Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

By The Erudite Redneck

It was something between pee yellow and sick-calf green, it smelled like new paint inside, had four little tires not much bigger around than Mama’s pecan pies, and would do zero to 60 in about a minute and a half.

But the car, a ’70-something Mazda GLC, was mine, and so was the stuff behind me under the hatchback: just about every stitch of clothing I owned, an extra pair of boots, two or three cowboy hats, a Bible, a college dictionary and a 76-day-old TV set bought just for my dorm room at Oklahoma State. I recall that the TV was about 76 days old because it played out about two weeks later, on the 91st day of a 90-day warranty.

Headed west on Interstate 40 with all my worldly possessions, 41 more or less useless credit hours from a junior college and ideations of wowing listenin’ audiences everywhere once I got a degree in radio-TV-film — on my own, as much as any college kid ever really is.

The weekend before, in honor of the fact that I was actually headin’ off to college, just about every friend I had gave me a big ol’ country send-off, which meant Bocephus, the Charlie Daniels Band, Haggard and the like playin’ loud, lots of coldbeer on ice, a bottle or two of the hard stuff and enough pork rinds to go around three or four times.

The get-together was in some river bottoms at the dead end of a dirt road that led to the site of a long-dead and long-gone town, which we temporarily revived as best we could most Friday and Saturday nights. All that was left was the dilapidated clapboard church house, a snapshot from the turn of the 20th century that fascinated us and demanded the respect we gave it.

The main thing different about this gathering was that it was actually more or less organized, rather than just coming together natural like, and it really was called in my honor — a fact that made me both proud and worried, punctuating, as it did, the importance of my leaving.

Somebody even hung a home-made "Good Luck!" banner, which I believe is still rolled up and stuck in the top of the closet in my old room at Mama’s house, 20 years later.

It was a Big Deal for me to go to college. Stillwater was plumb on the other side of Tulsa, and Tulsa was 120 miles or away to begin with — and it was all pretty much foreign territory to me.

Somewhere past the Tulsa turn-off — it took a year for me to get the nerve to take the more direct route to Stillwater, through Tulsa — "Mama She’s Lazy," a take-off on The Judds’ "Mama He’s Crazy," which never played on the local stations at home, came on the radio out of Oklahoma City.

Wow! What sass! I am gettin’ close to the fast lane of life now. Then, something else weird came on, and I pushed the "Urban Cowboy" 8-track back in, which gave me comfort, considering it, as I did, a good soundtrack for my life as I saw it playin’ out. Not that there was anything "urban" about me, or about Bud (John Travolta) in the movie. People forget that Bud moved to Houston from Spur, Texas, to find work in the oil bidness. I’ve been to Spur, Texas. It is a two-horse, one-dog town.

It was an even Bigger Deal for me to leave home, where most of my kin lived within hollerin’ distance and where not one of my friends was more than 20 country miles away — and that’s closer, friends, in many ways, than 20 city blocks.

In Stillwater, I knew one person, TECH, the guy who has the 51313 Harbor Street blog linked to this site. He helped me just by being there, just being from the same hometown, when I needed someone to be there 20 years ago. He’s a few years older than me, which meant he knew the ropes of college life at OSU. I don’t believe I ever thanked him.

Well, a belated thanks, dude. It’s been maybe 18 years now since we’ve laid eyes on each other, but a couple of years ago we got reacquainted on-line through a mutual friend, an ex of mine in our little hometown. I haven’t seen her but once in 20 years, but we’ve polished the chain of friendship, as the Indians say, again, solely on-line. A belated thanks to you, too, dudette.

All of this comes to mind — the dinky little car, the smells, the fears, the friendships, the excitement of leaving home (but not going too far), and the first inklings that my personal vista was fixin’ to open wide — all of it is rolling around in my mind and heart now because in about two weeks, I will load up the redheaded redneck stepchild and haul her and many of her worldly possessions to Stillwater, to OSU, to the same dorm I moved into 20 years ago.

This week, she is going through her version of the big ol’ country send-off my friends gave me. It’s much more civilized and suburbanized, of course — meeting high school friends for lunch in the daytime, for ice cream, burgers or pizza at night, sharing good lucks and so longs and we’ll-get-together-soons — and I know she is as aware of what’s happening as I was in 1984. I can see it in her eyes. Her personal vista, her perspective on life, is already so much broader than mine was at her age, it absolutely amazes me. It’s fixin’ to get even bigger.

Twenty years from now, may she remember these days — and the first inklings that wherever she’s been and whatever she’s done up to now has just been gettin’ ready. Among the small herd of friends she has headin’ to Stillwater at the same time, may she find her own TECH, someone to serve as an emotional connection to home, me and her Mama, for those times when she realizes that, while it’s only an hour or so to the house — and, unlike in ’84, we’re just an e-mail or a cell phone call away — she’s not home.

END