Snapshots

Sometimes images are more telling than words. A few photos from my life life of late....Summertime foods, driving, weather changes. You know, Oklahoma! Oh, and one photo of Crescent Lake that my sister Patti sent me. One of the most beautiful places on earth.
My view on the drive home today.

That's me and the Big dog as we head out to cruise Norman.

Mmmm, salad rocks. This one has mushrooms, parmasan, red peppers and olives.

Lake Crescent, Washington *sigh*

Byers, Oklahoma on a rainy day

Me, tired of driving 140 miles a day. It's only week 3.

Commute

The second week of my job, a tall, thin, white man walks into my office and seats himself. "Are you Dr. Dieu?" he inquired.
"Well, I'm Mindie. I'm not finished with the doctorate yet."
"I'm J--. I hear that you commute. I want to know if I can ride with you every week from Norman."
"Uh, I drive a Miata. It's like a pop can with wheels." It's true. Sometimes I think I outweigh it. I stuck my friend Ken in there to take him to lunch the other day. He's a big guy, over 6'4" tall and not exactly petite. Good thing I had the top down because his head stuck up over the windshield.
"That's ok. I'll pay you $xx per week in gas money." It was more than enough to cover the 45 gallons of gas I'd be buying a week.
I thought about it. Starving grad student. Someone willing to cover just about all of the gas. We made a deal for the year.
My Miata hasn't been feeling so good. The a/c sort of sputters and the back window is broken. Driving in the heat on the way home is pretty exhausting. The headlights don't work.
I decided to look around for a different car- something bigger that would fit more than a supermodel. Something that would fit my giant hairy dog and a commuter.
Since I'd bought the Miata through Craigslist, I decided to try a different route. I saw a PT Cruiser online through a dealership and went to check it out. Three hours later, I felt dirty, like a used car salesman had run his fingers through my hair and over my pocketbook. They had tried to sell me a different car- a Ford Taurus with a wobbly front tire, a broken tail light and hail damage. I insisted on test driving the Cruiser. It was a great car but had too high of mileage and a cracked windshield. When I walked out, he got the sales manager to come sweet talk me. I felt like just dropping the pretense of politeness and just running away. Or punching the guy in the throat. Somehow, I got away. I went home and took a shower with lots of soap.
I had to pick up J-- for the drive on Friday so I asked Luke if I could borrow his Escape for the day. It's nice, roomy and has air conditioning. He agreed and drove my car to his gig, where he played in the sun all day. At the end of the show, He couldn't get the damn car to go in gear. The clutch was out. Damn damn damnnit! I just can't catch a break. And Luke was stranded, in the heat, after sweating his ass off all day.
He caught a ride to his mom's house in the city and I went to pick him up. I apologized profusely to Luke, who took it all good naturedly, and I bought him a huge cup of coffee. Most people are placated with food or wine; Luke is most easily made happy with the application of a large dose of caffeine. I'm not so easy. Suddenly, I didn't just have a car problem, I didn't have a fucking car. First the headlights don't work, then the back window breaks, and then the air conditioning sucks. Now this. I swore that if I ever got that car running again, I'd just drive it off of a cliff. But what to do? I'm not sure at this point if I will ever be able to walk into a car dealership again without a semi-automatic or a sawed-off shotgun. Pretty disheartened and feeling like I got taken in a car deal. I had a few moments of feeling very sorry for myself before getting sick of that and devising a plan to cope. It will turn out ok, it will turn out ok. I have to keep pushing forward.
None of my friends had cars for sale or that they could just give me. Darn. Back to Craigslist. This time, I was looking for something that didn't get horrible gas mileage, was big enough to transport my big dog, would be heavy enough to drive comfortably during the winter months and didn't have over a certain amount of miles on it. I bought a 2-door Ford Explorer. I think it will work. Private seller in a good neighborhood in Shawnee. Not too many miles. Tinted windows.
I drove the new car to get the old one towed. We called the tow company and they sent a truck. While I was waiting, I contemplated all of the ways in which I felt slighted in purchasing the Miata. They didn't tell me about the back window. They didn't tell me about the transmission being bad or the way that some rats chewed up the wiring. They outright lied about the air conditioning. I should've been more careful. I should have never purchased a sports car. I wondered about the state of capitalism in the United States and how we feel as though it's our God given responsibility to step on others in order to get anywhere in the world. The more you squish, the richer you get.
The tow truck driver broke my reverie. Sherman was embroidered in his work shirt. Older guy, missing a tooth, sweaty hat and deep set blue eyes.
"What's wrong with your car?", he asked, lowering the bed of his truck.
"I think it's the clutch cable or something. It won't go into gear."
Sherman stopped the hydraulic lift on his truck.
"Open it up. Let me have a look."
I did so and he pointed to an empty container right next to the transmission valve. It said "Clutch Fluid".
"Your car doesn't have a clutch cable. They break too easily. You just need some brake fluid for the clutch and it will be fine to get you home."
Really? Am I that lucky after all? Luke ran to the store for the vital elixir. I sat in the air conditioned cab of the truck listening to towing stories from last winter and humming a little to myself.
Sure enough, when we added the brake fluid, the car started shifting like it should. I threw my arms around Sherman and told me he was my hero. He told me that he'd just screwed his own company out of some money and just charged me for the service call.
I'll actually retrieve the car tomorrow. Luke had driven me to Shawnee and then we both went to Rose State to get the car. He'll drop me off tomorrow to limp it home. Good thing there are no cliffs between Midwest city and Norman.

And on Monday, I'll pick up my commuter promptly at 6:30 and be on my way.

How I Learned to Drive

Yesterday, I sold my little Ford ZX2. It got good gas mileage and was gray and I just sold it because I want something else. I learned to drive when I was 14, I think. I had a step-dad named Gene and he was a pretty cool dude. Long tall Texan in Washington state. Real easy personality. Not much bothered him. Red/orange hair, short beard, freckles and a roadrunner tattoo. Buck teeth. Nice man. Family man. Treated us well. He and my mom bought a little 50 acre place way up the North Touchet, past Baileysburg, Crall hollow, Hatley gulch (really washboard, that road was), and past Wolf fork. You go left at Eaton's old place which is the property just north of Don Beaver's cabin with the carved beaver statute in the front.
Half mile driveway, all gravel~nobody else lived in that particular gulch. Had a little spring crick (that's slang for creek) running through it and seven acres of hay. Little barn half way up. Wild fruit trees, roses, bull snakes and some rattlers. Deer elk, occasional bears, lots of coyotes and sheep. Our sheep. Rogers gulch. If you get to Cahill or Bill Stearn's place, you've gone too far. Bill had a big dog too. Remember Bobby, that Great Pyrenees that would lay in the road? Yeah, cars would pull around him. Too much damage if you ran him over. He'd come over and beat up on our dog. Poor Corky-snorky-muppet-butt. It was probably because of his name.
Our house was really two trailers pushed together. One was a two bedroom double-wide with an extended out living room. The second was more of a camp trailer with two rooms and a kitchen/bath in between. Gene insulated them from the cold Washington winters with hay bales and we built a huge deck with a pantry and a roof that spanned both trailers. It was cozy, if ugly. Gene also built several outbuildings and a shop for himself and later an air compressor. And he trapped coyotes and foxes for their hides. I could go hunt or skin and dress an animal, but just couldn't bring myself to learn how to stretch a hide.
Gene taught my sister Patti how to change the oil and a flat tire. He taught me how to drive. In our one-ton Dodge pickup with lockboxes and manual transmission. It was the Blue Turkey. It looked a little like this. He parked it on the the lower driveway and I climbed in the cab. Gene explained about the clutch/gas exchange and how I'd need to practice that transition or none of it would work. I killed it. I killed it again. And again and again. I wanted to stop, quit and not learn how to drive a clutch. Nope, nothing doing. We still had the 1973 Toyota Corona Deluxe that Patti let me drive when I was 8. Why couldn't I learn on that? Because this was a valuable lesson. I got frustrated and had to calm down, but Gene didn't let me get out of the cab. He wouldn't let me give up. So I didn't. Finally, the truck went forward. Then backwards. Then forwards again. I realized I was shaking and that I had a death grip on the steering wheel.
Over the course of six months, I got better at it and used the truck to haul hay from the barn to the animals. Corky would jump in the back for a short ride. Once, I backed it into the broad side of the barn. Didn't even phase that truck.
I've had other cars over the years. I drove the Corona a lot, and our little blue Datsun truck through the rest of high school. No tape deck, only a radio that worked some of the time. If you pressed the gas too quickly, some thingamajigger would come undone. It would accelerate out of control until you turned it off, pulled over and popped the hood, reconnected the accelerator and went on your way. No real big deal. No air conditioning on any of our cars anyway. We had 2/80 a/c. Roll down two windows and drive 80 miles per hour the way nature intended. With our mom in her Bronco, it was 4/60. Not as good. Yvette and I would be late for school (as usual) and we'd go as fast as we could, honking past Uncle Vernon's house and performing a little low altitude flying. That's about as much fun as I ever had, and I didn't even realize it.
Over the years I've had a few different vehicles. Most were crappy but some were fun. I bought a 1977 Firebird that I taught myself to powerslide in. When I lived in Las Vegas, my car was rear-ended and my ex-husband let me drive his non-air conditioned, two-toned (primer black and brown) Toyota. Yes, no air conditioning in Vegas. I almost died on a daily basis. No wonder I hated it there.
I'm not sure what I'm going to get next. I have a little time, what with my scooter and bicycle and only needing to get to the city to teach twice a week. I sort of want an old reliable truck so I can haul stuff. The kind like the Blue Turkey, where if I wanted to I could put a camper on the back or some stock railings and haul around a couple of sheep. I guess it doesn't make a huge difference though, since I don't have a camper or a bunch of livestock.
What I really want is what I already have: someone to believe in me.