Our Parents and What They Were Like

Mom and Dad with my sister Nicole, my wife Abby, and our son Mitchell, Washington Oaks Gardens State Park, Florida, possibly my father's favorite place in the world, July 2004.

Now that Mom and Dad are both gone, it seems very likely that Nicole and I will not be returning to Florida. We have nothing against it, really; it's just that this state, and particularly this part of the state, doesn't mesh with our styles. Originally developed by ITT Community Development Corporation, Palm Coast was a "planned" community, and is mostly centered around leisure activities and retirement. Mom and Dad liked it here since 1987, when their employer changed hands and brought their management training center here. They liked it because it is warm all year around, and because everything is clean and new.

Here are some other things our parents really enjoyed:

• Dad loved to bake, make soup, and make key lime pie for Abby.
• Mom sung and was a charter member of the Choral Arts Society.
• After they were retired, they enjoyed driving inland to find interesting places to eat lunch.
• My dad loved, and I mean loved, Potted Meat Food Product. He was also a master at creating baloney salad (which is like tuna salad, only with cheap baloney)
• Mom's favorite foods, and by proxy my sister's favorite foods, included sourdough bread, soft-boiled egg on toast, "Amercan" spaghetti, and cow pie/dog in a blanket.
• My father was history buff, and was one of the first customers in his area to order The History Channel.
• Mom's favorite TV shows included 18 Kids and Counting, Monk, Frazier, and anything on CNN.
• The two giant orange trees in their back yard were Christmas gifts from us in about 1994. They yield huge, chewy oranges with giant seeds, but amazingly sweet juice.
• Traditionally, Nicole and I came to visit Mom and Dad for Christmas, but starting in about 2000, they decided they wanted to see us more often, so we included a summer visit as well.
• Dad had a sister, Carol, who died in 2006. Mom's sister Margaret just returned to California after a long visit with Mom last month. The two had the times of their lives.

I'm sure I'll think of a hundred more things to share with you about our parents. More later.

With my mother and father in their back yard with the orange trees, Christmas 2003.

The Warm Place

Abby has arrived, and I cannot express how glad I feel that she is here.

Sarah Jo and Abby, June 2004.

"Good Servant"

Please join me in celebrating the life of our mother, Sarah Jo Barron, who died early this afternoon at a hospice facility in Palm Coast, Florida. She was 74.

The Episcopal religious experience was very significant to Sarah Jo, as it was to Joe, her husband who died in 2005, so Nicole suggested the title "Good Servant" for this entry. In lieu of flowers, if one wished to donate to the Episcopal Church in her name, nothing would be more meaningful.

Update: services for Sarah Jo will be at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Palm Coast, Friday, July 3, at 11 a. m.

She was a tremendous woman, and loved her children very deeply. I know I can speak for my wife when I say it was an honor and privilege for her to know and love our mother. We are also delighted that our son Mitchell got to know Mom and, for a short time, Dad, before they passed.

Mitchell and Sarah Jo work a puzzle together at mom's house in Palm Coast, Florida, July 2006. Puzzles fascinated them both and they often worked them together. By the time of her death, Sarah Jo had a collection of nearly 100 puzzles, which she worked over and over.

Turn for the Worse

I am in Florida. I originally came intending to help our mother, Sarah Jo Barron, in her recovery from vascular surgery last week. However, over the weekend, she apparently had a serious vascular episode, and it is now likely she will die, probably quite soon. She is resting comfortably sedated in hospice care, and is showing signs of of increasing vascular insufficiency.

I know you all wish us well. No need to comment. I'll keep you updated.

Our mother, Sarah Jo Barron, with Mitchell, Abby and me, Palm Coast, Florida, July 2007. Photo by Nicole Barron.

Ride 'Em, Dawggie!

Max the Chihuahua naps on Abby's stuffed dog Skipper this afternoon.

A Fine Night for Frys

Rose of Sharon bud with full flower in the background.

Wil and Marline Fry came to Byng for dinner tonight. As many of you might remember, Wil and I encountered each other frequently at sporting events that both our newspapers sent us to cover, and we frequently comment on each other's blogs. Marline recently got a job in a faraway city, and Abby and I thought we would be remiss in our duties if we didn't have them for dinner. We also played with the goats, shot some pictures (of course) and stayed up until nearly 11 talking. It ended up being an excellent night, and since they won't be leaving for their new digs until August, we would love to have them over again.

Marline spiffs Wil for a photo.

Abby, Marline, Mitchell and Wil visit with goats Buxton and Coal.

Wil making images of wildflowers.

The happy travelers.

Where Credit is Due

I don't really care what my credit score is. I don't like to borrow money. Sometimes it's necessary, like now, when Abby and I bought her new used Jeep. We opted for the shortest loan period, 24 months, since long-term debt can be very destructive. We also have a balance on our main credit card, which we attribute to meeting the needs of our teenager, as well as recent travel, such as the Baltimore trip.

I bring this up because Abby's new Jeep had a salvage history on the title from 2002, which quite honestly could be anything from hail damage to theft. Either way, the underwriter balked, but my bank lent me the money anyway, and without using the vehicle as collateral, at the original interest rate. Why? A combination of factors, not the least of which is my credit score. I never looked it up, but on the phone today with the nice lady at my bank, I asked them what it was. My bank uses a scale that goes to 800. Mine is - get this - 796.

Holy mortgage default, Batman! What on earth did I do the earn a 796? Someone, upon learning this, actually shook my hand, saying it was the highest credit score she had ever seen.

It changes nothing, of course, since I still believe that debt is best avoided. But, man! 796!

Image: "Number one" glove on roadside recently.

Myth America

I know the Miss America scene isn't what it once was, with waning ratings and diminishing public interest. However, it still holds a place in the fabric of our society, so it's fun to think that someone I know, and have known for all her life, is competing in the Miss America Pageant on Saturday, January 30, 2010. Taylor Treat has lived here all her life, and is a by all accounts, including mine, a great kid. I think it would be very exciting if Taylor was named Miss America.

You can scoff at the pageant scene if you like, but consider this fact I culled from Wikipedia: "The Miss America Scholarship program, along with its local and state affiliates, is the largest provider of scholarship money to young women in the world, and in 2006 made available more than $45 million in cash and scholarship assistance."

Image: Miss Oklahoma 2009 and Miss Ada 2006 Taylor Treat at the Chickasaw Community Center in Ada Wednesday, June 24, 2009.

An Emergency Idiocy Alert

While reading about the triad of celebrity deaths today (Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson), I came across this quote in an Associated Press story:

Michael Harris, 36, of New York City, read from a text message a friend sent to his telephone. "It's like when Kennedy was assassinated. I will always remember being in Times Square when Michael Jackson died."

What a f---ing idiot. Maybe he'll die next.

A 4-Wheel-Drive Smile Maker

Abby is all smiles tonight after trading her 1992 Chevy truck for a used but very clean Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.9 Limited. In addition to being a nice car for her daily commute to and from work, it should allow us to access some of the roads in the wilderness that we previously had to skip. We are excited.

Abby and her new used Jeep tonight.

My Only Loan Officer Joke

In the process of shopping around for a car loan this week, I had to break out my one and only loan officer joke.

A frog goes into a bank wanting a loan. He approaches a loan officer named Patty Whack, and explains to that he has a trinket in his possession that he wants to use as collateral. Patty hesitates, then takes the trinket to her manager. The manager gives it one look and exclaims, "That's a nick-nack, Patty Whack! Give the frog a loan!"

I swear, they have all laughed at it.

Image: inflatable "The Scream" wearing Abby's suede blazer.

The Greens of Summer

Kodachrome color slide of Richard M. Batten, circa 1945

Robert Stinson called me yesterday to mourn the demise of Kodachrome, the once-popular color slide film that was originally introduced in 1935. Kodak is discontinuing the film after 74 years because of dwindling sales in the digital age, and because there is only one lab remaining in the world that is able to process this unique film, the only film that is developed using the complicated 17-stage K-14 separation process. My own experience with Kodachrome is somewhat limited, but my grandfather, Richard Batten, shot thousands of Kodachrome slides in his lifetime, most of which are in my possession, and are in excellent condition. He used a tiny Kodak Bantam 828 camera. He is, apparently, the one from whom I inherited my photographic skills.

"Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, Oh yeah..." -Paul Simon

The manual focus, manual exposure Kodak Bantam 828 camera.

Sic Semper Tyrannis!

Dead pocket gopher, shot through the neck from about 25 feet.

I shot another gopher tonight. I shot it with our very old bolt-action .22. Two years ago I shot one in this same fashion, and not long after that I stabbed one to death in the closest thing to hand-to-hand combat I have experienced.

Tonight I was mowing the north pasture on the big John Deere when I saw this pest up out of its hole, scattering dirt. It's rare that I get the chance to destroy these destructive pests, so I scampered into the house and grabbed the old .22 and about five shells. I snuck up behind the mower that I had parked not far from its hole and shot it through the neck. It died instantly. Despite the fact that they tear up the yard, ruin the garden and kill trees, I have no desire to see them suffer. After I killed it, I apologized for having to do so.

"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

The Filling Fields

Abby's father Hershel Shoffner with his wife of nearly 20 years Ethel today. Hershel's first wife, Agness, Abby's mother, died in 1986 at the age of 60.

We spent yesterday and today working like mules at Abby's dad's place in the country outside of Ryan, Oklahoma, trimming the yard with the weed whacker, cutting down dead branches from the trees, and hauling yard and other debris down to the brush pile. As Mitchell and I made one trip after another on the four-wheeler with a flat-bed trailer, in the scalding sun, to dump branches into a ravine, I kept noticing how much old stuff had accumulated on the property. Oddly, the same is true for our little patch of country two hours northwest. I imagine it's like that throughout rural America; years and years and years of old tractors, old plows, old Chevy pickups, old washing machines, old tires, old things made out of steel or wood that are now unrecognizable. I suppose there is more accumulation of that kind of stuff now than when I was growing up simply because more time has passed since the benchmarks of American life; the industrial revolution, the automotive revolution, the availability of electricity, the use of mechanized farm equipment instead of livestock like oxen. As we rode past it again and again, I thought about how none of this old stuff would likely be moved in my lifetime, or in Mitchell's lifetime.

The Shoffner House this afternoon, after we worked on the yard.

View of the back yard, showing the barn in the background.

The "Park," an area to the west of the house that Hershel created where kids can play and ride animals like horses. A machinist by trade, Hershel made pretty much anything he and his family needed over the years, like this wrought-iron gate and fence, and the swings and benches in the background.

Spanish gourd vine, an invasive species we battled today. I never saw this when I was growing up in nearby Lawton, and we don't see it at all in southeastern Oklahoma. Hershel says it smells terrible (which I can verify), and that the gourds themselves are inedible.


"Butch," the Shoffner's new puppy, followed us everywhere, and at one point when I wasn't looking, stole my gloves.

Abby and her dad on Father's Day. No one I have ever known has loved their dad any more than Abby loves hers.


Old truck in the field behind the barn. I made an additional image of this icon which I posted on my photoblog here.

Praise for the Mrs

A couple of entries ago, Tom commented that he liked the new avatar of Abby at the top of these pages. Since I change all the static photos on this blog fairly regularly, I thought it would be a good idea to post the image of Abby. I shot it early in our dating, in the spring of 2003, with my Nikon/Kodak DCS 720x, which rendered her green wool blazer as blue. She "doesn't do blue," so I fixed it with the "replace color" function in Photoshop. For a while I had a hidden page on my web site with this picture of her and the lyrics to Coldplay's "Green Eyes."

Everything about her is beautiful to me in this photo.

Snow in June

On Tuesday Randy and I ran out to a crash that involved a very drunk woman who ran her five-day-old Sebring convertible off the road into a ditch. When we got there, I could smell the ETOH on her from 20 feet away. Since it was 11:30 in the morning, the cops found an empty bottle of Xanax in the front seat of her car, and she later blew .28 BAC, I assume she is a career alcoholic.

A uniformed officer and a detective lead a slightly combative DUI suspect to a waiting patrol car. The suspect protested, "Don't you be grabbin' on me!"

Since we were kind of out in the country, we spent a couple of minutes taking pictures of the landscape, including where a huge cottonwood had fallen after a recent thunderstorm and spread its lovely snow all over the ground...

Cottonwood snow covers the ground.

We also found a staple crop for our area, poison ivy, and were told by a firefighter than they get into it, and suffer the effects, all the time...

Enough poison ivy to kill a rhino.

Finally, here are three friendly horses...

These three horses came up to the fence so we could pet their noses.

"Hey Hey Boo Boo!"

Tonight was the annual Pre-Paid Legal Services (Abby's employer) family picnic in Ada's Wintersmith Park. As usual, we brought the dogs, and for a change, we brought Dorothy, our defacto mother-in-law. We ate, walked around a bit, and played miniature golf.

Abby, Sierra the Chihuahua, Mitchell, Max the Chihuahua, and Dorothy

The Five Faces of the Skeleton

When I was in college, I read a poem in the Oklahoma University English department's literary journal Windmill called "The Five Faces of the Skeleton." I thought it was a pretty cool poem, and some years later I did an homage to it by reading some of my lame, depressing poetry over some Brian Eno music. It was sufficiently embarrassing that I have since erased that tape. However, I was reminded of the title "The Five Faces of the Skeleton" last week when our editor, Talina Turner, was preparing to photograph a party, and needed my help coming up with some lighting. I let her use me as a model, and it turns out that unlike a lot of other photographers, I am not particularly shy in front of the camera. So now I present to you "The Five Faces of the Skelton, Phase III"...

Thinking about Nietzsche


Thinking about water balloons


Thinking about frogurt


Thinking about Schopenhauer


Thinking about moths

I definitely see a major award for these works in the near future.

Pinching Off Crotch Suckers

For the several years that I have been gardening, I am always reminded of my father when I tend my tomato plants. He wasn't a very good gardener, but in the first summer when I was raising tomatoes, 1996, he shared with me a tip: the little sprig of leaves that grows out of the center of a "Y" in the vines is a "sucker" because it doesn't bear fruit and uses the plant's valuable nutrients for nothing. He told me you can just pinch off these suckers at the crotch of the vines.

Top image: flourishing cucumber vines. Bottom: tomato plant "Y" with sucker.

So I think of him all summer while I tend my tomatoes. He died in 2005. We think of him often. I was happy that he got to know Abby and Mitchell, and that they got to know him, before he died.

It looks like it's going to be another year of a good garden. Now that it's turned hot, the cantaloupe and cucumber vines are growing like kudzu.

A New Quiznos!

Ada has a new Quiznos! I tell you this because Mitchell and I went to the Subway tonight, where I have been going for years. On Saturday I had gotten a veggie patty sub, which I love, and I wanted to get another one tonight. When I ordered one, however, the girl behind the counter repeatedly argued with me that they didn't have a veggie patty, and had never carried it. I pointed to it on the menu, and even told her where they kept the actual patties, but she refused to make the sandwich. She finally summoned a regional manager who happened to be in the building, and the regional manager found the veggie patties and made me the sandwich. I didn't see the clerk who argued with me and was so completely wrong, but just in case she or a friend of hers reads this, I want to say that she is a stupid b!tch. I think tomorrow I'll try the new Quiznos!

Image: the veggie patty sandwich from Subway tonight that they repeatedly argued they could not make.

Once a Creep, Always a Creep

Around the dinner table with my Norman, Oklahoma friends (a group known by several names, such as The Thirty Something Group [despite the fact that we aren't 30-something any more], The Breadmaker Group, and The Bohemian Continuum) a couple of weeks ago, I revealed a not very secret secret that those closest to me, like my wife, already know: I look at women's hands, kind of obsessively. I related a story about having these feelings in third grade, explaining to them that when Mrs. Dzialo was at the front of the room, I stared at her hands, particularly that fold that forms just behind the little finger when hands are closed. It looked really sexy to me, in the way an eight-year-old sees sexy.

When I was done with this story, Thea said, "So, you've always been a creep?"

After the laughter died down, I said, "Yes. Yes I have."

Top image: Thea's hands. Bottom image: Linda Dzialo 40 years later.

Humble Beginning

I was out yesterday shooting some storm damage photos - mostly trees and limbs blown down - when I was oddly reminded of doing the same exact thing on the very first day of work at a newspaper, on May 17, 1982. I was a brand new intern at the Lawton Constitution, my hometown newspaper. There had been two severe thunderstorms the night before, and the damage was, like yesterday, mostly trees and limbs. The photos I made then and the photos I made yesterday are strikingly familiar.

My first published news photo, of storm damage at Fort Sill north of Lawton, Oklahoma, May 17, 1982.

Storm damage, June 11, 2009, in Ahloso, Oklahoma.

I started that summer with a Nikon FM with a motor drive, a 28mm Series E Nikon, a 50mm Nikkor, and 105mm Nikkor. It was a pretty nice bag for a college kid.

That summer was punctuated by the tantrum-esque suicide of my college room mate on May 12. Over the years I have gotten less and less sympathetic about it, until now I believe he was a self-important baby and a totally selfish dick. I have touched on this subject a time or two, and one day I will expound. In the mean time, let me just add that there are a lot of things that define winners and losers, and a lot of ways to live well and live poorly, but nothing is dumber than suicide, which of course leaves you nothing at all. I sometimes think about everything that he missed in life.

Frenetic Goaticism

He's got mimosa! Get him!

Another Pointlessly Complicated Dream

I won't bore you with the insanely detailed minutia of my dream last night, but I will bore you with the high points:

• Charlie Sheen escaped in a Piper Navajo (the airplane).
• Michael Douglas and I decided to find him in his Gulfstream (the airplane).
• To take off, we flew clockwise circles in the grass. Once airborne we saw a giant new Boeing taking off.
• We flew at multi-mach speeds at very low altitudes looking for Charlie's Navajo. There were very many small planes at our altitude.
• Ended up thinking we were in Canada. We flew along the street until I saw a sign that said Casa Ciudad, and realized we were in Mexico.
• Waiting in line to cross back into the U. S., I realized I was in my pajamas, and didn't have my passport.
• I told the gate agent, "Excusa, Señor. Uh. Can I talk to you about this?"
• Charlie Sheen burst into tears, screaming, "Daddy, daddy!"

There, just the high points.

Image: something penis-like drawn on a car in the parking lot at work last week.

"Flush Out Your Headgear, New Guy"

Mitchell has been asking me to buy him a fedora for weeks now, and today while we were out shopping, I got him one. It looks pretty cool on him, a cool that I, quite honestly, couldn't pull off. He's just got it goin' on, I guess.

Killing Ground: Junior High

After getting up and making coffee for Abby and myself, I sat here at my computer and waited for inspiration. What was I wanting to look up? Hmm. Oh, I remember: what does philharmonic mean? Is it a guy named Phil with a harmonica? Not really; when I was 12, I actually wanted to be in a philharmonic orchestra. (Sidebar: when I told this to my dad, he said with a laugh, "You'll starve!")

As I looked it up, I guided my iTunes to some Leonard Bernstein pieces to which I listened when I was growing up, mostly from my dad's collection of albums. (Side sidebar: I avoided the Ray Conniff Singers and the Percy Faith Orchestra [Side side sidebar: except for the one called "Bewitched" with the insanely hot barefoot woman on the cover, which I hid under my bed.])

As I played these often tender and intimate orchestral pieces that were my musical mainstay in the mid 1970s, I thought of how innocent and vulnerable I was as that teenager, and I wondered how I could have possibly survived the social killing ground that is junior high school. Particularly wounding for a sensitive teen like me was romance, and how unfair it seemed that one cute girl after another was with one idiotic douchebag after another. How could she like him and not me? I imagine it was a pretty universal sentiment for kids like me.

As my life went on and I became the growing adult I am today, I discovered that my feelings of those days were most certainly misgiven, since all the guys in junior high are douchebags, and all the cute girls are, essentially, bitches (I know the one for whom I pined was a dreadful bitch, and remains one to this day.) It is, I have discovered after many years of ponderance, the way of youth.

I didn't talk to my parents much about these feelings, and I imagine our son Mitchell faced a lot of similar challenges through his junior high years. He didn't talk to me about it as much as I would have liked, but that's also the nature of youth. He is in high school now, which I would gauge as about ten percent less painful, brutal and stupid than junior high.

If it's any consolation, most of the douchebag guys who humiliated and threatened me back then have had pretty miserable lives as adults. Divorce and obesity, mostly. It seems that they peaked when they were about 14, and I am still peaking now, more than 30 years later. I don't wish them pain, but I am amused observing their karma.

Me taking pictures with my new Fujica ST-605 SLR, summer 1978.

Image at the top of the page: me, my sister Nicole, and cousin Lori, circa 1975.

"Just a fine and fancy ramble to the zoo..."

Abby, Mitchell and I spent the day at the Oklahoma City Zoo today, and were joined by Michael, who brought Anna and David's daughter Lia. We all had fun and shot lots. We are home now, and have that "day at the zoo" feel.

Michael and Abby take aim at some birds in the aviary.

Lia poses on a bronze lion.

Mitchell compares his reach to the mighty eagles.


The Giant Muh in repose.

The happy crew.

This Just In...

"Tonight's top story: Mars invades the world. But first, a word from our sponsor."

These words, spoken by me when I was 15, are at the start of one of the funniest tapes my friends, sister and I made as we grew up. It is the intro to "Invasion of the Polka-Dot People," just one of dozens of tapes we made back then. Another was the Willie Do-It series, in which reporter Mack Wallace routinely asks, "Will Willie Do-It do it?" (Willie had a pair of brothers, I recall, named Woody and Canny.) Their adventures included digging around the world using a pair of chipmunks, leaping the English Channel, and going on trial for an unfortunate incident involving Dolly Parton. Also in the litany are tapes with my long-ago friend Keith Berry, and in college and my early 20s with Scott, Robert and their ilk. There are a lot of these tapes from through the years.

But why Polka-Dot people, and why chipmunks, you ask? Because for a long time I had my grandfather Batten's two-speed reel-to-reel recorder, and by recording on the slow speed and playing it back at normal speed, our voices sounded like chipmunks, and we would use any segue we could find to allow us to do scenes "in chipmunk." Sometimes we would just chatter and giggle "in chipmunk" for the fun of it. Our sponsor most of the time was Scudzo Mouthwash, which I pronounced "Scooo-zo" because I misread a B. C. comic when I was seven.

The reason I was thinking of them this week is that I have finished transferring all these relics to CD/MP3, and have finally purged my life of the archaic audio cassette tape.

Intro to "Invasion of the Polka-Dot People." Listen for the Scudzo Mouthwash jungle in "chipmunk."

Happy/Sad Balloon Story

My little balloon post the other day was so well-received that I thought of Amber Friday night when I was at Relay for Life and they loosed a bundle of purple and white balloons at the opening ceremonies. I also thought of my own balloon story, from when I was about four. It kills me to tell it, because it's such a sad-sounding story, but I'm over it, I promise.

I was at Grandma Barron's and I had a helium-filled balloon. For some reason we went outside, and as soon as the wind came up, it yanked the balloon out of my hand. As it ascended from my grasp, I called out, "Come back, Mr. Balloon!"

It didn't come back.

So Friday night, after making the standard boring news-photographer-esque balloon release photo, I watched them ascend for some time before making this image, which I think is pretty cool. What do you think, Amber? Two balloon photos in one week! It doesn't get much cooler than that!

A Broodster

Do you think I look brooding and deep, self-important and shallow, or really unhappy?

I still have those sunglasses, by the way.