Howdy y'all! Picked that up over the weekend in Oklahoma. In every place you go, that is the greeting. Even if it seems a bit strange to a Californian, it was nice to hear.
The Ransom family has had yearly family reunions for over 80 years. This was the 80th reunion, but some time was taken off during war time. The husband's family Ransom host was Guy Willie Ransom, father of John Dean Ransom, father of Clifton Ransom (with 6 siblings), father of Randy Ransom (the Husband), father of the Girl, Naomi Ransom. My father in law actually had a conversation with his great grandfather before he died about his grandpa who was a veteran of the Revolutionary war, who himself was a veteran of the Civil war. John Ransom was a veteran of the Great War (WW1) but his dad, Guy Willie was a veteran of the Spanish American War. Clifton's (husbands uncles) brother's were veterans of WW2 and Clifton was a veteran of Korea. During the Husbands lifetime in the service, there were no wars, except Granada and the Iranian Hostage Crisis.
History lesson done. All this to say that we had a super time with Aunt Florabelle (93) Uncle J.D (91) Aunt Jean (89) Aunt Donna (86) Father in Law Clifton (82) Aunt Orma (80) and Uncle Gary (76). These are the oldest generation of living Ransom's. Their parents, John Dean and Belle Ayers-Ransom settled in a place call Sand Creek, Oklahoma and pretty much began populating the town. It didn't last long, the town became abandoned when WW2 started and the farmer's lost all the workers. People from Sand Creek moved to the next town, Wakita. The town you may know from the movie, Twister.
We got an opportunity to take Naomi to the family homestead from the land rush in Oklahoma. We visited the remaining family in Wakita and Enid. All added up to 200 people, from all over. Many of us from CA, Rhode Island, Kansas and locally grown. It was so tender to see them all and to hear the stories. These are things we can never duplicate. Naomi had a great time and certainly learned a WHOLE LOT about her family.
This was not the trip I had been hoping for, but it was good. Mostly.
Instead of driving out and having a vacation, we all flew out. Yes, all three of us to Oklahoma. Just so you know, you can't fly directly to OK City, it always a layover somewhere. For us it was Dallas.
No problem. We booked for three to OK city via Dallas, layover of 1.5 hrs. Getting there was easy. No issue with finding the next gate and we all arrived, along with our luggage, at the prescribed point in OK. We picked up the rental car and the adventures began.
Don't toss me a map and say, "how do we get out of here and get to Enid?" That never has good results. My answer was, "let me pull up the gps on the phone" and sure enough, by the time those words were uttered, we were going the wrong direction. Got turned around and headed north and up the state we went. Finally reached Enid, pulled into the hotel, greeted everyone who was still up, see we lost some hours and they were all going to bed, but they are old and they do that.
We got our rooms keys, one room for the princess Naomi, and one for us. Got her settled in and headed for our, too pooped out to consider showering and went to bed. When I got up the next mooring, knowing full well we would be expected to be at breakfast by 8 OK time, I texted the Girl and headed for the shower, ready to get all that travel off of me, wash my hair and look like a million at breakfast. I was planning presenting a well rested and groovy person. I turned on the shower, let the hot water run a bit to warm up, pulled the diverter plunger and started to get in when I stuck my hand in first. What! The water was ice cold! So I turn it to tub mode again and played with the water. Got no hot water! and the cold water was just a bit warmer than the cold. Ummm this was not working. The Husband called the desk and they said someone else mentioned that and the maintenance man would be out at 8 to fix it. I took a cold shower. I wasn't the groovy person I wanted to be, but we would have hot water that night to make up for this.
That evening, Sunday, we had a very full day, I was becoming very tired, and dinner was very late, my eyes were very red and painful, and I wanted to take a shower. It was late but I was good with that, I needed to wash my face and clean my red eyes. Turned on the hot water. The cold water was still warmer. We needed to print up our boarding passes for the next day, so the Husband and I went to the lobby and used the desktop to print out the passes. There were 2 printers there, one didn't work, so we routed to the second one. It printed nothing but paper. The ink was out. I asked the clerk for ink and he told me he didn't have any. I was DONE! No ink, no hot water, which I reminded him there wasn't. I think I sacred him. He told me to send him the link and he would print them for me. Idiot.
So I took another cold shower. We did get to watch the thunder and lightening shower when we turned the lights off and it was all better....
Monday came, took a cold warmish shower, had breakfast with the family and we headed down to OK City to the airport. We had a 3 PM flight and got there at 1. Headed to check bags and found out the storm from last night was a doozy and Dallas was getting hit, hard! Our flight was cancelled and rescheduled for 5:30, printed out new passes, check the bag in, and headed for the TSA pat down. The Husband got to be pre approved and walk through like a king, the Girl and I went through the criminal pat down. She was quickly released, but I got the full butt pat down, hand check and laptop check. I felt better knowing I wasn't carrying a bomb.
We headed for the gate, knowing we had plenty of time..settled in and sat. We got to see some cousins come in, chatted with them, and watched them board their flight and leave. They were going to LAX via Denver. Our flight was again rescheduled for 8:30. We watched every plane destined for Dallas get cancelled and every flight from Dallas was cancelled. I have friends! In Dallas! So I called her and she told me it was a major funky system. She works for the airlines. Finally, our plane to Dallas left at 10, but we were not going to get a connection to San Diego before 6:10 AM. Yep we were going to spend the night at the Dallas Terminal, where Eboli has been found in the city. You do what you have to do. I check my carry one for a mask or maskable clothing. We disembarked from our plane and headed into the terminal. We found a place to plug in our laptop and phones while Randy headed off to find a ticket agent who would print our boarding passes for the morning, so we know were to go. He called me and said, "pack it up, sister, and haul hinny to Gate C 16, we are outta here!". Naomi and I shoved power chords in bags and hauled hinny to Gate C 16. We were at Gate C 2. God had done a miracle for me. The last flight into San Diego from Dallas had been delayed an hour and was landing at 11 and taking off at 11:30. The ticket agent booked us on and we scrambled on and sat down for a 3 hour flight that we didn't think was possible. It was so good to be headed home after 14 hrs.
We pulled into home, hugged the dog and cat, petted the birds, drank hot tea and hit the hay at 3 AM. This morning, when I got up, I took a hot shower, sent an email to the hotel chain headquarters explaining our stay at their hotel (it wasn't cheap either to stay there), and then sent an eamil to the airlines, telling them they had some great workers on their staff.
I had taken the names of two people, who I saw working beyond human capabilities and told their bosses about them. One was the agent who worked tirelessly in OK City when a full plane had to be brought back to the gate and all the people had to get off, because it was going to Dallas and Dallas was closed. The flight was cancelled and this man worked for HOURS getting everyone re-routed and rescheduled, despite the cursing and hollering. He never lost his cool. He was awesome! The other worker was the one who booked us on short noticed and told us to get on and she would take care of the blunder of the reservation that was made for the 6:10 am flight. She gave us priority boarding so we got on first and smiled the whole time, with dozens of angry people behind us hopping for the same thing. They all got it, we all got on and we took off on time and we all got to San Diego. She was awesome! Airlines can't do much about the weather, but this one handled it so well and despite the angry, hungry, tired crowd, they persevered and kept their cool. I take my hat off to them, because I didn't handle my hot water/no ink in the printer ordeal well, at all.
I appreciated the work ethic I saw, even in the clerk at the hotel. It wasn't his fault that the printer was out of ink, or that the hot water wasn't working, he is the lowest persons on the pole. He was really sorry. I told him I was sorry. I blame management for this, and that is why I sent them the email.
We are all home and resting, gearing up for tomorrow. Back to life! Hurry back, y'hear!
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