UPDATE: In the comment below, Beemer makes reference to the use of her name. I would like to refer to the NewsOK.com (The Oklahoman) article of December 24, 2007 – an interview which she freely agreed to and is quoted in. Read the article HERE. She can also be seen on youtube in a CNN interview. I went to the maps section on the internet to get a feel for the vastness of Oklahoma and to actually see the paucity of neighbors.

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Once I get to researching something, I am usually fairly thorough and this is no exception. I looked up Ladd Drummond and Pawhuska, Oklahoma and then went to Maps at Live.com. I saw her pond from above – at least I’m pretty certain it’s her pond and her house . . . and a lot of “just land” around it. Whoa, there is a lot of openness out there. You can get lost scrolling along the aerial view, so I don’t even want to think about driving the roads at night. Yes, I would get a GPS – would it work out there? Okay, I would definitely have a county map and a compass and maybe a sleeping bag, extra drinks, a jar of peanut butter, bread, a mad bomber hat, my LL Bean gear – clothes and hiking shoes, one of those plastic containers for gas and whatever else I manage to think of.
I guess it’s cold enough right now that if/when I had to get out to . . . well . . . pee, rattlesnakes wouldn’t be lurking around to tag me. Better plan ahead, if it’s in the summer I would just do it in the middle of the road – no grass for me.

There’s a restaurant there called The Blue Gate and you can see a partial menu listing on the website; I say partial because they leave out what I consider the most important item – meatloaf. When I last went with some cousins who were visiting, I checked to see what the special of the day was and they didn’t list specials; in fact, they didn’t list meatloaf. I almost panicked.

As it was, on that trip we had the family style meal which is okay, but not my favorite, considering I don’t care for chicken.

My mother doesn’t like the restaurant and eats there only as a favor to out-or-town visitors who want to see what it is like. Decades ago, she and my father, first started frequenting a spot in Middlebury – a lunch counter with a small dining area. It has grown since then – Das Dutchman Essenhaus. My parents were charter members. Oh, look HERE to see what it is now. Then check HERE to see what it looked like then. I remember it like this and I liked it that way. (One of the cars in the picture may indeed be my father’s.)