Saturday at the Farm

We went to the farm today.  Sheila and I have a routine that I find very enjoyable.  We get up early and then stop at QuikTrip to top off the tank and get a cup of their excellent coffee.  Then, we swing by the Subway on Admiral for one of their flatbread breakfast sandwiches to eat on the road.

We took the pickup.  This is the first time we had driven it for any distance since getting it back from the shop.  For reasons known only to God I guess, it was quieter, smoother and got better fuel economy.  Body work shouldn't have affected any of that.  It can't be all in my head, I calculated the fuel economy when we got back to Tulsa and filled up again and we got almost 23 mpg, about 4 mpg better than the last trip.

We got to the farm around mid-morning and spent until lunch time straightening out the closet in the front bedroom.  I got inertia while we ate lunch and had to finish a particularly sweet episode of Gunsmoke on ME TV Arkansas before I could get going again.  In the afternoon, I installed a new medicine chest in the bathroom and made and installed a new door for the crawlspace.

About 3:00, we took a drive around the pasture.  I have never seen the grass eaten down that low before.  My tenants cows had even eaten the sage-grass down.  They have to be hungry to eat that stuff.  When my dad was raising cattle, we used to joke about spraying sorghum water on sage-grass to makecows eat it.  Usually, with the weather as warm as this, there is a lot better green grass growing down below the sage that they munch on.  We saw spots of green here and there but it was all nibbled close

The ponds are several feet below their normal level.  I checked my grandmothers old dug well.  I saw the bottom of it bone dry for the first time in my life.  I had seen it muddy a few times but never bone dry.  In normal times, the bottom of that well is usually four of five feet below the water table.  In short, we are in the middle of a drought.  A bad one.  A multi-year, soil's gonna blow away if it don't rain soon drought.

By dinner time, we were passing through Sallisaw and as usual had dinner at Charlie's Chicken.  I don't know exactly how to explain to outsiders that the best meal in town can be found at a place that looks like fast food joint but is actually a first class southern/soul food buffet that serves better than average fried chicken, really good smoked meats and a great selection of sides.  This time they had smoked ribs on the buffet.  While I only sampled one since I don't eat red meat, Sheila enjoyed them thoroughly .... with a lot of sauce.

After dinner, I decided to drive up US 64 for a while instead of just getting on I-40.  As we passed Sallisaw Dam, a mysterious force took hold of the wheel and we wound up parked looking at the old dam and remembering other Saturday evenings.  In honor of those other Saturday nights, I swore I would not move the car until I got a kiss and I mean a real kiss, not just a peck on the cheek.

When we left, I stayed on US-64 until Webbers Falls.  It was very pleasant to just drive through the country, looking at the lights in the farmhouses and taking the drive a little slower.  All in all, it was a good day.

Bill & Sheila Become Grandpa Bill and Grandma Sheila

Our first grandchild, Benjamin Robert Schatz, was born at 5:38 this afternoon at St. John's Hospital in Tulsa.  We were up at 5:00, had breakfast at the Diner at 6:00 and were walking into St. John by 7:00 AM.  It was a long but good day with lots of time to talk, think and simply be around each other.  My good friend Bruce DeLay came by and spent much of the afternoon with Sheila and I.  Funny how guys with "Rev." before their name somehow know how to show up at exactly the right time.  Around 4:30 things started picking up and a little after 5:30 Little Benjamin was here.

Back to the Farm

Not my picture but almost identical to what we saw.

Sheila and I spent a nice long day at the farm Saturday not doing much of anything.  The fall color seemed to be about at its peak and the last couple of miles of tree lined dirt road were a real treat.

We spent a couple of hours puttering around the house, doing light cleaning, etc. In the afternoon, I put in a nice hour in the backyard with my new Remington 597 HB, shooting at pieces of 1/2 inch lath stuck in the ground in the dirt embankment lining the storm cellar wall. 

By dark, we were ready to go and had our hearts set on dinner at Charlie's Chicken in Sallisaw.  Unfortunately, Charlie's was closed  and the only thing open worth consideration was THE Chinese place.  For the past couple of years, the Chinese place on Highway 59 South north of the I-40 junction (the only Chinese place in town) had gone down hill and we had been avoiding it.  However, we were pleasantly surprised to find new owners and a great selection on the buffet.  It was really a very good meal and quite inexpensive.  We were home by bedtime and a good time was had by all.  

Bill and Sheila and the BBC

It would seem that Sheila and I don't care much for American TV anymore.  We just don't watch it for the most part.  It is mindless at best and at worst insulting to our values.  I can't remember the last time we watched anything from the major networks.  Now that technology has given us multiple choices, we watch a lot and I do mean a lot of UK produced programming.  Here are some clips from a few of our favorites:

Dowton Abbey.  Previous seasons available on Netflix Streaming.  Season 3 will air early 2013 on PBS Masterpiece Theater.  Another period drama which began before the First World War and is now continuing into the post war years.  Too many plot twists to explain in a paragraph.  Just very entertaining.

Foyle's War.  Available on Netflix Streaming.  The adventures of an aging British Police Inspector in WWII Britian.  Probably the best of the host of very good Brit mysteries.

Doc Martin.  Available on NetFlix Streaming.  Only a Brit could think this one up.  What happens if a snooty big city surgeon suddenly begins fainting at the sight of blood and gets a last chance to continue practicing as a GP in a small fishing village?  We have already watched the whole series but for those who haven't it is now showing on OETA.

Lost Empires.  Available on Net Flix Streaming.  A Granada Televsion mini series based on J.B. Priestly's novel of the same name:


A very young Colin Firth is the orphaned nephew of a mysterious and highly cynical (but usually correct) star performer on the U.K.'s music hall circuit.  In this clip, he and his love Nancy are having what appears the perfect afternoon together which is interrupted by the sound of distant gunfire from an army rifle range, symbolizing the onset of the World War One in a few months.  Firth's character does not notice but his uncle has already set the premise up in an earlier scene when he predicts the horror of the coming war and observes that Great Britian is sliding into a morass it will never completely recover from and nobody was doing anything to stop it.

Midsomer Murders.  Again, NetFlix Streaming.  This is one of Sheila and I's favorites but for entirely different reasons.  She likes the light, breezy "Murder She Wrote" tone which I have to admit is pleasant enough.  I like the fact that the program is better than sleeping pills and can usually render me unconscious in less than half an hour.

Three World Class Musicians You Can Hear in Tulsa for the Price of a Drink or a Meal

Tommy Crook, the guitar player the late, great Chet Aktins called the best guitar player he had ever heard.  Mr. Crook plays at Lana Thai on South Memorial on Friday and Saturday nights.

 
Rocky Frisco of the legendary JJ Cale Tulsa circle of friends.  Rocky plays several nights per week at various local drinking establishments. His personal "About Me" page at TulsaWorld.com says he hangs around at: Utopia, Cimarron, Roadside, Scotty's and Blind Lemon's.




Little Joe McClerran is a very young man who has already won several awards in blues competitions.  He has also toured the Middle East and South America through a program sponsored by the U.S. State Department in cooperation with the Jazz At The Lincoln Center program.  Little Joe and company often play at Bodean's on the weekends.

Bill and Sheila's 43rd Anniversary Party

Catching Up .....

I got an e-mail from a blog subscriber this morning asking if Sheila and I were OK.  It was the lady who sometimes rents us her cabin down by Octavia.  I hadn't posted to this blog in about a month and she was concerned for us.  That was very thoughtful of her but I should have expected as much.  Hill country Okies are good people.

Well gee, what's going on in our life?  The contractor has been here for two weekends replacing a rotted out bathroom floor and then re-tiling it.  As usual, he did a great job.  But, he was always a good kid even when I was his Sunday school teacher way back when.  Sure, he's kind of a charming rascal, but he's good at what he does and keeps his word.

My beloved Sonata is back in the body shop.  We reluctantly decided to change insurance companies.  Traveler's has been wonderful to us and I can't say enough kind things about their support staff.  But, their rates for Oklahoma took a big jump after last years storms and the recent brush fires.  I had some hail damage that I didn't even notice when it occurred.  But, several months later, when I let the car get dirty one day, I noticed I had numerous tiny hail dimples.  So, I thought it would be wise to get the claim in while I was still insured by the company that was insuring me when the damage occurred.

This week, I am driving a vanilla, 2012 Impala.  I used to like Impalas.  In the late fifties and early sixties they were fast and sexy.  Later, they turned into boats.  This one is a barge.  Don't get me wrong, everything works and works pretty well I guess. But, the car feels like it was designed by a committee and built by one. Everything about it from control locations to styling just screams "government motors."  It has all of the  style and personality of a bureaucrat.

How in the world U.S. automakers let the Koreans of all people steal so much of the market I will never know but they darn well did.  My two year old Sonata is still sexier, faster, more stylish and ever so much more comfortable than this Government Motors monstrosity that is supposed to compete with it.  Dang, if Hyundai doesn't try to make a fortune on me, I may keep my current lease car and if they do I may lease another.  I have to say, the Sonata is without a doubt the best car I have ever owned.

My pickup is still in the body shop and while that normally would not be much of a problem, without it I have not been able to go the farm and set up my turkey blind and feeder.  The season starts Nov. 3 and I should been throwing corn for the past month or so.

Well, that is a little part of what is going on in our world.  More when something happens.