Bye, bye Buick

The hail was huge, about golf ball size, as I was driving west in afternoon rush hour on Interstate-40 seven years ago May 8, and I started dialing up my reporter friends at the Shawnee News-Star east of the storm.

I found cops reporter Kim Morava.

“If anybody’s comin’ this way, tell them to wait. There’s a heckuva hail storm moving your way on I-40.”

But Kim didn’t care much about hail.

“Where are you,” she demanded.

“Oh, on I-40 about Tinker (Air Force Base in Midwest City,” I said.

“THERE’S A HUGE TORNADO AT TINKER.”

And I suddenly realized that big, floor-to-ceiling black cloud to my left, hovering over Tinker Air Force Base and the General Motors plant was not a cloud. It was a pretty substantial tornado.

It was not a good feeling.

It was May 8, 2003, and it was a few moments before I was more-than-a little-bit -concerned about huge hail and cars stopped under bridges blocking the road.

Now there was a whole new threat and nowhere to go.

So I drove. Boy, how I drove that red hot little, low-mileage ’88 Buick I’d bought a couple of years before from my mother.

That little red Buick took me home past the storm to watching my daughter Kat perform one of the leads in Casady High School’s production of “Book of Days.” It was a scary night and it was a great night for my daughter. Little did I know that she and her friends were watching the weather and she was crazy-worried about me coming through that stuff.

The Buick suffered hail damage severe enough to “total” it. But I wanted to keep it anyway -- and I did.

And the Buick went on to become my daughter’s second car, affectionately nicknamed the “Red Rocket” as so many red cars get tagged, replacing her first car, another old blue Chevy that had drawn the moniker of the “Getaway Car,” since it was basically invisible most of the time.

It also was precious in other ways. Mother offered it up after my beloved ’89 BMW 525 was totaled in 1999 after I was T-boned in a residential Altus neighborhood one week before I was to go to my dream job at the Associated Press in Oklahoma City.

The Red Rocket turned out to be a three-generation vehicle — precious to each of us in its own way.

And this afternoon, it moved on to its next life.

Now, the red Buick had issues that wore more than it was worth. Bad battery, bad shocks, but other good things like almost new tires.

This afternoon the red Buick went on to its next incarnation.

We donated it to KGOU for Click ‘n Clack’s Take My Car Puh-Leez.

And late this afternoon a massive wrecker came down our little one-way street and from its rumbly motor, I knew it was here before it stopped at our address.

Suddenly I’m wistful about this vehicle that has laid dormant for months in our driveway.

It took care of three generations of Cole women. And hopefully, it will be a good vehicle for someone else.

Bye-bye, little red Buick. It was a good ride while it lasted.

Witness to the battle of the seasons

When I arrived in Lagos, Nigeria, on a dusty Monday afternoon late last month, there was no question about the season.

It was still Harmattan, when the fine desert dust blows in south from the Sahara, making the normally hazy light blue/gray skies more of a dirty tan color.

The seemingly never-ending Harmattan, usually over by mid-March, had stolen away my sliver of ocean view from the wide kitchen window of our eighth floor flat on Victoria Island. I’m always fascinated by the parade of several dozen odd-shaped oil tankers slowly waiting for their opportunity in the harbor, lining the horizon.

The tankers “disappeared” thanks to those dust-drenched Harmattan days, as was the horizon, blending in with the dirty-looking sky and haze.

The red tile roofs of the buildings between here and the water looked soft-focus, tucked inside their towering walls topped with barbed wire or glass shards or spikes. Even some of the dozens of cell towers or construction cranes from Lagos’ building boom that usually litter the view weren’t jutting upward so harshly.

In Lagos, the seasons aren’t really very dramatic. But there are differences and the people there welcome them.

This year, people were complaining more than usual. Not only was it sticky hot — as always — but it was a dirty, sticky hot that seemed to squelch your metabolism, making it feel like naptime all the time.

Bob and I had always joked about the Weather app on my iPhone when I’d call him from home in Oklahoma or Texas. The week’s highs at a glance — 92, 92, 92, 92, 92, 93, 92, in Fahreinheit of course, and about a thousand percent humidity. Stop the presses, we’d say, a heat wave on Saturday with that 93. And the lows were no different — 79, 79, 78, 79, 78, 79, 79 — never varying more than a degree, at the most two.

Who do you think decides — in some weather office somewhere — how one day of the week gets a 93? Or a low drops one more degree on a certain day, like there was a cold front or something.

After I’d been in Lagos about a week, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a bright flash of light off our balcony past the potted bouganvilla and palm trees. And then another. And then another. Lightning — the tiny delay and then thunder.

And the rain came down, at first hurky-jerky kinds of large, splashy drops. Then torrents. It was the first hint, the first clue that the rainy season was easing into its own.

The air smelled differently that night and into the next day. My ocean, the line of tankers was back.

Water filled up the gargantuan potholes, so the next day our driver Tom threaded our black, carwash-loving SUV down the muddy streets to pick up the things we needed. And then washed the car. And then washed it again.

But the Harmattan wasn’t done yet. It got dry and dusty again. Darn.

A couple ‘nother days and another thunderstorm. Hallelujah. The rainy season finally arrived for sure.

And the horizon was gladly back, yet again. And I had to remind myself — it never left.