Thimble 004 Oklahoma

I bought this thimble on one of my many visits back home.

As I said in my first post, I was born in Iowa but many people think of me as being from Oklahoma. We moved to Oklahoma when I was 6 so I lived there most of my youth. Since my father was from there too it seemed natural to feel like we were Okies too.

I started this post around Father's Day and what better way to remember my Dad than to speak about Oklahoma.

No matter where he travelled to, California, Florida, Iowa, Italy or Spain, he always said 'There's no place like home' when he stepped on Okie soil again. When we used to drive over the border from Kansas into Oklahoma, you could almost see his heart jump with joy to be back in 'his' state. He just had that red dirt in his veins and no matter where he was, there was a big ole country boy inside of him, hollering to get back home.

He was born in a town called Friendship. I'm not making that up. It was a little town in southern Oklahoma near Lehigh, Coalgate and Atoka. There were lots of coal mines in the area and it was a boom area in its heyday but when I got to go there in the late fifties, it was pretty small and getting smaller. Nowadays Lehigh appears in some books about ghost towns of Oklahoma, that is how small it has got to be. It's still there though.

Oklahoma is most famous for oil, wheat, cattle and of course nowadays for the Oklahoma City Thunder NBA team. It's also known for its tornadoes. When I lived there I was terrified of them but I have to admit I never saw one 'live', so it must be harder to be in one than it seems.

Thunder, though, is the perfect name for an Oklahoma team. When thunder rolls in Oklahoma, it sounds like a freight train coming up at you, over and over again.

I guess I love Oklahoma because Dad did. Now that I am so faraway from there, I can smell the rain and see the golden, waving wheat in my mind's eye. I do think there are few landscapes that can beat that. I cherish that memory and then I understand why he was always so happy to see 'Welcome to Oklahoma' as he crossed the border and came back to his home.