385. Lawton, Comanche County (OK17)

Some of you have been reading my thoughts on courthouses for quite a while while some of you may be new to this peccadillo. Those of you who have can probably imagine what I thought as I pulled up here. For those of you who can’t, well, I’m not in the habit of quoting myself, but in this case, I feel it is warranted.

“Ummm… I don’t even know where to begin.”

It took me a few minutes to gather my thoughts to form a coherent and unemotional response to my own statement (yes, I was so overwhelmed that I was thinking out loud). I am curious what committee in the late 1960s thought that they were forward looking enough to put this together. I’m even more curious which architects foisted it upon them. Sure, it’s a “modern” courthouse for what was then a modern time, but it hurts me to even look at it. Oh, God, how it hurts.

Lawton is the location of Fort Sill, Home of Artillery. Full disclosure: the photo isn’t mine. I passed by one of the gates, but I was too preoccupied to stop and photograph. That and I’m not aware of the current status of the base vis-à-vis visitors during the time of cholera. But this is definitely a place to return to at some point. Not only does it have the only Atomic Annie that ever fired a nuclear round, it is also the final resting place of both Geronimo and, more importantly for my purposes, my old homeboy, Quannah Parker. As you can imagine, there are no physical caches on post. I don’t actually know if it’s in the rules, but I’ve never seen one on a post. It doesn’t take much to realize why, considering a cache would be a security issue that nobody running a post would be willing to fiddle with. However, there IS a virtual at the grave of Geronimo. Had I been thinking, I might have tried for it, but I think I’ll go visit it when I come back through the area. It would have been no good for the purposes of the Oklahoma County Challenge anyway. Besides, I already had one. Have you ever had a cache pick you? Well, I was driving down the highway and almost did a spit-take…

Wait… What? So I warmed up the map. Of course there’s a cache on the sign! DEUS VULT!!! After turning around on the highway so I could get back to the sign, I attempted to get it. The cache page said that it was under the left foot of the sign, but there was nothing there. I looked at the size and checked the recent logs and then found it…

You can’t quite tell because you don’t have me for perspective, but that’s about four to five feet over my head and I’m over six feet tall. This raised a problem: I brought neither my ladder nor my pole with me on the trip. I was in the midst of my preparations for hari-kari when it dawned on my that I have the greatest TOTT in the history of all TOTTs…

My beloved and long travelled umbrella to the rescue! I hooked it, dragged it, and, soon enough…

…Victory was mine! After making short work of the cache, it was signed, and then returned back to its perch in a similar manner. Once again, my umbrella has proven itself to be the MVP of the day! And, with the courthouse done (having offended my senses [also after the obligatory “We’ve got one of those, too“]), I headed for what was to be my final county of the day…