Just Cruising Along, No
Heavy Sayings Okay?
By Dan McDonald
Sometimes
you just need to get away. Today was one
of those days. Actually I needed to pick
up some records from a county courthouse for a house I used to live in in the
southern regions of Pawnee County Oklahoma.
So I drove 60 miles to Pawnee, Oklahoma the county seat and probably
home to at least or at least almost a thousand people. It has a county courthouse, a casino, and
Click’s Steakhouse. Click’s is probably
one of the five or six most famous restaurants in Oklahoma once you get out of
the Oklahoma City and Tulsa metropolitan areas.
I’d been there when I served jury duty back when I lived in the county’s
southeastern area. At noontime when
juries recess to eat, the restaurant has a waiting line. But if you go about 2:30 in the afternoon
there may be ten or eleven souls in the place, sometimes counting a friendly waitress
who ain’t running her butt off like she had to at lunch time. So that is the time to go to Click’s and
enjoy the look of a ceiling made of corrugated metal like a farmer would put
atop what we in Oklahoma call a “pole barn.”
We called those “pole barns” by a different name in Illinois where I
grew up. They were just “metal sheds.” You may have seen those sheets of corrugated
metal with the ribs and little valleys running lengthways on them. That is what Click’s has for a ceiling. It is better they say than asbestos. But when you get your steak you will
understand why no one complains about atmosphere. The fixins (that would be side dishes you know), they (be or is can’t figure out
the correct verb here) be alright too. I
imagine some of you’se guys(that’s Illinoisan not Okie) will just have to take
my word for it. If you are from
Oklahoma, you may have already eaten there and if you haven’t just start asking
somebody near you if they have and soon enough you will find someone that has
eaten at Click’s. They'll tell you I suspect that it ain't bad which means it probably is one of the best steaks they ever ate.
The first place I went to in Pawnee
today wasn’t Click’s. It was the
courthouse. It is a nice
courthouse. It was in style back in
1920. The doors are all shut in the
hallways, and you wonder if there is anybody behind the doors going to the
County Clerk’s office, or the Treasurer’s office. They are all up on the second floor. There is one elevator, but most everybody
goes up the stairs built in 1920’s style.
It is kind of interesting to walk into a courthouse and discover that
the main entrance on the ground level has a “Four-H” club area but you hardly
notice any county offices on the ground level.
They are on the second floor. I
noticed some monuments on the pathway to the county courthouse but I wanted to
get my business done first, so after I got my business taken care of, I went
back to the monuments. It was 9-11
today. I have mixed feelings about
patriotism. I sort of have some feelings
about patriotism similar to Mark Twain and Samuel Johnson. Johnson said it first. Twain repeated it enough that people
attributed it to him. They said, anyway
that “patriotism is a refuge for scoundrels.”
I am though an old crotchety man.
But when I looked at the names on the monuments of all those young men
who paid the price for serving their nation in a war, then I could not dishonor
their name. Whether I agree with the war or not, each of those young men had a
Mama and a Papa. When the young man went
to the Army his Mama went into the bedroom and probably made sure his bed was
made just so right. She wanted to make
sure that bed was made just so right for when he came home. Then someone from the military came to their
house. She looked into that bedroom and
cried and couldn’t do anything but make that bed wanting to believe she could
do something to bring him home if only for one more visit. A little brother or sister would peer into
the same room imagining remembering him.
I’m a crotchety old man but I can’t bring myself to speak arrogantly or
hardly to speak at all in front of a granite and marble marker with the names
of boys who never returned to the made beds mama had left for them. As much as I am an old crotchety man without
a sense of patriotism, I just think of those names and the heartbroken mamas,
sweethearts, little brothers, and sisters.
I even took some photographs of the marble markers:
I didn’t get up thinking anything of
9-11, but I guess at that marker in Pawnee County Oklahoma an old crotchety man
had a change of heart. I guess
patriotism is still a refuge for scoundrels, but if you going to lose your old
crotchety man status you might as well be a scoundrel. Don’t play Lee Greenwood or I’m liable to
just post Buffy Ste. Marie singing in a “you tube” version of “Universal
Soldier.” But not today the crotchety old man gave way to thinking of mama's making and keeping a bed for her boy that will never sleep there ever again. We'll keep building monuments with the names of those boys and now more and more often our dearest ladies as well until a day comes when swords will be beaten into plowshares and when young ladies and young men pick flowers for loved ones they are going to hug and kiss instead of flowers for a grave over which they will weep. I will respect them that they died, I just want to make sure come the next war that we don't send them to die unless it is absolutely necessary. I hope you understand that is my way of supporting the troops.
While I was in Pawnee I wanted to
get one more photograph in honor of one of the town’s famous folk. Even a town of a thousand gets somebody sort
of famous. You young ones that wear cell
phones on your ear like grandma wore ear rings, may not realize that back in
1930 or something Dick Tracy had a watch that he could use as a phone. Dick Tracy had the first mobile phone back in
the comics a long time ago. The guy who
created that comic was Chester Gould born in the year 1900 and he came from
Pawnee, the county seat of Pawnee County in the Great State of Oklahoma, and he
was born here before it was even a state.
He imagined cell phones as wrist watches on the arm of Dick Tracy when
he was chasing Flat Top and all the other bad eggs threatening society. The city of Pawnee has a mural just around
the corner from their “Subway” sandwich shop.
I had to get a picture of that too.
There was one other photograph I got in Pawnee. I took a wrong turn trying to get to the
mural with Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy on it.
I had to go a few blocks out of my way, but it was worth it when I saw
what seemed to me to be the neatest outdoor church sign I had ever seen.
I enjoyed my trip to Pawnee. I took some coconut cream pie with me after
my Rib-eye at Click’s Restaurant. I got
a haircut and stopped at some stores back in Tulsa later. Lately I’ve figured I’d written enough words
to get me almost into trouble with too many Facebook and Twitter friends, old
and new. I know sometimes I say too
much. That’s when maybe I just need to
get out. You may see the best idea for a
church sign you ever saw in the most unexpected place when you make that wrong
turn that turned out to be just the right turn.
I’ll be in Dallas the next four days with good friends, two former
pastors, new friends as well as old. I
plan on letting the emails and Facebook posts and Twitter Tweets pile up. But there are so many of you out there old
and new that mean so very much to me. This
morning I was sort of afraid I was going to ruin that by talking too much. Then I got out and my perspective it is a lot
better now. So, if you are getting stale
and spending lots of time on your social media, take a journey to a little town
with nothing in it except what you really need.
I’m signing out. I’ll be back
tweeting and posting and blogging Monday.
Lord willing, that is.
Dan
McDonald.
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