icensnow

The trees outside are crippled from their outer-shells of icy crystal. They are encased and defeated.

I am reminded of a particular winter at my stepfather’s house in Purdy, Oklahoma. His name was Craig West and he was a drug consumer and dealer. He gave it all up to marry my mother but he did not waste too much time getting back into it.

I can say that it was a very different world when this creature was introduced into our little lives. My younger brother and I liked him, I guess- it's hard to recall- but I recall there always being a subtle caution when dealing with him.
(I have written about Craig before, somewhere, so forgive me if I repeat myself on some items.)

One of my clearest memories of Craig's World was that, due to his living out in the country, we would have to burn trash in a 55 gallon barrel. It was one of my chores and I liked it. (Burning shit can be fun, right?) I would dump the trash into the barrel and, a few times, my little brother and I spotted some used syringes. One time we actually took one out and pushed on it, expelling the remaining fluid. (He shot speed, mostly.) That's pretty terrible, now that I think about it...
We couldn't get any cold medication because all of the pharmacies in the small town of Lindsay, Oklahoma had banned Craig, due to his notorious talents in making meth from cold medications. (I consider sort of a "meth pioneer" in this area: he could take those little nose inhalers and make a single-serve dose of meth- for on-the-go meth addicts...and I assume that they all are.)

I used to love going out to visit Mom and Craig. He built a little house in the country where we raised ducks, chickens, geese, and other such feathered nonsense. I shot guns, I camped, I had an ugly little dog that I named “Whiskey”, and it was there that I felt I could do what a boy of ten or so should have been doing: running around in fields, playing in creeks, catching lizards, frogs, and all that shi. It was a good time.
I am reminded of Craig mostly on these icy days because of this: I have a very clear memory of seeing walk outside one morning after a similar ice storm as the one we just suffered. The trees and earth were covered in ice; THICK ice. He walked out onto the patio with his cup of coffee and looked at that frigid world that surrounded us. He looked like something out of a cigarette ad: this tall, lanky character adorned in denim with his longer hair on his shoulders was lit by the sunrise. (He looked like a jaundiced Kelsey Grammer.) I watched as he slowly paced, looking at his feet, the sky, the trees.
Without warning, one step sent a foot flying- sending him down in a nearly perfect ninety-degree angle. I think he got a good bounce in there as well. The pain registered on his face. I felt the impact inside the house.
I couldn’t help it. I exploded with laughter. I cried with laughter. He was still on the ground in a fit of shock and pain and I was laughing like a brain-damaged idiot. I couldn’t help it. I laughed and laughed. I couldn’t help it.
I did feel some guilt and concern though. It bubbled to the surface after the comedy subsided. I said to my mother “We should probably go see if he is O.K” and I began to go to the door.
My mother calmly, coolly, yet firmly put an arm out and halted my progress.
“Don’t. He’ll just say that you pushed him.”
It was the way she said it that immediately convinced me that she truly believed that. I guess she knew him better than I did.

----------------------------------------------

I am not built for winter. I am especially inept at dealing with a winter such as the one we have endured in the past few weeks.
Cold cold cold. If hell is hot then I figure it gets cold further on down……that’s where my hell is.
I remember tunneling in a deep snowdrift in Woodward, Oklahoma when I was five or so. I wore a big winter coat that I had seen photos of Michael Jackson wearing. I don’t think that had anything to do with me ending up with one though…
No one really thinks of Oklahoma as having brutal winters but they were cold enough for me. Perhaps in that particular area, “the panhandle”, it is colder- it’s hard for me to tell as that’s where I spent the early years of my life before going more south-central. Maybe it was the flat, prairie-ish terrain that made me think of it as being so inhumanely cold- that cold wind blowing snow into walls and mountains of icy hell- I suppose I was so young that, to me, there was nothing colder.