What I love about Oklahoma

[tntrex]

I love that it is like a mini-Texas

 

[Coded-Dude]

I'd like to buy a place with rolling hills, ponds, and a live creek, stream, river running through it. Far enough to be out of the way, but have a small town within 30 minutes or so.

Sounds like our old place in Seminole(but were were only about 10 miles outside of town). Several hundred acres, a couple ponds around the edges of the property, a 52 acre lake in the back yard(with a beaver hut), and a good size creek/stream that fed it. The creek even had a 5-6 ft drop off upstream that made a cool waterfall in the wet season. Man I miss that place.....

 

[HMFIC]

I'd like to buy a place with rolling hills, ponds, and a live creek, stream, river running through it. Far enough to be out of the way, but have a small town within 30 minutes or so.

There are a lot of really nice places that I'd love to be like this up in Osage County between Hominy and Pawnee / Fairfax area. Beautiful countryside.

 

[HMFIC]

As J.J. Grey says:


It's all about home.

It's where we're all headed and where we wanna be. Wherever it may be.

It's all about having those places where you can just feel it. Something come through, something shining through. Something that takes you away from the world of problems, the world of worries and the world of care.

A place where you can leave all the bullsh!t behind for just a few minutes. Get in a boat maybe, sit on the bank, whatever you want to do. Watch the sun set on the other side of the lake. Take your boat out there and drop a hook over the side. You don't even care if it's baited at that point. Maybe get an ice cold beverage of choice and forget about all the stuff you've got to deal with when you leave there.

When you find that place, you hold onto it.

Someone told me, "well you just go there to escape reality."

And I thought about it for a minute and was like well, maybe I do go there to escape reality. But then I thought a little longer and I was like, "naw... hoss you got it backwards, I go there TO GET TO REALITY" and get away from all these problems that I invent.

So long live places like that. If you've got it, you hold it and feel it every chance you get...



I have posted this video before... and I love it. Besides being great music, the words speak to all of our hearts and hit us right where we live when it comes to loving the place we call "home". It might not be where we were born or raised, but it's where we feel it and we live. We all have our own Lochloosa.






Homesick but it's alright
Lochloosa is on my mind
She's on my mind

I swear it's ten thousand degrees in the shade
Lord have mercy knows - how much I love it

Every mosquito every rattlesnake
Every cane break – everything

Every alligator every blackwater swamp
Every freshwater spring – everything

All we need is one more damn developer
Tearing her heart out

All we need is one more Mickey Mouse
Another golf course another country club
Another gated community

Lord I need her
Lord I need her
And she's slipping away

If my grandfather could see her now
He'd lay down and die

Cause every minute every second every hour
Every day - Lord she's slipping away

Homesick but it's alright
Lochloosa is on my mind
She's on my mind

 

[been]

I love Oklahoma. I love the weather, wildlife (hunting), landscape, gunlaws, small towns, girls, and being in the bible belt. I also love the Oklahoma shooting forum!

 

[Parks 788]

I love Oklahoma. Even though Im not an actual natural born native, I do have deep deep Oklahoma roots. I currently live maybe half of the year in Oklahoma but due to my type of businesses I also live a good part of the year back at my other home in northern California and a bit of the year in Iowa.

I was born in the San Diego area while my dad was in the Marines but both of my parents were born and raised in OKlahoma even though they didnt know each other then. My dad weirdly met my mother some how in Los Angeles where she lived with her parents while her father was there working as a movie soundtrack musician/violinist&pianist and a small parts actor. They had lived on a family ranch back in Osage county where my mom was born near Hominy and where my grandparents would retire to later.

My mothers family were cowboys and indians. She is half blood Osage-Kaw indian. My maternal grandfather was raised near Ponca City and Pawhuska where I still have alot of relatives- my grandfathers mother was full blood Osage and his father was half Kaw half Osage. My grandfather went to Chilloco school for indians and then to Haskell Indian college. My mothers ancestors both Osage and Kaw were moved to Oklahoma from their home lands in Missouri and Kansas but Oklahoma at the time was their land where they did their hunting. Our tribe bought our land they live on now, all of Osage county, with relocation money that they had recieved from the Cherokees in a sale forced upon them by the government. My mother has alot of old family documents and books that show the course of their forced migration.


My father was born in Blackwell but they lived all over Oklahoma from Blackwell and NewKirk to later OKC as my paternal grandfather was in the oil business and they moved alot. He went from a rough neck to a producer to owner of other oilfield related companies during his life. He was there when they drilled the well in town in Barnsdall. He later moved to OKC to run his tool and oilfield equipment companies. He owned an interest in the old Sheppards Mall in OKC when it was new where he had an office that I use to visit when I was a little kid, and even co-owned the 101 Ranch for a bit with some other guys.

My mother left my father when I was 10 and went back to live on the ranch in Osage county and ended up remarried to an old highschool sweetheart. I had already been going back and forth from California to Oklahoma all my life visiting relatives there and then after the divorce I split my time between living with my mom and stepfather and their kids in Oklahoma a month in the summer and then back to southern California to live with my father and his new family during the school year.

My road back to living in Oklahoma was a weird one.

After graduating highschool I moved to San Francisco to go to school(s). I wanted to be an artist and a musician as I had been doing both art and music since I was young but I promised my mother I would get some school, so I did. I first went to an art institute during the day and took music courses at a college at night. I also started an apprenticeship in a tattoo shop and played punk and metal music in clubs on the weekends. After art school I went to a mortuary school and then took a few courses in culinary school at CIA. After schooling was done I moved up to north California in the Sierra mountains and built me a small place on family owned property where me and my 2nd wife who was also a tattoo artist/piercer went to work in a tattoo shop down in the foothills that we eventually bought. Then my music career took off and I left her to run the shop while I toured playing guitar.

I met a friend in Des Moines Iowa while there playing music who was looking for investors to help open a new tattoo shop. Went home and talked to the wife and we decided to do it so we jumped on the deal and moved part time to Des Moines to help with the setup. 2 shops, 2 homes in 2 different states, and one kid later, we split up. We decided to stay in business together and raise our kid together but just couldnt be married. Bought her a place in Des Moines and I went back and forth to California and Iowa to help run both shops plus I was playing in bands in both states.

Then I met my soulmate, my future and now current wife in San Francisco. She was there vacationing with friends. A divorcee with 2 kids- from Tulsa Oklahoma. She was born and raised in Oklahoma and had worked her entire career in a small but busy family owned oilfield equipment business in Tulsa. She had just become an officer of the company. She couldnt move. So we started the phone and internet courting and me doing alot of driving and flying. I'm still doing the phone and internet/Skype courting, driving and flying, etc, but it is so totally worth it.

We have a house in town and a piece of land outside town in Wagoner county where me and the kids can ride our moto bikes and 4wheelers and shoot. The wife wants to build her dream retirement house there some day. She and a buddy of hers also co-own a place at Flint creek where we've been going to get away at for a few years and where her family vacationed at when she was a kid. And I still have my little A-frame cabin up on the mountain in northern California when I need to get away from it all.

I love Oklahoma, but sorry I also love California. Oklahoma is in my blood as much as California is. Slag California all you want, I dont mind because I do too at times, but I still love the place because its home. And so is Oklahoma.

Sorry for the novel.

That's a great read Nofear': I agree with your last statement. California gets a bad rap and, IMO, 100% of that is justified and due only to it's political climate. Calif has pretty much everything any of the other 50 states has but are saddled with socialist who run the place.

 

[nofearfactor]

California gets a bad rap and, IMO, 100% of that is justified and due only to it's political climate. Calif has pretty much everything any of the other 50 states has but are saddled with socialist who run the place.

I agree. My county that I live in there, Calaveras county, is as Republican and redneck as Oklahoma, and as remote as some places in Arkansas. Its all 4x4s, guns, and hunting and fishing up there on the mountain. My nearest neighbor is down a dirt road about half a mile, myself Im about 2 miles off the highway down a black top about 2 miles and then about a mile on gravel. In the winter good luck getting from my house to the highway without a badass 4x4 or snowmobile. And Bear Valley ski resort is down the road.

Calaveras county politics:
In the state legislature Arnold(the city closest to me) is located in the 1st Senate District, represented by Republican Dave Cox, and in the 25th Assembly District, represented by Republican Kristin Olsen. Federally, Arnold is located in California's 3rd congressional district, which has a Cook PVI of R +7[5] and is represented by Republican Dan Lungren.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPVI

 

[Neanderthal]

I'd like to buy a place with rolling hills, ponds, and a live creek, stream, river running through it. Far enough to be out of the way, but have a small town within 30 minutes or so.

You've pretty much described where we live.

It's very rural out here and I wouldn't have it any other way. You cannot go 1/4 mile in any direction from my house without running into springs and crystal clear perennial streams. The hills are beautiful and teeming with wildlife like you wouldn't believe. There are lakes (Hudson, Eucha, Ft. Gibson, etc) close enough to where I can have my boat in the water within 30 minutes. There is no traffic out here, the only annoying noise is a damn whippoorwill outside of my bedroom window at certain times of the year. I've seen wildlife out here that I never knew existed in Oklahoma.

I have made quad trails that are miles long and use them regularly with my son, daughter and friends. Everyone waves at you in passing, whether they know you or not...that doesn't happen in cities.

I love our little place in the Ozarks and wouldn't want to live anywhere else. Here's a few pics that I've taken from out here.

 

[Neanderthal]

For the record, there is land for sale just up the road from us (I think 200'ish acres). The owners don't live there, I think they live in Tulsa. It's pretty much a wildlife sanctuary! You can't drive by it in the morning or at night without seeing deer, pigs or turkey. My wife and daughter saw a small mountain lion crossing the road to that land several months back. If I had the funds, it would be mine!

 

[Cinaet]

I love that it is like a mini-Texas

We're Texas' hat.