Day 98 September 24

Look at today's travel stops at this link.

Today's Map

We are on an eastern track now, headed home to Sweet Virginia.

Leaving The Great Salt Plains for Now

Away from the Great Salt Plains State Park and the Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge, a starkly beautiful place. We head out on section roads to intersect with 132 then 60 east into Pond Creek, OK (population 896) on the banks of the Salt Fork Arkansas River. Here a hungry traveler can visit the ever so popular ‘Greasy Steve’s’ eatery, where the motto is “It Ain’t Easy Being Greasy.”

Wednesdays; Grilled, Crispy Shrimp.

Thursdays; Chicken Fried Steak.

Fridays; All You Can Eat Calf Fries.

Saturdays; All You Can Eat Cat Fish.

Sundays; ‘Closed for Recovery’.

Friday’s menu begs the question, “What the hell is a calf fry?”

Well.....

In the Panhandle, some folks own a lot of cattle. Cattle, cattle, cattle. The reason for owning a lot of cattle in this country is primarily to make a lot of money. What better way to do that than to raise big, fat, happy, four-legged, grass chomping bovines and get them to market as quickly as possible, so the world will have plenty of Big Macs.

And how does one make a big, fat, happy, four-legged grass chomping bovine? You give it lots of water, grass, antibiotics, growth stimulating chemicals, hormones, pesticides, mineral salt licks AND you cut off its balls!

No testicles mean no testosterone, which is a game changer if you are a young calf or any other self-respecting male mammal, once your balls are gone, that is.

Those ball-less babies quickly morph into big, fat, content, lazy, easy to manage, money on the hoof eating machines, with only vague memories of those testosterone influenced days, perfectly happy someday to walk the plank at the nearest slaughter house.

No more having to worry about those young, cute, nubile heifers sashaying about in the pasture. No, all you must do now is laze the days away stuffing yourself with that sweet, irrigation-raised, imported grass; piling on the pounds and doing your part to elevate human cholesterol levels to historic highs so big pharma can sell more lipid-lowering statins. Ain’t economy grand?

Big Oklahoma Grass Country

Shifting from the subject of balls for a moment, as it relates to cows and all, let’s not even talk about the embarrassing low efficiency of supplying protein to the world in this way, which requires 28 times more land, 6 times more fertilizer and 11 times more water than producing protein from pork or chicken. Not that raising industrial pork or chicken is much better but it’s certainly better than cattle, which deliver up to five times more greenhouse gas emissions.

Imagine all those cow farts. I wonder, in my darkest moments, how many times a cow farts in an average cow day.  Enough apparently to ensure that, combined with all other farting cows, it accounts for a fifth of world greenhouse gas emissions.

And, big alert, that analysis does not consider the immense amount of vile, noxious and wonderfully satisfying human farting that goes on from eating all that delicious steak, barbeque, spare ribs, beef stew, chuck roast and the occasional Big Mac, Whopper, Baconator, Whataburger, Fatburger, Quarter Pounder or Super Burger. While farting is gratifying and downright funny, it only adds to the emissions problem.

Rolling Hills of the Oklahoma Plains

Now back to balls. Each year in America, well-meaning guys wearing big hats slaughter about 20 million steers. That amounts to 40 million testicles. What does one to do with all those balls? Well the answer is obvious. You ship them out to fine restaurants like Greasy Steve’s and others in the great state of Oklahoma, where very happy people descended from hardy pioneers prepare your basic batter-coated, deep-fried calf balls, which look vaguely like corn fritters or fried oysters; thus, another name for this delicacy, the ‘mountain oyster’. Never mind that the largest mountain in the Panhandle region is a spoiled cheese midden at the Hilmar Cheese Company in Dalhart, TX.

Disposing of forty million deep fried calf balls requires entrepreneurship. How does one get rid of THAT many balls?  Well, if you are a restauranteur you ply your patrons with beer and whiskey, then you spring local, artisan, batter-coated, Panhandle calf fries on them, recommend a touch more whiskey to keep their enthusiasm up, remind them that Fridays are “all the calf fries you can eat nights”, announce plans for your next “calf fry eating contest” and, with a  final flourish, announce that the bar is still open.

And that is what they do in Oklahoma for fun, besides lots of other cool stuff. What are you gonna do with folks who run outside to watch tornadoes when the siren goes off, who schedule their lives around football games and who have declared the watermelon to be their state vegetable.

In fact, the good folks in Vinita, OK (population 6,000) sponsor an annual ‘calf ball cook out’. Well, they don’t call it precisely that. Area teams (last year 17) vie for the title of “best calf fry”. Organizers, recognizing that participants hyped up on tequila, cholesterol, marijuana, microbrews and calf fries need lots of stimulation, also offer games, turtle and stick horse races, a hula hoop contest, an inflatable obstacle course shaped live a bull and a car bash; “how much damage you can cause” by hitting a car with a mallet.

Then there’s club owner Hank Moore in Stillwater who hosts the annual “Testicle Festival’ at his club the Tumbleweed, at which 20,000 of the Panhandle’s most seasoned partiers drop in, tanked up on tequila and God only knows what else and proceed to eat and drink their way through more than 10,000 pounds of calf balls! Never mind that the club is named after an invasive Russian thistle.

A few recent heartfelt testimonials about the “Testicle Festival” will bring tears to your eyes:

"There's nothin' we do better than drinkin', dancin' and diggin' in!! See ya at the Fry!!", Lacie, Oklahoma City

"I have already started drinking and can hardly wait!!!", Bryson, Marlow

"HOT WOMEN AND COLD BEER YOU GOTTA LOVE IT THANK YOU STILLWATER", Frankie, St. Louis

You can tell by these testimonials that the “Testicle Festival” attracts a  rather sophisticated crowd.

Not to be out done, Steve of ‘Greasy Steve’s offers his own calf fry eating contests and boasts that the best of the best, darn, ball eaters in Oklahoma come from Pond Creek. In fact, just last year, Mr. Ernest Colburn from Pond Creek established a new calf fry eating record when he inhaled three hundred and forty-six quivering, battered-coated calf balls in twenty minutes.

Ernest is the guy walking around town looking like a human shag carpet. Let that be a lesson to you. That’s what happens when you eat a bunch of testosterone laced calf balls.

I raise my glass to the people of the Panhandle. “Congratulations to you for solving the vexing problem of how to get rid of all those calf balls. May your communities prosper, and may YOUR balls always remain attached”.

We travel through Lamont (population 417), Tonkawa (population 3,216), named after a Tonkawa tribe of the Nez Perce and finally into Ponca City (population 25,387), named after another Nez Perce tribe. A great tribute to name your city after the Indian tribe from whom you stole it.

Ponca City, Oklahoma, the home of an imposing and brilliantly created 17 foot tall bronze figure of "The Pioneer Woman". The sculptor depicts her clutching a bible in one hand and holding on to her son with the other. She says, "I see no boundaries". I've known a few Oklahoma women. They are a force of nature. 

I See No Boundaries

Dust storms kick up around Tonkawa.

From Ponca City we cross the Arkansas River winding its way to confluence with the mighty Mississippi. East on route 60 into the Osage Indian Reservation, through McCord (population 1440), Burbank (population 141) and finally we pull into Pawhuska (population 3,477), named after Osage chief, Paw-Hiu-Skah, which means "White Hair" in English. The Osage tribal government center is here.

Pawhuska is also our staging area for a visit to the Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, the largest (39,650 acres) protected remnant of tallgrass prairie left on earth. Just to give some perspective consider that, before the Anglo invasion, tall grass prairie covered portions of fourteen states. Now less than four percent of this magnificent American landscape exist, and that only in scattered fragments. This preserve is one of those fragments. 

Eating Machines

Thank goodness for the Nature Conservancy, which not only successfully negotiated complicated land deals to protect this place, but also worked with many partners to restore it to some resemblance of a functioning tallgrass prairie ecosystem, using 2,500 free-ranging American bison as mowing machines and precisely prescribed burning to encourage growth of the grasses. And the bison work for free.

Big Old Bull

The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is for us a favorite place on the American landscape. Immense, open country where one can breathe deep. Nothing captures the attention quite like five hundred or a thousand American bison moving as one across open prairie; the bulls grunting confidently along, sometimes suddenly breaking into a boisterous and short-lived trot, the cows in loose groups ambling along, knowingly in charge, keeping a close eye on cavorting calves, who shake and buck and juke and jive their way along. A perfect prairie community.

We come to rest this night at the Osage Hills State Park. Another hidden gem of the American landscape. We camp all by ourselves in our favorite section, on our favorite spot on a hill top with oak trees protecting us from the relentless sun. Soon another camper arrives, destined to be the only other person here for the night.

Turns out that person is a friendly and obviously independent lady celebrating her 84th birthday this very day. And what better way to celebrate than to put your faithful cat companion in the front seat, hop in the big red pickup truck loaded with your necessaries, favorite things and a comfortable built in bed, go to your favorite campsite and break out the cheap box wine. Good on her.

Our campsite is great. Good water and cover and a bathhouse with his and her showers, which I visited upon arrival, being that I really needed a shower. I returned to the campsite to report to Emily that, lucky for us nature lovers, the shower house came with complementary scorpions.

I don’t think she appreciated that amenity and, as I recall, did not visit the showers.

Turns out Oklahoma has but one species of scorpion prowling about its countryside, and this is the striped centroides which can get to be about 2.5 inches long. The ones I saw were less that an inch long. Scary little devils.

Scorpions, of course, are spiders.  In addition to other attractive features they have a tail with a poison duct and stinger at the tip. I sure wish I had a tail with a poison stinger for those chance encounters with rude people, none of whom live in Oklahoma, except for a few politicians.

We pass a restful evening and night at Osage. The next morning away we go, headed ever eastward, ever homeward.

So long Oklahoma.

And I haven’t eaten in my first calf ball....yet!