Story by Jon Stalnaker AKA The Studebaker Dude
I’ve been getting a lot of Facebook memories from 4 years ago this week. It was a significant week for me in the year 2021. We picked up and moved our entire life from Dixon California to Sapulpa Oklahoma that week. It started several months before that when my daughter moved to Oklahoma and tried to convince Carlene and me that we should just pack up what we wanted to keep and get rid of what we could do without and move to Oklahoma. It’s beautiful here. I looked at Carlene and she looked at me and we both said (in unison), Oklahoma? No way…
Now Carlene was a military brat, and her daddy was born in Oklahoma. She was born in Japan, moved around where the military sent her daddy, married her own career military man and moved around with him until that didn’t work out for her, and we fell in love. I grew up in California and other than my own 3 years, 8 months, and 9 days in the Air Force, my moving around was contained to California. Being a lifelong California boy, my thoughts of Oklahoma centered around the Twister movies and the TV coverage of tornado activity in this state. But my daughter Jillian was persuasive and suggested that we check out the real estate here. We did and it started looking more and more like a good idea. My concerns about tornados were diminished when I compared them to the earthquakes that I had experienced personally and the amount of wildfires that were consuming large quantities of the beautiful landscape of California. I realized that California was not any safer than Oklahoma and the real estate we were seeing was beautiful and tempting. I suggested that we turn it over to God and let him open and close doors for us. We were willing to make the move. We also had to ask Carlene’s mom if she would be interested or willing to move and she was fine with it. So, Carlene was on Oklahoma real estate sites and showing me some really cool stuff.
After allowing God to open and close doors for us and being patient with His actions, Carlene came upon this house and was smitten. Her words, as I remember them, were “I’m not sure if you are going to like this or not, but I love this one”. I also loved it from the pictures on the Internet. Jillian’s husband, Tim, is a real estate appraiser and he checked out the house for us. He gave us a big thumbs up and so we made an offer. God opened all the doors and helped us get our California house sold within 4 days. We hired a mover and set out on the road before our stuff was completely loaded on the truck. I packed up my shaving gear and decided to let my facial hair grow out until I unpacked it again in Oklahoma.
We drove to southern California to spend some time with daughter Jessica’s, and son Andrew‘s families in L A before we headed east along Route 66, trying to time our arrival with the moving van. We drove the first day to Holbrook AZ as we missed seeing the Wig-Wam motel when we drove through in 2015. It was late and dark by the time we got there, I did drive by to see it, but it wasn’t much to see in the dark. Our next leg of the trip took us to Amarillo TX. It was Yaeko’s birthday so we took her to that big steak house there. That was our first 4 years ago memory sent to my phone by Facebook. Today they sent me the memory of when we took possession of the house. That was about 3 days after we got to Sapulpa. We stayed in a hotel in Tulsa Hills until the truck arrived. The house was empty with no place to sit or sleep. I posted some pictures of that memory. It included a picture of me with about two weeks of stubble on my face.
We were so happy with the house. It was everything that the computer pictures presented it to be. Still in need of a few cosmetic upgrades which we have achieved in the last 4 years. Jillian was right, Oklahoma Green Country is a beautiful place to live, and I love being close to her. The weather is a bit more extreme than what we had in California but I like having four seasons. Do I miss California? Some of the beautiful places we would vacation at, mostly along the coast. We have many great friends and family there and we miss them, but there is still much to see around here, and making new friends here is awesome. I hope to be able to clear a few more items off my bucket list from here, before my clock runs down. Tick Tock…
