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35 T H R E E Sand between My Toes Ask anyone what Oklahoma City is like and the first thing they will say is, it’s flat. If they appreciate the place, they might add that you can see for miles and the sunsets are spectacular. The city is situated on a broad plain. It receives only about thirty-two inches of rain a year, making its skies among the sunniest of those in any U.S. city. Flying weather is often ideal. In an average year, Oklahoma City has three hundred fifty good days for flying. Although it’s the bright blue skies and intense coral sundowns I picture when I think of my home from the age of ten to eighteen, and again in my late twenties, other people associate it with violent weather. They have good reason. Oklahoma is the most tornado prone of all fifty states. Oklahoma City, the state’s capital and geographical center, is struck by more tornadoes per year than any other city. Tornadoes are violent and unpredictable. They can occur at any time of day and in any month. Typically, they inflict their worst damage between four and eight o’clock in the evening. The month of May is the most unnerving if you’re afraid of extreme weather. In my family, we weren’t. When the local tv meteorologists broke into regular programming to report on the movement of funnel clouds, my father and I would stand on the front porch and observe the swift-moving clouds as they traveled past our house in 36 | FINDING PETE the direction of nearby Lake Hefner. When a tornado watch was upgraded to a warning and the TV set began emitting harsh beeps, my mother would once in a while suggest we come inside. But none of us overreacted, and only once did Mom plead with us to take cover under the dining room table. It was fun to stand outside with Dad, watching the sky turn yellowish-green and black, like an old bruise. He was steady. What most people called a storm, he merely called “weather.” Without being conceited, my father was sure of himself and his knowledge of the air. He didn’t put his confidence into words, but what I observed in him inspired a feeling of security. To this day, if I’m trying to get to sleep, I picture myself beside Dad in the cockpit of a single-engine Cessna enshrouded in clouds and him intently monitoring the instruments. He was a pilot’s pilot. He discovered his first love when his future father-inlaw took him up in an old Steerman biplane. Dad learned to fly in the army, then became a schoolteacher. During summers off from his job at the Lake Forest Country Day School, Dad dusted crops for Green Giant over the vast farmlands of Illinois. Crop dusters had a high accident rate, but my father was a natural. So suited was he to flying that in 1953 he left his job teaching the heirs to meatpacking fortunes and children of Cook County politicians to instruct cadets at an air base in southeastern Missouri. By then he was a father of four. My brother, sisters, and I grew up hearing my dad and his pilot friends tell stories of derring-do around our dinner table. To me they seemed interminable, and it was only after I left home that I realized my father seemed adventurous and colorful to others. His flying students, whom I remember as handsome and charming to a man, all visited our house at least once, when they had finished their flight training and my parents gave a party for them. Dad would make a big batch of spaghetti or pizzas from scratch, entertaining us by flamboyantly spinning the dough in the air. Many of the young men were of other nationalities or races, so my siblings and I were exposed to interesting people from all over the world. My parents invited all of Dad’s students, including non-whites, and raised some eyebrows for it. Our house outside of Dexter, Missouri, sat on a hill surrounded by twelve acres of woods. When the new road was being cleared and I was about four, I was sitting on a felled tree and watching the grown-ups while I chewed on a piece of what I thought was white meat. Pete asked what I was doing. I pointed to the...

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