thankful

"Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful."
- buddha

"It isn't what you have in your pocket that makes you thankful, but what you have in your heart."
- unknown

"Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough."
- Oprah Winfrey quotes

"I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose."
- Woody Allen

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit."
- Albert Schweitzer

"If you can't be content with what you have received, be thankful for what you have escaped"
- unknown

"And Lord, we are especially thankful for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is. Except for solar, which is just a pipe dream."
- Homer SImpson

the gate to the hundred acre woods

When I was young, we lived on a rural farm in Oklahoma. No other kids to play with, nothing else around for miles except lots of land, cows, farming equipment, abandoned oil well equipment, and undiscovered ways to amuse yourself with the isolation you haven't yet realized will start to make you a weird kid.

The ambient sounds. Oil pumps scattered out on the land, working day and night and going up and down to pull the sludge out from the earth. You could see at least three at anytime in any direction and they made a drumming noise in repetition; thut thut, thut thut, thut thut thut. You fell asleep to this noise in the distance, you woke up to the same. Menacing looking machines too, as dangerous as any rail road crossing. Where I went to school, we didn't watch films about the dangers of drugs, we watched films about the dangers of Rail Road Crossings.

There was a creek near the house that was covered in growth that led into a cave under the highway right next to the house. It was the creek our sewage was dumped into. This cave became my time tunnel. If you could be brave enough to get all the way through the dark, damp, cobweb infested tunnel, you would be rewarded with a trip to another time. I made it through several times actually. Near this creek, the water became more of an actual river on the other side of the tunnel. With the help of a an abandoned pallet crate, this became a sub standard but somewhat able to float boat.

Behind the house, was a road that had a gate to keep the cattle in. Past the gate and up a dirt road a bit was an old feed barn for storing hay for the cattle. The water trough was mildly interesting with the patterns of moss growth on it and the cows that wouldn't let me pet them would have to submit once i corralled them in the barn fence and shut the gate. Eventually when they realized resistance was futile, they uneasily allowed me to love them with simple petting. They never got used to me doing that.

the creek I mentioned earlier went far back into our side of the property as well and became almost a canyon. Nothing much to do down in it except climb on pipes that I discovered later were covered in insulation that had fiberglass particles and left you feeling cut up, but you had no visible cuts.

The two star attractions were the woods just past the canyon end (the Hundred acre woods, aptly named for the Pooh stories) and the cave on the mountain. The Woods were covered in pine needles and had one very large tree that mushroomed up so large, you could walk inside to what felt like a hidden bunker. I made forts in these woods many times, it was my favorite place to be but I never had anything to do there. I found some old lumber and nails once and made my own ladder so I could climb up the trees better. I was proud of that ladder. It was the first thing I ever made, on my own, that had a real purposeful use. On the best of days, it was beautiful in these woods, but it was still just me enjoying them.

The cave in the mountain was my fortress of solitude. A mountain with a water tower on it no less, so there was a neat structure on my fortress. Just a few feet over from the tower, facing towards the town of Cement , Oklahoma just a few miles away on the opposite side was the opening to the cave. I'm sure teenages came up there to get high and have sex and drink beer, but weekdays and weekend mornings, this was mine. I used to imagine the soldiers or Indians who would bunker up in here for defense in a war many years before. Once, I climbed up to the cave just to have a goat jump out at me when I walked in. That's right; a goat attacked me on a mountain with a water tower on it, in a town called Cement.

Sometimes, I would walk into town along the old roads used for the roustabouts checking on the oil wells. Often, it was so hot out there in the summer, you could barely go half a mile without having to take a break in some shade.

We sometimes had dogs. The coolest dog we had was a big white husky who ran away a week after we got him, he didn't care for the fireworks on the 4th of July. I saw him almost a year later on one of my walk abouts and hugged him. I was going to take him home but he had a collar on. Someone else had been calling him their dog for a year now. I figured he was pretty much their dog now since I only knew him a week before he left. I hoped he would come down and visit sometimes, he never did again.

The fields and the land had a sulfur smell to them from the old oil machinery and rusted pipes left everywhere. I used to think there should be a law to keep this from happening (there was) but, eh, the land was kind of ugly for the most part to begin with. Oh, cow pies; that smell was abundant everywhere as well. Cow pies from cold emotionless cows.

I did have one friend I took there, this kid from school, an indian (native american) kid who spent the night once. We went out and played in the forest the entire next day. I remember his face but not his name. He died a few weeks later. I was never really told how except that he "went too fast on his bicycle into a wall" Sounded like an unrealistic explination to me, but what was I going to do, start pointing at everyone and screaming "LIAR!"?

Anyway, I was watching Bridge to Terabithia tonight and it reminded me of the hundred acre woods behind my house when i was a kid. Our house on a farm that didn't grow anything but stupid cows and oil pumps.