El Reno: In The Land of Giants

Severe thunderstorm watch here.  Going to try to get to Shamrock Texas.

Update: I left the Sapulpa Walmart headed for El Reno, and had a crisis of faith.  For some reason I got an irrational fear that the GPS was leading me wrong, and I kept ignoring its directions.  This resulted in me getting off course, as you can imagine.  I have no explanation for this, unless it is some kind of psychosis triggered by the exhaustion of the road.  Eventually I let it direct me back on route and we were rolling through rural Oklahoma, past houses set back on hilly plots of green lawn with pump jacks in the front yard, nodding peacefully.  I saw my first armadillo!  It was the first of many.  Sadly, it was dead by the side of the road, like all the rest.  I love armadillos.  They are so homely they are adorable, and they have such serious little faces, going about their snuffling business.  I’m thinking that the “skunk” I saw in the parking lot at the Sapulpa Walmart was likely an armadillo instead.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m not entirely sure what my route was.  I’ll have to go back and check the map, but I think my unplanned stop in Sapulpa was actually more of a detour than it at first looked like it would be.

But finally I was back on the main highway, passing more dead armadillos, sweltering in the brutal heat, cycling the A/C on and off to spare Goose, and riding herd on KD each time a semi thundered past me.  It was a long, hot, hard drive from Sapulpa to El Reno.  The roads were the worst I’ve encountered so far on this trip, a punishing buffet of potholes and deep fissures and bumpy mountain chains of ridges where sloppy attempts at repairs had been made.  There was another turnpike involved (I forgot to mention in my last post that I got on a turnpike after entering Oklahoma from Missouri, and it cost $9.75.  Whew!).  This one only cost $6.75.  I now know that KD will fit through the narrow toll gate–albeit barely.  We went through Oklahoma City, which had less of a maze of freeway interchanges than some places I’ve been recently.  I spared a thought for Moore, which was nearby, but I kept going.

Finally we were approaching El Reno, which was one of my scheduled stops.  I’d been trying to avoid larger towns and cities for stopping places, on the theory that small towns are easier to navigate and have bigger spaces for parking trailers.  This isn’t always the case, but El Reno looked good from the satellite view, much better than Oklahoma City.

A couple miles from the exit to the Love’s Truck Stop in El Reno, I noticed a tree by the highway that was oddly broken off about halfway up.  The top half of the tree dangled sadly by a thread, the trunk a ragged and splintered spear.  It looked ominous.  I looked sharp to see if it meant what I thought it did.  There were a couple of perfectly intact billboards, and then, the remains of a billboard that had had something truly awful done to it.  It looked like a giant pair of hands had grabbed it, crushing and mangling, then ripping pieces off and throwing them  down on the ground.  Then there was more detritus, poles and unidentifiable chunks of metal and junk scattered over the ground, and then a row of buildings smashed and broken, pieces bitten out of them.  And then.  Then.

I saw what looked like a watercourse filled with trees, but the trees were not green like all the other trees I’d been seeing.  They were a strip of mangled, twisted, debarked skeletons.  It looked like a gigantic, dull-bladed wood chipper had been driven through them.  The damage kept going on the other side of 40, and I realized with a prickling at the back of my neck that I was driving over the place where the tornado that had killed Tim Samaras, his son and his chasing partner had crossed the road.  This was damage from the El Reno tornado of a couple of weeks ago.  I hadn’t really been expecting to see any of that damage, and I had certainly planned my stop at El Reno long before the tornado hit.  But there it was, laid out for my horrified inspection.

When you see videos of tornados where the videographer keeps saying “Oh my God,” it can get a little irritating.  You want to tell them to shut up already, one or two oh-my-gods is quite enough, thank you.  But now I will be more tolerant.  Seeing a sight like that leaves one without the words to express the feeling.  I kept saying Oh my god, in increasing intensity, as the single tree gave way to ever more sobering examples of a deadly EF5 tornado’s strength (that storm has been rated an EF5*, the highest rating, and it also now has the distinction of being the widest ever recorded, at 2.6 miles wide).  It had happened a couple of weeks ago, not two years ago.  The mess hadn’t been cleaned up yet, the mess made by a storm that had killed one of my heroes, killed him while I watched live streaming video of it.  I had passed signs for Mustang and Yukon, towns that had been mentioned repeatedly in the chaser chatter, alerts and warnings.

Then my exit was up.  Somewhat shaken, I missed the Love’s truck stop I was aiming for and wound up having to back track through El Reno’s downtown.  It looked like another interesting little old town, but I couldn’t take time to explore, so I made my way back to the Love’s only to decide it was too small to provide parking.  I went across the street to the Conoco instead.

A storm was building to the west.  It looked serious, but I didn’t want to overreact and assume every towering thunderhead was an immediate threat.  Everybody else seemed to be going about their business as usual.  The heat was terrible.  I staggered into the little store and the clerk said hello and asked me how I was doing.  “Hot,” I said.  He nodded and said yeah.  I got a cold drink and used the facilities, then went back outside to figure out what to do next.  My next scheduled stop wasn’t until Shamrock, Texas, and I could have used a break.  But there was no place immediately available, so I was preparing to saddle up and ride the rest of the way to Texas.  But I slowed down on the way to the truck and looked over to the west at the building thunderstorm cell.  It looked close.

“Looks like it’s gonna storm soon,” a voice said behind me.

I turned around and a man was preparing to get gas.  He was obviously a local, so I asked him his opinion about the weather.  “What do you think?  Is that something to pay attention to?  I’m from California, I don’t know when to tell if it’s getting serious.”  This isn’t strictly true.  I’ve read enough and seen enough footage to recognize what I’m seeing, but I still defer to the local weather wisdom.

The man nods and says it depends on which way the wind is blowing.  If the wind blows it away from us, no problem.  In about fifteen minutes it will have moved a considerable distance away.  But if the wind is blowing toward us, then it could storm hard shortly.  I tell him I saw damage from the El Reno tornado, and that it had been a terrible, awesome sight.  He tells me it took out his company’s shop, about a half mile away from where we were standing.  He waves a hand off in the direction of his shop.  The good news is that it didn’t get the warehouse, so they can still do business and carry on pretty much as usual, with a few adjustments to rig up a temporary shop and put in an order for new tools.

He tells me that he works in plumbing and heating, and asks me what part of California I’m from.  When I tell him, he tells me he used to live in San Jose, and went to the flea market every weekend, by which I assume he means the Berryessa flea market.  He says he lived for awhile in San Francisco, and then Minnesota.  He stood the winters in Minnesota until his marriage broke up.  Then he decided there was no point in staying.  He gave his wife everything, asking only for a "transportation car" and his tools, and he headed to Oklahoma.  He makes $18 an hour, and he can live comfortably on that wage in El Reno.  He owns his house and has decent cars to drive.  When he needs a new one he just picks one up at auction and fixes whatever needs fixing.  He made $25 an hour living in California, but was barely scraping by.  In El Reno he has a reasonable standard of living on a much lower wage.  His name is Jose, originally from Mexico, but he has made his way to many different places, working steadily and always paying his way, since no matter where he goes there is always a need for plumbing and heating services.

I’m not sure how he does it, but in the space of a ten minute conversation Jose manages to tell me his life story, share his philosophies about life, economics, and people, tell me about the recent El Reno tornado that hit and give me a dose of the local weather lore with advice about how to avoid the approaching storm.  And it’s not a monologue, it’s a conversation, with give and take.  He is a remarkable man, quietly going about his life and existing in a place with terrible weather and where you might expect tolerance for immigrants to be less than in other places.  But Jose knows how to talk to people, how to make himself useful, and how can you not like that?  He’s comfortable with himself, and this makes it easy to be comfortable with him.

I shake his hand and say I’m glad to meet him.  I’m sorry I didn’t get his picture.  But his gas was pumped, the heat was pressing down, I had miles to go and a storm to beat.  So I continued on to the truck, glancing up and over my shoulder at the cell that is looking darker and more threatening with every second.  Another local sees me looking and says, “I guess we’re gonna get a storm.”  I ask him if I he thinks it is serious, and he asks me where I’m headed.  I tell him I’m headed west toward the Texas border on 40, and he says I should be in good shape.  I pause to take a couple shots of the cell from the gas station, but the pictures don’t convey the boiling darkness and heavy, looming threat.  I need a better camera and more skill for that.

I hit the road, reaching for the weather radio.  It’s turned off.  There had been some annoying radio chatter on the GMRS that morning in Sapulpa and I’d turned it off, since there wasn’t much chance of bad weather until the afternoon.  And of course I’d forgotten to turn it back on.  I switch to the NOAA band and scan for the local channel.  It comes on and there is a severe thunderstorm warning for Canadian County, right where I am.  The cell I’ve been looking at is the very one that is severe-warned.  It is the closest I’ve been to a severe thunderstorm since 1998 when a rare tornadic supercell hit Sunnytown (the town I love to hate) and Los Altos.

I prop the radio up on the dash with the antenna against the glass for best reception and leave it on, the automated voice looping the warning and listing locations warned (Calumet, Cherokee, Chickasha, Weatherford, El Reno).  I’m driving west on 40 and I have a good view of the cell now, looming off to my right.  I want to stop and watch it, see if I can get some better pictures.  But I need to make time, and it is foolish to linger in the area of a dangerous storm, especially without a fast, nimble vehicle and knowledge about storm direction and behavior.  My mother would kill me if I got killed in an Oklahoma twister because I pulled over to gawk.  I fight the urge to take exits.  I pass the Cherokee Trading post in Calumet with tipi shaped buildings, a typical roadside souvenir and gift shop.  I am crushed that I’ve missed it, but it is not a good place to be stopping now.  I watch the cell as best I can while driving as I slowly make my way past it.  About 50 miles later I see a sign for another Cherokee Trading Post at Clinton and I do decide to stop, since I seem to be out of the immediately warned area.  It is so hot I need a break already, and I won’t be in Oklahoma much longer.  It would be good to hit at least one cheesy gift shop.  This one has ample parking and a pen with a couple of hot-looking buffalo.

Inside is the usual selection of boots and hats, moccasins (Minnetonka, now made in China, which is a sad, sad thing), jewelry, knives, souvenirs, toys, and indian-themed home decor.  I may possibly have bought a pair of boots, but I’m not telling (and anyway they were on sale).  There’s the usual selection of cheesy stuff, but also some quite nice items.  There is music playing from a local radio station, and it keeps getting interrupted by the emergency broadcast system weather alerts.  A couple of older ladies on their way to Oklahoma City ask when the storm will hit there.  The young man behind the counter pulls out a map and does some quick math based on the forward speed and direction of the storm.  I guess it’s an everyday skill that Oklahomans have honed over the years.

After far too long in the store (as usual), I am leaving when a man holds the door for me.  I thank him and say, “I’m not really sure I want to go out there, though.”  I’m referring to the heat, which I’m expecting to hit me like a blast furnace after the cool of the air conditioning inside.  He says, “Well don’t go that way,” and he points back toward Calumet.

“Oh, yeah, I saw that thunderstorm, but came west before it got too close to me.”  I tell him I’m from California and not used to this kind of weather, and he says he’s also from California, but he had not been as lucky as me.  He had been on 40 when it had started hailing golf ball sized hail.  He had hail dents all over his truck.   I look at him in wonder, and employ the infinitely versatile, “Dude!” to express my sympathy,

He says he was only there to pick up his son, and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do when the hail hit so he followed the lead of the other drivers and pulled over, then got back on the highway when they did.  I wish him better luck on the rest of his trip, and I realize that I had only just missed the same fate.  If I had stayed to watch, or visited the store in Calumet, I would have gotten more than I bargained for.  Poor Goose would have been dimpled and unhappy, and I don’t even want to think about what it would have done to KD.  I have paid attention to that wise, inner voice, and it was the right thing to do.

I head back on 40, and a short time later get off at the exit for Clinton.  My Mom has told me that my grandmother was born and raised there, and so I want to see the town and grab a few pictures.  I’m expecting the usual small, dusty town, but Clinton is slightly bigger than I thought it would be, and I don’t have time or energy to find the picturesque downtown (if there is one).  I see a couple of good photo ops, but I can’t get them because I’m driving with no place to stop, so after this brief detour, I get back on the main route.  My grandfather on my mother’s side was also from Oklahoma, and his mother is rumored to have been of native American extraction, although I’ve heard different versions of which tribe.  Initially I was told Osage, and then Cherokee.  The one picture I have seen of her makes her look like she might have been Osage.  In any event, it is certain that I have deep roots that go far back in this land that I love, and some of them are in Oklahoma.

The radio keeps chattering warnings, and I see many spectacular skies.  It is a long, hard drive to Shamrock, Texas, over very bad road (the fellow at the gift shop had asked me with a grin how I liked their roads, and said the toll roads were the only decent ones).

Finally, I reach the Texas border, and pass out of this land of giants that reach down from the sky, and red dirt and bad roads and interesting people and some of my ancestors (All My Relations).  

*The record-breaking El Reno tornado of 5/31/13 was initially rated at EF5 based on irrefutable radar wind speed measurements, but because no actual EF5 damage was found the NWS downgraded it to an official rating of EF3, resulting in considerable outrage and controversy in the storm chasing community.  Undoubtedly this tornado would have produced EF5 damage if it had struck a densely populated area, but its multi-vortex nature and chaotic, messy dynamic meant that peak winds missed hitting any structures.  Many people have refused to accept the EF3 rating, and others suggest that it should have been assigned at least a provisional EF5 rating.