Thursday, March 20, 2014

The day out

But first: My piano lessons start again next Wednesday at 3:30. (Yipes, I hope I can get the field vehicles back from lab and get home in time....lab is supposed to end at 2:50 and I live about 5 minutes from Motor Pool so I'm probably good unless something goes wrong.)

***

I will call yesterday a day out rather than a grand day out because there were a couple of disappointments:

1. The restaurant that I thought was still in operation in Sulphur (based on a quick check online) was long gone. (Stupid Internet, lied to me again). So I drove on to Davis and found....

2. Route 7 is nasty to drive on. Lots of big construction-truck traffic, and apparently the rail line through Davis snarls the traffic periodically - I wound up stuck behind a rock hauler and not being able to see and getting very worried because it would move a few inches at a time and then stop. I didn't know about the rail line until later on.

3. I don't know WHAT town it was that my dad and I briefly stopped in one time when he was down here to visit the Chickasaw National Recreation area, but it wasn't Davis - this was a nice older town with a fairly large downtown with a bunch of antique stores. (Paul's Valley? Paoli? I don't know). Davis had two. Which was okay but not what I was hoping for. (I even asked the owner of one store, "So....this is the main street?" hoping I'd be told, "Oh, no, the business district is three blocks that way." I was already buying something so I don't think she'd have not told me if there were other stores)

4. Two of the employees at the lunch place I wound up in (out of desperation, but the food turned out to be good) got into an argument because one of them messed up the entry of the bill of the person ahead of me into the cash register, and I had to stand for a long time while they worked it out. By that point, I was thinking, "This trip was a TOTAL mistake; I will have wasted a day of spring break for this." It got better later on, but right then I wasn't very happy.

I also discovered that driving over the Roosevelt Bridge (the big bridge over Lake Texoma; there are other routes to get west of the lake but it's the most direct one) still scares me, and in fact I had to talk myself through it because I could feel my heart rate going up and I started to perspire. I don't know why that bridge bothers me when other ones (like the one over the Red River) do not. I suppose it's because it's fairly narrow and is two-lane (so you're facing oncoming traffic, and God help you if someone strays over into your lane because for most of the bridge there is really no clearance between the lane and the railing). Also, for a big part of it the only thing between you and the lake is a low railing that seems like it would be very easy to go over in an accident. (I came home an alternate way, across the Cumberland Cut, and discovered they had re-routed the road so it doesn't cross the creepy-but-less-scary-than-Roosevelt iron bridge and have a normal, modern style bridge now.)

However, as I said, the day got better. I went to both the antique shops, and I found a small old bookcase in one that I bought. It was kind of expensive but it was small (so it will fit in a small space) and I kind of fell in love with it:



I plan to get a tack cloth to clean it up, and some tung oil to rub into it to cover the areas that the finish got scratched up a little. It's quite small - maybe 2 1/2 feet tall, but I think it will be a good place for my little old "Everyman's Library" books (I'm guessing it might be roughly the same vintage as they are.)

The owl is from another shop - I did run back to Sulphur later on (and found that the "nice" shops are now all affiliated with the big luxury hotel there, and the little old downtown is really empty). He came from one of the shops near the hotel. (The name he was given was "Orlando," I suppose I will keep that). I think if I were a student at Hogwarts, "my" owl would look kind of like this one.

There was also a cupcake shop and I have decided that, since I so rarely get a chance to have cake or cake-related items, that if I am near a cupcake shop, I will buy a cupcake. (I got red velvet, which is usually a pretty safe choice).

I also went to the Bedré chocolate factory. This is a Chickasaw-run business - I guess it's an economic development thing. They have big windows where you can look out at the factory floor where people are working. (The process is mostly automated, so it's not quite like watching a chef at work). They also have a factory store. (And samples. They were giving out samples of "chocolate crisps," which were like chocolate-covered Pringles. I am not sure how I feel about them). I bought a couple of chocolate bars and a small bag of chocolate-peanut clusters.

I also went over to the visitors' center (mostly a gift shop with books and Oklahoma-made items) next door. The hostess said one of those things I know I shouldn't be annoyed by, but tend to be: "All alone today?"

I get that people ask that to find out if you're waiting on someone, or it's a greeting, or something. But sometimes it almost seems to have a slight pitying tone to it and I want to say, "And why wouldn't I be?" I get that some people are insecure with going and doing ANYTHING alone. But some of us don't have too much of a choice - and anyway, lots of times when I go places WITH people, either we have to leave earlier than I planned, or skip some place I wanted to go to, or eat at a restaurant I wouldn't have chosen. Going and doing stuff alone allows me to make all the choices, and so often in my day-to-day life I don't get to do what I want to do, that it's kind of a treat just to be able to do what I want. (With restaurants, I sometimes wonder if it's to gauge "do we want to serve this person" because I've been in a few - and never went back - where I felt like they really didn't want me there.)

In some respects, it was a pretty good day. But I admit driving 2 hours (or close to it) each way (I didn't want to take the more "direct" route of I-35 because drivers on it are cray-cray) for the amount of places I found to go kind of put me off. (I might have been happier dodging the street construction in McKinney, which is more of a known).

But still, that mystery: what WAS that town my dad and I briefly stopped in some 12 years ago? I suppose Davis could have once had more antique shops, but the town didn't "feel" like the one I remembered. (I think that eBay and now Etsy have probably killed off a lot of antique shops: why pay the overhead for a store when you can sell stuff out of your home, and to a bigger audience who may be willing to pay more, especially for the "hot new thing"?) Daugherty doesn't seem big enough (I didn't even consider going there). Maybe a section of Ardmore I don't really go to?

2 comments:

CGHill said...

Tishomingo?

Charlotte said...

Maybe your dad remembers what town it was. In 12 years lots of things can change. Glad you had a change in your routine anyway.