James M. Redwine

JPeg Osage Ranch

The Prairie Sirens

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Peg and I like living in the country. Our nearest neighbor’s residence is within sight but not sound. Even the occasional gunshot is but a faint report. No one just walks over as they used to when we lived in town. Of course, with ’Ole 19 raging no one would do so in town either. So town living resembles country living for now. Perhaps a few million vaccinations will reprise neighborliness. Although I find myself gradually becoming acclimated to the solitude. I do not believe I am as yet completely misanthropic but I can sense the progression toward it. Even the occasional arrival of a UPS or FedEx driver now causes an initially negative reaction. There was a time such an event brought forth excitement. Now not so much. My current reaction is more like someone whose emersion in a good book is interrupted by his or her spouse’s request for attention to some task in need of immediate attention. Really, is there anything going on in our COVID-19 world that cannot wait? After all, if Congress and the president do not deem matters essential, why does Peg?

Anyway, life on the prairie in winter, especially during the pandemic, has a baleful bucolia about it. One is aware of the potential for evil in the outside world but the solitude insulates the senses from it. One begins to gradually retreat from the angst brought on by the cacophonous environment that assaults us every time we interact with our complex culture. On the prairie such things as politics and boorish behavior recede from one’s daily consciousness. If a person can detach him or herself from television, self-delusion can seep through the veil of awareness. Maybe 2020 was a bad dream and merely the detour we have had to take to get to the future.

But the sirens of prairie reverie can lull us into hopes that if we ignore the world it will leave us alone and, more importantly, that all will be well. It is similar to our hopes that by eating only chocolate we can lose weight or that more wine is the answer to depression. When the chocolate and wine are gone our clothes still will not fit and our problems remain. As we learned from Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), simple living and a desire to eschew government do not result in solutions to complicated societal problems. The hard work of day-to-day living and operating a country cannot be accomplished by wishing it so from the prairie. Somebody has to turn on the lights.

I may find myself drifting toward a desire for a reclusive Elysian prairie existence, but I expect hard scrabble involvement will be called for, at least by millions of other citizens, if I want to continue to enjoy my detachment.

Another China Virus?

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Log Futon Before Assembly

When I have nothing to do that’s what I do. When my wife Peg has nothing to do Amazon’s stock rises. I do not recall a promise to love, honor and spend countless hours schlepping around Peg’s mail-order treasures but she assures me it was in the fine print. And when Peg shops I get blessed with packages that must be unpacked and inscrutable assembly instructions. I do not know if China deserves any blame for ’Ole 19 but it seems everything that UPS or FedEx or Amazon, etc., etc., etc., ships to us comes with the warning “made in China” and “easy” guides that are “Greek” to me. Let me ask you, did ancient Greece once fill the current China role of world-wide shipping of products accompanied by Tower of Babble type assembly manuals?

Peg’s most recent “essential” on-line purchase was a log futon; it came in three large cardboard containers. But even though it was plainly labeled with Peg’s name and our address it was dumped by some overworked FedEx driver at an address four miles from our home. Julie and Wayne Brown, the nice people who found our packages propped against their front door, contacted us and we picked them up. Actually Wayne Brown, an innocent victim, helped me load the heavy and cumbersome articles into our SUV then Peg and I had to unload them at JPeg Osage Ranch. I had just a glint of uncharitable satisfaction when Peg could barely lift her end.

Once we removed the cardboard and located the sixteen-page assembly booklet we understood why the furniture company did not offer, at any price, the option of fully put together delivery. On the face of the assembly manual was a large red STOP sign that notified us we could not return the items to the store that sold them but, we had to deal with the manufacturer. Then we were directed to a website for a “video tutorial”. My heart sank as I realized my Labor Day weekend was over and the “holiday” was aptly named.

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Peg is the daughter of an engineer and is amazingly adept at technical stuff. I am better at more sanguine pursuits such as watching football and writing newspaper columns. However, I am highly experienced in the realm of lifting heavy objects and following Peg’s orders. Therefore, together we are usually able to navigate the choppy waters of arcane mail-order living during these unusual days of social distancing; however, not so fast on this Gordian Knot puzzle dumped on the neighbors and then us. It is a testament to our pure stubbornness, the potential waste of hundreds of dollars and our total lack of options that we did not simply add these finished wood parts to our burn pile. If I were not acutely aware of “the Law’s Delay” and the almost always unhappy experience with lawsuits, we would have just thrown up our hands and sought out a lawyer. Surely the sadists who came up with both the futon and its accompanying assembly manual(s) ought to be held liable for our two (2), that’s right, days of frustration before our “Mission Accomplished” was.

One good thing that happened was Peg was so ticked off at Kodiak Furniture and FedEx she may not order anything else for a week or so.

Log Futon After Assembly

Empty Chairs At Empty Tables

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Echoes of Games Gone By

Last week’s column was fueled by my current fear that the upcoming football season will not come up and my fond memories of football seasons past that did. It is not just football but all team sports and communal activities such as church and school choirs that each of us is anxious about and yearning for. And that yearning is truly about personal relationships, not the games we played and the songs we sang. The symptoms of ’Ole 19 include social distancing from friends and family but, ironically, our current isolation evokes poignant memories of times we did get to share with people who once filled our lives and now do not.

Should you have read last week’s Gavel Gamut you probably saw the photograph of my high school football team. It was my wife Peg, you know, the one who actually does the work on Gavel Gamut (and most everything else at JPeg Osage Ranch), who suggested using the team photo that appears in my 1961 high school annual. I am glad she did as it was a virtual reunion for me and, I hope, for others such as Ron Reed who is the brother of my friend and teammate Jim Reed who appears next to me in the picture. Ron contacted me after last week’s article appeared. Gentle Reader, you may hear more from Ron in some future column. Anyway, there are several of my friends in the team photo who look young, strong and positive who went on to greater accomplishments such as Jim’s service in the Viet Nam War.

Another of our teammates was Bud Malone who, along with his twin brothers, Jerry and Gary, also saw combat in Viet Nam where Gary gave his life for his country on July 28, 1966. The team photograph caused me to concentrate on several other of our teammates who no longer can bring laughter and high jinks to my life and it evoked thoughts of two of my favorite songs from one of my favorite musicals.

In Les Misérables young revolutionaries are filled with idealism and bravery in their quest for social justice, kind of the elàn our football team had hoping for a championship season. Our team did achieve such success but some of the young revolutionaries in Le Miz paid with their lives in their losing cause.

In the song “Empty Chairs At Empty Tables” one of the young survivors, Marius, sings to his fallen comrades:

♬ ”Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone.
…
From the table in the corner
They could see a world reborn.
…
Oh, my friends, my friends, don’t ask me
What your sacrifice was for.
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will sing no more.” ♬

However, in the song “Drink With Me” the young friends sound to me just the way I remember those footballers from 1960-61:

♬ “Drink with me to days gone by
Drink with me to the life that used to be
At the shrine of friendship never say die
Let the wine of friendship never run dry.
Here’s to you and here’s to me.” ♬

Well, here’s a thank you for those times we have played and sung in the past and to the fervent hope the next opponent to fall will soon be ’Ole 19.

 

The Good Guys

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Cowgirl Sister Shirley’s Covid-19 Mask

On Saturday mornings at the State Movie Theater in Pawhuska, Oklahoma in the 1950’s you could see a black and white double feature western where the good guys wore white hats and the bad guys wore black masks. The lines were not blurred. Cowboys, good; rustlers, bad. Lawmen, good; bandana wearing holdup men, bad. No mask, good; mask, bad.

Today society has divided into two warring factions that are as defined as those satisfying old movie plots but which are themselves not very satisfying. One group champions masks as proof of one’s concern for others and the other group eschews masks as unnecessary and an infringement on individual liberty. However, most of the members of both groups still view cowboys as the good guys.

In my family we had my mother’s youngest brother, Uncle Bud, a rodeo cowboy who roped calves and steers. He was one of my heroes even though the mean billy goat he used to practice his roping often butted me across the roping arena.

Another of our family’s cowgirl heroines was and is my oldest brother’s wife, Shirley Smith Redwine. Sister Shirley competed in barrel racing, pole bending and flag racing for several years at the International Roundup Cavalcade in Osage County, Oklahoma. Shirley was a member of both the Turley, Oklahoma and Sand Springs, Oklahoma round up clubs and she competed as a queen candidate several times. Shirley’s mother, Esther, designed and sewed Shirley’s fancy outfits and Shirley’s father, Hollis, trained her horses. She competed from age twelve until her freshman year at Oklahoma State University where she met my brother, C.E. Redwine, who managed to win Shirley’s heart with his saxophone and ended her rodeo career.

But Shirley has always remained a cowgirl at heart. She knows right from wrong and has always fearlessly championed the right. Cowboys are supposed to stand up and be counted. Shirley did just that when Covid-19 struck our world. She put her sewing skills to work and made masks for our whole family. Now I do not know how many other cowboys and cowgirls have mounted up to confront ’Ole 19, but I believe true cowboys and cowgirls are not afraid to stand up against any evil. So, cowgirl Shirley, thanks for the masks. Peg and I follow your lead and wear them whenever we go out and about. We do notice there are some folks who do not wear masks. Maybe the rest of the good guys can help get the message out until ’Ole 19 goes the way of the Saturday morning horse operas.

 

A True Depression

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If a recession is when your neighbors lose their jobs but it is a depression when you lose yours, what is the analogy for our society’s losses due to ’Ole 19? Let me suggest that for Peg it was when she finally submitted herself to asking me to cut her hair. Yep, it’s complete capitulation; 19 can claim total victory. I should be able to show you photographic proof but it turns out that a wife’s hirsute humiliation is in the same category of bad husbanding as failing to separate the whites and colors for the laundry. No pictures of my artistry were allowed. In fact, Peg has found a new use for the flowered bandana she uses as a face mask; it now covers the top of her head too. And my attempts to assure her that within a few months her hair will grow back just seem to exacerbate the situation. Please allow me to digress.

Gentle Reader, you may have noticed it is hot in July and August near the latitude along the Mason-Dixon Line. Well Peg, who was born in upstate New York, had not quite acclimated to the previous weeks of 100-degree temperatures. Her Joan of Arc length hair tended to stick to her forehead and the back of her neck whenever she lugged water to her flowers and her vegetable garden. The martyr-type comparison will make sense by the time you finish the column. I was understanding and sympathetic, but my advice that Mother Nature would eventually provide rain was not received gladly. She stubbornly persisted and even suggested I could get involved if the TV re-runs of old golf matches didn’t interfere. Surely, we need not revisit that painful discussion.

The real problem is not me but ’Ole 19. Peg used to go to the beauty shop to get her hair cut. Or, when we still lived in Indiana, our daughter, Heather, who is a beautician would take care of it. However, now, as we do not wish to contribute to 19’s macabre statistics, we have socially isolated since our last foray out to eat which was March the 5th. We wear masks, we wash our hands, we ignore our friends and family, we shop online, we eat lots of tuna. But we both knew the Corona Virus had achieved complete domination when Peg said last week, “Jim, I just can’t stand this heat and having my hair string down my face and neck. Nobody but you is ever going to see me again anyway (I thought that a little overly dramatic) so you are going to have to cut it. Come watch these YouTube videos and try to pay attention.”

Well, it didn’t look that hard to me. I remember when I got my hair cut in Pawhuska, Oklahoma by Clyde Ensley or Bob Butts or in Mt. Vernon, Indiana by Steve Burris. Heck, it appeared about like cleaning a squirrel or a chicken. Just slice here, snip there, shear off the sides. No problem. After watching for ten minutes or so I was pretty sure I could give Vidal Sassoon a run. “Peg, get a towel and I’ll grab a pair of scissors and the electric clippers you used to use on our dearly departed dog and meet you on the front porch.”

It probably would have turned out better if Peg had not sat as if she were an unfortunate customer of an electric chair and if she hadn’t jumped and squirmed each time the clippers whirred and the scissors snipped. Regardless, in my unbiased opinion I did a fine job. If the bowl I used had fit better it would have helped. I can only guess at Peg’s opinion as she hardly has spoken to me for three days and when she does it is difficult to make out what she is saying amid the shrieks, sobs and expletives as she tries to pull her hair back to its former length.

Hair on the porch floor

Eve She Is Not

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JPeg Osage Snake

Peg is a born and reared Yankee. What she used to know about such places as Oklahoma came from Gunsmoke and The Lone Ranger. Now she is learning about the Wild West from personal experience. This morning she received an up close lesson in herpetology. Whereas not long ago rattlesnakes and copperheads were only in Peg’s psyche as metaphors, now she understands why westerners check their boots before pulling them on and make sure doorways and windows are carefully sealed. Of course, these precautions also work well with scorpions and centipedes. But Peg’s education about ferocious arachnids and arthropods has been previously addressed in this space. For now our concentration is on snakes.

Peg has always been an avid online shopper and an imaginative and energetic adaptor of household products. This probably stems from her father’s expertise in engineering. Regardless, during our marriage I have often been impressed by Peg’s ability to envision uses for knick-knacks she finds on the internet, most of which originate in China. No, I will not go there.

Anyway, Peg ordered exterior screens for our veranda double doors so that we could benefit from the relentless prairie breezes. The UPS person delivered the box yesterday and we let it season until this morning. Upon opening the box and reading what purported to be instructions, we installed the screens which stretched from the top of the doors to within four inches of the veranda floor. This let in clean, sweet-smelling air but the material could not be stretched to close the four inch gap. While I had reluctantly entered into the installation as ordered by Peg, I did feel duty bound to point out to her that such uninvited houseguests as scorpions, centipedes and snakes might choose to join us, especially after we went to sleep, if we left the doors open and relied upon the screens to exclude them. Need I say, “I told you so!”?

After spending the better part of an otherwise gorgeous day deciphering the Oriental translation and affixing screens to doors, we stepped back so Peg could admire the affect. Then we ate supper while we talked about the inscrutable mysteries of the magnetic closure on the screens. After supper Peg went to the porch to once again check my work on the screens as I prepared to watch the latest misinformation on cable TV. Then I heard Peg scream, “JIM!” I ran for my 20 gauge as I assumed we had been attacked by some inconsiderate violator of COVID-19 ethics.

“Jim, come here now!”

I eschewed my shotgun and rushed to the veranda doorway where Peg was standing on a chair and pointing a finger at the doorsill where a copperhead was offering to engage with her.

After dispatching the serpent I expected to be allowed to relax on the veranda and admire the prairie view. Wrong! I spent the next hour removing the screens and making sure there was no light coming under the doors. On the other hand, I am fairly confident it will be at least another week before Peg enlists me to modify the entrances to our cabin again.