Recently returned from visiting my mother's family in Oklahoma. To be exact, the town of Corn, population 591, which is surrounded by hundreds of square miles of farmland, or as we call it back east, nothing. As I've said before, the rural midwest is more different from my daily experience here in Arlington than is any city in Europe. The rhythms of an agriculture-based life can seem strange for one accustomed to doing a 9-5 existence.
So here are the 5 things that I noticed while out in OK.
1. Caps are important.
Just before going going out to Tena's Diner (see #2) my uncle adjusts and hands me one of his caps. A kind gesture because I had no cap. Of course I didn't want a cap either, so after I tried it on for size I slyly left it in the cab of the pickup when we arrived at the diner. All the men inside wore caps.
2. Mid-morning is coffee time for the menfolk.
The diner had 1 large table full of men having coffee. It reminded me of cafes in Istanbul, of all things, where the men gather in the morning to socialize. It's not that women are not allowed, but coffee time is mainly for the men.
3. Objects can be abandoned.
From outdated farm implements to disfunctional machinery to empty houses to closed storefronts, you can see any number of disused items by the side of the road. They are not trash, nor are they dumped. All these things remain on their owner's property. Maybe someday the old tractor can be sold to a collector. Or maybe it'll continue to rust down to a heap. It gives the landscape a melancholy lost civilization feel. Route 66 passes through this part of the country, part & parcel of the romanticized mid-west past.
4. New things abound.
Around the town of Weatherford, a power company has 200 windmills generating electricity. These things are huge -- over 200 feet tall. Alternative energy source right smack in the middle of a very red state. Mobile phones are big. High speed internet, too, via satellite. They don't have much use for the trivial technology out there -- but if it's useful, it's there.
5. The landscape is unrelentingly cartesian, but not as flat as you'd think.
Looking at my GPS, the tracks from driving on this trip have an elementary etch-a-shetch quality. Due to the Public Land Survey System all land is divided into squares, and all roads follow the north-south-east-west boundries. But the land has a surprizing variety to it. The Norfolk-Va Baech area where I grew up is flat -- the only elevation is from overpasses and the unfortunate Mt Trashmore. Western Oklahoma has rolling plains, broad river beds, and ocassional mesas & buttes -- a good variety of landscapes.
