The Backroad To Oklahoma

Author Note: I must be in a bad mood to write a story with anything bad about Texas in it. I still love the place.

"Don't drive the back road to Oklahoma," the man at the other end of the counter at the Friendly Food and Foundry says to me in a friendly tone.

I look up reluctantly from the menu. Everywhere I go people give me unasked for advice. New York cabbies tell me how to get cheap tickets for Broadway shows as if I'm a rube who doesn't know about the ‘Half-Price Day-Of’ places. Vietnamese teenagers giving me a manicure tell me how to get a husband when my left hand informs them I'm single. Now some toothless old cowboy

with shaking hands is

giving me driving instructions.

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood. I’ve been driving for a long time through a West Texas landscape. The only change during the endless ride was the light of day. I'm beginning to wonder whether I’ll ever arrive at my destination - or at least someplace that made it out of the Palaeozoic Age.

Out of pure frustration I turn the spotlight on my advisor.

"The truck outside, the one with abstract art for a windshield? That yours?" I refer to the fact that the entire windshield is latticed with cracks.

He chuckles. "Yes ma'am, it is."

"Happen on the back road to Oklahoma?" I ask, continuing to bait him.

He chuckles again. "Yes ma'am, it did."

"Where in town did you get that nice orange shag carpet for it?" That was just a guess on my part.

"Must be a trick of the late afternoon light, ma'am. It's avocado green, and I got it for a steal in Marble Falls."

I want to say, “So, you stole it,” but I'm saved from further conversation by the arrival of an elderly waitress. Her skin looks just like the man’s windshield.

"Hi," I say. " What's your special?"

"It's Rattlesnake Taco Day" she responds, in a voice rusty as the unidentifiable pieces of iron I had observed strewn outside, at the "foundry."

"Oh. Well then I'd rather have, let's see, how's your --"

"We're serving rattlesnake tacos today."

"Yes, I understand that's your special but I'm more interested in your, um let's see, in your, um - -"

"No, it's not the special today. It's what we're serving today."

Though I try to pay attention to what she's saying, I'm suddenly concerned she doesn't fall down dead over the counter in front of me. That might keep me in this town a bit longer than I would like.

I choose my words carefully. "Ok, what else are you serving today?" I hold up the menu to help her remember this is a restaurant.

"It's Rattlesnake Taco Day. Like I said."

"You mean --?"

"I mean it's Rattlesnake Taco Day and only rattlesnake tacos are served today. On Rattlesnake Taco Day."

I know she won't let me use the bathroom unless I buy food or a piece of iron, so I order a half-order of rattlesnake tacos.I'm tempted to tell her I want the taco half, not the snake meat, but I don't.

Her face changes formation into what it assumes, incorrectly, looks like a smile to the rest of the world. I know she's pleased. I can tell by the extra flirty flounce of her ruffled skirt as she enters the kitchen to call out "One order snake, Billy" and then comes out again for a potential beverage discussion.Snake venom smoothie, perhaps?

Chalk up another victory for Rattlesnake Taco Day is written all over her.

"Betty, I was jist now tellin this young lady that she better not drive the back road to Oklahoma," the man at the other end of the counter says.

"Well hell, Marlon, them's all the back roads to Oklahoma."

"I appreciate the advice anyway, " I speak up, suddenly on the man's side. Of the two, I like him better. Maybe Billy the cook would win the contest, but I haven’t met him yet so I work with what I have.

Marlon throws some bills on the counter, tips his cowboy hat to Betty and me with as grand a gesture as John Wayne used on Maureen O'Hara and starts to walk out the door.

"Mister," I call.

He stops, turns around.

"Why shouldn't I drive the back road to Oklahoma?"

With that friendly, easy chuckle of his he says, "Because me - and others like me - are out there waitin’ for you."

I turn back to the counter and see my order has arrived. A snake head peers up at me from one end of the taco.

Freakin Weather

This first appeared on a challenge from another website http://www.combatwords.blogspot.com

I blame the whole mess on the freakin’ weather in Seattle. If it hadn’t rained in August, I would not have changed out my spring-summer embossed dotted ocelot op-art signature leather-lurex Coach hobo purse for my fall-winter heavy nylon sateen backpack.

How was I supposed to know freakin’ summer would come back?

It was, like, all over the media that El Niña was on its way, get ready people for an early and severe winter, blah blah blah. So when it started raining, I figured that was it. I haul around my whole life with me in a purse or pack, so in the rain and snow season, I need a carry-all with special airtight zippers and other waterproof features.

And I was angry that day about the rain because it would spoil Bobby D’s party later, so I, like, threw my empty purse, and I guess it landed on top of the stuff my mother was putting together for the homeless. The schizo weather here fooled her too, into prematurely doing her seasonal cleaning thing.

Let’s not go into the scene at my house when the sun came out again and I couldn’t find my bag. Daddy said he took everything to the Methodist Church Friday clothing giveaway to the homeless. He tried to sneak in a lame history lesson as usual Something about the justice of a hobo bag returning to the hobos. I didn’t know what he was talking about, hopping trains, the Depression. Supes, Dad.

It was Saturday and I had to wait another week. I tried going Sunday but the minister wouldn’t open the basement area where the clothing was. He was, like, right there! Bitch wasn’t being very Christian, in my opinion.

On Friday, I tore through a shelf of the ugliest, cheapest purses I’d ever seen in my life, like vinyl even, but mine wasn’t there.

“Oh that nice big leather bag with the tassles?” the stupid lady at the register asked. “One of the Tent City women took it.”

Tent City? DUDE! They were using my purse for tent parts?

She vaguely remembered a large, elderly black woman with two gold front teeth admiring my purse and adding it to her grocery cart. Helpful.

At Tent City, I was shocked to see the tents were all gone. Somebody sweeping the place informed me it had to move early to its winter quarters due to the rain last week.

“El Niña’s coming,” he explained.

He did remember the large black woman and her teeth though. So I went downtown looking for “Mabel,” he called her. I’d kill myself with a name like that.

I thought of going to the police but figured they might confiscate my purse as evidence in the theft, so I took Haley with me to help.

“Ooh, we’re, like, playing detective?” she squealed. I reminded her this was serious business, that my purse was at stake.

We found Mabel in less than hour. Haley and I are smarter than, like FBI agents. The Tent City manager told me she usually parked her cart at 3^rd and Pike.

I spotted her on the way, struggling to roll the cart uphill. I knew it was her when the sun reflected off her teeth. And I’m sorry, I know it isn’t PC, but I remember thinking she’s a retard who should not be out on the streets. I mean, she chose to take the hilly way to her destination when one block over was practically flat. And who hauls around a life in a grocery cart, anyways.

As I approached, I saw my purse right on top of her pile of junk. My heart ached, thinking what it must have suffered a whole week in that woman’s company.

In less than a minute, I had caught up to her and scooped the purse. I threw a ten dollar bill her direction “for your trouble.” Instead of going for the money, another sign of being mental: she grabbed the purse and started a really lame tug of war with me.

She was amazingly strong. I thought the homeless were supposed to be, like, weak from starving. Well, nobody told Mabel that.

I was so intent on not only regaining possession of my purse but making sure there would be no damage, that I didn’t realize Haley was screaming at all, much less screaming “Stop Thief!” and “She’s killing her!” I didn’t see the police either because when they arrived, I was on the ground with Mabel above, hitting me with the purse. The blood they saw wasn’t from anything she did to me, it was the re-opening of a fingernail cut on my forehead during a Zoomba work-out at the Pro-Club the day before, but the police didn’t know that. It was an honest mistake on their part, I testified to that.

Haley said they were yelling at Mabel to drop her weapon (my purse!) but she just kept on hitting me. It hurt, sure, but only on my arm as I covered my face. Just some bruises. I don’t approve that they shot her, and all that. We found out later she was born without hearing, and I guess the only good thing about her being dead now is that she doesn’t have to be deaf anymore. I mean, like, I would kill myself if I couldn’t hear music.

I’ll say this for Mabel. She must have recognized the quality of my purse, because she hadn’t harmed it any. Haley thinks it smells of gunpowder, but when the police finally returned it to me, I thought it was perfect.

September and October were mostly clear, so I got a lot of use out of it too, before changing it out with my backpack.

I still hate the freakin weather here.