10-03-2014, 12:04 PM
Oklahoma
When I used to make spaghetti I would tell the people that I cooked it al dente. They would all nod their heads as though the knew what it meant. I pronounced it Al Denton (whoever he was). I knew they didn’t understand what it meant because they were either from Texas or Oklahoma (I’m glad Rogers & Hammerstein wrote a musical about it, so now I can spell it. Oklahoma that is). What could you expect, people tended to be somewhat ignorant who lived in those two countries. Hell, they don’t even know that MSG isn’t bad for you. These people would go to the Chinese restaurant and tell the waiter that they didn’t want MSG in their food, as though it was still bad for you. I never told them, as I knew it would bereave them of their feeling of superiority. The waiters were all blond hair and blue eyed girls. I don’t know why they didn’t have folks who were Chinese looking for waiters, except the Chinese didn’t have the best reputation and maybe they didn’t want people thinking about Chinese while they were ordering. A friend's dad owned the restaurant, but she had to get a job at Gibsons (Like Walmart only dirtier and higher priced) cause her dad wouldn’t hire her at his restaurant.
Anyway, I asked a friend of my dad’s who was on a low sodium diet why he used so much soy sauce. He told me it helped make the food taste better since he was on a low salt diet. I guess I should have told him that soy sauce was about half salt, but I didn’t cause it would just make him feel bad, because he would not be able quit and it would ruin the enjoyment he got from it.
Anyway, we were out poking a couple of hoes one night and he said that he liked doing that better than not eating salt, and that he was going to eat salt and increase his hoeing. About that time his sprinklers came on, and we had to quit. I never did understand what more exercise had to do with salt intake, but then again I’m from Texas and he’s from Oklahoma. My friend Larry who had just been to his grandmother’s house (who lived in Oklahoma) told this story. He said she had just gotten back from the doctor’s office, and she said to his father, “ju’ know what, I was just at that dad blame doctor Brown’s office, and ju’ know what he said, eh, Lamoine? He told me I couldn’t have no more salt on me bittles. When Larry told it, it was a lot funnier, because he talked just like her.
Anyway, when I was young they built Hwy Interstate 35 (back then it was Hwy 287-281) through our town (well, actually on the side of it, but everybody called it through). Truckers called it the super slab when talking on their CB’s, because it was made completely out of concrete. My town was right on the Red River, so Okies would come to buy stuff that they didn’t have in Oklahoma, like 6.0 beer. That was why the ongoing joke was, “What does beer from Oklahoma have in common with having sex in a canoe?” The answer was (in case you haven’t heard it) “they’re both fucking close to water”.
Anyway, they had not ever seen a one way road (one lane roads sure, that was what most of the roads in Oklahoma were), and you would always meet them coming under the underpass going the wrong way. So that was why everyone started calling Okies stupid (I don’t know the reason why other towns in Texas thought the same thing, since most of them didn’t have an interstate running through them). Generally the only time I would go to Oklahoma was to camp out in the Wichita Mountains. It was a bit odd that they called them that. You could hike up the tallest “mountain”, Mount Scott, in less than two hours, and drive up it in less than ten minutes. Also the town of “Wichita Falls” was in Texas. So I don’t know were they got off on calling them the Wichita Mountains. Anytime someone said anything about Wichita Falls someone else would always say: “So falls Wichita, so falls Wichita Falls.” Nobody I ever asked knew what it meant. As this led to fights cause they thought I was making fun of them, I had to stop asking, even though I just wanted an answer. Actually my mother was the one who told me I had to stop. She said that I would get a bad reputation sending all these folks to the hospital. I asked her where I was supposed to send them, and she punched me in the face. I didn’t really hurt, as she was about seven inches shorter than me, and about as round as she was tall. Her pudgy arms didn’t have much of a kick to them. She wouldn’t even try to punch my dad, as he was six foot four, and she couldn’t get more than about six inches from his chin. He would have never punch her back if she managed to do it, he would of just turned red and shook. As he did that whenever he was mad or laughing, I never figured out which one it was.
Anyway, it’s debatable, I suppose, that Okies are about the same smartness as Texans, but Texans are far friendlier than Okies. Texans will smile at you, right up until the time they kill you, but Okies will start to look angry a few minutes before they do, and they will also inform the person that they are getting angry. Texans never do cause it would be rude. Sometimes Texans, or as Ray says, Texicans, but we were in North Texas and didn’t know much about that Texas used to be in Mexico. It’s sort of funny, in school they told the story about the Alamo (not the film with John Wayne, this was real history, not a made up movie) but they never seemed to talk about Mexicans. It was just some nebulous army of thousands that took a month to beat 50 guys at the Alamo, and this delayed that other army lead by Santa Aunta (whoever he/she was), so that Sam Houston could come and kill them all. I guess they never said it was the Mexicans because it would be considered rude to bring up that fifty true Texas men, and a dog, held fifty thousand Mexicans at bay for neigh on half a year.
Anyway, one of the most famous men there at the Alamo was Jim Bowie, the inventor of the “Bowie Knife”. Kind a like the one “Crocodile Dundee” carried, only the “Bowie Knife” was bigger. That’s why we used to have a law that said you could kill an Injun if you caught him crossing the Red River after sundown. This was because Oklahoma used to be Indian Territory. But that’s a different story.
–Erthona
©2014
When I used to make spaghetti I would tell the people that I cooked it al dente. They would all nod their heads as though the knew what it meant. I pronounced it Al Denton (whoever he was). I knew they didn’t understand what it meant because they were either from Texas or Oklahoma (I’m glad Rogers & Hammerstein wrote a musical about it, so now I can spell it. Oklahoma that is). What could you expect, people tended to be somewhat ignorant who lived in those two countries. Hell, they don’t even know that MSG isn’t bad for you. These people would go to the Chinese restaurant and tell the waiter that they didn’t want MSG in their food, as though it was still bad for you. I never told them, as I knew it would bereave them of their feeling of superiority. The waiters were all blond hair and blue eyed girls. I don’t know why they didn’t have folks who were Chinese looking for waiters, except the Chinese didn’t have the best reputation and maybe they didn’t want people thinking about Chinese while they were ordering. A friend's dad owned the restaurant, but she had to get a job at Gibsons (Like Walmart only dirtier and higher priced) cause her dad wouldn’t hire her at his restaurant.
Anyway, I asked a friend of my dad’s who was on a low sodium diet why he used so much soy sauce. He told me it helped make the food taste better since he was on a low salt diet. I guess I should have told him that soy sauce was about half salt, but I didn’t cause it would just make him feel bad, because he would not be able quit and it would ruin the enjoyment he got from it.
Anyway, we were out poking a couple of hoes one night and he said that he liked doing that better than not eating salt, and that he was going to eat salt and increase his hoeing. About that time his sprinklers came on, and we had to quit. I never did understand what more exercise had to do with salt intake, but then again I’m from Texas and he’s from Oklahoma. My friend Larry who had just been to his grandmother’s house (who lived in Oklahoma) told this story. He said she had just gotten back from the doctor’s office, and she said to his father, “ju’ know what, I was just at that dad blame doctor Brown’s office, and ju’ know what he said, eh, Lamoine? He told me I couldn’t have no more salt on me bittles. When Larry told it, it was a lot funnier, because he talked just like her.
Anyway, when I was young they built Hwy Interstate 35 (back then it was Hwy 287-281) through our town (well, actually on the side of it, but everybody called it through). Truckers called it the super slab when talking on their CB’s, because it was made completely out of concrete. My town was right on the Red River, so Okies would come to buy stuff that they didn’t have in Oklahoma, like 6.0 beer. That was why the ongoing joke was, “What does beer from Oklahoma have in common with having sex in a canoe?” The answer was (in case you haven’t heard it) “they’re both fucking close to water”.
Anyway, they had not ever seen a one way road (one lane roads sure, that was what most of the roads in Oklahoma were), and you would always meet them coming under the underpass going the wrong way. So that was why everyone started calling Okies stupid (I don’t know the reason why other towns in Texas thought the same thing, since most of them didn’t have an interstate running through them). Generally the only time I would go to Oklahoma was to camp out in the Wichita Mountains. It was a bit odd that they called them that. You could hike up the tallest “mountain”, Mount Scott, in less than two hours, and drive up it in less than ten minutes. Also the town of “Wichita Falls” was in Texas. So I don’t know were they got off on calling them the Wichita Mountains. Anytime someone said anything about Wichita Falls someone else would always say: “So falls Wichita, so falls Wichita Falls.” Nobody I ever asked knew what it meant. As this led to fights cause they thought I was making fun of them, I had to stop asking, even though I just wanted an answer. Actually my mother was the one who told me I had to stop. She said that I would get a bad reputation sending all these folks to the hospital. I asked her where I was supposed to send them, and she punched me in the face. I didn’t really hurt, as she was about seven inches shorter than me, and about as round as she was tall. Her pudgy arms didn’t have much of a kick to them. She wouldn’t even try to punch my dad, as he was six foot four, and she couldn’t get more than about six inches from his chin. He would have never punch her back if she managed to do it, he would of just turned red and shook. As he did that whenever he was mad or laughing, I never figured out which one it was.
Anyway, it’s debatable, I suppose, that Okies are about the same smartness as Texans, but Texans are far friendlier than Okies. Texans will smile at you, right up until the time they kill you, but Okies will start to look angry a few minutes before they do, and they will also inform the person that they are getting angry. Texans never do cause it would be rude. Sometimes Texans, or as Ray says, Texicans, but we were in North Texas and didn’t know much about that Texas used to be in Mexico. It’s sort of funny, in school they told the story about the Alamo (not the film with John Wayne, this was real history, not a made up movie) but they never seemed to talk about Mexicans. It was just some nebulous army of thousands that took a month to beat 50 guys at the Alamo, and this delayed that other army lead by Santa Aunta (whoever he/she was), so that Sam Houston could come and kill them all. I guess they never said it was the Mexicans because it would be considered rude to bring up that fifty true Texas men, and a dog, held fifty thousand Mexicans at bay for neigh on half a year.
Anyway, one of the most famous men there at the Alamo was Jim Bowie, the inventor of the “Bowie Knife”. Kind a like the one “Crocodile Dundee” carried, only the “Bowie Knife” was bigger. That’s why we used to have a law that said you could kill an Injun if you caught him crossing the Red River after sundown. This was because Oklahoma used to be Indian Territory. But that’s a different story.
–Erthona
©2014
How long after picking up the brush, the first masterpiece?
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.
