Sunday in Texas

We headed out to the Witchita Mountains in Oklahoma after a breakfast of fried left over cornbread from the night before. There are buffalo, elk, long horn steer and deer in the park, along with prarie dogs. The first thing we saw was a giant longhorn steer just ambling up the road. We drove through and found two sets of buffalo herds. The first set was on the side of a hill, one cow came out in the road and stopped in front of the car. Then her calf came out to nurse. A bull wandered out as well and then we had three buffalo blocking our progress. We watched them for quite awhile. One was dusting himself, others were just laying around. We finally backed around and left them to it. Another herd we found had a huge bull watching over them all.

We saw prairie dogs, but they were shy about having their picture taken. We also stopped at the museum and looked around. We drove out of the park to Meers, Oklahoma to Meers Restaurant. Meers Restaurant is quite famous, however, it is not much to look at. It's a bunch of ramshackle buildings tucked into a hill (see photo). It looks like remodeling took place about 1860. I have no idea how long it's been there. You walked into a section that looked like an old butcher shop. The lady gruffly told us to "go on upstairs". As you go up the few steps, you notice that the floor continues to go up, even though the steps stop! Meers raises and butchers it's own long-horns.

The menu was a battered 8.5 X 11 fold up. I can only remeber a few things on it, but I know they said what they serve is a cowboy burger and one of the ingrediants was jalopenos. They'd cook your burger any way you wanted, but if you wanted it without jalopenos they called it a "Sissy Burger" and if you wanted it with ketchup, they called it a "Yankee Burger." Warren said we were to get the $11 Seismic Burger, both couples sharing a burger the staff would cut into four pieces.

Our burger was delivered in a banged up 9 or 10-inch tin cake pan. The burger left only enough room to get your fingers in to serve it. The burger was topped with: jalopenos, red onion slices, relish, mustard, lettuce, pickles, tomatos, bacon and cheese. The burger was so lean it was almost falling apart from lack of fat to hold it together as you transfered it to your tin pie plate to eat it. It was probably the best burger I ever had. I felt guilty enjoying it so much. Ice tea and water were served in large wide-mouth mason jars.

Brian was busy pointing out all of what would be health code violations in Maine. Such as unsealed floors, walls with holes in them to the outside, no moldings etc. It might be a good thing he couldn't get into the kitchen, but when we left almost 30 people were lined up to get in! We had just beat the Sunday lunch crowd.

Back at Warren's I went over to Christy's house to show the girls some photos of my kids on my Facebook. They'd asked to see pictures and I wasn't well prepared and hadn't printed any out to show them. But I had plenty recent ones on there. We went back to Warren's for a supper of smoked pork ribs. I haven't eat this much meat in a very long time. The ribs were good, and so was the cole slaw Brian made and the cantaloupe salad Barbara brought. Christy made fruit pizza for dessert that was very goood. We opened a couple bottles of wine I'd bought in California and Patty's husband and his brother helped me finish them off.

After supper, Barbara wanted us to visit her son Joey's grave. I heard the story in bits and pieces and from my dad at the time of his death, I also talked to Barbara briefly on the phone in March, and I may have some of it wrong. 19-y-o Joey had enlisted in the Navy, but didn't pass a test that he couldn't make up. When he returned home, Patty saw a lump on his back. They lump was needle biopsied and determined to be cancer. They didn't know what kind, but it was very fast moving. The sample was sent to the Mayo Clinic and then on to another one that I forget the name of. It was id's as a fast cancer that was genetically triggered. I think he lived less than six months I think from the biopsy to his death the day after Thanksgiving 2007. He has a lovely, well cared for grave near his mother's home. It hasn't been all that long and they're all still stuggling with it some. It was overwhelmingly sad. I hope they find some measure of peace soon.

We took some pictures and chatted until after 10. I was sad to see the girls go. I will miss them and don't know when I'll get to see them again. Two of them have never been back to Maine and the last time I was in Texas was in 1980.

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