I approve. At the same time, this was different from what I was expecting. I can’t actually articulate what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it. Apparently, it got a little screen time in the movie The Grapes of Wrath. This is both interesting and slightly distressing because I have this thing against John Steinbeck. When the day comes when I manage to reach Monterey Bay in California, I have no doubt that I will go on at length about my passionately heartfelt (yet ultimately ridiculous) grudge. As a sidenote, the building was designed by Solomon Layton, the same guy who designed the Oklahoma Capitol Building and the courthouse back in Mangum.
Once again, a veterans’ memorial brought to us by the Daughters of the Confederacy…
And this fine specimen was most certainly not expected. It’s called The Spirit of the West, though I found some informal references to him being also called “Sergeant Buffalo.” I can’t find anything about the artist or too much in depth information on this piece, but I wonder if anyone saw the racial statement I got out of it. I mean, it’s a buffalo, and soldiers were instrumental in taming the Oklahoma territories, but Buffalo Soldiers are a specific thing. While I can’t imagine this was lost on people, I can also totally imagine people not making the connection in the first place. I’m dying to know, but I’m sure research would involve getting hyper-local and my curiosity only goes so far.
As for the cache, well, there’s always a cemetery. Oddly enough, it was part of a similar cemetery series that I found myself working back in New Mexico. Unlike all the rest of those, though…
…this one was across the road from a prison. Nothing makes the approach to your cache exciting like knowing that hitchhikers might be escaped convicts. I’m not exactly picking anyone one up to begin with, especially in the time of cholera, but that tiny chance dropped to Six Sigma levels. This is not a place to tarry.
The last thing I need to is to get involved with anything having to do with correctional facilities. I completed my business here and then got rolling again most riki tik and didn’t stop until I hit…
Geocaching While Black 
Oklahoma wasn’t even a state during the short-lived Confederacy. It still belonged to the Natives at that point. That makes it all the more racist.
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I hope you don’t think I thought ill of the buffalo. The opposite, in fact. I thought it an interesting tribute, but at the same time, I have trouble imagining that the 81% non-Black population would have chosen it. I admit it may betray MY lack of imagination, but as far as I’m concerned, long live SGT Buffalo! Even if he really is a corporal!
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Oh no, I don’t think ill of the Buffalo. It has more to do with the “Daughters of the Confederacy” marker. It seems they were smart enough not to put the buffalo in Confederate gray at least.
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