Enid, Oklahoma

After leaving Pensacola, Florida, the Navy decided to send me to train with the Air Force at Vance AFB in Enid, Oklahoma. First off, Enid? What sort of disease was this. Right up there with Gout and Eczema. Second, training with the Air Force is notorious for being an experience on par with being kicked in the crotch repeatedly...which it was. More on the actual training later because this post is dedicated to the magnificent, picturesque monotony of Oklahoma.

I give Oklahoma less credit than it deserves. The air is always fresh and the skies are a nice shade of blue when they aren't black or an ominous green right before a tornado is about to destroy half the town. The people are always friendly and cheerful and made me laugh with their version of the english language. All in all it is a great place to die.

For three hundred bucks a month I lived in a two bedroom, two bathroom, one story house complete with a garage and backyard. They were building me a neighborhood when I moved in. Here's a nice view of the front yard looking East:

And here is looking West:

Isn't it magnificent?! Enid itself is about a 4 x 4 square mile town two hours from any "major" city. There are a few bars, the most popular being a country dance bar called Scooters. The town boasts a Wal Mart, Lowes, and Chili's, and not much else with a local mall having more vacant spots than stores. That's seriously all I can say about Enid. Look!

As you can see there's nothing anywhere except little named dots on the map. I figured out these were mostly ghost towns created when the highways and railroads shifted course. Because there was nothing to do in Enid, most of my time was diverted to exploring these towns. Over the course of the ten months I was stuck here, I explored about twenty five ghost towns. Overall most were pretty lame, but occasionally one would make up for the rest. What was most confusing to me was that a lot of the abandoned homes in these towns were unlocked and still contained a lot of furniture, pictures, toys, clothes, etc. Who knows. It was fun looking through people's lives who may or may not be dead now. One of the homes had a horse outside.

"Hey, nice car!"

The only problem with exploring these locations was that they were so far apart. Easily the most interesting was a town on the Oklahoma-Missouri border known as Picher. Ever see the movie Silent Hill? Supposedly some of the movie was filmed here - here being a lead-infested wasteland riddled with abandoned mine shafts and empty buildings. I continued to explore this place past sunset, finally leaving and winding up on a deserted dirt road in the middle of nowhere...which was exactly where I wanted to be.

The Hornet Spooklight

I glanced at the clock - 1:06 AM. I killed the engine, turned off the lights and waited. Nothing. I felt pretty stupid. I sat there in the blackness and stared straight ahead, now able to make out a large field and a clump of trees off in the distance. Minutes passed and soon I realized I was staring at a dot in the distance, about the size of a pin hole. I held my breath. The dot began snaking its way through the trees, weaving in and out in a figure eight pattern and rhythmically changing colors from white to orange. After watching the light for some time, I turned the car on as quietly as possible. I inched my way along the dirt path never taking my eye off the light, which was now the size of a baseball. The light began to vanish. I raced forward now but the mysterious light was gone.

If you want to know more about this phenomenon you can read this article written by CJ: The Hornet Spooklight I was the "close friend who drove there".

And with that here are some random pictures of Oklahoma.

So Wonderful.

Typical Oklahoma Dirt Road

Perfect Oklahoma Architecture

Driving Back to Enid

Weird Grassland Creature