Kentucky: The Oakton Mafia

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I keep to myself much of the time while I'm in Clinton, rambling around the Emma House, enjoying an airy space that's not available in San Francisco. But Saturday night's sunset brings me to the window, to the back porch, and out to the car.

A left at Clinton's one stoplight and in a matter of minutes I'm on highway 123, windows down, jetting toward Hailwell Corner. The sun is drifting lower and as it falls the light of the sky becomes even more intense; it separates into layers of silver and gold, crimson, purple and blue. An artist's palette.

Another ten minutes and my car is parked at the edge of our soybean field and I am looking across 140 years of family history--rows that vanish into hills. I want to still the sinking sun but in a matter of seconds the field turns from green to indigo, the puddles of water from Wednesday's rain turn dark, and it is time to move on.

The only wide spot in the road between and Clinton and Hailwell is the community of Oakton. It's emblematic of what has become of the rural South-- the railroad crossing is a rise of asphalt. Goldenrod and Queen Anne's Lace wave lazily along the tracks. The abandoned post office is a one room structure on a foundation of concrete blocks, its cashier's desk and pigeon holes for mail are masked by boarded windows. But there are still a couple of churches in Oakton, plus a cluster of homes with carefully tended yards. On this Saturday night there are lights in windows, and a short line of trucks is parked outside what once was once Oakton's general store.

Against the store is a sign that reads "Oakton Mafia." The nearly-empty building is brightly lit and there's a small congregation outside on benches that have been there longer than my lifetime. I slow down. I see a lifted hand....the all-inclusive country greeting that indicates, "Hello, whoever you are." I'm not ready to go home so I slow to a crawl and think about pulling in.

The first to recognize me is Bobby Kelly. Known as the mayor of Oakton, he's a man about my age with a contagious smile and off-beat sense of humor. He may well be the creative force behind the Oakton Mafia sign. It's beyond twilight now but I edge over.

"Looks like the boy's club to me," I say.
"Come on, get out," he replies, and I comply, swinging my rental car into the gravel.

I get out, hug Bobby and then realize I know everybody. It's Bobby and his brother Ricky, Mary Ann and Lucas Deweese, mother and brother of Caleb, our farm manager, and Tracy Workman, whose parents are family friends.

The Kellys are known for their good humor and nonstop conversation and I'm promptly drawn into the mix. In the thirty minutes that follow, the sun completely vanishes and mosquitoes start making a meal of us, but I don't leave. We're all looking at a book of photographs--old school houses in Hickman County-- as we pass around the Oakton Mafia's one pair of shared reading glasses. We talk about family and farm matters with an irreverence that keeps the laughter flowing.

Ricky Kelly asks me how I like San Francisco and I tell him it's too cold this time of year for me. He asks what I do in California and for a moment I grapple for an answer. I tell him I walk the dog, go to the park, handle Kentucky farm business on my computer. I don't think to tell him that I try to write every day, and that I have a love-hate relationship with my tubes of watercolor. In context of this Saturday night these things don't come to mind.

There's a bit of a pause and I look around at Mary Ann and Lucas, Tracy, and the Kelly brothers, getting a handle on what matters most. "I really get homesick for Kentucky in the summer."

Bobby Kelly offers me a popsicle from the cooler inside, but I say I should get going. By that time swatting bugs has become a full-time job. It's been fun, and we say goodbyes all around.

I pull out into the two-lane road and look into my rear-view mirror. There's only blackness where the sunset has been. The Oakton Mafia sign recedes from view. I slowly drive through Oakton keeping an eye out for the scruffy brown-furred dog that often lopes along the center line. Passing through farmland I scan the shoulder for the flash of deer's eyes.

It's a rarity for me to drive this way in darkness, but I'm no stranger to the route. On the road from Oakton I know where I am, what's in front of me and what's been left behind.
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"Sunday in the Shop"
photo by Earl Warren, Jr.

For Em: Dogdance

Before I met you
(even before I met your dad)
I was a dancer.

I was too cool, leaping from chair to couch,
silhouetted by the basement light, arm handles, leg shapes,
battements and plies.

My room upstairs, a studio, for great percussive leaps
(causing the kitchen light to do its own jette’ )
Mom would inquire and I’d just smile and shrug;
practice, you see, is quite the private thing.

I still dance.  Mostly while housecleaning.  I slipslide and boogie to
Motown, doing a little cha-cha when I footmop the tile.
Cleo and I tango when she’s begging for treats,
And when Daisy comes to visit?  A big and joyous
do-si-do.

Crater Lake

The sudden, unprecedented blue can be explained,
the spectrum pared away, leaving only blue
to dance with electrons in the pure depths,
but it cannot be known, the blue richer than Chartres
that draws the binocular gaze, irresistible and disturbing,
the blue that stares back, like the eye of some god,
through the long lens of the pilgrim who climbs
the splintered rim to find, below the pointing pines,
new angles on perfection, while the still blue enters,
searching among places deeper than the lake,
to sear with what lies beyond camera capture.

(Ira's poem)

Night Window, San Francisco

Western light is magical. From the north side of the house I can see Golden Gate at the distant right, the shops and homes of central Richmond in the foreground, and Holy Virgin to the left. It's the church that draws me to the window in the evening and I've tried dozens of times to capture it. This shot comes close.

Kentucky: Local residents launch war on shade

In an move that may spark nationwide interest, residents of this west Kentucky town believe they can-- once and for all --completely rid the town of shade. Beginning in early March, citizens of Clinton, Kentucky launched a grassroots effort to confiscate and systematically destroy all visible tree branches.

J.K. “Rexie” Ross, Clinton cannonizer, is among those voicing support for the effort. “They were everywhere” he said. “You couldn’t see the sky for those things.”

When asked about the origin of the project, most community leaders were stumped.“The idea came from Clinton’s radical core,” one citizen admitted. “But now splinter groups have formed in Fulgham and Water Valley." Oakton has one of the largest limb nullification projects in the area. For weeks at the onset of the project residents worked day and night, abandoning their jobs and rejecting computer and television as “distracting.” Most even resisted cell phone use.

“It’s impossible to log all the hours we’ve given to this effort,” one worker commented. An elderly lady added, "I feel like I've been pulled through a knot hole backwards."

There has been opposition, though largely hollow. One homeowner was seen lumbering aimlessly in his orchard seeking shade. Neighbors believe he has a deeply rooted problem. "He's an indolent sort, certainly not executive timber," one noted.

In this case and others like it, the state department of deforestation takes up the slack, attacking offending limbs with their own bucket trucks and chain saws. The workers are in high spirits. “No hangers in this town,” one barked. “We’ve stripped the place clean.”

With trucks running 24 hours a day much of the tree refuse has been relocated south of town. Once only the size of QE II, the growing wood pile is now roughly the length of Delaware. Ex-zetta Bencini, local journalist, said Clinton residents will bend but never break. “We won’t stop until every branch is gone, ” she said. “This town knows how to stick to it.”