Photolog 12: Good Days and Bad

Just a reminder: all images are clickable for a larger view.

First, let me refer you back to a previous post about the Midwest City ride I took on a rainy day. Today I completed the intended loop. The first part of the journey was pretty much as I described there, to include my effort to dodge the traffic on the main roads. Two unusual events just prior to shooting this image of the quite backstreets of Midwest City. First, I spotted Air Force One still sitting next to the military air terminal on Tinker AFB. It was easy to see from SE 29th, but a pair of vehicles from the state’s Dept. of Transportation were making sure folks didn’t pull over and linger there on the side of the road just across from the north end of the runway.

Second, as I passed the back side of the Sheriff’s substation just another quarter-mile along there, I spotted my son on a riding mower. You see, he’s a sheriff’s deputy and they want an armed and uniformed officer doing their maintenance stuff. So among his other duties, which is primarily department vehicle maintenance, he also mows a lot of county property. However, just south of the 552nd AWACS monument, I stopped off for a bit of nostalgia.

I left the US Army in early 1993. They wanted me to stay and offered a promotion board to E-6 and Jump School (hard to get into), plus the next level of leadership academy. They were ready to ignore my bad knees, but my knees told me staying in would be a huge mistake. They were right. Shortly after coming back to Oklahoma, a cane was no longer enough. I switched to forearm crutches, then to a wheelchair. It took two years before the VA Hospital in OKC could get me in for surgery. During that time I first drove a taxi for a year, then went back to school on VA Vocational Rehab to become a school teacher (Secondary Social Studies).

We moved into a house in Del City, essentially making the payments for the owner, someone my wife knew as a family friend. After a couple of years there, he lost the house in a divorce and his ex-wife had to nerve to ask us to stay for double the previous rent. She even tried flirting with me. We moved to a trailer park about a mile east, nestled up against the backside of Tinker AFB. It had once been their FamCamp (family camping area) but the Air Force sold it off. The new owners eventually made it into a decent trailer park. We were there for over three years.

During that time, I was in and out of the wheelchair. There were months when the knees stayed swollen and, even though they hurt while I was sitting, it was worse walking. At other times, just wearing neoprene compression sleeves was enough to get me on my feet. During the good days, I decided to improve the lot where our trailer sat. We were backed up against a creek and part of the lot was washing away. In fact, an adjacent lot was far enough gone they refused to put any trailers there. So I waded out in the creek during dry weather when it was just ankle to knee deep and pulled out rocks. Along the back where a fence once stood, I created a retaining wall by carefully stacking the rocks tightly together. Then over a month or so I would carry soil in a 5-gallon bucket up from a spot where the creek had a massive sand bank. Some 30-40 buckets later, the yard was restored. They eventually put the fence back up. I used some of those stones to create a patio of sorts to raise the back steps up to a proper height. While the timbers got moved, the stones remain pretty much where I placed them (image on the left). Today the lot stands empty, as you can see in the picture above (right).

The greenery at the back was not there during the late 1990s when we lived there. Could you get close enough, you’d see a lot of flood debris. This entire section of the park is almost empty, with only two out of ten spaces still occupied, and even those trailers are vacant. While we were there, during one rainy night a bunch of tree limbs got caught against the bridge a little way upstream and diverted the water out over our road. We got a foot or two of water that night. Apparently our more recent spring flooding really made a mess there, and all of those spaces in the lowest part next to the creek got flooded even worse, so I’m sure the new management (same corporation as the one we have now) decided to leave it empty as too flood-prone.

We were also there during a severe tornado: May 3rd in 1999. The only viable shelter for us that evening was the brick clubhouse, where a large number of residents packed inside while the skies grew dark. The tornado passed just a quarter-mile west of us. The floor vibrated and the rumble reminded me of standing next to a railroad track when a heavy loaded train passed by. We emerged to find debris all over the place. Despite the lack of power, we were okay for a few days until the police came out and set up road blocks to “keep looters out.” By the time I convinced them there was actually a trailer park back off in the trees there, my two bags of ice had nearly melted in the trunk.

Heading back south and along the bottom end of the Tinker runway and past the back gates where the former GM assembly plant stands, there was no rain to stop me. On the right here we see the long ramp running up the hill from the southern end of Air Depot Boulevard. Just beyond is a police gun range (the corner of a white building peeking through the trees), but I climbed the bike path up and around in big lazy circles. If you use something like Google Earth or Google Maps to catch a satellite view southwest of Tinker and northwest of Draper Lake, only recently did the imagery show it in completed form (the gray curving line below Interstate 240). You have to see it to believe it, because for this part of the country, that was pretty extravagant for such a remote location. Most of it is near the highest elevation in that area. Somebody mows it pretty regularly, but except for a brief swoop down through a draw, there are no trees. It’s pretty ugly (right). That is, until you look off the path to the south. While I failed to capture them with the camera, several horses were cavorting gayly on the slopes above the trees. My pocket camera can’t do it justice (below left).

From there I kept going straight east along Draper Lake Drive where the road loops around the north end of the lake. Workmen were still banging around on the concrete on the new paved section, so I had to slow for the heavy equipment. Still, at the far end of this section I kept going straight east on SE 89th. That meant another hump up over the trio of razor-back ridges between Anderson and Hiwasee Roads. It was worth it, because I got to check on the progress of the washout repair on Hiwasee where the West Branch of Hog Creek crosses. While I could hardly ride across the fill dirt, it was easy enough to walk my bike through that stuff and head home on the other side. As always, riding through any part of the Hog Creek valley system is just beautiful.

Where Hiwasee and SE 59th merge to cross over I-40, I decided to stay on 59th and roll home on Henney. It was a good chance to grab a few blackberries where they grow in someone’s fence. In all, about 25 miles, but it took three hours because I wandered around the Meridian trailer park for a bit.