Oklahoma Today July-August 2003 Volume 53 No. 4

It-"--*
-t
-.--a
- -
the 1 and we 1 0ve
By JimTo 1 bert
Photography by Yousef Khanfar
A FRIEND SENT ME A POEM BY, OF ALL PEOPLE, JACK KEROUAC,
which she found in the NauYork Emes. It described how summer arrives
and contained the line, "windmillslof Oklahoma IooWin every direction."
Instantly, I was a small boy riding through the dusty heat of Kiowa
County on a visit to my grandmother, fascinated by windmills.
I think those childhood visits to Hobart were where my pervasive
affection for the Oklahoma landscape may have begun. That connection
has been a constant ever since-changing, evolving, maybe
maturing, but always an undercurrent in my thoughts. It is in most
ways a gift from my father and one that I sincerely hope has been
passed to my children.
To a six year old from Oklahoma City, western Oklahoma was
endless, bigger, and more infinite than the world. But not frightening.
In Hobart, land was omnipresent, no more than a block or two away
at any time. Its seamless openness offered exhilarating freedom.
My father had grown up in this harsh landscape, where the only
available work was helping a farmer. He spent summers and school
breaks working on the red dirt farms that surrounded the town. His
was a time when farming was not about fertilizer and herbicides but
was largely done by hand, assisted by horses and mules. It must have
been hot, demanding work, the kind that would have built in most
of us a bone-hard conviction to seek another life. For him, it created
a lifetime need for a tangible connection to the land.
At fifteen, I spent the summer in southern Oklahoma with my other
grandmother in Ardmore. It was one of a series of summer jobs, arranged
by my father to keep me off the streets and in the outdoors.
At the time, a regional effort was under way to demonstrate the
importance of pollinating insects, specifically bees, to the success of the
cash crops in the area-from to grain sorghum. Several hundred
hives were to be trucked from site to site with their impact on production
measured and publicized. I was to be the beekeeper's apprentice.
Above, from left: 14,200acre BrokenBow Lake in the Ouachita National
Forest; Major County's Gloss Mountains lie between the Cimarron and
North Canadian Rivers; the shoreline of the Great Salt Plains Lake spans
41 miles and covers 9,300 acres. Erosion has created unique geological
formations in the Arbuckle Mountains, oppos'b.
ESSAY 31