A Flying Saucer? No, it's a Squash

It's the most delicious time of the year, when tomatoes turn into a sliced piece of heaven, punctuated by kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, maybe a little good olive oil sprinkled on top. Ah, I'm a purist.

I try to boycott those strange, sawdusty things they sell in the grocery stores the rest of the year, although I give in occasionally to those faux tomatoes on the vine they sell in the chill of the winter. But last week, with the purchase of my first heirloom Cherokee purple tomato, it's all so good again. Yum. Cherokee purples taste like they're infused with wine. Don't ask me to reveal which stall sells the Cherokee purples. You have to discover it on your own. Only hint: look for the purple potatoes.

Wednesdays are my favorite days to trek to the Norman Farmers Market. It's not so crowded. The best farmers are still there in good numbers. And if you arrive at 10 a.m., it's not so picked over that you might not score some of the fresh eggs or Cherokee purples.

The best underappreciated item is purple potatoes. The outsides are nearly black and they don't look so appetizing. My advice: just cut them and expose that beautiful purple flesh of the potato. And then cook them and enjoy something really special.

One of my favorite farmer/vendors at the NFM is Charlene Perry of Goldsby, not just because she always tries to put forth the best offerings of her awesome garden, but she also offers up recipes. Hit Charlene up for her Perry's Farm recipe for Unfried Green Tomatoes ... they're really great and if she'll let me, I'll share the recipe on my blog. I'll ask.

This week my NFM haul included Porter peaches (Porter is in the same neighborhood as the more famous Stratford, Okla.), flying saucer squashes, purple potatoes, Cherokee purples, and some OM Garden mushrooms -- golden oyster for salads and Maitake that I'll slice up, cook in a little red wine and serve aside some righteous Oklahoma beef.

Life is good. Eat well and live well. NFM will help you do that.

The Summer of Stink

Imagine having a stinky green Dumpster less than a dozen feet from your kitchen window and only a few more feet from one of your a/c units. This shouldn't happen to ANY Norman resident.

Recently, when Campus Station apartments at 502 S. University Blvd. resurfaced their parking lot, they relocated their Dumpster right underneath my kitchen window -- the first time only 7 1/2 feet away. I called the apartment management to request that we find another solution to the Dumpster location. They blamed its location on the City of Norman, but said they'd contact the owner and see about moving it. Followup calls were not returned.

I visited the City of Norman on May 27, talked to several people who said there is NO ordinance regarding setbacks for Dumpsters from their single-family residential neighbors, and finally e-mailed sanitation director Scottie Williams. Scottie visited the apartment complex and called me to say they'd relocate the Dumpster to the north side of the parking lot, which backs the McFarlin Methodist church parking lot. It was done within hours.

But Tuesday, June 8, the Dumpster reappeared in almost the same spot. I e-mailed Scottie and he wrote back that the apartment management had objected to the Dumpster being moved and they had to put it back because the apartments were paying for the Dumpster. The photo to the right is a little dark but you can see my kitchen window just to the left of the Dumpster 2 1/2 feet past the fence.

I should probably mention that my situation is further complicated by a weird little triangle-shaped piece of property on the plats that juts between my property and the property to the north -- that's where the Dumpster is now located. It would be an ideal location for a Dumpster if there were no neighbors.

My house stinks when the wind blows the wrong way and I have my a/c on. Plus I can't open my kitchen window or I have flies everywhere. I reiterate -- this shouldn't happen to ANY Norman resident. It also impacts my family's property value (the house is owned by my elderly mother and I pay her rent to live here when I'm in town.)

I'm requesting that the City of Norman consider passing an ordinance with the following:

• A setback requirement for Dumpsters of at least 40 feet from residential neighbors' homes.

• A requirement for all multi-family residences or apartment complexes to have an at least 8-foot fence in good condition. Currently, the Campus Station fence is a 6-foot fence. It would be preferable that this be retroactive or required on replacement of any fence.

• A requirement that the multi-family residences or apartment complexes maintain their fences. When it falls out of compliance to the point where it's a code violation (slats out, etc.), they should be given a 30-day warning and then fined if they don't comply. (See the Key West apartments' fence that's in bad repair, just south of the Campus Station apartments.)

This isn't my first rodeo with the Campus Station apartments. The first was in 2006 when their 6-foot fence was literally falling down. Yep, right by my kitchen window again, just past the falling-down fence. A call to the complex management received a "we'll try to do something about it," response. Followup calls were not received that time either.

That time, it took calls to my councilmember in Ward 4, Carol Dillingham, and also calls to the code enforcement folks at the City of Norman.

The apartments' management responded by tearing down the fence and leaving it totally down for a couple of months, before finally replacing it. During that time, some residents of the complex took to heckling us when we barbecued in our backyard. That finally stopped when the apartments replaced the fence.

And in 2008, I suggested they trim a tree that had large, dead branches hanging over my power lines after the December 2007 ice storm. I was concerned that our Oklahoma wind would come sweeping down the plains and limbs would come crashing on my lines. The apartment management responded by taking the whole mature tree down. Sigh. I'm big fan of big trees. Trimming would have been adequate.

It's been a continued pattern of harassment from the 30-apartment complex to its two single-family residential neighbors. (I'm not the Lone Ranger — there is one other residence affected.) I know you have to make compromises when you live close to campus, like learning to live with a little more noise and occasional college student who doesn't understand why it's not OK to drive over your lawn because they've gotten parked in at the neighbor's house. My student neighbors have been far more well-behaved than my apartment complex neighbors.

I've heard back from two councilmembers, Tom Kovach, Ward 2; and Carol Dillingham, Ward 4, who ran interference once before; along with Mayor Cindy Rosenthal. They are working on a remedy, which could include passing my suggested ordinance. So I'm hopeful.

But I doubt if it will be soon enough to save me from the Summer of Stink.

View from Porum Mountain

Breathe in the air and memories. We're on top of what we call a "mountain" in Oklahoma -- Porum Mountain, where my granddad, "PaPa," took me quail hunting, where my dad loved the wildflowers and gnarly wood used for fenceposts among the rusted barbed wire, where it seems like a world apart and you could see the hazy blue of the hills below through the trees.

I drove to Porum in southeastern Oklahoma for Memorial Day ... about three hours each way from Norman on SH 9, the best way ... to visit my dad's grave for the first Memorial Day since he died Jan. 24, 2010, and leave some fresh blue flowers (even if they were weird dyed things) to decorate his grave, because I know he hated silk. It's still so very fresh and my tears of loss continue to be close to the surface. And I visited Porum Mountain, one of his favorite places, just west up Ute Road from the home of my grandparents almost under the tiny town's water tower. Ironically where my dad is buried is east on Ute Road at Fields Cemetery, where you drive and drive until you find the faded rusted sign and think you've about run out of road when you get there.

It's a question of what is "home" for each individual? As my dad fought to breathe the air that keeps all of us alive, thanks to his uncomfortably painful and progressive pulmonary fibrosis, he would ask each of us as we entered his room at the nursing facility he hated, "Are you here to take me home?" And to him that meant Porum. Would we take him to his beloved Porum? It answered our unasked question about where to take him when he lost his biggest life battle.

Daddy and I had planned to go to his beloved Porum High School reunion about a year ago, but his lung disease had already robbed him of too much of his body. We'd gone twice in recent years. He'd lost too much of his vision as a result of macular degeneration to drive, but he loved me chauffeuring him there and his arriving like a rock star amongst his dwindling group of friends, most of whom would attend from his tiny class of loyal graduates. He had so many good friends from his class who would attend -- Leola Griffith, Eugene Cooper, Flora (Hilton) Tye, Cora Shipley, Margaret "Maggie" Hazelwood and more.

As a young man, my dad escaped Porum to go to college at Northeastern Oklahoma State University in Tahlequah and dental school at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. And I say escaped. Because he left for dreams of a good life that he didn't think he could have in Porum. But as we all want recognition in our home towns, so did my dad.

After he retired from dentistry in about 1990, he started modeling and acting, first in Oklahoma and Texas and later in New York City. He had some success, like his lovely little part as a classy security guard in Home Alone II that delighted his granddaughter, although it was not the wild success he dreamed of. Those kinds of parts went to veteran male actors like Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda and Walter Matthau.

He had his happiest acting experiences with the interactive New York murder mystery troupe, Murder Mystery Inc. -- always as the guy who dies, some times as a corrupt New York councilman with women on each arm, something his kids found humorous. We joked that he was dying to meet you and he "died" thousands of times.

But I digress. All that time he spent in exotic places around the world and Daddy still wanted to come back to Porum. After living in the always bustling New York City for two decades -- which he reveled in -- he was always drawn back to Porum.

My Aunt Louise (his older sister) and Uncle Bill lovingly purchased my dad's head stone and traveled there when it was set quietly May 27. I love that they did that as their last gift to him -- and us. They are very special people.

Porum's a sweet spot where I spent parts of my youthful summers -- chasing chickens with their heads cut off, shooting bottles off a downed tree with my granddad over a creek near the house and nursing sick cows -- and now it's the place that my Daddy wanted to be and now it's the place where I'll visit when we want to be especially close.

Daddy ... I miss you and I'll be there again one of these days soon. But I know you're with me all the time anyway.

I can hear your voice as I greet you on the phone with, "What's cookin', good lookin'?" And your perennial answer -- "Chicken, wanna neck?" And you'd laugh and it was our silly Okie joke. I can hear it. And you're with me right now.