 Today's post from posts-past (8/17/2015) was certainly action-packed...I apparently had a lot of time on my hands that day. This post charges around from ideas for spectacular movie blockbusters to daring public nudity to acts of sheer stupidity launched from a one-story roof. It's a ride, that's for sure! Enjoy!
Wow…it was an action-packed weekend here at the compound. In fact, a bit too action-packed perhaps. I managed to sustain an injury to my leg (thankfully, they don’t shoot Robins who sustain leg injuries around here). More on that later. First, there was Friday night. I decided to convene a round-table discussion here at the compound late Friday afternoon to discuss ideas for the screenplay I’m currently at work on in preparation for the 2016 Twister Alley Film Festival in Woodward. I’m thinking of my work as a Mel Brooks style of comedy and was looking for some feedback, but all eight of my round-table participants indicated that from what they could read it was “maybe” somewhere between Hal Roach and Ed Wood, with a dash of the Koch Brothers thrown in. That wasn’t helpful. It was about that time that someone suggested that I needed to throw out the script in progress and start with something new. Several unsolicited ideas were thrown around including one that sounded like the Northwest Oklahoma version of “Casablanca” (though the suggested title was “Tangier”). Here’s the scenario as discussed at the round-table: Our protagonist, a ne’er-do-well oilfield refugee has opened a local hotspot (which, in Tangier means it doesn’t have a covering overhead) among the ruins of the old Tangier school. He has a small wooden stand from which he sells watermelon and a small variety of other produce including onions (gotta watch for the sandburs in those), cucumbers, squash (for those of you who live outside this Paradise, the local dialect pronounces that ‘squarsh’), and potatoes. Ah, but behind the wooden stand he is selling quart jars of watermelon flavored moonshine. He has a couple of thugs who stand out at the road to vet any potential customers who stop by for produce. When someone pulls up, they look back at our protagonist (we were calling him Mick for purposes of the round-table discussion) who nods if it’s okay to let the person get out of the car. If the customer is unable to get Mick’s approval, the thugs hand a free cantaloupe through the window and tell the person to keep moving. So much for scene setting…the story centers around a beastly hot Oklahoma summer in which not a day passes that the temp doesn’t reach 120 degrees. People are seeking to escape NW Oklahoma in search of cooler climes, like the Mojave Desert. Mick himself longs for the frozen tundra of Alaska’s North Slope where he harbors dreams of opening his own igloo-housed craft brewery. But Mick, like everyone else, faces the same problem in that with the downturn in Oklahoma’s budget, the roads have become so impassable with potholes and endless “construction” that no one can escape without ruining tires, throwing their front-end alignment irretrievably out of whack, or becoming hopelessly lost following detours. Tis a troubling time indeed for Oklahomans who long to escape the ravages of heat and the impotent grasp of the morons on North Lincoln Blvd who steer the good ship Oklahoma like an overloaded runaway oilfield transport with a stuck throttle and no brakes. That’s where our hero Mick comes in. Mick has found a series of connecting county roads running deep into the Texas panhandle that are little traveled and in very good shape. He has a map that he provides only to his closest friends who seek to escape the hellish landscape that our make-believe-movie-Oklahoma has become (cough). Then, one day it happens. A jet-black Mercedes pulls up in front of the old Tangier school building. The driver exits the front cursing at having just crossed the rickety old bridge that spans the railroad tracks. He falls to the ground swearing that he left a piece of his exhaust system at the top of the bridge. Such a bold move catches Mick’s thugs off guard. They step forward to insist that the driver remove his fine German automobile from the premises when, from the passenger side, emerges “the woman.” She’s a long lost flame of Mick, someone lost to him after he left for college following the war. He recognizes her in an instant and murmurs her name, “Helsie.” She introduces the still-cursing driver as her husband, Hector Badtoe. Mick immediately recognizes both the name and the face of the husband. He was well known in Oklahoma City and environs for his efforts at reforming Oklahoma politics to bring a sense of common decency, ethics, and a modicum of intelligence to the state legislature. Alas, for his efforts, he was banished…exiled to Kingfisher to serve out his solitude running a roadside motel at which no one ever stopped to rent a room. He and Helsie were making their way to Texas where an underground resistance was forming made up of moderate conservatives, ethics professors, and generally anyone with an IQ of more than 85. Blah, blah, blah…in the end she gets a copy of the map, but only after making love to Mick on an asbestos-laden pile of rubble at the old Tangier school (probably the only original part of the whole scenario). I listened patiently, told the person that it wasn’t a bad idea, but I was pretty certain it had already been done. Soon thereafter we commenced drinking…heavily. The wine flowed and the liquor poured. I’ll have to be more careful about picking my round-table participants next time. At some point around eleven o’clock, one of the women in our group and her husband decided it would be a good idea to strip naked and go drive into Fargo. They drove off in the darkness, various pieces of clothing flying out the windows. Not finding anything in Fargo at that hour, they soon returned, but had lost their clothes along the road. Robes were provided. The next morning, I had to drive into Fargo to get the mail. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol had set-up a roadblock on State Route 15 that prevented anyone from going into or out of Fargo without stopping. It seems that our nude drivers had decided to take a midnight swim in the stock tank near the school’s FFA barn and their images had been caught on a security camera. The Troopers on the roadblock were comparing drivers’ faces with those of our round-table participants. Maybe they should have been comparing parts…just sayin’. I suspect we’ll be hearing more about this in the near future. Saturday afternoon, the wife and I headed into Woodward for a reception in honor of photographer Jim Ybarra’s exhibit (runs through the end of the month) at the museum. Nice artistic effort and definitely worth seeing. Mr. Ybarra has that rare, innate ability for combining light and composition that turns a photo into art. Upon returning to the compound that afternoon we discovered that the umbrella that is normally in the middle of the table we have on the front porch had taken flight. I know, I know…this isn’t Virginia anymore. Can’t leave anything out that can become a windborne missile. Apparently, a gust of wind had lifted the darned thing straight up into the air from the table and it was caught on a lightning rod on the peak of the roof. And me, scared of heights. Fortunately (I think), at that moment the brother-in-law pulled into the driveway. He said he had come by to check the residual pressure on our well system water tank or some such nonsense. Truth be told, I suspect he was able to see that big-assed umbrella on our roof from his house and couldn’t resist a good yuck at my expense. As we stood there looking at the umbrella, I casually mentioned my fear of heights. He suggested taking a couple of shots of whiskey before I attempted anything so daring. It seemed like a good idea at the time. After a couple of shots of rare Tennessee sipping whiskey, I was ready (amazing how brave a little alcohol can make a person). I climbed up a step ladder that only barely reached the bottom of the eaves and then vaulted myself onto the roof. Freeing the umbrella from the pesky lightning rod was easily achieved. I was just beginning to collapse the umbrella’s canopy when the brother-in-law called up suggesting that it might be fun to see if I could descend from the roof using the umbrella as a parachute. That seemed a fun and entertaining way to end an afternoon. The brother-in-law told me to wait while he computed whether the canopy was big enough to lower my big behind without injury from the top of the roof. His calculation revealed that the descent velocity would be something on the order of 4.5 to 6.0 meters per second. Looking over the edge of the roof, that didn’t seem too bad. I wasn’t looking for sustained flight or anything. What I FAILED to take into consideration is that the peak of the roof of a one story house is only about 6 meters anyway. This was going to be a fast trip. I also failed to take into account that I was planning to go off the south side of the house with a steady south wind blowing in my face at roughly 12 mph. I can say that I did feel some resistance to gravity for a nanosecond until my weight combined with the force of the wind blowing against me cause the canopy to rip loose in the wink of an eye. I plummeted to earth with all the aerodynamics of a box of bolts. The emergency room doctor, when he learned how I came to injure my leg, suggested to the wife that she could probably get an emergency committing order. He said he knew a judge in Grant County that would only be too happy to sign such an order. Fortunately (I think), the brother-in-law stepped forward and said he would take responsibility for ensuring I was no longer a danger to myself or others. So, that was my weekend. Learn nothing from me, except how to stay alive! Comments are closed.
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