“You Cain’t Have Coffee”

We had an appointment with a contractor a few years ago. We were finishing the plans and the contract to build a new home and were trying to work it during the noon hour. I was away from my office and She Who Must be Obeyed had told her employer she was going to have to take a long lunch so we could work it all in. Our builder lived several miles away and we had to have enough time to finish our tasks.

While driving to see him we decided to stop at a Braums to get a hamburger for lunch. For those unfamiliar with them, Braums is a regional dairy which markets their milk by selling it through their own stores. Free standing stores, it was a convenient stop to purchase milk and milk products and their stores have grown into small markets with an ever widening list of products. They also sell ice cream and ice cream products and have a grill where you can buy hamburgers, fries and other such items.

It was a little before noon when we entered. There weren’t many other people there yet, none in line to be served. We went to place our order and were helped by a young woman who was obviously a little challenged. It appeared likely that they were hiring disadvantaged persons, thus getting some tax credits from the state. In a slow, deliberate drawl, sounding like she was fresh from the set of To Kill a Mockingbird (the poor side of the track) she asked, “Whatta you want?”

She Who Must be Obeyed looked up at the menu and replied, “I’ll have a number 4 with a Diet Coke.” I looked at the menu and saw that it pictured a very nice looking hamburger, fries and a Coke. That looked good to me. She slowly punched the appropriate buttons on the cash register.

“Whatta you want?” she asked me.

Knowing we were in a bit of a hurry, I said, “I’ll take a number 4 with coffee.” I started getting my wallet out to pay for it.

“You cain’t have coffee,” she said. (That isn’t a misspelled word. She didn’t say “can’t”, she said “cain’t”, with a long “A” sound, drawing it out and making it a much longer word than necessary for most communication.) She had said, “You cain’t have coffee.”

I thought she was of the impression that they didn’t have any coffee but she was mistaken. I had just seen someone place two pots of freshly brewed coffee on the warmer so I explained it to her. “Sure I can,” I said, “they just put some fresh coffee out there.”

“You cain’t have coffee,” she repeated, speaking a little slower and more deliberately than before just to make sure I could understand her. I thought I could detect her upper lip curling.

“Why not?” I asked.

She looked at me in a condescending manner, rolled her eyes and jerked her head in a manner that forced me to look up at the menu. “It don’t come with coffee, it comes with a soft drink!”

I looked up at the menu and, sure enough, there was a picture of what you get with a number 4: a hamburger, fries and a soft drink. I returned to look at her and she was glaring at me as if I was trying to get something for nothing. I was playing outside the box and it was her job to protect the integrity of its walls. It was her job, right at that moment, to keep me from trying to make changes to the menu and, by God, she was going to do her job.

I didn’t want to get into an argument or even a spirited conversation with her. I was highly educated and above average intelligence. As I said, she was obviously challenged and it would have been an unfair exchange. She should not have wanted to argue with me. For that matter, she should have been thankful for the opportunity to simply talk to me. It should have been the highlight of her day. But, here she was missing the magnanimity of the moment by declaring herself the Guardian of the Coffee Pot.

“I don’t want a soft drink,” I said, “I want coffee.”

“It don’t come with coffee, it comes with a soft drink,” she replied.

“But I want coffee.”

“You cain’t have coffee!” She was emphatic.

I tried to reason with her. “I’m sure management doesn’t care if I get coffee rather than a soft drink,” I explained.

Again, she would have no part of that plea. “It don’t come with coffee, it comes with a soft drink.” She was clipping her words, speaking even more slowly just in case she was dealing with a simpleton who didn’t understand plain English.

I decided to approach it from another direction. Perhaps if I explained why I wanted it she would be sympathetic. “Look,” I said, “I like coffee. No, I don’t just like it, I love it. And just recently I had coffee with a sandwich and I was amazed how these flavors combined to form their own unique taste. I tried the flavor combinations of a hamburger and coffee. It was incredible. I loved it. I want coffee.”

It made no dent in her armor. She was just all the more resolved to stand firm against my wishes. “You cain’t have no coffee,” she said, almost yelling. “It don’t come with coffee, it comes with a soft drink.”

This had been going on several minutes when She Who Must be Obeyed interrupted us. I thought she might have been on my side but she said to me, “Just get it with a Coke so we can get on down the road.”

“No, I want coffee,” I answered in a very calm voice.

“You’re holding up the line,” she said. I looked and saw there were about six people patiently standing there to order.

“No,” I said, “I want coffee. And, besides, these people are on my side. I’m taking a stand not just for me but for them and everyone else who comes in here wanting to order what they want.” None of them seemed to be impatient about waiting too long while I got what I wanted.

She Who Must be Obeyed turned to the girl at the register. “Do you have my order?” she asked.

The girl looked down at her register and replied, “A number 4 with a Diet Coke?”

“That’s it,” said She Who Must be Obeyed. And then, to me she said, “I’m sitting down. Come on over to the table when you’re through.” And with that she left me alone.

I turned my attention to the clerk again. I said, “I really want coffee with that order.”

“You cain’t have coffee! It don’t come with coffee! It comes with a soft drink!” She was standing her ground. I was standing there alone with no one watching my back and she knew it and was savoring the moment.

I came up with an argument she was obviously missing. “Look, maam, you make more profit selling coffee than a soft drink. A soft drink requires water, carbonated water, syrup and ice. With coffee, it’s just coffee and water, that’s all. I don’t even put cream in it. Or sugar. Coffee and water. You’ll make more money off the coffee than you would off a soft drink.” Surely, appealing to her monetary nature would work. After all, Braums was there to make money, no other reason than that.

She leaned forward over the register. “It don’t come with coffee,” she said, as if I hadn’t heard that before, “it comes with a soft drink.”

I was quiet for awhile. I tried to think of another argument in my favor but I had already called out the best in my play book, personal taste and economic arguments, and nothing had worked. I looked behind me and saw 12 to 15 people now standing in line to be served. And their pleasant, supportive looks were replaced with looks of impatience. They didn’t have any more time than I did. We were limited in how much time we could spend at lunch and I was using too much of it arguing with this young lady who controlled the register.

I turned back to her, hung my head and said in a low voice only she could hear, “You’re not going to let me have coffee with that, are you?”

“No,” she replied, “it don’t come with coffee, it comes with a. . . .”

“Yes, yes,” I interpreted, “I understand, ‘it don’t come with coffee,’ it comes with a soft drink.”

“That’s right,” she said.

I hesitated and then, “Please let me have a number 4,” I said.

She slowly punched the appropriate button on the register. “One number 4,” she echoed. “And what would you like to drink with that?” she asked, glaring at me while awaiting my announcement.

“I’d like a Diet Coke with that,” I said.

“One Diet Coke,” she said as she poked the Diet Coke button on the register. She was a little smug as she cast a glance in my direction. “Will there be anything else?” she asked.

“Yes maam,” I answered, “I’d like a cup of coffee.”

The request startled her but only for a moment. Regaining her composure, she said, “I’ll have to charge you for that.”

“I would expect nothing else,” I replied.

She slowly punched the coffee button on the register. “Will there be anything else?”

“Yes maam,” I said. “You know that Diet Coke I ordered.”

“Yes.”

“Please don’t make it. I’m not going to drink it and it would be a waste to make it and just throw it out.”

“Okay,” she agreed.

On Reverence and Respect

Often one meets clergy deserving of respect; seldom does one meet clergy deserving of reverence.  Reverence is defined as deep respect and by that simple definition the foregoing premise is proven inaccurate.  However, there is something about the word that places it far above “respect” and the attitude or the emotions conveyed by that word should be reserved for something more than mortal humankind. 

All too often we give “reverence” to persons undeserving of such.  There always seems to be some clergy, man or woman, who demands reverence and thus claim a special status for themselves.  And they demand that their pronouncements are more meaningful than others’.  Those pronouncements, however, seem to defy reason and logic, and, for those who are concerned about the state of religion, they leave one cold, wishing the “reverential” person would have remained silent.

Pat Robertson comes to mind, with his pronouncements that natural disasters are the result of God’s punishment on offending persons.  It reminds us of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”  We often wish such people would worship the loving God of Jesus and quit delighting in their belief that God has not only set up a hell in the afterlife for those who don’t do precisely what He says, but has also flung hell-like retributions on people while they are still alive for not doing precisely what He says.  The immediate problem is that those hell-like retributions hurt, harm and kill the just and the unjust, and regardless of how one tries to spin it, that is a very real problem.

It has always been this way.  Increase Mather said, in commenting on the great fire that swept through Boston in 1711, “Has not God’s holy day been profaned in New England?  Has it not been so in Boston this last summer?  Have not burdens been carried through the streets on the sabbath day?  Nay, have not bankers, carpenters and other tradesmen been employed in servile works on the sabbath day?  When I saw this, my heart said, ‘Will not the Lord for this kindle a fire in Boston?’”  The God of Increase was hardly the God of Jesus.

You Don’t Need to Tell Me I’m Fat

 

Of course I’m overweight.  I don’t need my family to tell me that or my friends or even my doctor.  Every time I look in the mirror, I see an old fat man looking back at me.  You wish I wasn’t fat?  I wish I wasn’t old.  Although I have always been large, I have noticed it has become more of a problem in recent years.  Part of that is that I am older and losing weight is more of a problem the older one gets.  I remember when I was in my prime that I went on a severe diet and lost 60 or 70 pounds.  In fact, I did that on two separate occasions.  The weight loss was nice but the change in my overall personality was rather dangerous, even to my health.  Both times I put it all back on, plus some. 

I am heavier today that I have ever been.  I know it’s not good for my health.  My doctor will suggest in a very kind way (not judgmental at all) that for my own good I need to lose some weight.  Weight loss is a pretty simple formula—on paper.  I could share my “severe diet” but it’s something I really don’t recommend.  I understand the formula, burn more calories than you take in.  Usually that simply means reducing the amount of intake and increase the amount of physical activity.  I explained to an interested party that about the only exercise left to me today is walking.  “Then, you need to walk,” said the listener.  “I can’t walk,” I explained, further telling that I shuffle rather than walk and I do that with the aid of a cane and sometimes a walker.  I’ve gone to my doctor with such leg problems that he has offered to have someone take me back to my car in a wheelchair.  I declined the offer.

Would I like to be a hundred pounds lighter?  You bet.  Will that happen?  A few months ago I would have told you that was so unthinkable that I would not even want to speak of it.  Something has happened since then I can’t explain.  My walking became a little easier.  The pain in my legs and elsewhere diminished.  It didn’t go completely away, but it was better.  The pain in the knees became almost irrelevant to my overall functioning.  I felt better, walked better and was able to be more active.  I was able to walk a block and then a few blocks and eventually got up to a half a mile and then a mile.  I was able to get around outside doing things I had only thought of for the past few years.  I uncovered my old 1966 Mustang, put in a new battery and got it started.  I worked on the engine.  Crawling under the car, something I would not have attempted earlier, I was able to drain the gasoline from the tank to put fresher fuel.  I was able to remove the wheels and work on the brakes.  That involved getting down on the floor, lifting, squatting and stretching.  I was frankly amazed that I was able to do as much as I did and still get back up.

After a few months’ improvements, I went to the doctor for a scheduled exam.  My blood pressure was perfect, the cholesterol and triglycerides were improved from the previous six months and were near perfect, the blood sugar was perfect and I had lost nine pounds.  I believe he was feeling pretty good about his doctoring skills and then I explained that I had started taking Flax Seed Oil and that I credited the improvements to that.  He didn’t argue with me and told me to keep it up.

I don’t know that that is the reason I am doing better, nor do I know of anything else which could be responsible.  Right now, I feel better than I have in years.  My legs still get tired and over a day’s time they start hurting and the walking becomes difficult again.  Sometimes I even have to get out the cane for added strength and stability.  Yes, I have a lot of problems and I am sure it’s because I am fat.

I’ve always been fat.  I know because I was told often as a youngster, not by other kids but by a teacher.  I remember one time when I was about in the seventh or maybe the eighth grade we were looking at our science books at body types.  There were three line drawings of body types, depicting a skinny boy, a moderately larger boy and a much larger, obese boy.  I had a teacher who enjoyed putting me down, trying to make me feel less about myself.  He never failed to remind that I wasn’t much of an athlete (which I wasn’t) and tried to humiliate me whenever he could.

I remember a time when he was reviewing words with us and brought up the word “flammable”, giving its definition.  I asked what “inflammable” meant and he told me (and the class) there was no such word and that if there was it would mean “not able to burn.”  I told him that I was pretty sure I had seen it on the back of a gasoline tanker and he got a good laugh out of that, telling me I was imagining it.  Sometime later we were on a school bus on an outing that took us through town.  There in front of our bus was a small gasoline tanker with the word “inflammable” painted in large letters across the back.  All the kids saw it and pointed it out, explaining that was exactly what Hershel had said.  I didn’t say anything.  I was afraid of the man who had a history of what I perceived to be violence toward children—something tolerated and even encouraged back in those days.  That was why I never looked it up in a dictionary to prove him wrong.  Of course, today takes little effort to learn that “flammable” means “easily set on fire,” and “inflammable” means “easily set on fire.”

Ours was a small rural school which only went through the eighth grade.  We had only three teachers and he was one of them, serving as both a teacher and the principal.  Looking back on that school, we probably got just as good an education as anyone else, including our counterparts in town attending larger schools.  I think socially many of us were underdeveloped.  Years later, when I was no longer afraid of him and was not a threat to his children (and I came to view him as an equal—if not an underling), I asked him if they ever thought of the social difficulties we had when we left there and went into town to larger schools.  He said they understood it at the time but they didn’t know what to do about it.

Back to the line drawings of the body types—for some reason the teacher signaled me out for a question.  “Hershel,” he asked, “which one of those do you think you look like?”  I knew I wasn’t the skinny kid, but neither did I feel I was the obese.  “The middle one, I guess,” I answered.  He didn’t just snicker at the answer, it provoked a giant and hearty belly-laugh, accompanied with, “You might have been but you’re sure not now.”  And I sank a little lower in the desk.

I wish I had jumped up and said, “Why you g _ _  d _ _ _ ed, m _ _ _ _ _ f _ _ _ _ _ _ s _ _ of a b _ _ _ _, I’m in the eighth grade, I’m 5’ 6” tall and weigh less than a hundred pounds.  We can’t all be anorexic like your entire family.”  They were the kinds of people who could have eaten lard for every meal and never put on a pound.  His daughter was in my grade and he always wanted her to be the smartest person in class.  They worked at it.  Every year we would take achievement tests and I always beat her until our final year when she won first place and I won second.  (It really didn’t matter to me but my mother was always suspicious of those test results.)  I didn’t say all that to him because I didn’t have such a fine vocabulary back then, and I was afraid of him, and I was more afraid of my dad.

Looking back on those times, I was made to feel very poor about myself and it affected me in nearly every facet of my life.  He singlehandedly made me feel I was fat and that was treated as a moral failing.  We had an invitational basketball tournament at that school called the “PeeWee Tournament.”  To play in that tournament boys had to be less than one hundred pounds and the girls had to weigh less than ninety pounds.  I played in that tournament all the way through the eighth grade.  I do not think a kid standing 5’ 6”, weighing less than 100 pounds can be considered obese.  I would speculate that a hundred pounds would only look obese on a two year old.  I further recall being in the ninth grade when John Kennedy was President and we were subject to considerable physical fitness testing.  Only because of that event do I remember that I measured 5’ 9” tall and weighed 125 pounds.  That’s not obese either.  When I graduated high school, I stood 5’ 11” tall and weighed 165 pounds.  Neither is that obese.

I saw some bullies when I was a kid, but the only bullies I ever had attack me personally were school teachers.  Thank goodness they were the exception or I might never have completed school and gone on to college to earn degrees including a Master’s in Education and a Juris Doctorate.

Given all that, today I know that I am obese.  Medical terminology says I am “morbidly obese,” a term I would think they would have changed by now.  But, I lost nine pounds by not even trying.  Perhaps I will try this time.  Maybe I can lose twelve pounds by the next six month exam.  If I don’t try to lose 60 or 70 pounds in four months, perhaps I can lose it and keep it off this time.  Yes, I know my health would be far better off.  But, I still refuse to think it is a moral issue.

You Ever See a Dead Guy?

 

“Did you ever see a dead guy?”  This was the question a guest asked David Letterman on his late night show.  “Sure,” answered David, “I’ve seen thousands of them at funerals.”  Of course, that was not what the guest had in mind.  He wanted to know if he had ever seen a dead guy in the raw—a dead guy somewhere where you aren’t supposed to see dead people.

Most of us have seen death, not staring us in the face, but laid out before us like a work of art to view with others, something like walking through a crowded art museum.  If the funeral defines our experience with death, we know little about its ugly side.  Regardless of how much we grieve, we get together with people sharing our loss and loss, remember the good times and the bad, and tell stories over and over again that bring joys and tears at the same time.  We eat and drink with family and friends while reminiscing about the past to which this person has now been committed.  We go into a house of worship and listen to a professional mourner talk about this person and then we go to look at him or her and marvel at how good they look.  We may even break down and cry over the coffin, but the pain and all the bad memories will someday be forgotten, or at least diminished, and we will remember only the good.  If that is what you have seen, a sanitized version of death, you have never seen a dead guy.

Have you ever helped pull a dead body from a car wreck?  It’s not a pleasant sight to see how badly the body can be broken.  Seeing a man lying in a house with a shotgun wound to his chest, his eyes vacantly pointing unfocused at a spot unknown, is death in the raw.  He is a stranger and so is his wife who is in the other room crying for what she has done.  You don’t know either of them or what brought on this tragedy.  There is no food and drink.  There are no sad or happy stories, no laughing and no crying.  There are no mourners.  There may later be a grieving mother or a grieving father, a sister or a brother lost in their not knowing how it is that this vital young man is suddenly gone.  There is nothing you can do.  As you walk through the room your eyes suddenly come into the space where the dead man’s dead eyes seem to be looking and you see not the dead man but catch a glimpse of death itself.  It can be ugly and hideous. 

You ever see a dead guy?  Yes.  As a youngster, perhaps 10 years old or so, my cousin and I were riding bicycles in a suburb of Oklahoma City.  A loud roar went overhead and crashed in the yard next to us.  He and I, as you would expect of any young boys, hurried over to have a front row seat.  Our youthful curiosity led us into a sobering scene of destruction and death, a place where small children should not venture.  I had always been fascinated with airplanes.  A youthful encounter with those amazing flying machines had opened vistas rarely imagined by one whose feet are firmly placed on the solid footing of mother earth.  But, there I stood looking at twisted metal, hardly recognizable for what it had been only a few seconds earlier.  Something dropping from the sky seldom holds its original form.  And the devastation of the done to the twisted metal paled to the damage done to the man and the woman who only a few seconds were riding in that machine.  I saw one torso lying by itself near a couple of arms and a leg looking as if they had been surgically severed from a human body.  There was a head nearby.  I couldn’t find the other one.  Most of the bodies were fragments.  They were picked up with tissue and placed in a bag.  All that damage was contained in a small back yard of a small house in a suburb filled with other small houses.  Surely there would someday be memorials and eventually happy memories for the ones left behind.  But, that day I learned that death can be ugly and hideous.

You ever see a dead guy?  Yes.  It came suddenly but realizing what had happened, fully realizing that he was gone was laborious.  I was high school age living with my parents in the country about six miles from the nearest town, about fifteen miles from the nearest hospital.  A car drove up to the house and came to a sudden stop.  Id didn’t know the car but I did know the driver.  He was a kid just a year or  two younger than me, Jackie Brimer.  We had gone to the little country school called Hext.  We were both were from close families that knew the difficulties of eking out a living from the sandy land cotton farms of that region.  He was a good kid.  We were not close friends but we were a little more than simply close acquaintances.  He had been crying and driving all too fast on those poor roads.  He ran to the house and told us his father had passed out and could we call for an ambulance.   And, then, as quickly as he had appeared he was gone, returning from whence he had come.  We made the call and it would take an hour in those days for the ambulance to find their home.  Both my parents kept a large oxygen bottle next to their bed.  They both had heart trouble and when their breathing was labored or when they had severe chest pains, they would lie there breathing in pure oxygen.  We wrestled that bottle into the back seat of my car and drove as fast as we could to the Brimer home.  What we found was a chaotic scene of fear and confusion.  We carried the oxygen bottle inside and put the mask on him just in case he was still breathing.  He wasn’t.  We were pretty certain of that.  He had soiled himself which is not unusual for a person who dies.  He wasn’t moving.  We didn’t know to try to feel a heartbeat in the carotid artery in those days.  We tried to feel a pulse in his wrist.  My father placed his ear near the nostrils of the man to try to detect breathing and I lightly placed my hand on his chest to try to detect the same thing.  His wife was sitting nearby, crying.  She probably knew all our efforts were useless.  There were two small children with her crying because their mother was.  There was a daughter a year or two older than me who was crying hysterically while bathing his face with a damp cloth.  Across the room was an older daughter who had been blind since birth; she hadn’t been taught to be a part of the world.  She had been hidden from sight of the community, her family having been embarrassed by what they had deemed a deformity, and that had resulted in a sightless person somewhat socially insecure.  She was sitting alone.  No one was comforting her; no one was telling her what was going on.  She was more afraid than anyone in that little house.  The ambulance finally arrived and he was taken to the hospital.  There was a general consensus that he was dead, but they put their oxygen on him just in case.  For whoever this man was, for whatever his failings as a husband and father may have been, he loved them in his own way and they loved him.  And he was gone.  And the fear they felt for the uncertain days ahead came before the memories, the recriminations, and the mourning.  Death can be ugly and hideous.

You ever see a dead guy?  Yes.  Too many.

Oklahoma and Red Dirt

 

My daughter came to me after a being asked by a new student from New York why there was so much red dirt here.  She didn’t know the answer and brought the question to me.  Telling her that I guess we were just luck didn’t seem to be enough.  Having done additional research on the subject I can now explain with a little more certainty why there’s so much red dirt around here.

One day God was busy making the world.  It wasn’t that he needed help or anything, but he had Gabriel there just to keep him busy; everyone needs something to do just to stay out of trouble so he had Gabriel running errands.  He had just finished the cornfields of the Midwest and had used more of the rich loam soil than he had originally planned.  He was working his way west of the Mississippi River, laying out the soil like a sweet little child spreading the dirt smooth so he could write his name.  He would smooth it down and then decide to put a little hill here and a little valley there.  He would drag his finger down through some of the valleys, meandering down to another, larger groove in the dirt he had drawn earlier using his full hand.  He would plant the large deciduous forests wherever he wanted them and the pine forests where he thought they were needed.  He had fun making some swamp grasslands down in a peninsula he had stuck on the land jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean.  He had had some left over weird animals, hard armor shelled animals with long tails and a long mouth full of wicked teeth and he thought that would be just the place for them.

He worked his way on further west and got all the way to Western Oklahoma when he ran out of dirt.  “Gabriel!” he called.

“Yes, Lord.”

“Do we have any more dirt I can use?”

“We only have some of this red dirt and you know that’s not all that good,” Gabriel replied.  “We’ve run out of the good stuff.  Can it wait until tomorrow when I can get some more loam made?”

“No,” said God.  “I’ll just go ahead and use what we have on hand.  I’m going to make my just a little further west and then I’m going to build me some mountains.  We need to spend our time tonight and tomorrow making some granite for the mountain base and you know how much work it is and how much time it takes to make a mountain.”

“Yes, Lord, I surely do.”

So God took the red dirt and spread it out from here to there, as far as the eye could see.  After it was through it was late at night and he and Gabriel decided they were too tired to build any hills or trench hardly any rivers.  Gabriel had prevailed on him not to make a lot of rivers as the red dirt would just make them muddy anyway.  But, God had felt they need a few of them because he was sure some of the animals might wander into that area and would need to take a drink now and then.

Before turning in for the night, God had decided to plant grass over the dirt he had spread out so smoothly.  He spoke the word and before Gabriel could turn his head there appeared a lush carpet of green reaching all the way from the hills of Texas to the Canadian border and even a little further.  It spread from the forests back east to the edge of the world on the west where he planned on making a great Rocky Mountain range.  God admired the sea of grass and thought it was good and told Gabriel so.  Gabriel, though, was particularly fond of hills, mountains and valleys, running rivers and lakes.  He asked God what kind of people would ever make that kind of place their home.

God said, “Gabriel, there’ll be some people who like this land just for what it is.  They’ll be as strong as a wild animal, so strong in fact that the buffalo and the bear will look at them in awe.  Deep down they’ll have a sweet spirit and when they look at this land where you see nothing they’ll see paradise and they’ll make it their home.”

God and Gabriel walked back to their line shack for the remainder of the night.  They were staying in a line shack as they were not finished with their work and wouldn’t be going home to Heaven before the work was through.  They still needed to prepare some granite for the mountains before they could shut it down for the night and get some sleep.

The grass was a short grass, not requiring a great deal of nutrients and certainly not requiring much water.  The plains had been made so hastily that there were no plans made for the weather system that would provide the amount of rain which would be needed to sustain large, towering trees.  The short grass grew and flourished.  Soon there were small animals, mice and other rodents and even rabbits that came into the grass lands, finding food among the tender leaves and homes deep within the roots.  They were blissfully growing their families.  And when the coyotes and the bobcats heard of those little thriving communities, they made their stealthy march into the grasslands looking for dinner among the mice and the rabbits.

Deer, elk and other large animals found the grass was satisfying and abundant.  They came there, grazing all day and resting during the night.  They were happy and prosperous.  They were grateful for the little rain that did fall and found there was just enough for them to find a little stream, a creek and a small river, here and there where they could quench their thirst.  They ate, they grew and their families grew.  And the wolves and the bears and even the cougars followed them onto the plains. 

Eventually large herds of buffalo came to the plains.  There were no animals so well suited for this short grass.  They ate well, eating their fill, resting up and moving on to another area where the grass is greener.  They roved from place to place eating whatever they could find and they never complained.  There was enough grass to support millions of them in the great herds.  Now and then a wolf would take one of them down, but hardly ever.  They lived without any danger; they had no enemies to speak of as there were just so many of them and they were so large and could be such a formidable enemy.  And then the Indian came along, going where they were, following them where they went.  And the buffalo provided the Indians their food, clothing and shelter.  It was a partnership that worked and the short grass was the base for it all.

Then, one day a box with wheels came onto the plains pulled by two large horses.  The wagon had a sheet of white cloth stretched over hoops attached to the box.  Tied behind the box were a milk cow and a young bull.  That box was stuffed with stuff, homemaking stuff, farming stuff, feed stuff and everything else people needed to survive.  There was a man and a woman sitting on a seat at the front of the box.  They were weathered, their skin was hardened by the sun, and their hair was dry and tangled.  They looked as hard as the buffalo but it appeared they had a tender heart.  They looked to be about in their 60s while in reality they could not have been any more than their mid to late 20s.  They had five children with them.  Two of the children were riding in the back of the box, two were walking along behind while driving four pigs along with the procession, and one was a little thing being held by the woman nursing at her breast.

They stopped their box as if to rest the weary horses and the weary people.  Sitting there, they looked around at the grass; grass as far as the eye could see to the north and the south, to the east and the west.  They sat there just south of one of the few rivers they had seen, the North Fork of the Red, and looked at it all.  They couldn’t see any buffalo that day, but they could see buffalo trails and buffalo wallows.  They saw a deer in the distance.  Mainly they saw the short grass, the green grass from which life seems to spring.  They knew if the mice and the rabbits, the deer and the elk, and the buffalo could live there, so could they.

She asked, “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

“I’m seeing a paradise,” he replied.

“But, I’ve never seen so much red dirt,” she said.

“I’m seeing a paradise,” he said again.

Crab Legs and the Hanging Judge

We live within a four hour drive of Ft. Smith, Arkansas, a town I have always found interesting because of its very unique history as it relates to Oklahoma Territory, the State of Oklahoma and the American West. I have always been interested in the American West, reveling in its brief history and mythology. And no state has a more interesting history than does State of Oklahoma.

During its earlier days, prior to statehood, Oklahoma was designated as Indian Territory. Sometime after the Civil War, it was divided into two parts, the Eastern half was Indian Territory and the Western half was Oklahoma Territory. Indian Tribes from all over the country were relocated into the Territory. It was a difficult and shameless solution of what the dominant society in the United States called the “Indian problem.” Indian Territory was a lawless area. There were always jurisdictional problems when it came to this vast amount of land which was set aside for the Indians, especially since the Indian tribes were being treated as a sovereign nation. Various tribes had their own police force, such as it was, but they were limited in dealing with the Indians themselves. Much of the crime taking place in the Territory was by white outlaws who were there sometimes to escape the authorities in the states surrounding the Territory. They found a safe haven in the Territory because law officials had no authority to enter it for any purpose and the tribal authorities had little jurisdiction over the intruders. The Territory was a large area, only slightly populated, with plenty of hiding places. And, while there they could prey on the Indians, thus making them once more victims, this time in their new homeland because their former homeland had been forcibly taken from them by the actions of the Federal and State governments. This had resulted in their removal to and relocation in the Territory in a movement known as the Trail of Tears.

Judge Isaac Parker was sent to Fort Smith, Arkansas, in 1875 to serve as the presiding judge over the federal court in that city. His jurisdiction included Indian Territory which then still covered what is present-day Oklahoma. Over a history of 21 years on the court, he tried thousands of cases and sentenced many men to be hanged. The court was in shambles when he took over and he readily sent word to the public that with his ascendency to the bench nothing short of law and order would ever be tolerated. He raised a small army of U.S. Marshals who were dispatched to the Territory with proper jurisdiction to reign in on the lawlessness. These marshals were a match for the outlaws they were sent to corral and they made a steady trek into the courtroom with their prisoners, the prisoners were given a fair trial and many of those who were convicted were sentenced to death. Those so sentenced were usually hanged outside the courthouse there in Fort Smith. Outlaws were hanged in such large numbers that Isaac Parker became known to this day as the “Hanging Judge.”

Today, Fort Smith is a small city in Arkansas which boasts a rich history. It is built on the Arkansas River and has always been capable of supporting river traffic down the Arkansas to the Mississippi to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. It is a prosperous little city which is a pleasure to visit. It is always good to visit the courthouse, Judge Parker’s gallows, the jail and all the other remnants and relics of the late 1800’s.

More often today we go there for the dining experience of Catfish Cove, a seafood restaurant. On Tuesdays they have a special—all the crab legs you can eat. The cost is a little pricey, but the food is excellent. They fly in sufficient numbers to feed hundreds of people on that one night. As you sit there eating, they keep coming by asking if you want more crab legs. And you say “yes” and continue eating, throwing the shells in a bucket on the table. It isn’t just crab legs, it is everything else on the entire menu. Vegetables you remember from your childhood, fried okra, potatoes prepared two or three different ways, casseroles, brown beans, green beans, fried yellow squash, soups and God knows what else. A vegetarian could go there and be in heaven. Of course, there is the obligatory salad, although I seldom see anyone spending a lot of time at that bar.

There is a selection of meats to rival any place. There are fried fish, frog legs, ribs and, again, more stuff than I can recall. They fry hushpuppies to go with the fish. Notice the common factor in most of this is that it is fried. Fried food isn’t good for you, but it tastes good. All of this is served on a buffet and you are encouraged to go back again and again until you have enough. They don’t want you to leave hungry and I cannot imagine that anyone ever has.

After you are through with the main course, there is a desert table loaded once again with stuff you remember from your childhood, two or three kinds of cobbler, cakes, homemade cinnamon rolls and one of the heaviest and richest chocolate cakes you could ever imagine. As if that isn’t enough, while you are eating dessert and having coffee to finish the evening, waiters and waitresses come around with buckets of ice cream offering you some to go along with your other dessert. About once a year my brother-in-law will call from Sallisaw, Oklahoma, asking if we are ready for crab legs. I’ll think about it and tell him I will check the timing with my wife. If we can go, we will. I call it premeditated gluttony. We know to get there by 4:00 o’clock in the afternoon as they open the doors thirty minutes later. Inexperienced eaters don’t understand that the line gets pretty long if you aren’t there that early and there have been occasions when they have run out of crab legs. Anyone who knows me would not believe that I use a little restraint when visiting the Catfish Cove. If I overeat, I pay for it dearly. Too much fried foods have an adverse effect on me. If I visit the dessert bar it can hurt me. I recall once returning to Sallisaw and having to lie down in the fetal position until the chest pains went away. It took about three or four hours. What happens to me, especially when I pig-out on desserts, is that it jacks my blood sugar up which in turn jacks up my blood pressure. This in turn causes chest pains. I have been hospitalized with this condition. (Sometimes it happens when I haven’t been eating anything at all.) It has happened enough that I know what is going on. The blood sugar is stroke level and the blood pressure is heart attack level. And the pain originating in my chest and radiating to my back and arms, shoulders and legs and feet, is more than I I can sometimes stand. It has happened often enough that I seem to know how to control it. Aspirin, nitroglycerin and bed rest seems to do the trick every time, at least it has so far. The last time I went to the hospital for it, they prescribed aspirin, nitroglycerin and bed rest. Do I still go to the Catfish Cove? Yes, but not often. I don’t think we went last year and I probably won’t be able to work it in this year either. When I do go I try to use a little restraint and don’t overeat. I avoid the dessert bar and refuse the ice cream. I like it all, but I recall my sister’s advice, “You have to ask yourself the question, ‘Is it so good you’re willing to die eating it?’” I have to admit there’s nothing I want that much.

What does Catfish Cove and all-you-can-eat crab legs have to do with Judge Isaac Parker, the Hanging Judge? Probably nothing except that they were both in Fort Smith, Arkansas, one of my favorite towns.

The Interview

In the spring of this year, a man came to my door wanting to interview me for an article he was writing about politics in rural America. He wrote for Der Spiegel, a German magazine which enjoys a good reputation among the reading public. I live in the small town of Washington, Oklahoma, and the Washington Post had done an article on our town as representative of a very small red community in a very red state. This reporter had decided to come to Washington to see for himself. The writer was German born, writing for a German publication. He was assigned to the United States bureau and you could tell the experience of our small town was something he had never seen. He visited with several of the people in town (at the local coffee shop and the local domino parlor) and had a feel for their Republican loyalties. When he asked them if there was a Democrat living here, they told him that I apparently was as I had an “Obama” bumper sticker on my car from 2008. With that, he appeared at my door. We visited about three hours. It was an enjoyable visit and, for the most part, he represented me well in what I told him. He was having difficulties understanding how the people of the community could relate with one another when they were members of differing political parties. He had nothing in his background to help him relate with rural Oklahoma. He never told me what direction he was going to take the article. The article he wrote appeared in Der Spiegel on June 14, 2012, entitled The President of Disappointments: How Obama has Failed to Deliver. Had I known this was the direction he was taking the article, I would have expected some questions on whether he has actually failed in his presidency. Personally, I don’t feel he has at all. I do feel Congress has failed the American people. It’s always nice to say, when condemning conduct of one political group, that both sides are guilty of improper conduct. But, in this partisan gridlock in our Congress, I just don’t see sharing the blame with those so-called “small government” Republicans. I have never heard a Democrat say, “Compromise should be those guys coming to our way of thinking.” The article was not such a bad piece. It is lengthy and I will include only that section that deals with my interview. (Not only did he fly down to Oklahoma to research the story, a month or so later he sent a photographer from New York to Oklahoma to get pictures of Washington, Oklahoma, and of me. He didn’t use any of those pictures.) With that, this is the part of the article based on my interview: Democrat in the Diaspora The Republicans are not at home in the cities, the metropolises along the coasts, where the leftist Occupy movement has also vented its displeasure over Obama's performance. Instead, they derive their support from America's forests and mountains and plains, its rural areas. It's worth paying a visit to such places to examine the limits of Obama's chances of succeeding in the vast stretch of country between the coasts -- to a place like Washington, Oklahoma, for example, where retiree Hershel Franklin is already seen as a misfit because he drives around with an "Obama '08" bumper sticker on his car. Franklin is a Democrat in the diaspora. In Oklahoma, a state wedged between Texas and Kansas, that's enough to be considered an outsider. The town of Washington is a place where people say business transactions are still sealed with a handshake, and a man's word is worth more than a contract. In this Washington, with its 520 residents, where everyone knows everyone else, people don't lock their doors and they leave their car keys in the ignition when they go into the post office. It's a place that attracts people who want to get away from the cities, and from their licentiousness and liberal lack of morals. Franklin came to Washington because of his children. He is 70, white-haired, slightly overweight and a football fan. He worked as a criminal lawyer for 30 years. His wife is the marketing director at a local bank, and their two children, 14 and 16, a boy and a girl, are both adopted. Washington, Oklahoma reminds him of his childhood and of the idyllic image of the American small town, says Franklin. It's the America of high-school proms and the America where entire small towns turn out to watch the local high-school football game on a Friday night. In the Domino Building, the retirees still smoke as if there were no smoking bans, and they make crude jokes about Obama, saying that they would drive him out of town if he ever had the audacity to show up there. Washington, Oklahoma, is fighting against change. Change is suspect, almost a crime against the past. Oklahoma is deeply in red-state territory. In the last presidential election, all 77 counties voted for the Republican candidate John McCain, giving Oklahoma the distinction of being the only state in which McCain won every county. "Ironically," says Hershel Franklin, "the people here really ought to be voting for the Democrats." Touch of the Irrational In rural towns like Washington, the people are even more dependent on the government and on government assistance than elsewhere. There is little infrastructure and a lot of poverty. Until recently, Franklin lived on a farm, where he received his electricity through the Rural Electric Cooperative, which installs power lines to remote areas. Today, like almost all retirees in Washington, he benefits from Medicare, the government healthcare program for retirees. These are both programs that were introduced by Democrats, because Democrats, unlike Republicans, believe in the government's capacity to benefit citizens. But it hasn't done them any good in Oklahoma. The Republicans, says Franklin, have managed to convince people that completely different issues are more important: the right to bear arms, a ban on all forms of abortion and the rejection of gay marriage. The Republicans, says Franklin, have claimed that the Democrats want to ban prayer in schools and desecrate classrooms. "God. Guns. Gays," says Franklin. "They behaved as if Jesus himself was a Republican! And eventually the people here actually believed this nonsense." This touch of the irrational always pervades the political debate in America, partly as a result of an unwillingness to confront the excessive complexity of the tasks at hand. The biggest project of Obama's term in office, healthcare reform, has been talked to pieces to such an extent by now that even the experts are clueless about its details. There are sharply contradictory calculations that predict either financial salvation or ruin for the United States as a result of the program, known derisively as "Obamacare." Even Obama himself hasn't managed to come up with clear enough brushstrokes to paint a convincing picture of his reforms. There is a chance that the Supreme Court will overturn the entire body of laws at the end of June, a court whose judges have openly said during hearings that no one can expect a court to actually read a bill consisting of thousands of pages. The same applies to the similarly voluminous bills on the regulation of the banking system and insurance companies and, on the other side of the aisle, to the Republicans' budget proposals. Confusion is being produced where clarity ought to prevail. And when legislation becomes so complex as to confuse even lawmakers and the courts, the lobbyists, the true regents in Washington, come into play.