Oklahoma Dreaming: Blowin' in the Wind

by Donna Schoenkopf

last time: Fidel

I did it.

After three and a half years of working seven days a week, morning, noon and night, scrimping and saving, plotting and dreaming, I've moved in.

I have built a house on thirteen acres of paradise for UNDER $50,000!!!

And it is ecologically friendly (as much as I can do for UNDER $50,000) ...

It turned out to be more beautiful than I thought it would be. (And I thought it would be VERY beautiful.)

Some days, when I open the door to my house and step in, it takes my breath away. The house is filled with the most beautiful light, which streams through the southern sliding glass doors. All six of them. Hills, pond, trees, grass, sky, hawks—are framed like giant moving pictures against that wall.

The windows not only light my home, but warm it in the winter by letting sun shine on my concrete floors, which soak up the heat and keep the whole house cozy long after midnight. Those same windows will cool the house in the summer when I'll open them all to let the Merry Little Breezes in. When the Breezes dance through my house, it feels like I'm floating in the sky in my Air Ship.

(Just facing your house in the right direction is extremely important.)

The house is one big rectangular room with the exception of the bathroom, which does have walls. (My friends told me they weren't going to come to my house if they couldn't have privacy during their bathroom time. They said friendship only goes so far.) So, as you walk in you see almost the whole house laid out in front of you.

Can you see it?

Walk through the western door. You can see from that end of the house to the other, 60 feet, on down through the eastern sliding glass doors, out to the gently rounded slope of the hill with its naked oak, elm and hemlock trees .

Everything is painted white—walls, trusses, beams overhead. My daughter, Rebecca, sounded disappointed when I told her I had chosen white. She wanted color. But I have color splashed all over the house from the art everywhere. And plants.

The first third of the house is the living area. The furniture is Salvation Army, Ikea, rescued alley-finds, gifts from the Universe. Room for guests who will push the twin beds together and have their own teevee. The bookshelves and desk and computer sit there, too. Plenty of light and windows.

In the middle third of the house is the kitchen and dining area. The kitchen is open and has only a portion of its countertop so far. I polished the wood I do have with boiled linseed oil. The shelves are milk crates and hold canned goods. I use a blond wooden table with chrome legs as an island in the middle of the kitchen area.

My dining area has a long picnic table that I painted in swirling colors. I sit at it in the morning with my coffee and watch the pond and C-SPAN and plot my day's activities, which usually revolve around what I'm building or planting that day.

My bedroom is at the eastern end of the house and every morning at dawn when Rosie, my shy and only cat now, nuzzles and purrs me awake, I see the sun coming up through the trees. It rises all fiery some mornings and invisibly when clouds hang low. Every tree is silhouetted against the colors of the day. Real purdy.

Last week the wind blew. So fiercely that it scared me. That sweeping, slapping, PUNCHING wind blew EVERYTHING away. My four outdoor tables went sailing down the hill and ended up stuck in the trees. Every chair was whisked through the air and landed, like drunken house guests, all over the hill.

It blew from every direction. North, south, east, west. It would bump into itself and crash against the house. (My son, John, a geography student, told me that wind rolls like huge blocks, around the planet. Blocks of air!)

Feeling its confusion, I watched while the tops of trees bent in first one direction, then another, tall sprigs of dried grass bent low by its power, and while this was going on, I saw one leaf slowing, gently, floating to the ground.

?

The wind even blew over the brand-new-gorgeous-fabulous-gas barbecue that my sweet heroes, The Cell, my lifelong friends (MORE than friends ... knights in shining armor!) from high school 47 years ago, bought for me as a housewarming present. I managed to push and pull it upright again and found that not a hair on its lovely head had been harmed.

The barbecue weighs a TON. The wind blew it over. What the HELL?!??!!?

Tree limbs snapped, dust blew like the 1930s, the pond whipped itself into a frenzy of diamonds, glittering madly in the morning light.

Intense, I tell you.

No wonder they call this Tornado Alley.

The whole dang place is intense. Life, death, beauty, fear, satisfaction, love, all of it, ALL of it HERE.

So ... I had a party.

Actually, dear John decided I NEEDED to have a party, so all was arranged and people came and brought food and adult beverages! Ribs and greens and apple pie and chicken and corn pudding and TWO kinds of cobbler and strawberry daiquiris and beer and wine and sushi and falafel and gosh! I've forgotten what all! And nobody got too drunk, nor tumbled down the hill.

(I was kind of looking forward to people getting too drunk and tumbling down the hill. Oh, well. "I get old. I get old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.")

Next time, maybe.

Maybe YOU'LL come.

You're certainly invited.

Three days ago it snowed, turning my hill white and freezing the pond, which caught a cardboard box in its icy grip. The box sat there, halfway in and halfway out of the ice, like a derelict ship. I tried to pull it out, but the pond refused to give it up that day. Nor did it give it up for two more days, until ...

TODAY! It's 81 degrees out. Jeez. The weather here is always the big story of the day.

Again I say ... WHAT THE HELL???!!?!?? I'm sweltering in my turtleneck shirt. The day hangs sagging in the air at ten in the morning. It's just February 4th, for crying out loud, so I've escaped to the Tecumseh Public Library, typing out my thoughts to you, Dear Reader. I hear the AIR CONDITIONER humming in the background, the tapping of other folks on their computers, and an occasional beep from the librarian's check-out machine. Very peaceful.

Tecumseh.

Brian, who lives here with his new wife, Meredith, calls Tecumseh "Mayberry RFD." It IS. Its sleepy streets, old trees, no sidewalks, and sweet little houses only take up a few blocks. Downtown is two blocks long. People do things slowly here. They drive slowly. They talk slowly. They walk slowly. At first I thought they were slow in the head but came to realize they do things slowly because they CAN. They don't rush to beat someone else to the stop sign because there is nobody else there. They stop to chat in a grocery line because there aren't other people waiting ... at least not too many. They talk slow because they enjoy talking and telling funny stories and gossip and handy helpful hints.

AND thanks to the federal government, we have a great post office here in Tecumseh with friendly workers who LIKE you and chat a little with you.

AND a public library. A library with topnotch computers. For FREE.

I am of the belief that our Constitution declares that not only does everyone have the right to free speech and all, and not only does the government provide for the common defense, but that it should PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE.

It says it right there in the Constitution.

You know we often forget that part. Maybe it's the word "welfare". But the library exists and I, who have no Internet service because I live way out in the boonies and internet doesn't reach there through the phone lines because it gets degraded when it's too far away (so I'm told), NEED the computer here in the Tecumseh Public Library. My welfare is being provided for by our tax money.

AND according to Rousseau, the philosopher, when writing his treatise, The Social Contract, when we give up liberties (such as driving any speed we want and not killing each other) then we must get something back from the government which has taken these liberties away. And I say, "Give us what the rich have! Internet service!" Among other things.

It just doesn't get any better than this.

At this moment, in this place, I am happy.

Can you feel it?

I knew you could.

next time: lightning