A License-Plate Prompt

This morning. Sitting at the bottom of an off-ramp. I-480 onto Ohio 91. Truck in front of us. Oklahoma license plate. And that's all it took ...

Waiting for the light to change, I whirl back into the 1940s and 50s when I was living with my family in Enid, Oklahoma (with some stints in Norman--and in Amarillo, Tex.). Because my dad's family lived in Oregon, we made several long car drives out there--pre-AC, pre-Interstates: Mom, Dad, three little boys (births in 1941, 1944, 1948).

We would read books and what-not on those trips, but Boredom was also along for the ride, and he, now and then, held sway. I would often spend my time staring out the window, seeing that Western landscape, imagining myself as the Range Rider or Hopalong Cassidy or Wild Bill Hickok or ... So many of them had TV shows then--and "B" movies that played in the local theaters on Saturday morning. I loved them all.

That diversion would work for a while. But soon my little brother and I would get ... restless. Some fraternal violence would inevitably ensue. Boys, my father's voice would boom, don't make me pull over and stop this car ... That usually sufficed.

Mom would try to distract us with travel games. One (surely of her invention?) she called "Cowpoker." Who would get to 100 cows first? The left rear window? The right? The game was always kind of fun--until I started losing. Then it sucked.

My older brother was a Reader back then and always had his face buried in a Fat Novel and barely tolerated the boisterous presence of his two younger siblings. So ... when we tired of Cowpoker, we would turn to a more exciting version—what I now call Brotherpoker. It had but one rule: Punch and see what happens.

Lots happened. Yelps of pain (usually grotesquely exaggerated). Dire parental warnings. (Whispered vows of revenge.)

A famous one: My younger brother clocked my older brother in the face while he was reading Warlock (a Western novel, 1958, by Oakley Hall). My older brother flailed back, earning a dressing-down from Dad, who talked about a college sophomore punching a sixth grader. I thought the whole thing was ... delicious.

Whenever we returned from out-of-state trips, we--all five of us--would launch into "Oklahoma!" the moment we crossed the state line: "We know we belong to the land, / And the land we belong to is grand!" Ah, Rodgers and Hammerstein! Uniting the family again!

Now that Oklahoma license plate in front of me is beginning to move, and I realize I miss very much the punching of my siblings. I look over at Joyce. Dare I ...? 

No way!