ecovlke's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 19: Okemah Chapter 19: Okemah The summers of my youth were spent in my home town of Okemah, Oklahoma. It was here that I felt the most at home. I was no longer a brown face in a sea of white. Okemah is heavy Indian. I was home with my real family. My cousins and I would roam the alleys of this former oil boomtown. The old empty buildings of this small town, standing out of the overgrowth like a forgotten rural cemetery, was our playground. It was in these buildings, which stood like headstones of a more prosperous time, that we escaped the brutal heat and humidity of the Oklahoma summer. We would crawl into the dark and dank basements of these buildings to explore. Exploring, like cultural anthropologists, the remains of a once dominant society. Here in the back alleys were old oil company offices, doctors offices, now forgotten and quiet with time. The only other person who paid attention to these buildings other than me and my cousins was the town firebug, who periodically torched many of these turn of the century buildings. I remember stepping my foot through a ground level window of what appeared to have once been a doctor's office. The room was cluttered with antique medical appliances. Everything was dusted in a fine white powder from years of plaster falling from the ceiling and walls. As my foot touched the floor, a plume of white dust jumped up to greet my shoe and pants cuff. I stopped, frozen in time just like the lonely wicker and wood wheelchair which sat in the corner. I could feel the ghosts of this room's past. And not wanting to disturb them as if this was sacred ground, I pulled my foot back out. I looked at my lone shoe print in the dust. It stood out like Neil Armstrong's first foot print on the moon. I pondered the fact that I was the first person to step in this room for many years. I wondered what had happened to the person who rode in that wheelchair. I then turned and run to join my cousins at the next building. It was always a big homecoming for me when we went to Okemah. I wasn't in town long before my family found out by way of the "moccasin telegraph" that I was there. Within the hour of reaching my new father's parents, somebody from my real family would show up to see me. I would leave with them, and they would bring me back late that night. My new mother was always fearful that they wouldn't bring me back. My aunt was in high school so she was always in town on the weekends. She was my real mother's baby sister. She would come by and pick me up so I could go cruising with her. All evening long we would go up and down Okemah's main street in grandpa's old Ford pickup, honking at her schoolmates as they passed by us in the other lane. For a seven year old, this was high excitement to be crusing with the big kids. 8:25 p.m. - 2001-12-13 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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