Dispatches from rural Oklahoma: From first light to last rites

I was flipping through the Internet the other day, on co-op-provided broadband no less, when I stumbled across something that stopped me cold: a funeral home that’s also a cooperative.

Yep. In Lone Wolf, Oklahoma — which is a real place, not a metaphor — there’s a place called People’s Cooperative Funeral Home. It got its start back in 1931, right in the thick of the Great Depression, when folks in Kiowa County decided that even the hardest parts of life, and death, shouldn’t come with big-city prices or impersonal service. They pooled what little they had and built something that belonged to the community. A funeral home, of all things. Cooperative-owned. Still running nearly a century later. And I got to thinking. Maybe that’s not so strange after all.

Out here in rural Oklahoma, co-ops have a way of showing up at the start of things and sometimes at the end. We’re born into the light a co-op provides, and in at least one part of the state, we’re buried under the direction of a co-op too. Now that’s what I call full service.

The first electric bill I ever saw was addressed to my parents, but I remember it had the name of the local co-op on top. It didn’t sound like a company. It sounded like a neighbor. And in a way, it was. At some point I realized we weren’t just customers, we were members. Like a club. Except instead of club tote bags and coupons, we got working power lines and storm crews that showed up before the Red Cross even knew there was a problem.

When I was a kid, the co-op meant the lights came on when you flipped the switch and the refrigerator hummed through a summer thunderstorm. Later on, it meant a phone line that buzzed when you picked it up and internet that wheezed through a dial-up tone like it was running uphill. But we were still grateful. Not just because it worked, eventually, but because the folks behind it lived just up the road. They knew how to pronounce your town’s name right the first time.

That’s the thing about co-ops. They come from us. We built them because no one else would, or could. And we believed in doing things together, even if it took a little longer and smelled like diesel and coffee.

Try telling someone from the city that your power company invites you to a potluck once a year. Or that you voted for your lineman’s boss to see him kiss a pig at the local fair at the same place you voted for President. They’ll look at you like you made it up. Believe me, I’ve experienced it.

But that’s just how it works out here. We build things that belong to everybody because we know what happens when they don’t. And we keep them going not for profit, but because we want the lights to stay on. And we want someone we trust to be there when they flicker.

So yes, it turns out, if you live long enough in rural Oklahoma, your final bill might go to a co-op too. Just not the electric kind.

And I think there’s something beautiful in that. Maybe even funny.

Because if I’ve learned anything from a life lived under co-op wires, it’s this. When we say we’ll take care of each other, we don’t just mean casseroles and jumper cables. We mean all of it.

From first light to last rites.