Room to breathe--Sunday in Sayre

The Spirit of the West in Sayre

The minute I get out of the city limits going west, my tension eases, even though I'm on I-40.
Halfway to Amarillo, I always stop for a walk around at Sayre, Oklahoma, right before I get into Texas. But last Sunday, at a more leisurely place, I got off I-40 for a few minutes and drove up into downtown Sayre. My traveling tension evaporated.
There's room to breathe out here in Western Oklahoma. The skies are big, the horizons long, the people friendly. 
I know a few friends from this area, including Brad and Dayva Spitzer, owners of the award-winning  weekly newspaper Sayre Record and Beckham County Democrat, and former UCO student Cody Vignal and family.  I didn't stop to visit anyone, but thought about how peaceful the town is on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

I'd traveled through here on old US 66 on my way to my freshman year in college long ago. Then I saw the old Rock Island depot, thinking about how my Dad went through here in a box car on a freight train longer than that--headed for Mexico to celebrate his high school graduation. Coming back, he tried to jump another freight in Tucumcari and lost his right leg. But he would have seen this depot.
Today, it's the aptly named Short Grass Country museum.

City hall--a monument to civic pride

The streets are wide, like the land, and the Beckham County Courthouse is distinctive as the people--Westerners as the Spirit of the West buffalo suggests on the Courthouse lawn. 
It was also featured in the movie "Grapes of Wrath," but the town is healthier and greener than that now.
 And who can miss the elegant architecture of a former bank that is now city hall? It's a monument to civic pride. Check the equally classy chamber of commerce web site for more information.

This home brightens up a normally dry country

Some of those people make sure there's color in what is usually dry country by painting their houses bright colors. 
Room to breathe--Sunday in Sayre.

Where the streets are as wide as the land--room to breathe

My newspaper died, but not the smells, the memories

Waurika's red brick streets

Memories have two edges, and the recent death of the Waurika News-Democrat brought them back, things long forgotten or repressed. Yes there is nostalgia and smiles for the good ones, but also regrets and tears for the tragedies and "might have beens." There's no use living in the past, but it's good to be reminded of where you've been, of who you are deep down.
The late great science fiction writer Ray Bradbury said that everything that happens to you becomes compost that will eventually bring forth something new.
Waurika added a lot of compost to our family's lives--we would not be who we are today without those dozen years of memories.  They  cobble unevenly like tires over the red brick streets of Waurika.
We bought into the  News-Democrat because we knew there was promise there. Waurika Lake was a-building; the town seemed to be growing; we were young and dreaming of owning our own newspaper; there was a good church; pretty good schools; friendly people. 

The iconic red brick Rock Island depot, now the library, from the caboose

So here are some of the piecemeal memories that jumped back into my consciousness when I learned the paper had been killed. The old red brick building at 117 W. Broadway with large windows open to let some circulation int0 the high metal ceiling's dusty interior. 
Only one room was air conditioned for the new offset typesetter, with old type tray racks converted to pasteup stands.
Out front was a huge counter, behind which were shelves of office supplies.  Don Morrison had a typewriter and a typewriter table out there for his "office," where he wrote most of the news and his weekly column, "Keynotes."
That was the front shop. Behind a divider that rose halfway to the ceiling was the majority of the building--the "backshop" where the old newspaper press had once been before the conversion. The press pit was filled with sand. That's where we spent many Thursdays and Fridays after the paper was "out," running  the offset Chief 15 and Heidelberg letterpress job presses, printing jobs for merchants and the county, school and city--much of what today would be done on a copier machine.

The red brick newspaper building at 117 W. Broadway

Most of all I remember the smells--a combination of dust, years, stacks of printing paper of different sizes, ink, presswash and lead type and the heat of a still functioning Linotype, the standby letterpress typesetter where "hot metal" was literal.
When I walk into  the "backshop" of almost any small newspaper, or a print shop, I'm immediately back home, yet I can't describe that smell. I've asked for years what the smell of printers' ink and presswash and paper smells like, and nobody has been able to tell me. Usually, you can compare the smell of something to something else. I'm stumped.  
You can add the smells of the darkroom too. Developer, photoflo, hypo, fixer, film. The News-Democrat's darkroom was in the back of the building, where I spent many hours developing film and printing photographs, or using a vertical camera to make negatives for offset printing jobs.
Next to the darkroom in one corner was the toilet, partitioned off  with a wooden stall, and outside a big ceramic double sink, with scrubbers and grit to try to clean your hands from the ink  on your hands from offset job printing, and trays for washing photos. It was almost impossible to get the ink out of the grains of your finger tips and from under your nails. I think it's still there, deep inside me.
In the other corner was the old caster room, where the "hellbox" had been to remelt the used metal type for the Linotype. Now it was home to decades of yellowing copies of the newspaper, bound by year, termites and time eating away at the brittle pages. That smell is also distinctive.
The once vacant red brick Rock Island depot  is now the town library. The once active red brick News-Democrat building is now vacant. Red brick streets cobble many more memories to come.

No weak coffee, please

“Don’t knock our coffee. You may be old and weak yourself some day.”

That printed sign hung on the wall behind the counter of the All Nite Café in Comanche, Oklahoma.

Sign in the home of daughter and son-in-law, Dr.
and Mrs. Todd Bell, he a champion coffee drinker too.

Long before statehood, Rock Island changed trains crews there, and kept the café on Main Street in business. It was owned by ancestors of mine, who first moved to “The Nation” (Indian Nation) from Texas.

My grandfather soon followed his relatives to the little red clay town in south-southwest Oklahoma, located on the still fresh ruts of the Chisholm Trail. He owned a grocery story, sold coffee, and painting houses for a living.

And coffee’s been on the burner and in my genes ever since.

Granddad always drank coffee in the mornings, after he’d put on a white shirt and tie and lit his first Camel.

Dad and Mom drank coffee for as long as I can ever remember. When I was a kid, the Jewel Tea man’s truck used to pull up in front of our house on the outskirts of Fort Worth, and they’d buy strong coffee with chicory from New Orleans. Later, when visitors like my Uncle Mike would come visit, they’d stay up all night talking, having eggs and bacon and coffee well after midnight.

I started drinking it as a teenager. It developed into an addiction during all-night college cram sessions and in working on newspapers at all hours of the day and night.

Now that I’m getting close to being old and weak, I’m trying to cut back—not quit mind you—just limit myself to less than three pots a day—no matter what time of day. That's part of the price of being a journalist. Put out a weekly newspaper like we did at the Waurika News-Democrat, and you have to have coffee all Tuesday night long.

But when I do get old and weak, you can be assured—as the folks who know me will tell you—my coffee won’t ever be old and weak. It’ll be strong, 24 hours a day. And like me, no fancy stuff, or sweetened or weakened with milk. Just straight, thank you.

It's not by accident I like the rap song, "Black Coffee, No Sugar, No Cream," and that we have more coffee mugs than ever needed.

When I die, they wont have to embalm me—my veins will be full of caffeine.

The folks in the All Nite Café in Comanche, Oklahoma,  100 years ago, would understand.