i was going to pick up on my visit home, skip a couple of days and talk about our trip to see grandmother in OK City. but as I was trying to think about what i would say, i could not get very far without first talking about Moffitt.

Moffitt, Okla sits just across the bridge from fort smith. it is a little town with a big reputation.

when i was in grade school, my father was a deacon at grand avenue baptist church. grand avenue was the second largest baptist church in town, the largest being, first baptist.

grand avenue baptist had what it called a "mission" in moffitt. since my dad had been assistant pastor in a small church in mustang okla before we moved to fort smith, he volunteered to be the pastor at the mission. only once did i go with him and mom. the church was a sad looking one. old fashioned with white peeling paint, a steeple (which held the bell) and several smaller rooms right off the sanctuary. i swear the whole building, steeple and all, tilted to one side, looking like it would topple over at any minute.

dad let me ring the bell, calling the congregation to service. i think that sunday morning, two women showed up.

Moffitt had a horrible reputation, and i remember dad telling me when we first moved to fort smith that the town was one of the only, if not the only, place in the u.s. that the military forbid the personnel from visiting. it was off -limits. the reason being all the bars. soldiers would come out drunk and stumbling, only to be rolled and relieved of their money. it was, to say the least, a rough town.

later on in high school, one of my friends dated a guy from moffitt, roy. he was a white guy with the biggest fro i had ever seen.

one night, on a wild girl(s) night out (sorry, i messed with settings and the firefox will not let me use contractions), five or six of us, with roy at the wheel, took little miss goody two shoes, Kay Farrow, on a harrowing ride through moffitt. we parked in front of the junk yard, where not only the dogs, but the owner came running at us, more than a little irritated.

the story was if you were not from moffitt, you should not go to moffitt as bad bad things would happen. of course, we had a local, we felt a little safer, but even roy had his problems, when one night a bunch of guys tried to jump him, and managed to bust out the back window of his car.

roy also had his little marijuana patch in moffitt, on the banks of the arkansas river. and it is that riverbank that is the setting for my story, "Brutal Apathy"

when i was in my twenties, my friend(s) dad died. i was surprised, because i did not know her dad was still alive. she had never talked about him.

i went with her to moffitt, to clean out her father(s) house, which sat right in front of another junk yard that can be seen from the highway. i could not help but think, that she had to think of him every time we ventured into okla and passed it.

later i too would go out with a guy from moffitt, and he would take me riding the long straight roads on the river bottoms, and it did not seem as scary as it once was.

there is no point to all these recollections. i am sure everyone has a town in their state similar to this one. but the town still remains, virtually unchanged, and still as backward and poor as it always had been.