Oklahoma Dreaming: Getting Tough

by Donna Schoenkopf

last time: outside shower

I feel myself getting tough.

I always thought I was already. But life out here in Affordable Housing Country has taught me that I am a pansy. A dilettante. A wannabe.

I was going to be a pioneer, build my own house, brave the elements, work hard like Robinson Crusoe, and have my own little paradise. All with courage and bonhomie.

But no.

I, Nature Lover Extraordinaire, the person who MOVED HERE to become PART of Nature, the person who plotted, planned, sacrified time, money, and yes, even the presence of her beloved CHILDREN (who remain in California) ... got scared of Nature.

First of all, I had a fear of snakes. It was irrational. Some people tried to argue me out of it. They'd tell me snakes are good and eat varmints. They'd tell me they won't hurt me if I don't hurt them. They'd tell me they're one of Nature's creatures. I would have none of it. (The only people who didn't tell me these things were people who actually LIVED in the country. THEY told me to watch out and carry a GUN. THEY told me horror stories of snakes, like the true story of the guy last year who went out to his shed, to grab some nails off the shelf and a rattler jumped out from behind some stuff on the shelf and bit him on the shoulder, so he jumped back and a copperhead was behind him and THAT snake bit him on the leg, so he whirled around and the rattler bit him AGAIN, and then he fell backward and the COPPERHEAD bit him again.

True story.

(He lived. Thought you'd want to know. But he was MONTHS in the hospital.)

But now ... if you say the word "snake," my skin doesn't creep (well, just a little) and my pulse rate doesn't race. In fact, I can actually walk through the semi-tall grass without the thought of instant death crossing my mind. When Peewee tells the story of his buddy rowing his fishing boat out on the pond for some fishing and Peewee calls to him, "Turn the boat around and come this way," and his buddy asks why, and Peewee tells him to just do it and then when the the old guy is close to the bank, Peewee tells him to turn around and look up in the tree branch that had been over his head while he was fishing and his buddy sees a copperhead dangling right there, over his fishing place, I can actually laugh without too much shuddering.

And when Peewee tells me of his son Rowdy reaching down into the water of a pond and snatching a copperhead and breaking its neck, and throwing the dead snake over his shoulder, I just wish I will be able to do that some day.

And ticks.

Used to be the thought of them also sent waves of disgust over me. I had a dream when I was a teenager that I had gotten up in the middle of the night, gone downstairs to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, saw a bowl of fat, juicy, gray ticks there, scooped a handful of them up and put them into my mouth, feeling them popping like grapes. Gross, huh?

About two years ago, when I was in Oklahoma and checking out my still-unbuilt house site, I found several ticks on my skin as I was driving south on the 177. Of course, my brain went into eeeeeeeeeeeeeek just as I was crossing over Highway 9 and I was promptly hit by a GIANT truck which tore off the left side of my rented Kia.

BUT now, when Rosie the Cat comes in at night from her daily wanderings through the woods and grasses of Chigger Lake, and I pet her and feel lumps in her fur despite her monthly dosing of Frontline Flea and Tick POISON, I calmly pluck the li'l cuties from her tick-ridden hide.

And when I see them crawling across the blanket or the pillow of my bed, I don't freak out. I just pick 'em up and flush the little buggers.

And storms.

I'm getting better. Much better.

Oklahoma had a good one this past week. A line of storms stretched from mid-Texas to north Oklahoma, like a long string of Death. The forecast was, "WATCH OUT!!!" And sure enough, the rain came POURING down, the lightning FLASHED continually, the thunder BOOOOOMMMMED forever, wind BLASTED for hours.

People died.

But it was daytime. And it made all the difference. I could see what was happening out there. It was NOTHING compared to the nighttime battering of other storms.

PLUS, knowing my house is grounded and ONLY 600 people a year are killed by lightning, and knowing I WILL know when a tornado is coming and can make a run for it, makes my whole attitude lighten up. (Actually, that isn't completely true. I still get a bit of a panic in the nighttime because you cannot SEE a tornado at night and I have discovered NOAA is WAY behind the local TV weather stations as far as what is happening out there, but the wind knocks out my TV reception sometimes, which leaves me with battery-operated NOAA which may NOT let me know in time.)

AND another thing that gives me a sense of well-being is that Elmer is gonna install my break-proof windows with 3M plastic something-or-other so the hail and flying debris won't blast my windows out, and Peewee is gonna dig me a storm shelter made out of a plastic storage container right outside my door and underground, and Kendall is gonna install the lightning rods (4) on my roof. Now knowing that another thunderstorm is coming on Saturday doesn't send me into panic. I am COVERED.

Plus, my sister-in-law, Lynn, isn't scared at all and barely pays attention to the weather reports, and nobody else is scared around here either, except the guy I met at Sherry Lynn's cafe who had lightning blow a hole, a foot in diameter, in his roof, over his head, while he slept. HE still has a healthy fear of lightning.

Another thing I'm toughening up about is letting Rosie the Cat kill all the chipmunks she wants to. She catches one and carries it around like it's a kitten. It's exactly the size and shape of a kitten. She's never had kittens because she's spayed, but I think it's in her DNA to want to have, and carry, a kitten around. ANYWAY, she carries it around until it's dead. (Yes, I did try to get the first couple of chipmunks away from her, but she just runs off with it dangling from her motherly jaws. After it dies, she lays it on the ground and watches it for a while. Finally, she gets up and walks off. Six so far this week.

And red clay mud. All over everything. Seriously. Everything. So now I don't even TRY to mop, scrub or wipe it off. Ever see the movie My Cousin Vinny? And his car has been shimmying on the highway in Alabama and the old guy tells him it's because he's got red Alabama mud in his wheels? Well, that happened to me this week. I got stuck in the mud because the driveway was partially ripped out by the last storm and sure enough, the next day, driving down the highway, my car began to shimmy.

Red mud is ground into my towels and wash cloths, it's spattered onto the side of the house so I have a two foot red border all around it, it's in the runners of the sliding glass doors. It has stained the concrete floor, leaving swirls of shades of red where I've tried to mop, and there are Rosie the Cat's footprints from when she came in out of the rain. They're really cute. It's on all my shoes, pants, shirts, under my fingernails. And finally ... it has permanently become part of my feet. You may not realize how wrinkled your feet get when you get old, but they do. And if you get Oklahoma red clay mud on your feet, the red clay stays in those wrinkles, and if there are cracks in your heels, HOO BOY! The bottoms and the sides of my feet ended up looking like a riparian map. And that's not counting the lovely red outline around each toenail and the Tuscan red between my toes.

Yes, I have scrubbed. With a really tough scrub brush.

I am a real fashion statement in my sandals.

Yeah. I'm getting tough.

As Peewee's wife Karen says, "You gotta get mad! Then the fear goes away."

An old guy told her that after she had been robbed 32 times. (You get robbed a lot in the country.)

She is so right.

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