Your intrepid correspondent here, reporting from Ruidoso, Nuevo Mexico, hometown of Tristan Gale who won a gold medal in the skeleton when it was brought back to the Olympics in 2002, and Michael J. Fox is from here...wait, no he's not, it's Neal Patrick Harris.
Anyway, our trip to Oklahoma was pretty good, the twins and I tried playing the ass game for a little ways (replacing one word of any sign with the word "ass") but quickly got bored (we were in Hereford, Texas) with changing "Custom Cattle Feed" to "Custom Ass Feed," so we started singing signs to the tune of "Loving You." This kept us, well me and the Chiweenie anyway, amused through the next 300 miles.
Our first morning there was Mothers Day, which is decoration day at the cemetery, so the kids and I packed into the car with Mom and Dad and went to what's left of the town of Lenna where the cemetery is that holds a lot of my relatives from my dad's side. Mom had her list and bundles of silk flowers so that my uncle, great aunts and uncles, grandparents, great grandparents, and great great grandmother, along with a couple of people who I'm not quite sure how I'm kin to all got flowers.
Walking around with my bag of flowers while Mom planted them at each grave and Dad talked with the old man who acts as caretaker and the kids searched for the oldest grave (oldest marked one we found was 1897, though there are several that are unmarked or marked only with rocks) I was wondering who would take up this task when my mom was gone. My sister lives in Kentucky and due to events involving her ex says that she'll never move back, and as much as I love that piece of land, I can't see moving back either.
I also can't see not moving back, maybe a little cafe out there in the sticks with a garden (my God, you can grow anything there), access to fresh perch and catfish...
Most of our time at my parents' was spent working, which suited me just fine. Danny, Steve (brother-in-law) and I cleared a lot of brush and cleaned up the small orchard which I had helped plant over thirty years ago, but that over the last fifteen years or so had gone mostly untended.
No one brought firearms, I couldn't find fireworks, and I didn't have a drink the whole time we were there, so this visit was a little different. We did have a bonfire every night though, we did have to watch shows at night that my dad thought we'd like (c'mon Dad, Airwolf?), and we did have sausage for almost every meal, so it wasn't totally different either.
And you know what? Airwolf is pretty kickass.