Watonga Knights

Monday, 1st April 2013

Map: Raton, New Mexico to Watonga, Oklahoma---392 miles

Originally I had planned to drive east of Raton as everyone else does---southeast to Clayton and then northeast to Boise City, Oklahoma. But since it was so dry and that drive is solely prairie rolling ever lower, with only an interesting tiny stone bank in the almost ghost town of Des Moines as a distraction, I decided to head up the canyons northeast of Raton and proceed eastward over Johnson Mesa and then along the Dry Cimmaron.

These canyons once had fairly prosperous coal mines around the turn of the century.  New Mexico 72 heads towards the Sugarite Canyon State Park, but veers east up Brown's Pocket Canyon and through the site of Yankee, an early 1900s coal town.  Once lording over this location was the promoter Ensign's Ranch, a rural mansion with mahogany paneling throughout and the finest furnishings overlooking beautiful apple and cherry orchards.  The mansion lasted less than twenty years before being stripped and falling into ruin.  Today the area is dotted with trailers and is part of a cattle ranch.

Pronghorn antelope on Johnson Mesa

At the end of Brown's Pocket, New Mexico 72 twists around up to Johnson's Mesa.  Winter is so severe up here that there's a gate on the road to close during stormy weather.  It is a beautiful place of shallow ponds, cattle and antelope---and most of all, spectacular views to the northeast of the Great Plains.  Since we were just east of foul weather, it was too hazy to photograph the vista.  Some old farmsteads dot the mesa, but now only a few people live up there.

Main Street---Folsom, New Mexico

The highway drops down to another valley to the tiny living ghost town of Folsom.  Man has resided in these parts for thousands of years: In the early 1900s, archaeological discoveries here  first proved that humans had been in North America for at least 10,000 years, far longer than previously believed.

Folsom had peaked at around a thousand people when a flash flood hit the town in 1908.  Eighteen people died, including the elderly telephone operator, Sally J. Rooke, who stayed at her switchboard to ring up all phones and warn subscribers of the coming flood.  Those who didn't believe her frantic call died with her.  Her body was recovered the following spring about eight miles down the 'Dry' Cimmaron, and telephone operators from around the country sent in over 4,000 dimes to erect a monument for her in the Folsom Cemetery.  Unfortunately, when reading this story off a plaque in Folsom proper, it didn't mention where the monument was.  Folsom never recovered from the flood, and it's notable that what remains of the residential section is far removed from Main Street---the area most prone to flooding.

Folsom Hotel---possibly the site of a "notorious roadhouse" in the 1970s.

New Mexico 456 follows the Dry Cimmaron north and east for some fifty miles through often picturesque canyon country.  The ranches are few and far between, and after passing right through the yard of one, the road loses pavement for the next 17 miles---so we got our typical taste of dirt during a long road trip.  The surface had been recently graded,  smooth at the pavement for the most part and minimally dusty.  The canyonlands in this section are very colorful, rivaling western New Mexico and Arizona.  A new, wide bridge about midway along this section suggests that pavement may eventually be laid.

Back on asphalt, we noticed the haze growing strangely thick ahead.  The sun was still shining and it was 50 degrees, but within ten miles in Kenton, Oklahoma we were under low clouds and the temperature was 37.  Little Kenton is very remote but gets some visitors from the adjacent Black Mesa State Park.  There are some interesting sandstone block houses and buildings there, and it seems a number are used as vacation homes.  The one person we saw, a young man, stared back at us when we waved.

Many dreary miles brought us closer to Boise City, but not before my husband had to take a leak on the side of the road.  It was very bitter out---34 degrees, with a high damp wind bringing the chill way below freezing.

In threadbare, dessicated Boise City we stopped at a rather large thrift shop run by volunteers who directed the mentally/physically challenged at tasks in helping run the place.  We found it a rather amazing set up for such a small town.  Unfortunately we didn't find anything worth buying.

Another sixty miles brought us to Guymon, a more prosperous city of services and meatpacking.  In fact, we once ate delicious bacon waffles there at a restaurant next to a giant pork processing plant.  This time we only stopped to see the new Treasure Thrift Shop (or something like that) that we heard about on KGYN.  It turned out to be expensive and not very well stocked yet.

"How do you like your Prius?"

I turned around.  No one has asked us that in years.  There stood a pretty older lady with a halo of white hair and heavy plastic glasses, bringing in a bag for the proprietress.

"We like it very much---we have almost 300,000 miles on it."

"I just love mine," she said---love being the only indication she had a bit of an Okie accent.  "What kind of mileage are you getting?"

"Oh, around fifty to fifty-five."

She nodded.  "Once we came up from Dalhart with a strong tailwind.  I checked the mileage when we pulled into the driveway and we got 75 MPG.  I couldn't believe it!"

"Yeah,  we usually get around 63 coming off the Rockies and onto the Plains."  Although today we weren't.  I blamed the heavy cross winds, but the average so far was even below normal.

"That's the car I need!" chimed in the proprietress, as if we we talking about spacecraft.  I presumed the old lady had the only Prius in town.  We walked out to see her husband sitting in a new Prius in front of ours.

We switched drivers and continued east on US 412.  I had just dropped to sleep when I was rudely awakened by a ass-grabbing stop.

"What's going on?!" I yelled.  We were pulled over at an abandoned gas station.

"Something's wrong with the car.  The brakes don't work right."

The dash was lit up like a Christmas tree.  "Looks like the auxiliary battery has died.  All the lights came on when that happened to Joretta."

However, only the braking system lights were on---the brake light, a brake exclamation, the ABS and the VSC.  The owner's manual was no real help.

"Maybe something hit a brake line on the dirt road," I said---but we doubted it.

The brakes did work in a rudimentary way, and the synergy system still seemed to work and keep the battery charged, so the only thing to do was to keep driving.  At least we were in flat to rolling open country with few towns to deal with.  We hoped for a Toyota dealer in Woodward, some seventy miles away.

After whiplashing ourselves half way through the city of Woodward, Roland stopped at an O'Reilly auto parts store and I looked under the hood.  The brake fluid reservoir was within parameters.  I got back into Patsy, as it was only slightly warmer here than in Boise City.

"The nearest Toyota dealer is in Enid or Oklahoma City," my husband reported.  "Enid is a little closer."

"But to the north, so we might as well aim for Oklahoma City," I replied.

That would be another 150 miles of grab ass braking in increasingly congested traffic---and it was supposed to start raining.  Hard.

The original plan was to stay in Watonga and drive through Oklahoma City the next morning---which would still work, particularly if we left at the crack of dawn to get to the service department.

So after another hundred miles we came to a neck-snapping stop at the Watonga Motel.  The owner came trotting across the parking lot to the lobby, and in the lobby she had two nice cats.  Our room was big enough to hold a square dance in, had a comfortable bed and reliable Internet.  We also got a free breakfast at the Noble House downtown.

"What time do they open?"

"5:30," my husband reported.

"Perfect farmer's hours."

I found a number for Jim Norton Toyota on the Northwest Expressway side of Oklahoma City.  It was too late to be connected to the service department, but the operator was extremely helpful---putting a note on the service desk about our problem, when to expect us and our cell number.

"If you don't hear from them by 7:15, call me," she said.  "I should be in by then, and I can make sure they know your situation."

So---it was the best of a bad situation. 

Okay, no Watonga Knights in shining armor were involved.  The title of this piece was just a personal reminder about an online find I discovered:  an openly gay man in an Oklahoma town of 5,000 people.  As I plotted out our stops, I got into the habit of researching them online in a gay sort of way.  Usually nothing of interest came up for the small towns we were to stay in, but under Google images photos from online dating sites do sometimes appear.  And there was a chubby middle-aged gay male nurse with an ad---all rather sweet and charming.  There was even a photo of him with his mom, who looked quite a bit like that Guymon Prius woman.

Who obviously cursed our dear Patsy....