HC's informative post about the states' boundaries briefly touched on how the Oklahoma Panhandle came into existence. But the brief run-down falls short of describing the humanity that dwells within its borders. People up there are unique, to say the least.
My brother Holden and I use to make annual trout fishing trips from Oklahoma to the Colorado high country this time of year to enjoy the weather and youthful memories when we lived there. After enduring a few camping trips sleeping in tents (trying to blame the farts on each other) Holden purchased a used 18' Dodge motorhome that was about twenty years old.
It fit our needs for a few years and also doubled as "deer camp" in the fall. The one small problem that kept popping up was that Holden had zero mechanical talents. And if you're going to own a 20 year old Dodge, you need at least a cursory knowledge of 20th. century vehicles. I've often felt Holden only invited me along for two reasons: to have a mechanic on staff...and someone to drive when he got liquored up.
One hot Sunday morning we were headed back to Oklahoma along a gravel road we found (it's since been asphalted) that got us from CO back into OK which we nicknamed the "canyon road". This road peels away from civilization outside of Trinidad and winds through Las Animas County through a place called Trinchera and hits the NM border just south of Branson, CO. After a dusty couple of hours we would wind up in Kenton, OK...at the west end of the Oklahoma Panhandle.
The Panhandle use to be called "no man's land"...and I believe it earned that name on various levels. Above the readily apparent environmental factors there is the human factor. The forty or fifty humans that inhabit that part of the country are some of the crankiest self reliant ranchers that ever stuck their feet in boots. There's a story that most of them were purged from west Texas for being too opinionated and hard to get along with. I'm not so sure they care what state they live in; I'm not even sure they care whether they're in the United States or not. They are a breed all their own.
This fine day found us pulled off the side of the road so Holden could pee and get another beer. I made the mistake of turning off the ignition on the Dodge. We had trouble with it not starting; sometimes it would crank just fine, other times nothing. This time it was nothing...in the middle of nowhere.
I got out and laid down on hot gravel to get up under the Dodge to see what might be happening. I found the connections to the starter solenoid in really bad shape with a couple of connections broken. I figured the easiest way to clean things up was to remove the starter and solenoid and make the repairs in the quickly disappearing shade of the van. It shouldn't have been a problem except the starter was gunked with 2" of grease from a leaking seal; it was 250 degrees and all I had was a large screwdriver, vise-grips and a Crescent wrench...an Okie cake walk.
I was under the Dodge procuring first and second degree burns on my hands and Holden was staggering around complaining the A/C wasn't running when I heard a truck idle up next to us. One of these Panhandle ranchers had stopped to see what was going on. I believe he actually stopped to complain we were ruining the scenery because he really wasn't offering much help.
"You doin' OK?" he asked. I told him I was having the time of my life and if he'd get out of his truck and look underneath he would see the smile on my face.
"I find a lot of folks out here unprepared for trouble" he continued, "people need to think about what they're doing when they try to drive through here."
I told him I was actually planning on breaking down a little closer to Boise City, but just the thought of joyfully laying under a blistering hot Dodge in the middle of nowhere made me jump the gun on the day's festivities.
He told me I was a smart-ass. I thanked him for noticing as I scooted out from underneath the truck with a greasy and sizzling hot starter wrapped in a red shop rag. I squinted in the sun to see who I had been talking with. It was an old wrinkled and leather-faced rancher with a permanent sunburn and a sweat stained straw hat. It could have been Willy Nelson, but I would have recognized the voice.
I stood up and lifted the starter up to my shoulder to continue our conversation. "Wanna beer?" I asked him. He declined. I told him if he'd drink a couple it would keep my brother from drinking them all and then possibly falling prey to my large screwdriver.
He asked where I was from. I told him Norman, OK. He asked if everybody from Norman was as big a smart-ass as me. I told him no, I was a shy one; there were lots worse down there. He hopped out of his truck, opened the tail gate and told me to put the starter down. He was grabbing the fuel nozzle from the diesel tank in his bed.
"Let's get that cleaned up" he said as he put down an empty feed bag for me to place the starter on. After a little diesel sloshing and rubbing we had the starter where we could get a good look at things. He dug around in his tool box and came up with a 12" long piece of #12 copper wire and some dikes. The solenoid also had stripped threads in a female connection on the end. He dug around and came up with a self-tapping sheet metal screw that would tighten things up nicely.
As I was finishing up the screwed up connections on the solenoid he was dragging jumper cables out of his truck. We jumped the starter to make sure it was working. He asked if I was sure I could get it back on. I told him I thought I pretty much had it under control.
"Didn't need my help now did you?" he quipped.
"Didn't ask for any help." I stared him down in the sun...and grinned. We shook greasy diesel stained hands. I'll remember that old man's grip as long as I live. He smiled and climbed back in his truck and was gone. I had the starter back on within a few minutes and was happy to hear that familiar sound so very unique to Dodge starters. Holden and I continued eastward toward civilization and more cold beer and ice for his cooler.
So you all be warned, those old coots in the Oklahoma Panhandle are a grumpy and nasty breed all their own. 😉
"I told him I was actually planning on breaking down a little closer to Boise City, but just the thought of joyfully laying under a blistering hot Dodge in the middle of nowhere made me jump the gun on the day's festivities."
Typical Cash response. Loved it!
paden cash, post: 438238, member: 20 wrote: There's a story that most of them were purged from west Texas for being too opinionated and hard to get along with. I'm not so sure they care what state they live in; I'm not even sure they care whether they're in the United States or not. They are a breed all their own.
Come on, no self respecting metes and bounds west Texan would live in Oklahoma;-)
Those who live there understand the concept of being SELF-RELIANT. The buzzards will find you before any humans happen to come along.
Kenton is in Cimarron County and is the only town in the entire state that operates on Mountain Time although the entire state is located in the Central Time Zone.
The 2010 census reported the county seat, Boise City, to have 1266 residents while the smaller towns of Keyes, Felt and Kenton have populations of 324; 93 and 17 for a total "urban" population of 1700 souls. Of the total reported for the county, 2475, that leaves a grand total of 775 people to occupy the 1841 square miles within the county. That figures out to 2.37 square miles per person. The county borders Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, a little bit of Kansas and the adjoining county, Texas County, Oklahoma. Fifty years ago the Chevrolet dealership in Boise City had the name, Five States Chevrolet, for a very obvious reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimarron_County,_Oklahoma
The land area of New York City is 302.64 square miles, which at a rate of 2.37 square miles per person would produce a population of 128 instead of 8,175,133.
When someone says they are running into town, don't plan on seeing them again until after sundown, because they will make every stop they can think of while making that multiple-hour trip. Every home has a significant supply of non-perishable food on hand at all times. On one of my grandfather's trips out to the farm from his home in Kansas in 1930-something a blizzard blew up out of nowhere. He went back to a house he had seen a few minutes earlier. He spent three days there with nearly 40 other people in a three-room house because that was the point of no return into the blizzard.
2.37 sq. mi. per person seems high, but I guess some of them just never venture out onto public roads. If you want to really, really get the "full experience" of a high prairie summer thunderstorm, Cimarron County is a good place to sit through one. The biggest thing to hang onto up there would be the corner posts in the fence...if there's one handy. 😉
Fence? What fence? Heck, I don't even own any rocks, or fence posts, or trees, for that matter. It's all dirt. No water. No oil. No gas. Incredibly, no prairie dogs...............................yet. There is a swale crossing the farm so I will miss out on the big bucks from the windmills that are going up as fast as they can possibly do it. Air rights are worth a whopping one dollar per acre for fourteen million years (lump sum). I bet I could even set a bunch of survey monuments and it would be decades before a big yellow Tonka toy destroyed them.
I suppose the hamlet of Kenton is probably considered just an "necessary nuisance" to the folks in the Mesa area of Cimarron County. Even though they are very self-reliant there are still parts of our modern world that probably bleed over into their solitary life whether they like it or not. One that comes to mind is U.S. Postal Service. While I'm sure some still consider even that an extraneous part of living; how else could they receive their NRA membership renewal notice?
Here's the PO in Kenton. Designated an obvious federal facility by Ol' Glory waving proudly. I would hate to make a bet on how many stars are actually on that flag.
And directly south (to the right in the pic) is a facility far more necessary for life up there than U.S. Mail; the volunteer fire department.
Now directly west of the PO, on the other side of the street, stands another point of interest:
Although there is no sign designation, I would almost bet this is where the Postmaster lives. It too is probably federal property. The big giveaway is the ADA compliant ramp...
There use to be a small general merchandise and grocery store in town but I couldn't tell you if it's still there. Frivolities like store bought food stuffs probably never got real popular up there. To quote another old story teller that grew up in a small town (thousands of miles from Kenton) that only had one store, Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery. According to the author the store's motto was, "If Ralph doesn't have it, you could probably do without it anyway".
Home is where you hang your hat. 😉
I believe it is currently closed. But here it is a couple of years ago. [MEDIA=youtube]uqMEUDCb3mA[/MEDIA]
Here's a place to visit, though. [MEDIA=youtube]dwWrPp9r_Ow[/MEDIA]
The dust bowl [MEDIA=youtube]8yMarRsdkzE[/MEDIA]
More on the dust bowl [MEDIA=youtube]iS6DJo1NYFA[/MEDIA]
For you highpointers, Black Mesa, close to Kenton
[MEDIA=youtube]cQlyFQqPivo[/MEDIA]
paden cash, post: 438238, member: 20 wrote: HC's informative post about the states' boundaries briefly touched on how the Oklahoma Panhandle came into existence. But the brief run-down falls short of describing the humanity that dwells within its borders. People up there are unique, to say the least.
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So you all be warned, those old coots in the Oklahoma Panhandle are a grumpy and nasty breed all their own. 😉
That might of been my Uncle/Father/Brother. Be nice!!! We are just unique!
