FullReads

The fabric of my faithful love
No power shall dim or ravel
Whilst I stay here,–but oh, my dear,
If I should ever travel!
–Millay.

If you’ve spent more than one day in Okoochee, Oklahoma, you’ve had dinner at Pardee’s. Someone–a business acquaintance, a friend, a townsman–has said, “Oh, you stopping at the Okmulgee Hotel? WON–derful, isn’t it? Nothing finer here to the Coast. I bet you thought you were coming to the wilderness, didn’t you? You Easterners! Think we live in tents and eat jerked venison and maize, huh? Never expected, I bet, to see a twelve-story hotel with separate ice-water faucet in every bathroom and a bath to every room. What’d you think of the Peacock grill, h’m?”

“Well–uh”–hesitatingly–“very nice, but why don’t you have something native … Decorations and … Peacock grill is New York, not Okla—-“

“Z’that so! Well, let me tell you you won’t find any better food or service in any restaurant, New York or I don’t care where. But say, hotel meals are hotel meals. You get tired of ’em. Ever eat at Pardee’s, up the street? Say, there’s food! If you’re going to be here in town any time why’n’t you call up there some evening before six–you have to leave ’em know–and get one of Pardee’s dinners? Thursday’s chicken. And when I say chicken I mean—-Well, just try it, that’s all…. And for God’s sake don’t make a mistake and tip Maxine.”

Pardee’s you find to be a plain box-like two-story frame house in a quiet and commonplace residential district. Plainly–almost scantily–furnished as to living room and dining room. The dining room comfortably seats just twenty, but the Pardees “take” eighteen diners–no more. This because Mrs. Pardee has eighteen of everything in silver. And that means eighteen of everything from grapefruit spoons to cheese knives; and finger bowls before and after until you feel like an early Roman. As for Maxine–the friendly warning is superfluous. You would as soon have thought of slipping Hebe a quarter on Olympus–a rather severe-featured Hebe in a white silk blouse ordered through Vogue.

All this should have been told in the past tense, because Pardee’s is no more. But Okoochee, Oklahoma, is full of paradoxes like Pardee’s. Before you understand Maxine Pardee and her mother in the kitchen (dishing up) you have to know Okoochee. And before you know Okoochee you have to know Sam Pardee, missing.

There are all sorts of stories about Okoochee, Oklahoma–and almost every one of them is true. Especially are the fantastic ones true–the incredible ones. The truer they are the more do they make such Arabian knights as Aladdin and Ali Baba appear dull and worthy gentlemen in the retail lamp and oil business, respectively. Ali Baba’s exploit in oil, indeed, would have appeared too trivial for recounting if compared with that of any one of a dozen Okoochee oil wizards.

Take the tale of the Barstows alone, though it hasn’t the slightest bearing on this story. Thirteen years ago the Barstows had a parched little farm on the outskirts of what is now the near-metropolis of Okoochee, but what was then a straggling village in the Indian Territory. Ma Barstow was a woman of thirty-five who looked sixty; withered by child-bearing; scorched by the sun; beaten by the wind; gnarled with toil; gritty with dust. Ploughing the barren little farm one day Clem Barstow had noticed a strange oily scum. It seeped up through the soil and lay there, heavily. Oil! Weeks of suspense, weeks of disappointment, weeks of hope. Through it all Ma Barstow had washed, scrubbed, cooked as usual, and had looked after the welfare of the Barstow litter. Seventeen years of drudgery dull the imagination. When they struck the great gusher–it’s still known as Barstow’s Old Faithful–they came running to her with the news. She had been washing a great tubful of harsh greasy clothes–overalls, shirts, drawers. As the men came, shouting, she appeared in the doorway of the crazy wooden lean-to, wiping her hands on her apron.