Tip
Popeye says, visit Alma. Popeye always scared me just a bit with his overgrown forearms, and I never developed a taste for spinach. That was the province of my older brother Steve, who was always looking for a Bluto to beat up on. As I headed for the Oklahoma border, I slipped the Creedence tape in the stereo and thought to myself: I’m headed into cockroach country.
It’s the gene-pool I came from. Native America they call it now; but really it was a dumping ground of dreams. Poor white trash and native tribes thrown together, with the only unified element being poverty. I have no idea how much “Indian” blood I have, but I know it’s in there. There’s a certain survival instinct, that comes from climbing out of the teeming garbage heap. Of course Oklahoma is a lot different from when my father and mother left in the late 30s, for the sunny climes of California. Fighting back the urge for a White Russian, I entered the part of the state that has changed the least.
That’s where my parents are now, just down the street from the Choctaw casino, in Pocola, Oklahoma. The name of the town is an Indian word which means “ten miles,” because it is ten miles from Ft. Smith, Arkansas. I’d say it’s about thirty miles from the Spinach Capitol of the World, Alma, Arkansas. I got into a lot of trouble when I got here for pronouncing it “all-muh” rather than “AL-MA.” It’s also about thirty miles from the site of the Worlds’ Highest Hill, in Poteau, Oklahoma. My parents sit on the border, but their roots are all on the Oklahoma side.
It’s a land of hardy people, who struggle each day to get by. Deep poverty, generations of it, living side by side. The newspapers each day relate tales that are stranger than any fiction writer could create. It’s hard for me to figure out why my parents choose to live there. Steve I can understand. He’s always been more comfortable near the bottom of the barrel. But my parents are fairly well-off, and could live anywhere they want. They used to live on 200 acres in the middle of a National Forest, but they moved closer in to be nearer to medical care as they got older. Even though they don’t suffer from poverty, I suppose they are still comfortable near it.
Poor people are easier to understand, for my family at least, I guess. They’re actually from around the Norman area originally. My father’s mother was a cook at a sorority at the University of Oklahoma in the 30s. My mother worked at a mental institution in Oklahoma City, before my father decided it was time to look for greener pastures. They were both happy to leave Oklahoma, but as they got older, Dad wanted to go back. I picked up another clue about where my predispositions come from, in a new story I heard from my mother on this trip.
She came from a huge family, about a dozen kids. All the kids had to work in the fields, to support the family. But mom told me that she never did, it just wasn’t her forte. She worked around the house, cleaning, making the meals, and taking care of her baby sister while her mother went with all the other kids out in the fields to work. Her brothers gave her a hard time about it, so they insisted that she had to hoe the corn one day. It was a hot day, and she fainted and had to be carried back to the house. She said that she was too heavy to be lifted over the fence, so she had to be pushed under it. They never asked her to work in the fields again.
She always worked, but she worked inside. She couldn’t take the sun. So that’s where I get it from! I’ve never been the nature type either. My father is a more grizzled outdoorsy type. I always feel like such a wimp next to him. He has deep lines on his face, and looks much the same as the photographs I’ve seen of Native chiefs, with deep weather-beaten features. Not me. I’m a cream-puff by comparison.
Leaving town, I see that another tribal war is in process. The Cherokee Casino has erected a billboard down the street from the Choctaws. Some folks just can’t get along.
Mom’s been reading a bunch of stuff about the civil rights movement. She explained that she missed it, and had no idea what was going on back there in the 50s and 60s. California is like another planet, and that’s the planet I grew up on too. Things are different there, but what has always struck me as odd is that the religious propaganda that I find stuffed under my windshield, in Little Rock, is mostly printed in California.
Driving back, I stopped at a Wendy’s in Clarksville.
I always think of the Monkee’s song when I pass through.
However, there is no train station in Clarksville, Arkansas.
In the bathroom, someone left me a tip.
What is it about advertising practices on urinals that fascinates me so?
The big thing I have to wonder is, what was the ladies auxiliary of Texarkana doing in a urinal in Clarksville? I suppose they must have been headed for the casino. Silly me, I had to pick it up. I'm always looking for a tip.
