CHICO! CHICO!

The weekend got off to a strange start last night.  Friday night, Sheila and I had a nice dinner at our favorite Thai place, did our grocery shopping for the week and were just settling in to bed to watch an hour or so's TV when the phone rang.  It was our daughter, Michelle.  It seems that their Dachsund, Chico, goes a little nuts when Robert is out of the house.  Last night, he apparently decided to try to find Robert which would have been difficult since Robert is in Austin, Texas.  Michelle asked if we would come and watch little BB while she searched the hood for Chico. We were there in moments.

I didn't want Michelle wandering the neighborhood alone at that time of night so I asked her to get in the car with me and we began scouring the neighborhood.  Soon, Michelle rolled the car windows down and began yelling Chico! Chico! out the window as we drove around.  It only took me a couple minutes of watching lights come on to realize just how odd we must have looked, two distinctly white people driving around an East Tulsa neighborhood yelling Hey Chico! Chico! at darkened houses and yards.  I gently tried to suggest that maybe yelling Hey Chico! Chico! in this hood might not be a great idea.  Michelle is totally oblivious to those types of considerations and continued until we had covered several blocks.  We eventually found the dog two houses down from her house.

This morning, we went to the farm.  I always enjoy the moment just before we round the curve and pass over the twin bridges over Onion Creek on

the road leading to the place.  That spot of road was always cooler in the hot summer and in my youth, I would slow down there as I passed to get a moment's rest from the heat.  This time, I actually stopped and took a picture of it with phone.

We did a few chores and I watched some Saturday westerns on the old TV.  They were the same westerns  I used to watch when I was growing up there.  I spent a while shooting my high power air rifle at soda cans.  Growing bored with that, I took aim at an old pot covering one of the water well heads.  I expected the pellet to just dent the pot and bounce off.  That did not happen.  It went straight

Not my kill.  But a good pic of the gun.

through the pot with a clean hole and did damage to the well casing inside.   I began looking at that air gun with a new found respect.  The specs said it shot its' .177 pellet with about the same muzzle velocity as a good .22 but I really didn't believe it, until now that is.

Soon, Sheila busied herself on the front porch removing years of accumulated paint from one of the chrome chairs from the dinette.  I joined her for a while and enjoyed the view from the porch.  The place is marvelously quiet and aside from my cousin delivering a load of cattle into the pasture we had the afternoon to ourselves.

There is something incredibly calming about the sun on your face, the wind in your hair and no sounds but a a few birds and cattle when you live in a city surrounded by people, cars, sirens, airliners

overhead, police helicopters and often just voices from the neighborhood.  Before we built the privacy screened deck you could see, and sometimes hear, eleven different houses from our back porch.  I have learned to tolerate it but I don't like it.

Sheila is still too shy to let us have friends from Tulsa come down.  Granted, the place is a dump but it is a cleaner dump every time we leave.  To me, it is charming and homey in a poor boy country cute kind of way and I think our friends would enjoy it too.  And,  nothing will change the fact that it is the house I grew up in and whatever it's condition I refuse to be ashamed of it or the people who put it there.  It is what it is and I am who I am.  I've both been a lot of places and done a lot of things since I was kid down there but that place will always be a part of me and to some extent ...... home.

Tomorrow, I am doing NOTHING.