“Just take a seat anywhere you like,” said the lady with a down-home, jolly sort of smile. She was a large woman with an apron in a bright print wrapped around her lower-half. She wore shorts that came down to her knees and athletic shoes that might have cried out for a speedy game of basketball or a sprint around a track, but they looked so tired from carrying her weight that they stayed silent.
She was middle aged, and no fuss—no make-up, no salon in her hair’s future, all cotton clothing that draped loosely over her. And I liked her a lot. She looked like Oklahoma.
We had arrived at the small diner in a tiny town in Oklahoma the morning after we had stopped off to camp. This being a road trip with some camping thrown into the mix, we weren’t exactly fully equipped for being out on our own. In the absence of running into the diner, the kids were having tortilla chips or vanilla wafers for breakfast. I don’t think they would have complained one bit about that, but I wanted a real breakfast.
We had driven into Oklahoma the day before for the first time. Its seemingly endless fields of reddish-brown dirt—the sort of color soil is supposed to be, rather than the white Florida sand—was so rich looking. Everything looked fertile, despite being so desolate. The little oil pumps (is that what they are called?) were just pumping away, like sad solitary slaves with muscular arms pumping away automatically while the mind drifted to higher things. Things like the beautiful golden sun setting in the same direction we were heading.
Despite the occasional Dollar General, who seems to specialize in far flung locations where you least expect to see one, there were no chain businesses in the tiny towns we drove through. Just lots of old brick store fronts lining tiny downtowns. Someone had parked their tractor at the local barbeque joint. It just so happens that I love fertile looking soil, and cows peacefully chewing grass, and tractors parked at restaurants. I’m rather fond of Oklahoma.
So anyway, we sat down at a booth in the diner. It was one of those places that have lots of knick-knacks on shelves surrounding the tables that have not been dusted in five years or so. It looked like the sort of place that might not pass inspection in a busy city, but it was clean where it counted—clean enough.
I heard the lady say cheerfully to the only other guests in the diner that they ought to try the pancakes before adding syrup—they were the best. I believed her, but I was looking more for a large slab or protein on top of a large slab of carbohydrate. The fresh air has a way of making you hungry.
The fresh air on a lake maybe even more so. We had pulled up to our site just before dark. I was a little dismayed to see that the campsites were so close together. Normally when we camp I pick woodsy, distant locations. This was our first time road-trip camping, where you find a place to pitch your tent at a convenient stop-off but still kind of cool location, which often involves being near other humans. I got over my dismay quickly when I met our neighbors—an older couple from Texas—that were eager to tell us all the best places to camp in Colorado. They were just eager to be nice. Nice humans are acceptable humans in my book.
Then there was the lake, twenty feet ahead of us. Wind was whipping off that thing and tangling in the branches of all the trees, turning them into leaf wind chimes. Everything—the plethora of parked RV’s, the occasional human walking about in cowboy boots, a distant dog bark, the grass covering our campsite—was all wrapped up in the magic of that wind, just a spiral of magic. We watched the sky and lake turn palest of blues to palest of lavenders. Then the stars came out, and the Milky Way shimmied there up above us, something like the puddle of milk that spills out of your baby’s mouth when you have nursed him to sleep.
“Where are you from?” The friendly woman asked after taking our orders. I have the suspicion that we looked like outsiders. In a sea of boots and closed-toed shoes, it may have been the Floridian sandals that gave us away. "Florida," I told her.
“Didn’t you all just have some big hurricane?”
“Yes,” I said, and remembered that it felt good not to have my days revolving around the 11AM and 5PM National Hurricane Center updates. “The southwest got hit bad, but we just got a tropical storm.”
“That wind last night,” I volunteered a minute later, when the lady, with nothing else to do, sat down near us. “It reminded me a bit of a tropical storm.”
The wind rushed against the tent all night like the sound of the ocean, rubbing against us firmly but not ferociously. It was a fresh, whooshing rush, and I could sleep in it every night and be very happy. And to wake to the sun rising in a fierce ball of orange as the wind died down was climatic.
The lady nodded politely; the wind and the lake had long since ceased to be interesting topics to her. Oklahoma was just old hat to her. I thought on it while I ate the best sausage biscuit ever.
Oklahoma isn’t old hat to me, it is just lovely.
We were soon off to our next stop, a four day visit to Albuquerque, New Mexico…