I’m feeling philosophical about my walks with my assistant producer, Boomer, on the trail near our home. By applying a lesson I learned from the pages of the nerdy books I read when I was a kid, I have special outlook on not just the walks on the trail, but many of the things that happen around me.
Most know the United States entered World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Just a few months before that fateful December morning, folks in Miami, Ok .were already hearing the engines of foreign pilots over head, friendly pilots from across the pond. Miami was home to Churchill Field, a training school for British pilots beginning in the summer of 1941 through the end of the war. Over 2,100 would-be pilots came to this corner of the Sooner State for training, a handful never left.
Before he was on the Five Dollar Bill, before his words were memorized by American schoolchildren through the decades and just a few years before he was hailed as the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln was a candidate for President…and it wasn’t looking so good. He undertook a trip to Kansas to see for himself the violence and legacy of popular sovereignty, and maybe score a few extra delegates to the upcoming Republican convention. A rare look at candidate Lincoln and his first trip to the west.
It’s a story that can only take place in America. They had come west, illprepared, to a new home where they hoped to start fresh for themselves and their families. The new residents of Nicodemus, Kansas, mostly former slaves from Kentucky were unready for the rugged and harsh environment of the Plains, but a roving band of Native Americans came across the hapless migrants. After discussing the situation, the Great Spirit touched their hearts. The following day they returned to Nicodemus and shared their bounty with the new-comers. A story that had many causes and effects that could only happen in America.
I took it as a challenge to find the history of a character from my mother’s hometown in western Oklahoma. She had little to go on, but we found the story – not only the story about this figure from her childhood, one Percy Hook, but also that of the nature of the town itself.
Within the Realm 