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

By the Erudite Redneck

Yet again, ol’ ER is as proud of the books he left on the shelf yesterday as the ones he took home. That shows bibliophilic maturity.

Naaaah. Just means the debts incurred in grad school are voluminous, and, since ol’ ER can’t even walk across his home office – has to hop over rivulet of the flood of books, in fact, just to get his rear to his computer – because of recent acquisitions, he is bein’ damn picky about the books he buys these days.

Acquired, at a bookstore we didn’t know existed near NW 30th and Pennsylvania in Oklahoma City:

Grant Foreman, ed., A Pathfinder in the Southwest: The Itinerary of Lieutenant A.W. Whipple During His Explorations for a Railway Route from Fort Smith to Los Angeles in the Years 1853 & 1854 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941).

Speaks for itself, don’t it?

Also acquired:

Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains, paperback ed., (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1931).

Webb’s seminal work -- “a compelling history of the great central plains and how this land has shaped the destiny of the American nation,” the cover blurb says – was the first big turn in American historiography after Frederick Jackson Turner’s the-closing-the-frontier-and-the-end-of-life-as-we-know-it hypothesis of 1893. Ol’ ER encountered it in grad school. Now it’s on his to-read stack.

So much for erudition yesterday. Now for the redneck realm:

Picked up a tub of mink oil, a gun-cleanin’ kit, an elk meat stick and a new pair of boots at the Bass Pro Shop at Bricktown. What a place. Shoulda listened to Bird. She TOLD me I’d dang near swoon. And I dang near did.

We skipped the Cowboy Hall of Fame. We did check out some of the artsy-fartsy shops in the Paseo area. Very cool.

One of the shops has a complete set of knightly shining armor for $3,999. Same joint had some phrenology heads and palmistry palms.

Heck, there’s a couple of artsy-fartsy bars down there ol’ ER didn’t know existed but are now on the to-do list next time Dr. ER leaves him without proper adult supervision.

Something tells me, though, that they won’t have Tennessee whisky on the drink menu, although I’ll bet they will have Beefeater gin, which means all will be forgiven.

END