theaters here in town, the La Vista Theater (recent photo) and the Capri Theatre.

The La Vista was an older movie house, but some seats were reclining and they also had a "crying room", a small soundproof room with a huge picture window so mothers could take cranky infants inside and not disturb the other patrons. I used to like to go in there sometimes just for the novelty of it. Some of their seats however were threadbare and crooked, the padding compressed by thousands of movie goer's butts over the decades. I can't remember when it closed, but the last time I was in there it was very run-down and dirty, the floor permanently sticky from thousands of gallons of spilled drinks, the once-beautiful art deco marquis in front showing its age.

The other theater, the Capri, was new, but lacked the style of the LaVista. The seats didn't recline, but at least they had padding. It's closed now as well, a victim of both a new multi-screen theater in the shopping center and the advent of home VCRs. I remember my folks speaking of La Nora Theatre with fondness, but that was before my time. According to what I read on the 'net, it burned down in 1960.

I don't recall my parents ever going to the theater with us, but I do remember all of us going to the drive-in. At one time there were two of them here in town, both long since gone. One of them had a playground right under the huge screen and I guess I was about six or seven and looking up and seeing the shower scene from Psycho, the knife ripping through the curtain, as large as a car from that perspective. I opted for baths for years after that.

Funny how things embarrass you when you're a kid. I absently mindedly scratched my butt once in the hallway at school and one of the other guys said "Hey, Mike....you goin' to the movies?" Puzzled, I shook my head. "Jes' wonderin'." he snickered. "You were pickin' yer seat." My face turned red with the howls of every kid in earshot. He didn't think it so funny when I poured vinegar into his chocolate milk later at lunch. I'm not sure what was more funny; the look on his face when he swallowed or watching it come out his nose. The lesson I learned best that day wasn't in reading or writing, but "don't get mad, get even."

I haven't been to a drive-in since I lived in Denton. A buddy and our girlfriends would load up and go, especially on the nights when it was "bumper sticker night"; if you had the bumper sticker on your vehicle of the radio station that sponsored the night, the entire carload got in for just a few dollars. The movies usually weren't all that good, but it was fun to get there early and watch the college kids drive in and unload eight or ten out of the car and sometimes several more out of the trunk. We usually went in my friend's El Camino, parking backwards in the space and sitting in lawn chairs in the back, drinking beer and enjoying the soft, warm North Texas nights more than we did the movie.

Thinking of how much fun it was to go to the movies when I was younger reminded me of a girl I went to school with. She was a couple of years younger than me, really cute, but...well, let's just say she wasn't the brightest bulb on the tree, ok? A classmate of mine took her to the movies one Saturday evening and told us about the date on the following Monday. She lived way out in the country, so he left early to pick her up as so to be able to get to the first showing of the movie he planned to take her to. She wasn't ready - I really don't think she was too good at telling time - and they got to the theater after the movie started.

They sat through the movie and the intermission after it was over. This was back when they didn't clear the theater after the showing (and that was why my sisters and I sat through two showings of a movie when we were kids) and there were local commercials, cartoons and coming attractions before the feature started. My friend and his date watched all of that, then watched the first of the movie that they had missed.

My classmate said several minutes of what they had seen had gone by and he was ready to go. He kept glancing over at the girl, but she was engrossed in the movie as if she had never seen it before. He waited a few more minutes, trying to be polite, thinking that she'd finally catch on that she had already seen that part of the movie, then leaned over to her and whispered:

"Where did we come in at?"

She looked at him like HE was the stupid one and with a mouth full of popcorn turned around and pointed:

"Right back there at that door!"

Does a Bear...

**** in the woods?

I was reminded of one of my dad's stories when I read this on a Facebook friend's wall:

Heading to lake McClellan for Boy Scout one day campout hope they can handle the bear that's gonna be growling while they are asleep LOL

My pop used to tell a story of going to the lake with a bunch of his buddies;  they drank beer all the way there (that was legal then, btw) and ate cheese crackers and hot sausages and all sorts of stuff.  They weren't far away from the lake when dad said he started suffering from "intestinal distress" because of all the beer and junk he had consumed.  As soon as they found a campsite, he jumped out of the car, grabbed some TP and headed off into the bushes.

It was a moonless night, pitch black and he stumbled his way through the brush until he figured he had gone far enough away from the campsite to be as sanitary as could be considering the rough conditions.  He hurriedly dropped his pants and crouched down, his stomach loudly rumbling, a sure sign that he had better be quick with his business.

Not to get too graphic, but pop said "it" was explosive, making a noise such as he hadn't heard in a long time. ("Like a wildcat well comin' in!" he would describe.)  No sooner than he had started, he heard a muffled female voice: "Did you hear that?" then a man's voice, "What was it?" then the female replying in fright:  "I dunno, sounded like a bear!  "Where's my pistol?" said the male voice.

Without hesitation, my pop pulled up his pants and hastily made his way through the brush and dark night back to where his pals were setting up camp under the light of a gas lantern.  Drunk and tired from their trip, dad and his friends went to sleep.

The next day, more than a little hungover, dad looked in the direction of where he had stumbled to make his emergency toilet and saw he had relieved himself right smack-dab in the middle of someone's campsite.

French Toast & Fresh Tears

Earlier today I followed a link in my reader to a recipe site post about French toast. I didn't learn anything; the post was about how good the ends of a loaf of bread were for that dish, but a single sentence about her mother eating the ends of the bread because her kids wouldn't eat them touched my heart and brought tears to my eyes.

Moms make sacrifices all the time, both big and small. I didn't realize it at the time, being a self-centered child, but my mom sacrificed so much for her kids. I couldn't even begin to list the things she gave up so my sisters and I could have a better life...and there were probably hundreds more I never knew about.

I sure miss my momma. I’d give half the rest of my life to have her back for just one day.

Growling Mother, Munching Monkey

I think about my mom every day, but more so that today is Mother's Day. I often beat myself up, thinking about the times I disappointed her or wasn't the son I should have been, but most memories are about the good and funny times. I like to think I inherited her sense of humor.

One recollection I had earlier made me smile; we were having a family dinner with the main course being ribs. I had just polished off my last rib (there were none left on the platter) and jealously looked over at mom eating one of her ribs. She saw me eyeballing her rib and she put an exaggerated bite on the bone, narrowed her eyes and growled at me.

I laugh out loud every time I think of that.

Kids Ask the Funniest Questions

I've got a Facebook friend - Kevin - who is the son of an old classmate; I always enjoy his posts, especially the ones about his nephews and nieces and his interaction with them.

I was listening to a classic rock station while recently checking my FB friend's posts and laughed out loud at another one of Kevin's tales about one of his nephews when the old late 70's tune came on: "Do You Wanna Make Love" by Peter McCann. (song w/ lyrics)

Thinking about this song and my own nephews when they were the age of Kevin's reminded me of something I had forgotten until the song stirred my memory. I can't remember where we were, or what we were doing, but my youngest nephew Brad - who has nearly grown children of his own now - tugged on my shirt sleeve and said he wanted to ask me a question. "Sure!" I told him, and knelt down to get on his level. It was clearly important to him that he get my opinion, so I gave him my full attention. "Uncle Mike," he started, his sweet little face looked at me with earnest "Would you wanna make love or wouldja just rather fool around?"

I was taken aback, at first thinking he was making a joke, but he was far too young to even know what that meant. It then dawned on me that he had heard the song on the radio, maybe even overheard his momma singing along. I replied the best way I knew how:

"Dunno, Brad. Guess that would depend on who I was with."

That satisfied him,thank goodness.

Here's a scan of a photo I took of him at around the same time.