Chapter 23 Grand Lake and Buffalo River

For a while there in the early 80's Bartlesville, PPCo in particular, had a very active singles group. We met for happy hour, lake, camping and canoe trips. We played volleyball and softball together. There were groups and sub-groups of the larger group. These included locals and non-locals. Couples and non-couples. I'll recount a few of our sojourns.One of the local guys owned a ski boat. So we planned a trip to one of the Grand Lake resorts. It was on Monkey Island, more like a motel really, but it had a covered pavillion in the center of the place and a boat ramp and dock. I rented a room for me and my friend Cindy, the daughter of a well known Phillips geologist. I engendered a bit of resentment among the others because I didn't want to share my room. We wanted a bit of privacy, and well... I think I ponied up more than my share of beer and gas money so I didn't feel any guilt at retaining my privacy. We had a great time. There were a number of couples along and a few singles. We skied during the day, drank and danced at night and I learned the Oklahoma two-step. The boat owner obtained a gallon of genuine Arkansas moonshine which we proceeded to consume. We took a night time boat ride out on the lake, not the smartest of things in an overloaded boat full of drunken partiers. I remember the person at the helm trying to toss me off the back end while I was taking a leak, by gunning the engine. It didn't work, and I remember waking up in the bottom of the boat when we got dockside. We made this pilgrimage several times in subsequent years. I brought a whole pig to roast on one occasion. Attendance dwindled in succeeding years as people married, move away or got laid off. There were several notable folks in the group. Cindy was one. She was the daughter of a noted Phillips Geologist. She was a redhead with legs a mile long and every inch of her feminine real estate covered with freckles. I saw her along Riverside Drive years after she had moved from town. I think she married a former boyfriend and was living in Tulsa. When I saw her I was riding a tandem bike with my future Ex # 2 so I couldn't very well stop. We caught eyes and I am sure it was her. There was another gal very athletic. She was cursed I think. She was every guys buddy, but never a girl friend. She was blonde, and not unattractive. But she had that feminine athletic look, you know, the field hockey player. She was a tomboy. She was fun to be with and could drink you under the table, but few guys wanted that kind of competition in a girl friend. He she could have probably kicked my ass. We were at a party one night out at the apartments off Nowata Road at Kings Road. on the east side. We ended up in the pool after everyone else had gone back to drinking at the apartment. I remember we started out horsing around like two kids, each of us upping the ante, touching this grabbing that until we were at the side of the pool going at it like two bunnies in heat. It is funny how alcohol can be so liberating. If you have ever done it in the bathtub or pool it ain't that great. There is the dilution factor, soapy or chlorinated water does not make the ideal personal lubricant and tends to reduce the efficiency of the lubricant we tend to produce (or the women does anyway) ourselves. None the less that didn't stop us. It was a wonder no one interrupted us. It was a one time thing. No strings, we continued to run into each other as a lot of our friends lived there and we frequented the pool during the summer. There was another gal who had a terrible accident while water skiing. I wasn't there but heard about it later. She got a high speed suppository of lake water. She had a big bum at the time and I guess her buttock cheeks acted like a big water scoop and she suffered a tear. Pretty nasty. She was a sweet gal and went on to marry her sweetheart of the time. We had a gal on our volley ball team report she was raped. I never read about it in the papers. Something the powers that be in Bartlesville didn't like to publicize. Rather have people victimized than let them be forewarned. Two friends had their homes cleaned out by a gang of thieves. They lived in the country just outside of town. On off of South 75 one up in the Osage hills just over Nike Hill. The gang would approach from the prarie side of the house and just load up trucks or whatever was handy and take everything they could. could. They usually had all day to do it. There was the spate of gun point robbings, or worse on Johnstone Park River Walk. One gal wife of a prominent so and so was pistol whipped while jogging. Let's see oh yeah joggers carry a lot of money. She was probably raped too. I still don't think they report the bad things that happen. Some things they can't cover up. Like the son of a former PPCo Chief Geologist, whom I worked with. First time I saw actual nepotism in action. This guy was worthless but moved right up the latter of management. That is until he was caught by his wife bonking thier 14 year old baby sitter. Yep, hard to hide that. But they kept him on the payroll till the court found him guilty. Wife divorced him and probably took everything he owned. He had an office across the hall from me. Clean cut, conservative. A real dufus. It didn't surprise me in the least. Not really. Don't know if the pedophile is out yet, but he probably needs Depends now. His roomy was probably some big black guy that he had to share a bunk with. I cannot even envision the hell his life turned into all because he didn't have the sense to turn down an underaged girl. It may have been statutory, or not. I don't know, but he certainly got what he deserved. A friend and ring leader of the larger group was a guy named Dale Chapello. His family was from over in Arkansas. He worked in the Catalyst Lab and was a chemist. He had worked on Aspartame at another company and was very bright guy. He organized canoe trips over on the Buffalo River. We would drive over and camp on his mother's living room floor in Harrison the first night and hit the river the next day. Imagine 20 people sleeping on the livingroom floor! We generally paired off with a partner on the trip, either female or male. I had my own canoe so took a date along. If a gal got an invitation to go on a canoe trip and camp in my experience it was pretty well understood that there would be sex. It is like inviting someone to go on a trip knowing ahead of time you were sharing the same room and the same king size bed. I took a co-worker by the name of Kathy R. a very bright and sexy lab technician in the Geology Branch. She was pixyish, short hair a impish smile and game for anything. We did a stint of field work in Paris, Texas. We went to a restaurant in Paris, and I got some bad imitation crab, or maybe it was real crab they had driven up very slowly from the coast. In the event I had severe hershey squirts and was dehydrated to beat hell. I was afraid to drink water for fear of leaving a trail of diarrhea across N. Texas. We had to walk about 7 miles in the heat climbing fences and carrying shovels and samples. I became weak as a kitten, but she soldiered on and carried all the equipment for me. A real trooper. I made it up to her later. One of the other team members, who was pretty clueless, must have heard noises in the wee hours of the night and inquired at breakfast what had been going on. He must have been Mormon. No, even they know about that stuff, they have huge families. I mean really, what did he expect me to say? "Oh, that was just Kathy and I boxing the compass last night on my bed..." We had had a FB relationship for some time and personally I don't think it was his or anyone else's business. Kathy left R&D to go back to school I think. She was pretty lonely in B'ville, living in some apartments near down town, it was this square apartment complex, with a center courtyard, more like a motel. Anyway, I don't know what happened to her we fell out of touch. On the canoe trip we had some excitement, turned over at least once, camped at the first 4 mile takeout and it started to rain. We had a fun cozy night together. I really like that. Didn't get too wet, not from the rain anyway. The next day the river had risen to flood proportions and the rest of the group bugged out. Left their canoes and booked. I on the other hand had to get down stream to my truck, which I had already had shuttled to the takeout point. It was the most exciting canoe trip of my life. We covered the 6 miles in a very few hours. We dumped once just upstream of a strainer, a flooded stand of trees. I was able to get to shore with the canoe before we wrapped it. Not having wet suits we were border line hypothermic. Hot coffee we had helped. We finally started following a guy in a solo canoe who knew what he was doing and had no further problems. There were standing wave a good 4 feet high in some places and water would come over the bow and drench the bowman and fill the bottom of the canoe. We were glad to make it to the take out point but very exhilarated as well. I went on more than a few canoe trips and took dates along, a single mom here, a single gal there, and we always had fun. I tended to do the luxury canoe trip. Cooler with food, beer, wine, it was rigged properly with no fear of loosing anything from the canoe in an upset. Dinner might be cajun blackened fish or shrimp etouffe. Dessert might be strawberries and cream. Drinks, beer, wine and even champagne. I even found a blind date; no she could actually see, for a friend from Houston. He came up and we paired him up with her. She was an acquaintance of my future Ex # 2 and the same rules applied and she was ready and eager to go. We three couples shared a cabin the first night at Lost Valley on the Buffalo. My god she was a screamer. My girlfriend and I lay awake half the night listening to them by the fire place. The other couple had taken the loft and we settled in on a pull out bed by the bathroom. The couple in the loft, well the female half was so disturbed by it all; she spent the night, according to her boyfriend, with her pillow over her head. It was pretty humorous at breakfast the next night. This same later on the river saw fit to pitch his tent next to mine, when I took great pains to camp away from him and the carnal soprano of his date. The next morning I got up to fix coffee and almost walked into a used condom hung from a tree branch in front of my tent door. Those kooky crazy guys. He was the same one who detested a pink tie I owned. So on an occasion of me staying at his apartment, with said tie and my camera being present. He enlisted the help of a friend, dropped trouser, tied my tie to his penis and documented it on film in my camera. I got quite a laugh when I got the pictures back. He though I would be appalled. Not so, I still have the tie. Dale hooked up with a troublesome gal from Dallas who played the jealousy card on him a lot. She would drink want the attention of other guys, then have to deal with the consequences. It jerked him around a lot. He finally married her, which was not the solution, obviously. She didn't stop or change and I lost contact with them before they flamed out. Too bad. She was a very attractive gal which was probably why he tried to hang on to her. I think she had some problems though. From a guy who married a bi-polar woman (Future Ex #3) I now know the symptoms by heart and run the other direction. I am sure the alcohol and drugs going around that part of the group probably didn't make things any better.