Day 239: Corn Scorn

As she browsed the Emerald Victorian’s library preparing for the day’s tour, Laetitia ran across a book that she hadn’t seen before. It was a catalog from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. She never knew what she would find in the library. Perhaps the book had been there before. She knew that her grandmother and “the girls,” as they called themselves, had been to New York recently, but she didn’t know if they had gone to the Metropolitan Museum.

As she flipped the catalog pages, she saw a reproduction of Matinee de Septembre, or, in English, September Morn. It is an image of a nude young woman standing in a misty lake framed by a mountain backdrop. French artist Paul Émile Chabas painted it and first exhibited it in Paris in 1912. The woman’s arms tastefully cover her private parts, and the painting created no stir at the Paris exhibition, but when it appeared in the window of a Chicago art gallery the following year, the mayor charged the gallery owner with indecency. The art dealer won the lawsuit that followed, and the notoriety ensured the painting’s enduring popularity. But Laetitia was touring the western United States, more specifically Oklahoma, so she pulled out an Oklahoma guide book and planned the day’s tour.

Laetitia and her group visited Quartz Mountain Nature Park on the way to Corn, Oklahoma. Quartz Mountain is a part of the Wichita Mountain Range. Rising about 500 feet above its base, it is mostly granite, but has the quartz crystals for which it was named filling spaces between the other rocks. After some hikes in the park, the group went to Corn, where they were spending the evening. Corn has about 600 residents. It was settled by Russian and German Mennonites and was called “Korn” originally, until anti-German sentiment during World War I brought about its change to “Corn.”

Instead of her usual habit of going to a bar for happy hour, Laetitia found a park bench with a shade tree and sat there reading a book while she waited for dinner. A teenager named Peg walked by and stopped to talk. Laetitia asked her what she and her friends did for fun in Corn. Peg said, “There isn’t much to do here. We’re too young to go to bars to try to meet people. When we get bored, we all go skinny dipping over at Lake Crowder.” Laetitia thanked Peg and when she walked away, wrote down the limerick of the day in the notebook she always had in her purse.

Young Peg rued the place she was born
That small Sooner village named Corn
But when living got slow
In the lake she would go
With her friends dressed like “September Morn.”

Day 238: Cache Flash

Laetitia took her group to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge for some hiking and wildlife viewing. They found it a lovely area with rivers, lakes, rock cliffs, and grasslands with buffalo herds. The refuge is close to Fort Sill, where the famous Apache chief Geronimo is buried. Late that evening, the group arrived in Cache, where they were spending the evening. Cache is a small Oklahoma city of about 2,400 inhabitants.

In the motel bar during happy hour, Laetitia watched a man circulating among the crowd. He seemed very popular. When the bartender noticed that Laetitia was watching the man work the crowd, he said, “That’s Bob. He just inherited a lot of money when his father died. He’s popular with the ladies right now because he has a new car and is a big spender. But his cash won’t last long at the rate he’s spending it. He’ll find that he’s not so popular when it runs out.” Laetitia smiled and thanked the bartender. He had given her the limerick of the day.

Bob thought that the ladies of Cache
Found attractive his looks and panache
But it wasn’t his charms
That drew them in swarms
‘Twas the fact he was rolling in cash.

Day 236: Red Oak Joke

The day’s destination for Laetitia and her group was Red Oak, Oklahoma, a town that is home to about 600 people. The original town site was on land later given to the Choctaw nation. It is said that the town was named for a red oak tree that grew in the center of that settlement. Later the town was moved eight miles away to be alongside what became the Rock Island and Pacific Railway.

The group visited Wister and Robbers’ Cave State Parks. Tradition holds that the cave in the latter park was a hideout at various times for the Jesse James gang and Belle Starr, but the legend has been difficult to verify. When Laetitia and her group did their walkabout, they met a local man who told them about a thin woman who wished to be better endowed but couldn’t afford breast implants. On a dare, she chose an affordable alternative and everyone in town had a good laugh.

When a lady who lived in Red Oak
Stuffed balloons in her bra as a joke
She was so well endowed
That she drew a large crowd
But lopsided, alas, when one broke.

Day 235: Back Seat Defeat

Next on Laetitia’s agenda was a visit to Oklahoma, the Sooner State. “Sooner” was the name given to people who illegally occupied unassigned lands in Oklahoma Territory, before the lands were officially opened for homesteading in 1889. The tour stopped in Oktaha, in eastern Oklahoma, and visited the art gallery of Jeanne Rorex-Bridges, an artist of Cherokee descent whose exquisite tiles with scenes of Native American life were admired by the tour group. Several individuals bought tiles.

The group’s destination was Hugo, a town of a bit over 5,000 inhabitants in Choctaw County. They spent the afternoon hiking in Hugo Lake State Park. Back in town that evening, they stopped in a local bar for happy hour and, as usual, the bartender was an excellent source of local gossip. His story, which gave rise to the day’s limerick, was hearsay, of course, but he had heard the story in two versions from Mortimer and Yvonne, who were the story’s participants.

The story began when Mortimer purchased a Yugo subcompact. When this product of Communist Yugoslavia was first introduced in the United States, it was an instant marketing success, owing chiefly to its exceedingly low price. The euphoria didn’t last long. It wasn’t a good omen when the car that Motor Trend Magazine was testing broke down. Some authors who review automobiles called it “the worst car in history” and others joked that its owner’s manual included a bus schedule. But the bartender’s story wasn’t about mechanical problems. Mortimer and his girlfriend, Yvonne, were two very large people who still lived at home, and Mortimer’s car was the only place they could go to “fool around.” After the incident that became the limerick, Mortimer traded in his Yugo for a used Cadillac.

Yvonne said to Mortimer, “You go
And take me on back home to Hugo”
His back seat was so cramped
That her ardor had damped
And he vowed to get rid of his Yugo.