Welcome to Idahell

Life could be going better for me right now. My job is mind-numbingly boring, and highly time consuming. My finances are in a depressing state, and it looks as if I'll have to put off finishing my degree another semester because of it. My book has just received its first rejection, and the girl I think I love lives half a country away. Yet none of this bothers me overmuch. Even with all that in mind, I cannot help but be happy. Deliriously, wonderfully happy, and I always will be. No matter what happens in my life, not even the most horrible of pains can erase from my mind the glorious fact that I no longer live in Idabel, Oklahoma.

I have lived in almost a dozen states during my nineteen years on this earth, and visited almost every state at least once. But in all my travels up and down this country, I have never been somewhere as terrible as Idabel. I can honestly say without exaggeration that I would sooner make some Lovecraftian seaside town of Eldrich horrors my home then return to Idabel for even an hour. In all honesty, even writing about the wretched place is most likely a sin, but I feel it is my duty as a goon to tell my rambling tales for your amusement and mockery. Here goes nothing...

If you head north from Dallas long enough you'll eventually clear the clutter and sprawl of the Metropolis area. Skyscrapers and factories give way to suburbs and strip malls, which in turn surrender to long, dilapidated farmhouses and fields of cattle. The hills begin to roll more then the flat plains of Texas are known to, and the green grass begins to turn a more pale yellow. After three hours, or so, you'll notice the sky begin to darken, and smell a terrible stench in the air. When that happens, you'll know you've arrived in Oklahoma.

I should be fair. Oklahoma is not an entirely unpleasant place. Parts of it are beautiful, and I've enjoyed many weeks of camping and hiking in its lovely forests. And, aside from the occasional bombing of a federal building or the odd tornado, Oklahoma City is a very nice place. It is a poor state, but most of the poor there are the industrious sort; working hard to climb upwards on the economic ladder and make a better life for their children. Much of the state is just fine, but all of Oklahoma's reputation takes a fist to the ovaries thanks to Idabel.

If you keep on heading north once you pass the state border, you'll see a large off-white billboard in the trees which cheerfully informs all passerby that "JESUS IS THE OF IDABEL!". Before you ask, that's word for word what it says. A large lightbulb was supposed to be affixed to the center, but the city chamber of commerce never got around to finishing it. In a way, the billboard paints as an accurate description of Idabel as I can write.

Past the billboard, you'll drive through a series of farmhouses and fenced tracts of grazing land. One of these farms was my home for four years; a tiny white home, surrounded by one hundred acres of cow-filled grassland. I wiled away many hundreds of happy hours with my trusty dog, Hannah, chasing cows around and smacking them on the ass with my "bushwacker" (a large mop). I'm not sure why I called it that either.

After a few minutes the farmhouses disappear, replaced with rows of filthy, dilapidated one-family houses. As with all of Idabel, one gets the feeling these could be nice homes if someone bothered to maintain them. Instead, virtually every home had a roof that was falling in (and a few that had already collapsed), peeling paint, and a badly cracked foundation. More then one house had entire walls replaced with cardboard or plasticard, the family not having the money for a more permanent, or stable, repair. Anywhere else in the world, the denizens of these decaying ruins would deserve pity and understanding. But Idabel spits at pity, and defies understanding; in the parking lot of every crumbling, ruinous domicile is a brand new truck or SUV.

Cars are important in Idabel. Feeding your family, keeping your home above condemnation levels, and paying your rent is not. Social status here is entirely measured by how nice and new your truck is, and what position your son holds on the football team. If your chronic unemployment (due to your drug addiction-I've heard as many as 40% of the town residents have been caught DUI) gets in the way of car payments, you can always turn to the town's primary venue of employment; crime.

The rate of petty theft here would be the highest in the country, if any of the police bothered themselves with reporting it. Their neglect is understandable, since the frighteningly high rates of violent crime, murder, and drug use are a bit more pressing matters for them to attend to. (As a note, I have no issues with most drug use, but Meth labs next to pre-schools piss me off).

Racism is another huge problem. The year I moved to Idabel (I believe it was 1994 or 95) I remember vividly a story my mother told me about a horrific crime that had just taken place. Shortly before we moved in, a small black girl (maybe 4 years old?) had crossed the train tracks and into the "white" area of town, and had been beaten to death and raped for it. They never caught the murderers.
Again, this was in the nineties.

I could go on all day about the terrible stories from this town, and I will if there's any interest in this thread. For now, I'll tell the story everyone asked for in my previous thread: the baby that shat an eight inch parasite.

My grandparents were pretty incredible people. Grandad was a veteran of WW2 and Korea, and one of the civilian governors on Okinawa after the war (and hospital administrator, and founder of the Okinawan boy scouts), and my Grandma was the primary raiser of five American girls on a tiny Japanese island. When they came home, they were too restless to retire, and decided to open up a daycare in their hometown of Idabel. They called it "Good times daycare", which was actually an apt name. They were good and loving custodians, and for some of those little kids the only childhood they had was in that daycare.

I first went to Good Times when I was six, and immediately befriended a little black boy named Jazmine. He was a sweet little kid (although I tormented him awfully), and we had fun together. Jazmine had a sister who went to daycare with him. He was six like me, and his sister was a few months shy of a year old. Both kids were very sweet and polite, but oddly quiet. Every morning Jazmine would come into the daycare with a new bruise and another story about how he "Fell down the stairs". By the looks of it, his mother also fell down the stairs a lot; she was even more bruised and battered then her children. This was an utterly unremarkable story in Idabel, Oklahoma.

Most of the time, the women of Idabel never fought back. They took their beatings, cried alone, and drank themselves into an early grave. Jazmine's mother was different; she fought back. It took her months to work up the courage, but to her credit the woman managed to kick her violent deadbeat husband out of the house, and get a restraining order against him. For about two weeks, Jazmine and his sister seemed to be out of the twilight. The bruises faded, they lost the haunted looks, and the little baby started laughing.

Then they disappeared. One day, Jazmine and his baby sister stopped coming. When my Grandmother went over to their mother's house to investigate, she found the young woman in a state of panic. Their father had broken in, knocked her unconscious, and stolen the children. She wanted desperately to get them back, but she was too afraid of the police to call them. My grandmother eventually convinced her to contact the authorities, who tracked him down in Texas, near the Mexican border. He'd apparently taken them to Mexico for several weeks, until he and the kids came down with something nasty and had to head north for hospital care. Altogether, I think the kids were with their dad about two months.

We had a big celebration when Jazmine and his sister returned. They both looked like they'd lost about ten pounds, but they were more or less okay. Life shortly returned to normalcy (if that word can apply to Idabel) and we almost forgot about the whole ordeal (though I'm certain Jazmine never will).

One of my grandmother's employees at the daycare was a woman named B. I'm not certain of her real name, but B is what we always called her. She grew up in an abusive household, under the permanent shroud of racism that covered Idabel. Despite this, she was one of the kindest and most decent people I've ever met. B was the stereotypical large, matronly black woman; she was about six feet tall, and a good three hundred pounds. She routinely walked around with a baby under each arm, cooing and singing and just being a wonderful person.

B was one of those people that's seen every shitty thing the world has to offer, and was almost unshakeable. And so, when she suddenly began to scream in horror one day, we knew something very wrong was going on. B had been changing Jazmine's sister's diaper at the time, and so we all rushed towards the bathroom to see what was up.

My mom was the first person in the room, and let out a scream to rival B's. Judy (my ma) is a big, tough woman of Welsh stock. Her scream was almost as frightening as B's. I made it in the room next, along with my Grandmother and some of the other, older kids. We all echoed their screams when we saw what it was.

Laying on the changing table was the baby's diaper. Curled and writhing within the mound of baby poop were a half dozen or so pale grey, twitching worms , presumably of Mexican origin. There were at least a dozen or so of them, and they were long, thin things. But that wasn't the worst of it.

Hanging out of the babies butt, with its anterior end wriggling and twitching, was a long, thick, flat black worm-ish parasite. It looked far too large to have possibly come from an infant, and the baby screamed an absolutely unearthly wail as this fist-sized worm tried to crawl back into her bowels. With grit and determination forged by forty-years in the worst town on earth, B reached down and started to pull the pulsating, alien looking monstrosity out. She peeled the cheeks back, and gently slid it out of the baby, and dropped it into the diaper with a horrified squeal. When it landed, I seem to remember several people running out to vomit. I got one last look at the squirming worm before my mom and grandma hurried all of us out of the bathroom.

Now, more then likely my impressions from so long ago were not entirely accurate. I'm certain I remember the worm as being larger then it was, but my mom agreed that it seemed huge to her as well. Personally, I blame that day for my lifelong fear of flatworms. They terrify me more then any creature on the planet. I love snakes, I've poked at human brains and cadavers without hesitation, and gore has no affect on my gag reflex, but I cannot look at an ascaris for more than a few seconds before getting queasy. Given the circumstances, I think that's a fair phobia to have.

Anyway, that's my worm story from Idabel. I've got many more tales from that wretched pit, and if anyone is interested in hearing more I'll find the time to type them up. I'm afraid this thread didn't end up as funny as the last one, but hopefully it'll put some perspective on whatever town you live in. Just remind yourself that, at least, you aren't in Idabel. That's what keeps me going.