Chapter 35 Crime, Canoe Trip Rules and Dale C.

We had one gal on our volley ball team report she was raped.  I never read about it in the papers.  Crime was something the powers-that-be in Bartlesville back then didn't like to publicize.  They'd rather have people victimized than let them be forewarned.  Heaven forbid that people should think crime existed in B'ville.  Two friends had their homes cleaned out by a gang of thieves.  They lived in the country just outside of town.  One off of South 75 one up in the Osage hills just over Nike Hill.  The gang would approach from the prairie side of the house and just load up trucks or whatever was handy and take everything they could.  They usually had all day to do it.

A friend and ring leader of our group of horny young people was a guy named Dale C.  His family was from over in Arkansas or at least that is where his mother was living.  He worked in the Catalyst Lab and 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 your living room floor!  His mother would even get up the next morning and make ups breakfast.

Some of us would pair off with a partner on the trip, either female or male.  I had my own canoe so took a date along.  In my experience, if a gal got an invitation to go on a canoe trip and camp 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 an impish smile and game for anything.  A months later after the canoe trip, 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.  She was 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 about 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..."   Cathy and I had a FB (that does not stand for face book), 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 12 mile takeout below Lost River and it started to rain.  We had a fun cozy night together.  I really liked 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 rental 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. 

 

I sent Cathy on in a car to the takeout point and another guy volunteered to be my second in the canoe.  We covered the 6 miles in a couple of hours.  You could not see the shore, the water was up in the trees so you had to stay in mid channel to avoid reall trouble..  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.  The 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 waves 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 were 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 "Canoe Trip" rules applied and she was ready and eager to go.  Another friend and his girlfriend came along.  On the way over from OK to the river we were having a few drinks and on one stop, both Future Ex #2 and the date got out and had to throw up form the alcohol.  My buddy, he was the one who married the Indonesian gal, looked at me with a serious face, the cracked a smile and gave me two thumbs up.  He was like that.  He knew he was in like Flynn.

 

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 companion.  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 waited till I was gone on an errand.  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 and the picture.  To be honest I don't' think I ever got it cleaned.  It is silk and you know how delicate silk is..

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.

Update.  With Facebook allowing people to connect, I reconnected with Dale just in time to experience his death.  It was just a few years back.  Dale was always a trend setter.  It seems he had cancer, and just about knew the time of his expiration.  So he got on Facebook and posted a good bye to all his friends and then cashed in his chips.  It was kind of eerie, but nice in a way.  Everyone got to hear what he had to say about his life and the end of it and then if you were lucky, you had time to respond.

 

I lost another good friend and classmate to his excessive drinking and tobacco.  Sadly he did not heed nature’s and his bodies warning signs until it was too late and had a massive cardiac event that left him brain dead.  Facebook seems to have turned out to quasi memorials to people, which is fine.  We all posted pictures and memories of the guy and new and old friends got to see him in different periods of his life that they might not have known about.

Chapter 33 Unbalanced and Suicidal: a Tale of Stalking

There was a gal, Her name was Vicky G.  Her mother lived over on Adam's Blvd where it ran by Pennington Hills.  She was a fixture at the DI and most parties, but she was a bit strange.  She was a local girl, not hard to look at but a bit clingy.  I guess she was one of those unfortunates that nobody liked in school, but everyone knew.  The kind of girl that has "Use Me" written on her forehead, and a lot of guys did just that.  She was the proverbial outsider, who was desperate to fit in.

My friend, the one who dated the Brown Bomber became someone on which she became fixated.   He never admitted to asking her out or even having relations with her.  She apparently worked in the same group at Phillips that he did.  She probably delivered mail or worked in the copy center.  As best I can figure,  he may have spoken to her or flirted.  He had boyish good looks and all the girls like him.  But if ever there was a a walking talking Dorian Grey, it was him.  We ran around for years together, In Bartlesville, Houston, Dallas, Florida and even Bangkok Thailand.  He finally moved to Jakarta, and eventually got married.   He has lived over there for damn near twenty years now.  I believe he has two or three sons.  He and I had a falling out and have not spoken since sometime after 9/11 because I was a little out spoken about the Muslims.  that might have hurt his feelings since his wife and father are members of the Nation of Islam.  She also was a beneficiary of a clitorectomy, more the foreskin removal than the whole little bugger, but I cannot be certain, she wasn’t specific when we talked about it in Tampa Bay on a golf trip. 

Just an aside, she hit the gold mine gravy train.  You white girls just do not know how to do it apparently.  He and his girlfriend and now wife, used to fight like cats and dogs.  She ran off on the trip to Tampa Bay and he didn’t give a shit till I reminded him she was here on his sponsorship and if anything happened to her, like she ended up dead in a ditch somewhere, the cops would come looking for him.  Well long story short, they are married with kids.  They live in Singapore, he sends her to Europe periodically with her friends, most likely so he can get rid of her and pursue his lifelong passion for Asian prostitutes.

The other Asian gal I mentioned in an earlier chapter, also hit the gold mine.  The beneficiary of the right draw on the blind date, ended up marrying the guy, traveling from Pakistan to Egypt and finally back to Houston.  First thing old Debbie did was buy a new Jaguar and a new home in an upscale neighborhood in Cinco Ranch west of Houston.  I live not too far from there.

Back to the original plot line…

I was friends with my friend’s Indonesian wife on Facebook for a while and saw her travels but heard not a word from him.  So I am not sure what bug he got up his ass.  Life’s too short to care.  He is and probably will always be an expatriate.  I just wonder if his boys are going to visit the Karma on him that he did on his parents.

Okay back to Vicky G.  I knew her and she knew me by name, but I never hit on her, thankfully.  She never seemed to be around at closing time if I felt like a roll in the hay.  Could be that someone else already had snapped her up.  Whatever the case she never fixated on me, but she did on him for whatever reason.  I have to say that I did look for her on more than one occasion but never found her on those nights.  I dodged a bullet.

She started to stalk my engineer friend,  sending him weird notes at work, calling him at home and the office.  If he was out of town, she called his boss to find out where he was. Even his boss was starting to get pissed.

My buddy finally filed a harassment complaint.  She stopped for a while but ultimately lost her job at Phillips over it.  The final chapter was her confronting the CEO of Phillips Bill Douche or maybe it was the one after him, in the parking lot over by the Phillips Building.  She didn't attack him or anything just confronted him in an attempt to get her job back.  That must have been the last straw for the poor Vicky because she gassed herself that Christmas in her mother's garage by leaving the car running.

 

For years afterwards we would send my buddy a Christmas card signed Vicky, as if she was still watching over him.  Kind of a sad last tribute to a sweet but troubled girl.

A side story to this involved a former hunting buddy of mine.  He still works for Phillips unless he retired.  He was last working in the Environmental Division.  He is the one who married the China Doll that worked in Production Research.  Anyway, he was just beginning to date the China Doll.  She, being a good southern Baptist was not giving away the milk for free until the cow was bought and paid for.  He came to me one day lamenting how horny he was and that he just could not convince her to let loose the old Abe penny she kept between her knees.  He knew about Miss Stalker and our mutual friend.  He asked me if there were any women I could fix him up with so he could get laid.  I had done this for a few guys, single unattached women not being a scarce commodity in Bartlesville at the time.

His intent was not for me to fix him up with her, I assure you.  But I saw a great opportunity for a practical joke.  Our whole relationship was based on joking one another.  Tit for tat.  I was a friend when he came to Bartlesville and he was going through a divorce where the gal pretty much cleaned him out.  He played doormat, letting her have every damn thing she wanted in an effort to please her.  Thing was is she was the one who was fucking around on him in the Philippines while he was off shore.  I know where his head was…at least now, because I’ve been there.  Not at the time though, but he didn’t even get an attorney and had to pay alimony and sell just about everything he had.  I bought some of his furniture and still have some nice rattan night stands.  We duck hunted together for years, drank, partied and were pretty tight.  Then came China Doll.

Well seeing the opportunity for a great joke at his expense, I had one of the young women in our section call him up and say she was Miss Vicky G. the Stalker and that I had told her he was interested in meeting her.  It was all real innocent like, no sexual references, just the lingering threat that he would now become the stalking target of Vicky.

He went ballistic.  Not with anger, but with fear!  He called his mommy, I mean his girlfriend.  He was terrified, either that Vicky would start to stalk him, or that it would get back to China Doll.  Unbeknownst to me, his girl friend China Doll knew Miss Stalker, either from church or school or Stalkers Anonymous or something. 

Well, fuck me!  She calls her up and confronts her.  Well, now haven’t I stepped into a nice tub of  shit!

Well, China Doll calls her friend Vicky and finds out that  the call wasn’t from her after all.   I can see the light bulb come on over his head to this day.  He connects the dots and they lead back to me. 

So he comes down and laughs and swears to get even, right?.  No, not on your life.  Most men would, if they still had a pair swinging between their legs they would.  But if yours are kept in a jar next to your girlfriend’s make-up, you have her call your friend and read him the riot act on your behalf. 

 

To be fair she did it without his approval, and the chagrin on his face and humiliation he felt was painful to see.  I hung up on her after telling her that she should let him take care of his own business, after all we traded practical jokes all the time.  Up till then anyway.

That was pretty much the end of our relationship, because she forbade him to go out drinking, which meant no time with me, and he had to take his future brother-in-law hunting with him, which meant I wouldn't be going because the kid could not find his ass with both hands.  I am surprised Scott could stand to hunt with him either.  My friend was pretty serious about his ducks and was mightly embarrasses when his future brother in law showed up wearing disco clothes to hunt ducks in.  Scott was a hunting purist and taught me pretty much all I know about hunting waterfowl.  Well not all of it, I just said that because I just used his name…whoops.  But I guess once he was family, he had to make allowances.  His parents, his mom and step dad had died, and he was alone.  So wanting to belong to a family and getting regular poon overrode any loyalty with his male friends.  Believe me I understand that.  I have been around long enough that some people can't live without family.  Besides, I was not going to bend over and spread’em for him no matter how close we had been or how many early mornings we spent in the woods together.

I feel I helped him through the divorce and then the shit done to him by the gal who ran one of the diet meal rip-off plans.  She ran around on him too.  I believe she drove a red Ford Bronco at the time, or maybe that was his.

I have very fond memories of our duck hunting and fishing on Copan together.  I only hope that eventually he got possession of his equipment back, but I doubt it.  They wouldn't go well with the tutu he probably has to wear around the house what with the short hem and all.

Chapter 34 Safety or Damage Control?

I have to preface this by saying that everything I wrote when I wrote this was true to my knowledge.  I have not been affiliated with PPCO since before they merged with Conoco.  I have worked for Conoco on the Environmental side working on property they acquired in Charleston. S.C. with attorneys at their offices in Houston.  But I have no knowledge of their business practices since the 1990's. 

It's a roman candle, no it's a bomb, no it's an exploding polyethylene plant!

I had left Phillips about the time the Plant in Pasadena, Texas exploded killing umteen people including the female engineer who had reported the unsafe practices to the company.  But I get ahead of myself.

 I saw a letter to the editor in the Tulsa World that got me a bit riled.  It was probably a PPCo retiree who was defending his former employer company.   He said something to the affect of "Why are you and the OSHA picking on Phillips, if anyone knows how to operate a plant safely it should be Phillips.  Apparently OSHA and the courts thought differently.

 

 I wrote back to the Tulsa World that PPCo's practices at the time were all damage control.  They scrambled like hell after the fact.  As an Associate Geologist, I also acted as the Geology Branch safety officer for a year.  It was a revolving position that meant you hosted the monthly safety meeting in the Research Forum, which also doubled as nap time for most of the older guys who knew everything already.

I was trained as a DuPont Safety Auditor and ran audits in the Production and Chemical branches.  It amazed me to see what people did after being told not to do it.  Like balancing gas cylinders in swivel chairs etc.  My point is the middle line managers did not take things seriously, so it had a trickle down effect. The word seemed to be "do what you have to do to get the job done but don't get caught."

 

You could tell that no body cared about safety, because the company could not be bothered to hire someone full time to act as a safety officer, or give them sufficient authority to enforce the rules.  Instead, they made kids like me one year out of school safety officers.

 Well I said all this in the letter rebutting the other letter.  I also said that it was interesting that Health and Safety was NOT represented at the corporate level by a VP or anyone else until AFTER the Pasadena disaster.  Then all of a sudden it rated a VP and a female one at that. 

 

Not bashing females...I love females, but Oil Companies didn't seem too.  If you recall, if a company wanted to look good they found somewhere to hire women and put them.  Usually it was in the useless HR department.  They would put a male VP over them just to make sure things didn't get too out of hand.  I took HR classes at and OSU campus in Tulsa and it was a joke.  My point being what better way to make a good impression than by opening up a Health and Safety Department and then put a woman in charge of it to make people feel like you really meant business.

 

They quickly staffed the new organization with whatever engineers were available.  It didn't matter if they had ever had a course in industrial hygiene, environmental anything, or industrial safety.  Just being an engineer was enough.  They do oversight anyway, and let the consultants do the work.  My "junkless" friend ended up in that new organization overseeing pipeline safety.  (His little story will come next).

Now I also mentioned a few things in passing in the letter that surprised a few people.  My letter made it up all the way to the CEO I am told.  I mentioned a little known event involving the loss of a whole tank of Benzene at the refinery in Borger.

Benzene you see is a carcinogen and one of the four primary constituents tested for when dealing with gasoline spills.  It is an additive along with Toluene, Ethylene and Xylene.  They collectively form the acronym BTEX.  Well someone screwed up at Borger and left a tap open and a whole tank drained on the ground.  I knew someone involved in the sampling of the site.  Not wanting to draw attention and win the wrath of the then Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission.  PPCo kept mum and sampled it themselves sending some of my former workmates out to do the job.  Turns out they contaminated the watershed of an adjacent ranch.  So their solution was to buy the ranch.  This served to do what they wanted.  In Texas a problem does not exist unless it is reported and comes to the attention of the State Regulators.

Phillips now owned the contaminated property so they were not going to report themselves.  So nothing ever happened.

 

In fairness, the stuff probably evaporated and went to that big "landfill in the sky" as we used to say in the environmental industry.  The hot Texas summers would have baked he ground and wicked it up and into the atmosphere.  Hopefully this happened before it got down to any shallow aquifers, but likely any shallow water would have been alkalai and not fit for consumption by man or beast.  But then there is the possibility that it went into the aquifer or creek and into the nice big recreational lake there around Borger.  I have no knowledge of the gradient out there or where the spill occurred so I am just speculating.  Since this happened in the late 1980's unless there are a lot of people with three heads walking round, I doubt it hurt anyone in the long run.

 

It was to demonstrate the mindset of the company.  Anyhow...

I didn't go into any details in the letter I just mentioned it as an example of how PPCo put a band aid on things after the fact.

My Ex #3 owned a pub in Katy which is near the site of the Great Southwest Equestrian Center.  That is a horse arena to most people.  I got to know the owner and did catering for him on weekends through the pub.  Yes, I can cook.  I did one event for 1200, German food for an Oktoberfest.

Anyway, turns out he was an engineer too.  He had been married to the engineer who reported the dangerous conditions at the Pasadena plant prior to the explosion.  Well, who should PPCo try to pin the blame on?  Yep.  The poor dead female engineer.  Seems she was smart and had copies of all the safety reports to her bosses at home.  So it was easy for her husband's attorney to prove they were lying through their teeth.  Not surprising really. 

 

Well, my new friend and owner fought back and won a defamation and wrongful death suit and a boat load of money.  Seems he got about $12 million.  More than enough to buy the Equestrian Center and all its property while it was in bankruptcy.  He probably paid $50 of the dollar or less for the very large property directly in the path of the western expansion of suburban west Houston.

He has gone on to keep the center in operation while selling off surrounding property.  At last look there were at least 2 apartment complexes, a super church, condos and commercial property all in the front 1/4 mile of the property along Mason Road.

Seems he turned those $12 million dollars that PPCo stock holders generously gave him into a tidy profit.

Chapter 32 Hawaii Bound Brunette or ( Dogs really are great bait chick magnets)

I ran into this cute young thing at a festival on Riverside Drive.  I brought my Doberman down to the festival for company and he was a great ice breaker.   She saw the two of us walking and came running over with a friend to pet the dog.  Gotta love dogs...anyway she ended up inviting me to a party that evening.  I took the dog home to B'ville and came back.  I ended up spending the night with her and but not before I got to meet her boyfriend. 

 

WTF?

 

Yeah. 

 

They were in the restaurant business, the part that serves the tables, and were planning to move to Hawaii together.    I guess there was a waiter and waitress shortage in Hawaii at the time.  Yeah, right?  

 

I hope she didn't end up turning tricks somewhere.   She was cute as a button, dark hair cut into a page boy, and yes, a major rack on a 5'7" frame.  Simply gorgeous, liberated and about 18 or 19.  She lived on the south end of Riverside just north of where it used to take a hard turn east at 81st or so.

 

Now how I figured in I do not know.  The party was really just some friends, booze and the three of us.  She let me stay after the party, we made love, and then cooked me breakfast in the morning before sending me on my way.  Now I don't know if her boyfriend was gay, or saving till they got married.  All I know is she wasn't. 

 

Which reminds me…have you heard the joke about the father catching his son jerking off and telling he had to save it till he got married?  A year of so later he comes to the father with two mason jars filled with jizz and asks his dad if he thought he had enough to get married.  Ta dum!

I am waiting for the laughter to subside.  

 

I don't know if it was just him, or both of them, but there seemed to be a lot of naiveté going around.  Or it could have been me. 

 

I kind of thought she was cheating on him, but she introduced me to him, and he went on his way, and I ended up with her for the night.    Who knows, maybe he got off on the idea of his girl making it with an older man.  I was about 27 at the time and she had to have been 8 or 9 years younger than me.  It could be I was the naive one.  He could have been in the next room listening for all I know.  Years later, I now know those kinds of things are not so strange as they once might have appeared.  I married one.  My future Ex #3 like to bring women home for me or pick them out, let me take them home, only to show up later so she could watch.  Go figure.  As far as I know, they made the trip to Hawaii and lived happily ever after.  I certainly hope they did.  On a trip to Hawaii, I wondered if I might run into her.  I know it was far fetched, but weirder things have happened.  I was on Kauai and she struck me as a Kauai kind of person.

 

No I didn't see her, but wish I had.

 

Chapter 31 Betty B.

Another nurse I ran into was a beautiful but odd bird.  She was a home grown cutie from Tulsa, but had moved on to fast times in Dallas.  This sweet Berry, got into weight lifting and from all accounts a fast living abusive husband.  She lived in the Dallas fast lane for a while, then I can only surmise that her husband, beat her up in a 'roid rage.  Don't know if other drugs were involved or not, but probably were. She told me how her ex had rearranged her dentistry and he must have really wailed on her knocking out about 4-5 teeth on the left side of her jaw.  She moved back to Tulsa and lived with her parents off Sheridan or Yale.  In the event, I met her at the County Health Clinic.  She was administering AIDS tests, and yes, I had the cajones to ask her out when I went back from the far east and got a clean bill of health.  We went out a few times and ran into each other here and there. 

She had a body that would stop a freight train.  She worked out and walked regularly in the park off Yale, speed walking, and I used to troop along with her and some doctor friends who bird dogged her.  Betty was gorgeous and had a nice customized front end too.  Body shops did and still do wonders.  She worked hard on it no doubt about it.  I know her and her ex were probably narcissistic work out freaks.  She actually tested her urine to determine if she was in ketosis or not on a daily basis.  For those not familiar, ketosis is when your body is utilizing fat instead of the preferred glucose as an energy source.  "Most medical resources regard ketosis as a pathological state associated with chronic starvation. Glucose is regarded as the preferred energy source for all cells in the body with ketosis being regarded as a crisis reaction of the body to a lack of carbohydrates in the diet."  Get the picture?  One really has to be obsessed, and also has to know what they are doing to want to stay in the state of ketosis.  The term comes from Ketone, a by-product of the breakdown of fats in the body.  It is decarboxylated into Acetone and that my friends is excreted in the urine and in the breath.  It is quite noticeable.  Know anyone with anorexia?  Smell their breath, it will have a sweet chemical smell to it.  I went on a diet program called "The 6 week cure to the middle aged middle." and it relies on ketosis to drop your weight rapidly.  It is tough to stay on, but it works.  I went from 267 to 240 in six weeks.

 

I fell out of touch with Betty and was living down on Riverside at Place One in 1988.  I came out of my apartment and saw her cruising around in her car looking lost.  I waved her down and we chatted.  Seems she was doing home checkups for patients AIDS patients and was looking for an address when I happened to see her driving around. 

 

I helped her get oriented and pointed her in the direction of the address. 

I really regret not getting to know her better, but she had a lot going on in her life.  Either she wasn't over her ex, or he had been enough to scare her off relationships, or it could have been the parents.  Her parents seemed the very religious types and had convinced her that her ordeal was divine retribution for her wayward lifestyle.  Anyway, they kept her on a short leash since she was living under their roof.

 

Chapter 30 Third World Souvenirs

I have had my share of experiences in the lands south of the border.  Today I have strong feelings about mass illegal immigration but what is one person to do?  I have worked in Bolivia, traveled to most of the countries in South America, and worked and traveled in Mexico.  I generally like Hispanics, but just what is a Hispanic or Latino?  Are not most of them just Native Americans of some percentage or other who's people at one point or another in their history were forced to adopt Spanish as their primary tongue and expunge their native religions and languages?  How does that make them Latin or Hispanic (from the word Hispanola, the first island Christopher claimed for Spain)?   Actually a Peninsularo is the correct term for anyone who was born on the Iberian peninsula of Spain.   A Creole is anyone who was born here in a colony or can trace lineage back to a Spaniard or French colonist.   Most of the so-called or self proclaimed Hispanics, or Latin Americans, are in truth, merely Spanish speaking Native Americans with some varying percentage of Spanish or Native American in their lineage.  They are not that special a breed, but are pretty much like what we call African Americans.  They have a varying ancestral genetic makeup that could include Spanish, French, or English genes along with the African.   In fact in the Caribbean basin, what pasts for Black and Hispanic are indistinguishable.  Throw in a bit of Indian, the Hindu kind, who were brought over to Trinidad, and other British colonies, and you have a real genetic stew going.

But I digress.

When I was living in Tulsa over at Place One off Riverside Drive, I had occasion to go to the Post office on Peoria.  I was waiting in the seeming endless line one day and met this gal from Colombia.  I struck up a conversation with her and had more than enough time to chat her up.  We agreed to meet later.  I took her out for drinks and I think we had dinner then went back to her place.  One thing led to another and we hit the sheets.  Now I can only assume I was great at the art of seduction, or she was fishing around for a husband to put her on the superhighway to citizenship.  In either case, I was in like Flynn in no time.

 

Being a considerate partner I decided to sample cuisine south of the border, and being a good Catholic girl, she was intrigued but not entirely relaxed and comfortable with my endeavors.  We finished our assignation and parted ways.  Before we could meet again, I noticed this familiar itching.  It wasn't in my nether regions, but in my beard.  Seems I got a few unexpected garnishes with my Colombian snack.  I once again hit the drug store and eradicated the little bastards before they spread.  I did my lower regions as well, just to be sure that I got all the sons of bitches.

Now I’m not picking on our friends from South America, but don’t they notice when their privates come alive at night and feel like a pack of mosquitos just took up residence?  I mean you have to be numb not to feel the little critters crawling around and the itch when they start to feed.  Is it that our Third World neighbors just get used to it?

 

I guess it is one of those questions we will never know.

 

Update...I wrote the above years ago, and as you can no doubt tell from the frequent news reports, new diseases are cropping up like mushrooms after a shower due to the flood of our southern neighbors across our borders to get on board the Gravy Train of the Western World.  From Kissing Bugs to Bed Bugs, the Central, South and Mexican Americans are bringing their national treasures to share with us in exchange for a better life on the Gravy Train. 

 

I think it is a measure of how wretched the refuse is, that in all my days in South America and Mexico...I never once brought home any souvenirs, rather I had to come home and get them from the recent arrivals. 

 

Such is life and the New World Order.

Chapter 29 National Cash Register

Now, if you are asking yourself, if this guy has a steel trap for a memory, I do have a pretty good head for recollection, but to be honest, I wrote most of these entries years ago in a journal of sorts.  To post them I am just updating them a bit, like with this intro, and then cutting and pasting the rest in.  So why didn't I finish posting these years ago?  Good question.  Too many things going on, procrastination, you know the normal list of things.

There was a club off of Peoria, which for a while in the mid 80’s, had a late night TV broadcast on a local station.  I can’t remember the name, but for a while it was a very popular place.  They put cameras in the club and telecast about an hour or so of the club’s goings on.  I use to go there frequently, making the drive from Bartlesville.  This is the club I took Dana to on our abortive date.  On another night I met a somewhat older gal that turned out to be the tri-state manager for National Cash Register or NCR.  We danced a while and then did the obligatory getting to know you routine, then decided to leave.  She had a condo nearby that we drove back to. 

It amazes me how trusting women can be, or were back then at least.  I must look like a nice guy, but then so did Ted Bundy.  My point being, I could have been a real crazy and here she invited me back to her place.  I did meet a couple of her girlfriends, and I may have shown them my driver's license just so they knew I was who I said I was and to increase her comfort level.  But there have been other times, when it was "how do you do, lets screw!" and we were off to the races without so much as an exchange of names that I can remember.

 

In the event, things worked out well for her and me.  She was a nice woman, probably about 9-10 years older than me.  Don’t get me wrong, but I was thinking sugar momma and gigolo.  Alas it was not to be. 

 

She didn't appear to be a cougar on the prowl, I think it was her celebration with her gal pals of her new promotion.  I just happened to be the icing on top of the cake.

 

She too was headed out of town, to Louisiana shortly after that.  She had gotten promoted, and was leaving in a week to take the other position.  So I guess I was a going away present so to speak.  It was too bad she was leaving, she was a hoot and fun to be with.  She turned out to be my one and only shot at a sugar mama.  She was probably near to pulling down six figures in the mid 80's, making almost twice if not three times what I was making.  It could have been fun, but turned out to be all too brief.

Back in the days of the Reagan Era, it seemed everyone was drunk on excess.  My god, there were new clubs popping up in Tulsa on Lewis and Peoria like mushrooms. There were clubs that I can't even remember the names of, nice glitzy upscale places on Yale and Sheridan.  Most were on Peoria or Lewis.  I used to go to the Double Tree for happy hour.   On Friday I would drive to Tulsa from B'ville to make a happy hour or two.  This was when Disco International in B'ville was beginning to fade. 

It seems that the down turn in oil prices hit the high rolling big spending locals first.  As stripper wells were shut in and plugged, more than a few locals in Washington County learned that the royalty money that all of a sudden seemed to be raining from heaven during the boom could just a quickly dry up.  I've heard of a lot of sad stories that would have ended differently had the individuals only put the money away; rather than spend it as fast as it came in.  They would have been set for life.   Instead they spent way too much and got in way over their heads and lost everything and then some when the tap was closed as the prices dropped.

As they say, only two things fall from the Heavens, manna and airborne rangers.

Trooping to Tulsa introduced me to a whole new group of people.  Like the nice buxom (yeah, that characteristic again) Catholic girl , who happened to be a nurse at St. Francis.  She had a nice personality, but struck me as a bit needy.  But what the hey? I liked her.

I was supposed to take her on a canoe trip but things got mixed up and it never happened.  I think her background was German.  Her biological clock was ticking and she wanted to have kids.  That gave me pause.  She struck me as one of the type who wanted about 8 or so, but she had the figure for it.  As my Ex Wife #1 would say she had "kartoffel stumpfers"  or potato stomping legs, and tiny waist and yes, as set of DDs. If I had to guess I'd say about 36 DD.  She would show up for happy hour with her blond hair hair up in a bun, channeling her grandmother, no doubt; her nursing uniform on, and this angelic look on her face.  This gal was like a rumbling volcano ready to spew hormones all over the landscape.  I had known two good Catholic girls just like her in college. One of them from very large family of 10-12 siblings from good practicing Catholic parents.  Birth control was not what they were practicing obviously.

I could tell our late 20’s something nurse was just waiting to sink her teeth into Mr. Right after about 25+ years of celibacy.  As Mr. T would say, "I pity the fool..."  It wasn't me, sorry to say, I would have liked to give it a go, but it never happened.  The happy hour crowd drifted on to another locale as they are wont to do, and I never saw her again.

I went to the New Year's Party there the following year in hopes that she might show up, but I didn't see her.  I had to go into St. Francis for knew surgery about 5 years later and never saw her either, but hopes of that were on the slim side, unless I knew exactly what unit she worked on, and I didn't.