Yesterday we paddled a stretch on the river that we were sure we had done before but we could remember nothing about it.  Now we know that’s because there was absolutely nothing memorable about it.

At one point,  Dave did spot a magnificent eagle

And then, in that way he has, he paddled into an inlet to explore the tiny water wildlife.  He’s an old science teacher.  I paddled on ahead and over to the opposite bank to listen to the birds. Then I looked up just a bit, and there in the trees, not six feet from me, were two beautiful, perfectly camouflaged deer.  They thought if they did not move I couldn’t see them.  I thought if I didn’t move, they wouldn’t flee.  So we sat there for a long time not moving.  Their antlers were covered with velvet.  You’ll just have to imagine it.  No photography is allowed at such a moment.

One hardly knows how to think about the removal/destruction of  monuments honoring the Confederacy all across the South as well as the renaming of many things named for deceased slave holders.

I think of Sam Houston as a hero of the Alamo, but he owned slaves.  Should we rename the city of Houston?

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves.  Should we blast their images off Mount Rushmore?

Personally, I think that whole thing is pretty awful and It would be fine with me if we blasted it in toto.

As we raze many statues and memorials honoring the Confederacy, I think we should do something with bits of the rubble so, while we mourn this blotch on our history, we do not forget.  I liked seeing the pieces of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 buildings made into monuments in front of the new NATO center in Brussels.

Oklahoma, where I was born in 1943,  was not a state during the Civil War.  It was Indian Territory.  But for some reason which eludes me, Oklahoma has a very “southern” devotion.  “Whites” and Indians alike fought for the Confederacy, yet I never heard of anyone there who was a slave holder.  Everyone there at that time, and most people there now, were poor.  Even since the oil industry boom, there are a lot more oil field workers than there are Haliburtons.

But I digress.

One of my earliest memories of my childhood in Durant, Oklahoma, is of playing in front of the Bryan County courthouse just down the street from our  house and where my grandfather, a “Europeanized” Choctaw Indian in a necktie and suit, worked in the Land Office.

What I played around was this:

I never thought about what it was until recently.  I found these shots online;

Interesting that this memorial was erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1917.  Oklahoma was a state by then.  One wonders who Julia Jackson was.  I imagine a group of “ladies” sitting in a parlor in white gloves and hats appropriating money for it.  I have every confidence that this particular monument will never be razed.

A vivid memory of my most recent visit to my birthplace was the prevalence of Confederate flags being displayed on the backs of pickup trucks. That terrifies me almost as much as the swastika tattoos sported by some folks in those parts.