Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees, Oklahoma
I’ve always been hypnotically drawn to water, like how a blue-green dragonfly is drawn to hitch a “piggyback ride” on another dragonfly.
When I was very young our family moved from my place of birth, New York, to Oklahoma to be closer to my mother’s family.
One of my most vivid memories is when we got to Oklahoma and went to Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees that summer. My US Marine grandfather, Jack, had a cabin cruiser named Pearl Cat in a slip on the deep, deep massive lake.
The hours-long drive was tempered by stops at roadside novelties, like the two-story blue whale slide on a pond, and giant plastic ice cream cones atop mid-century huts selling ice cold Dr. Pepper and instantly-melted soft-serve cones.
Once we finally arrived at the lake, and stepped out of my father’s baking black 1976 Pontiac, we were hit in the face from the oppressive heat, while the wetter and stickier humidity took our breath away.
Just down the long splintery gangway awaited neon floating rafts, grilled foods, watermelon, and so much more nature than I’d ever seen. Spider webs were in every corner, and deadly Cottonmouth Water Moccasins were hiding in crevices on the rocky shore’s edge, ready to be picked off by my grandfather with his M1 rifle that he kept in the spidery shed, just in case. We fished right around the shaded dock using canned corn to catch Perch and Sunfish. Always thrown right back in with our now fishy-smelling little hands.
As the sun set, the swarms of mosquitos descended, made only tolerable by the endless whizzing and exploding Black Cat bottlerockets that Jack launched from the corrugated rusty roof that covered the Pearl Cat, or just sometimes from his hand.
Exhausted from water play, sun, boat rides to the dam, and too much strawberry shortcake, we drove the long ride back home after.
Scott A. Wilber • He • Place of Origin- Kingston, New York, and Current- San Francisco, CA
Scott A. Wilber is a San Francisco artist working as a painter and sculptor, and former Art Teacher of thirty years. Most recently Scott has been building paintings and sculptures that mimic the “life-stories” that used objects can tell, using icons, symbols and characters that are derived from popular culture influences from Scott’s childhood.
