Lynn, I am just so relieved to hear that the damage was minimal. (Although, of course, it never seems quite so minimal when it is your own place, and not someone else's.) If I were there with you now, I'd just give you a big hug and say how happy I am that you are OK, so consider yourself hugged long distance. : ) I know it is a terrible experience, especially as you're hurrying home and watching that big old plume of smoke, all the while wondering what has already burnt and what remains in danger. I am so proud of all the firefighters in Oklahoma--volunteer and professional--and the work they do. In our county, the 14 volunteer fire departments, the BIA and the forest service fire crews work together so well that it is just amazing. I'd like to second what you said, Lynn, about people supporting the volunteer fire departments. Most people assume that there is some kind of magical pot of money that the VFDs get from their city, county, state, or the federal goverment.....and that there is always enough money. That, of course, is not at all true. Most volunteer departments barely scrape by even though they are constantly working hard to raise money. On extreme fire danger days and extremely critical fire danger days, I am like a cat on a hot tin roof. I keep the fire radio turned on to the County Repeater so I can keep track of every fire in the county, instead of leaving it on the "pager" feature. And, I hate to get too far from home. We live in an area of rural mostly native pasture land too, and it can burn like mad. We've never had a fire as close to us as yours, but have had 2 on our land (but they were burning away from the house and outbuildings, and nowhere near fences of animals or anything). However, the ranch across the road catches fire at least a couple of times a year. (Their pastures back up to a highway and most of the fires start from the roadside.) For any of you wondering how to know when the fire danger is high, one of the easiest ways is to look at the NWS Enhanced Weather webpages. I check them daily, as they are informative and give info on all weather, and not just fire danger. On the enhanced weather page, the fire outlook is usually in one of the boxes along the right side of the page, near the bottom. Just keep scrolling down until you see it. You can click on it to enlarge it. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: NWS Enhanced Weather Webpage

I was working as a temp at Fred Jones Manufacturing, about of mile, as the crow flies, from the Murrah building. The week before our fire alarms had gone off. Someone on the third floor had run into one of the sprinklers with a forklift. Because of all the volatile chemicals present in the building, once the alarms went off we had to evacuate, even though we knew in five minutes what had happened. But alarms in our building went off simultaneously at the nearest fire station so we were required to wait until we had an all clear from the firemen before we could return. When we felt the blast we just figured this time someone had dropped a forklift. We got up and prepared to head downstairs expecting to evacuate again. On our way to the stairs we looked in the offices to the east to see if they, too, were preparing to leave the building. ThatÂs when we saw the smoke and all the papers flying around in the street below us. All the plate glass windows on the ground floor shattered, and you could smell the stench. Many of the smaller windows on the upper floors were cracked, and the blast put a crack in the east wall of the building, originally completed in 1916, that was not there before. Two of the men I worked with lost their wives. They both worked for HUD and were at the sign-in desk when the bomb went off. One had been married about 12 years at the time. They had spent most of their first ten years of marriage trying to have a child. Finally, about a year before the bombing they had a little boy. Until about a month prior to the bombing he had been in the day care center in the Murrah building. They had taken him back the week before the bombing for a birthday party. They took lots of pictures of all the kids at the party. He was asked to take those pictures and go to Denver to testify during the sentencing phase of the trial. Poor man, he was so grief-stricken at losing his wife that he moved back in with his mother to have help with the little boy and never again lived in the house heÂd shared with his wife. Another man had a "near miss" with his wife. She also worked for HUD and, under normal circumstances, would have been right there with the other two menÂs wives, but her job involved travel to Indian communities. She had a regularly scheduled travel date that conflicted with their only childÂs, a daughter, soccer game so she traded and traveled on the 19th to be home for the girlÂs soccer game. My daughter and her best friend, just two years out of high school, were both working evening shifts. My daughter was waiting tables at a restaurant near our apartment, and her friend worked at the sign-in desk at what was then the Westin Hotel downtown. I think itÂs now a Sheraton. Being accustomed to staying up late they didnÂt wake up until maybe 10 am. Once they heard the news they took off together to see what they could do to help. First they tried the Oklahoma Blood Institute which had put out a call for O negative donations (my daughter is not O negative, not sure about her friend), but every donation center was swamped. They had to turn away people because there would simply not be enough time in the day to take that many donations. They went to a fabric store to buy ribbons. No ribbon color had yet been selected to represent the city and the tragedy so they picked purple. Late that first night they took their spools of ribbon downtown and tied them around all the poles along the marked off perimeter of the area. The next night a policeman would remember having seen my daughter tying ribbons. Next they tried volunteering for anything that was needed. Again, they were turned away everywhere because everyone was swamped with people volunteering to help. They finally managed to convince someone, Red Cross I think, that they had something to offer most of their other volunteers didnÂt. They were young, worked evenings, and were accustomed to being up very late. They could be there to help in the middle of the night when most of their other volunteers needed to get some rest. Mostly they just served drinks to the rescuers, police, and others working on the rescue effort. This is when the policeman remembered seeing my daughter tying ribbons the night before. My daughterÂs friend "caught" a rescue worker buying himself a soft drink from a vending machine on the hotelÂs first floor. She "scolded" him and pointed out that one flight up, on the Mezzanine, rescue workers were being provided drinks for free. I remember a news article where some of the rescuers who came from New York remarked about how in 1993, the first time the World Trade Center was attacked, street vendors showed up charging outrageous prices for coffee and sandwiches. Here, we pretty much fed them for free. Cots were set up in the convention center for the rescuers to sleep rather than them having to pay for hotel accommodations, and the governorÂs wife worked with local florists to see that a rose was placed on each cot every night. Whenever the rescue effort put out a call for supplies, I specifically remember boots for the search dogs, in short order they would be literally inundated. WeÂd hear the local news people ask for something then the next thing you hear is, "Please, we have enough of this, no more!" I have a friend who was still active in Boy Scouts then, both his sons were in Scouting. He remembers sitting at the Channel 5 location with a semi trailer taking donations. He says the line of cars waiting to drop things off was enormous. He especially remembers a little old lady; he says she probably could hardly walk, driving up bringing goods and then insisting on also writing a check to help out. Sometime in the late Â90s I took my first, and so far only, tour of the Crystal Bridge. I donÂt remember where in the gardens it is, and I donÂt even remember what exactly it is, but somewhere is a tree, small when I saw it, with a plaque in front of it that states the tree is a thank you gift to the city from rescuers who came from Arizona. I canÂt explain how perplexed I was when I read the plaque. They came to help us. It is we who should thank them, but there I was staring at a tree these Arizonans gave us in thanks. I think that gesture says a lot about who we are and how we were perceived in the immediate aftermath of the bombing. We have another anniversary this week. While the environmentalists co-opted it some years ago for "Earth Day" for me it will always be the anniversary of the run of Â89. Thousands of brave souls came looking for a new life, but one that they would have to carve out of the wilderness by their own efforts and hard work, having no one else to rely on but themselves and their neighbors. Less than twenty years later Oklahoma Territory joined with Indian Territory, another situation where people had to make a new life in the wilderness by their own work except that it was forced on them and not their choice, to form the State of Oklahoma. We are the sons, daughters, grandsons, and granddaughters of these pioneers. Through oil booms and busts and the associated economic ups and downs, the Dust Bowl, killer tornadoes, and the Murrah Building bombing we have continued to exhibit what Howard Witt, writing for the Chicago Tribune on the occasion of the bombingÂs 10th anniversary, called our "Âessential prairie stoicism--the same ÂOklahoma spirit for which they were lauded in the aftermath of the bombing, when Oklahomans demonstrated extraordinary decency, humility and bootstrap resiliency" based on "deep religious faith and unblushing middle American values." I agree with Dawn. April 19, 1995 was both our worst tragedy and our finest hour. I have never been more proud of my state and its people than I was in those dark days of April. IÂve always said that no matter how much nicer, prettier, easier other places might be to live, I wouldnÂt want to live anywhere else, and my fellow Okies are the reason. You are the best people in the world, and that goes just the same for all you "transplants" and "adoptees." YouÂre here now, and as my Granddad would say, "youÂre ourÂn." Debra

Thanks for asking, Moonie. I think about it a lot, but I don't see myself doing anything about it until next spring at the earliest. I think I mentioned on the KT that I was going to wait until I got my cataract surgery over with, and that hasn't even been scheduled yet (and won't be, as long as I'm being treated for Lyme). Then last month my finances took a big hit from several sides, and the last thing I need is vet bills right now. But another factor is the challenges that winter brings. I'm going to have to figure out how to deal with this issue before I get another dog. My dirt road (and much of the property) is always icy in winter, and after injuring my knee a couple of years ago I am no longer willing to fall every winter. So I can't do any dog walking. Over the years I've had dogs we could let out by themselves, but some of my neighbors up the road ruined that idea when they started letting their large, aggressive dogs run free. My property is their favorite toilet, apparently, and they once attacked Wolfy in my back yard, giving him a serious wound in the throat. I have 31 acres here, but I feel as though I don't dare let a dog out by himself. When I had Angel and Wolfy I dealt with this by letting them out the back door in winter on a 25' horse lunge line, with me keeping watch. I suppose I would do this again. But this winter, with my Raynaud's Syndrome as bad as it is, I'll be somewhat relieved not to have to repeatedly open an outside door and unhook cold metal leash fasteners. Life is complicated. :-/ Glad to read the good advice and support you've received on this thread. PS: As long as I'm here, did you see my mention that I was surprised this week by a childhood friend popping in to visit me at work? Her maiden name was Clark.

dedtired, I checked out Dukestown and found that is part of the old iron working town of Tredegar in Monmouthshire, probably so called after the then local land owner the Dukes of Beaufort. Today the place does not have much going for it after all the closures of the mines and heavy industry. A run-down area of high unemployment with all the problems that brings. However the countryside to the North, known as the Brecon Beacons, is very beautiful in a rugged sort of way, with farms in the lowlands, lots of streams and small rivers, tiny villages and lonely farm houses. You can read about the general area in the fiction of Alexander Cordell; the best known is The Rape of the Fair Country set in the time of the Industrial Revolution. In this area of South Wales there are a series of 'valleys' running generally from N to S. The roads follow the same pattern as do the narrow rows of houses. The people seem to have little contact with their fellows in the next valleys to the E or W. It used to be a place of gaunt-looking chapels for a Sunday, Male Voice Choirs and brass bands. And the women rule the roost! The Tredegar/Dukestown valley is the 'Sirhowy' named after the river which runs through it. Here is a link that might be useful: info on Cordell and the area.