An Oklahoma Adventure

IN 1965, MY LAST SUMMER AS A SINGLE MAN,  I decided to go to Oklahoma for the summer, maybe get a job on a pipeline, oil well, or whatever.  Barbara was about to be off to A&M. I knew what kind of splash she would make there that summer. I also knew she was not ready to put all her eggs in one basket yet, and she still had ties to some guy in the Air Force. But we parted on good terms for the summer, each with no ties on the other.

     I headed out. When I got to Tulsa, after getting lost trying to get out of Arkansas, I decided to rent a room for a few days and check out the possibilities. It didn't take me long to realize that corporate headquarters was not the place to get these jobs. Out in the field, on location was where it was at. But I  did stumble onto a sales thing that sounded OK on the front end. Go to Oklahoma City to train. So I headed out in my car, accompanied by an Indian and a sorta wild dude. The company put us up in a hotel.  We went to the first training session. It was selling aluminum siding. The sales line they wanted us to memorize went like this: “Hello, are you the property owner? Blah, blah, blah.” We went back to the hotel. I had pretty much realized that wasn't for me. Just sleep on their dime tonight, head out to look for something else tomorrow.

     The wild guy was talking. “Hey, I know a couple of girls. Want me to set up a double date?”. I quizzed him a little. “Well, they're not really the kind you want to take home to mama. And if one of them is busy, the other can “date” both of us.” Well, I was seeing the big picture by then. He wanted me to drive him around for a wild night in my car. “Not interested,” I told him.

At daylight, I woke up with the wild guy far too close to my side of the bed, so I left him and the Indian to their own devices early, and soon found a pest control job opening in the paper. I checked it out. They wanted to send me and an older applicant out with a trained man through small towns for a few days, get trained up, then we would have our own route.

     I went to Joe, the older man's house. He had a nice family,and a beautiful daughter a year or so older than me. His family was full of hope for Joe's prospects for a job. I began to get the feeling they had been through all this before. But the daughter WAS awfully pretty.

     Billy, the trained man, our teacher, came by. Joe and I followed him in Joe's truck. I left my car at Joe's house.

     Here's the plan. While Billy worked his route, Joe and I went to all the houses surrounding. “We're spraying your neighbor's house. Those roaches will run to your house. Maybe you would like us to spray yours also.” Actually, there was truth in that, but it mainly picked Billy up a lot of extra business. Joe kept a little bottle in his truck, and went to it regularly, at first trying to hide it from me. When he could no longer hide it, I took over the driving. But, as much as he drank, I never saw any visible effects from it, until about the third day, about the time our tour ended. Joe and I headed back to Oklahoma City. We got there very late, and Joe insisted I stop so he could call his AA man.

     Going on to his house, Joe said, “I couldn't stop drinking on my own, but if you had asked me to, I would have.” I felt very guilty. I didn't know much about alcoholics in those days, and I didn't understand the little mechanism they used, trying to spread the blame around. When we got back to his house, he was falling down drunk, and I felt responsible. His wife and daughter came out, crushed and heartbroken, once again. No telling how many times they had been through this before. They all wanted me to spend the night, but I just couldn't look them in the eye because of my role in their heartbreak. I drove off into the late Oklahoma night to look for a motel.

     The boss wanted me to start my own route Monday out of the McAlister office, in southeast Oklahoma. The weekend was coming up, so I headed out. The Boss decided to ride down with me. Passing the prison, just west of McAlister, he talked a lot about it – how good they were to the inmates, etc etc. I learned later why he knew so much about it. He had just finished a term there, for non payment of employees. He directed me to an old hotel, that ran $1.81 per night, for the weekend. This fit my budget. The money I had brought was running thin. Sunday morning I went to a nice little church.

     Monday morning I put a lot of my extra clothes in the office, to make room for all the spraying equipment he loaded me down with. I headed out toward Antlers, Broken Bow, and points east. I went through sawmill towns, and their company houses were overun with roaches. Everyone welcomed me in with open arms. The route had been well serviced, and I was raking in the big bucks. By the weekend, I was very tired, but close to Arkansas, so I headed home for a visit. It wasn't far, and I got a chance to take my buddy Grady out and show off my money. Be  the big spender. The local boy who drove off into the cruel world and made good. Monday morning found me picking up the south half of the route. Ida Belle, Hugo, working back toward McAlister.

      Late that afternoon, I pulled into a small motel. The nice lady at the office checked me in (while she checked me out). She was pretty, but old as dirt. Probably 30 or more. I had just got settled in my room when the phone rang. It was the pretty woman at the office, inviting me over for a coke. She sat down next to me with her coke, put the other hand on my arm, and started telling me a very sad story. Her husband left her all alone all the time,while he was out chasing other women. She was all alone, there every night, she was very lonely, and just didn't know what she was going to do. Well, I WAS very young and inexperienced, but even I  could tell where this was going. I sympathized with her a little bit, told her I was sorry for what was happening to her, finished my coke, and told her I had to go eat supper. She walked me to my car, waved goodbye as I drove off. Goodbye forever, it turned out.

     The waitress at the restaurant was about my age, cute, and came over and sat at my table. Said she got off at eleven, and though I was interested, I was too shy to say the right things, and anyway, I had to get up early and go to work. By the end of the week, I had reached the McAlister office. The Boss told me I had really done well, made some money, and next week he had a good route for me, out from the Oklahoma City office toward Lawton. “Alright now. You have made some money. You're set. We've been off this route awhile, and I want you to build it back up.” He offered to ride up to Oklahoma city with me. I could sleep in the office there that weekend, if I wanted. Always ready to save money, I accepted.

     Hanging around the office Saturday, I began to see that strange things were going on. Many women worked there, constantly on the phones. Other women were constantly coming in, asking if they had a check for them. “No, it's not been processed yet.” or, “It's in the mail.” seemed to be the stock answer.

     Out on the new route Monday, I saw right off I was in trouble. Most all regular customers refused to let me spray, “No, you were supposed to be here a month ago.” or some such. Finally, I called the boss and told him the situation. “Tell them we're back on the route regular now, and we will never be late again. Settle them down.” Well, I tried. But I just never did have a very good line of BS.

     I finally got to Lawton, and one customer, a bar, which was a “Blacks only” joint, did let me spray, but I kept getting some very hard looks, and a few comments, from the patrons. I just stuck to my work, minded my own business, and never said a word. Nobody really bothered me. The next day, the papers were full of news about a big race riot that had just broken out in that part of town.

     I found a cheap hotel, $2, in downtown Lawton. The money was running thin again. I had a room on the second floor, and when I got off the elevator, I was a little shocked.  Scantily clad women were busily leading soldier boys in and out of almost every room except mine.

     Like I say, I was young, innocent, and all that, but I finally got the picture. But I had paid my $2, and I decided to just mind my own business and just make the best of it I could.

     I got on the elevator to go downstairs to eat, and was about to push the down button. A woman walked in. I asked, “Are you going down?” she just smiled, and winked at me. Then I flushed very red, and when the elevator stopped, I got gone quick.

     I read the handwriting on the wall. The job was playing out. I was down to my last few dollars I had on me. I couldn't cash a check. I reasoned that if I went to a police station, they would reason I would not dare write them a hot check, so I went. They reasoned differently. Finally, I talked a banker into calling my bank at home. I talked to him.(He had known me all my life.) and I finally got some money.

     That weekend, I drove to McAlister, got my clothes I had stored there, wished my now-former bosses goodbye and headed to Enid, across the state, where a pipeline job was starting. I managed to get a job starting Monday.

     With a little time to kill, I got to thinking. When I was in the 10^th grade, my girlfriend who was a 7^th grader at the time, had moved to Enid. Almost killed both of us. I got to thinking about the kiss we had shared, after I had been practicing by kissing my forearm a few times, at a party at her house. After my friend Jerry and I started walking home, her mother left to take some of  the kids  home. Jerry's girlfriend was there too, and we decided to run back up and just maybe, if we were lucky, we could get another kiss. As I was running up the paved road, I fell, skinned up both my hands and my chin. I was not in much shape for kissing when we got there, bleeding like I was. But she did very tenderly bandage me up. That was almost as good.

     Anyway, I decided to call her in Enid. Sure enough, she was still there. Yes, we could go out. But we had both moved on, the magic had gone, and I  took her home early.

     My job on the pipeline involved setting the hook thingie, the caliper, on the pipe, to lift it in place with the side boom. The side boom driver was fairly new, too, and he was slow. This gave me plenty of time to set the caliper on the pipe perfectly.

     Late in the afternoon, the foreman got tired of our slow pace, so he took over the side boom. I saw the caliper was a little crooked, so I reached down to adjust, just like I had been doing all day. Too late. The foreman was already lifting the boom. My glove got caught in the block and tackle, and when it came loose, half an inch of my left thumb stayed in the glove. I walked over to the foreman and told him I had lost a thumb. He started cussing me good, for messing up his safety record.

     Well, the net result was, my Oklahoma adventure was over. I was headed home to Arkansas. Little did I realize, as I drove home, how losing that thumb would affect the course of my life – for the better! I headed down to Arkansas A@M to look up Barbara. In six months, I would no longer be a single guy. I paid for the ring and the honeymoon with my workman’s compensation for my thumb. We decided to honeymoon in New Orleans, but I could not follow those Cajun‘s directions, and we never did find New Orleans. But it didn’t seem to matter, at the time.