buffalo

America is a wonderful country from the amazing amalgam of cultures in cities such as Miami, New York City, San Francisco and Portland to the majesty of Yellowstone and the Mississippi River. We are truly fortunate to have the privilege to live here. As for Peg and me, we are most familiar with two counties in two states, Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma.

Of course, the basic element of all inhabited areas is the same, the inhabitants, and those inhabitants are more alike than unalike wherever we live. I have found this to be true from Russia and Ukraine to Palestine and Bahrain as I have taught judges from several foreign countries and from every state in America. Of course, I have also physically visited a few places around the world. It has been my great pleasure to discover practically everybody I meet is interesting. I understand why Will Rogers who grew up near Osage County, Oklahoma said he’d never met someone he didn’t like.

But just focusing on Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma, the two places Peg and I call home, I find much to admire in both. In Posey County the soil is so rich and the people are so industrious that enough wheat, corn and soybeans are produced to feed much of the world. And Osage County’s Tallgrass Prairie and hardworking cowhands furnish the accompanying beef. One need never go hungry if he or she spends time in either county.

I hope I have made it clear that I truly appreciate the county where I was born and the county where I have earned a living. On the other hand, just as there was a serpent in the Garden of Eden, both Posey and Osage Counties fall a little short of perfection due to the foibles of Mother Nature. I suppose life just requires that we occasionally find half a worm in an apple. Let me explain.

Neither Posey nor Osage County has unbearable weather. Each gets a couple of snows each year and each has a hot July and August along with a rainy spring and fall. Both experience tornadoes. For Posey County, Big Creek and the Ohio and Wabash Rivers occasionally flood as does Bird Creek in Osage County along with the Arkansas and Caney Rivers. But all in all the climate for both counties is fairly salubrious. In fact, the weather in both helps make them more interesting and for Indiana it gives citizens something besides basketball to talk about and for Oklahoma it expands the topics beyond football. Both states used to discuss politics but recently most rational people do not broach that topic.

However, it is not the occasional weather phenomenon that keeps paradise just out of reach for both counties. No, it is Mother Nature’s diabolical sense of humor. Let’s take up spring in Posey County first. You may know that Osage County, Oklahoma has thousands of roaming buffalo (bison). Well, just to make sure Hoosiers remember who dictates what happens in heaven, each April, May and June millions of biting/blood sucking buffalo gnats (flies) descend on Posey County much like the Biblical hordes of locusts. And like beachgoers after the movie Jaws it simply is not fun to be outside.

But Osage County has its own flies and to add to Mother Nature’s amusement She has supplied Osage County with several varieties of scorpions. Gentle Reader, should you never have been stung by a scorpion, as I have in Oklahoma, trust me, it is an experience you do not want. Peg, who is a born Yankee who spent her childhood in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts and northern Indiana, has now learned to shake out her boots in the morning to be sure some scorpion has not chosen them as a residence. And the ubiquitous sand rock of Osage County appears to be a scorpion’s version of the Garden of Eden where the scorpions play the serpent’s role.

I guess what it comes down to is both Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma are wonderful places to live. But don’t forget to channel Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen and wear screening over your head and carry a fly swatter in Posey and shake out your boots in The Osage nine months out of the year.

Forty-four miles west of my hometown Pawhuska, Oklahoma, in Ponca City a bronze statue honors the spirit of the women who were vital to America’s western expansion. This Pioneer Woman is depicted striding valiantly forward while leading her child. Her faith and fortitude shine forth.

As a child growing up in Pawhuska I remember staring at the statue with my mother, a true pioneer herself, as she recalled how she and her mother had arrived in Oklahoma before there was an Oklahoma and before women could vote. They came in a covered wagon. Women pioneers were and still are the best America has to offer.

In between Ponca City and Pawhuska lies the heart of the Osage Indian Nation and the Drummond Ranch. It is a beautiful expanse of tall waving prairie grasses. Nearby, thousands of buffalo (American bison) roam freely on the Nature Conservancy’s thirty-nine thousand acre Tall Grass Prairie Preserve. The Drummond family has operated their ranch for over a hundred years. And about a hundred years ago the immigrant from Scotland who started the ranch was operating a general store he named the Osage Mercantile Company on the corner of Main Street and Kihekah Avenue in Pawhuska. On October 31, 2016 Ree and Ladd Drummond reopened it to the pleasure and wonderment of thousands of the new Pioneer Woman’s fans.

If you do not watch The Food Network on television you may not have heard of The Pioneer Woman. However, when Ree published her first cookbook my sister, another pioneering woman, bought a copy of it and gave it to my wife, Peg, for Christmas. It was the beginning of a true FAN-atic following of Ree’s televised life by Peg. Then when it turned out my old friend and classmate, Chuck Drummond, was Ladd’s father and Ree’s father-in-law, Peg was near euphoria. Peg found this out at my 50th high school reunion when Ree hosted the class for breakfast at the Lodge on the Drummond Ranch in 2011.

Now, I truly enjoyed the maple-glazed cinnamon rolls and buttermilk biscuits with sausage gravy but, since I had never, until then, known about the gracious lady and wonderful cook called “The Pioneer Woman”, I just saw it as a chance to reminisce with Chuck. Peg on the other hand was like a teenager next to Brittany Spears.

Fast-forward six years to the gala opening of Ree’s new Mercantile Building. It reminded me of my first visit to Disneyland in 1963. It was exhilarating, fun and very tasty. In the two days my family and several thousand people from Alaska to Alabama bought cookbooks, merchandise and copious helpings of great food Pawhuska was changed forever and for the better.

If you are looking to find the Old West in new clothes, buffalo, Native Americans, cowboys, good food and gracious southwestern hospitality, you might want to go visit both of The Pioneer Women who inhabit the old Cherokee Strip of northeastern Oklahoma.

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