Nobody's Property: Living on the Remains of a Life in Calfornia

Nobody's Property 08

March 10, 2011·39 min·2 clips

Emily's father wants to return to Germany and confront the man who last saw Jenny alive.

1. Nobody's Property: Living on the Remains of a Life in California, episode eight, begins part two with Emily Kathleen Cook considering Jenny's disappearance. 2. Emily's father proposes a Germany trip to examine Jenny's case and speak with people connected to her final days. 3. Emily asks what the next 30 years with her father will look like after the first 30 years have ended. 4. Emily's father identifies Germany as the place where he might find the man who last saw Jenny alive. 5. Emily and her father plan to return to Oklahoma because Charles has the investigative files. 6. Bruce's house outside Shawnee contains Lake No. 2, dogs named Fearless and Eeyore, cats, deer, geese, raccoons, ducks, and coyotes. 7. Bruce calls Emily's father Jimmy, reconnecting him with his youth at the Wide Awake Cafe and in central Oklahoma. 8. Bruce recalls that Emily's father danced with Hattie in what he describes as a first in Shawnee history. 9. Bruce and Emily's father discuss Oklahoma's red earth, the Choctaw language, the Osage, and the state's Native American identity. 10. Emily contrasts Oklahoma's cottonwoods and slow rivers with California's narrower public image of Native heritage. 11. Emily visits Charles in Oklahoma City for his 85th birthday and recognizes Jenny's portraits in his condo. 12. A house blessing associated with Joan Didion appears among the family photographs and antiqued furniture. 13. Emily and her father visit the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building memorial, including its black granite water and children's chairs. 14. Emily searches her purse for a toy belonging to her daughter to leave at the Murrah Memorial but finds nothing. 15. Charles gives Emily a private investigator's report about Jennifer Cook's disappearance in Germany. 16. The report says Schiller College's dean waited from November 4 to November 11, 1971, before reporting Jennifer missing. 17. Police found Jennifer's clothes near Hardheim on November 6, 1971, but a search by nine policemen and one dog found no further trace. 18. Witnesses later described Jennifer's rides with a truck driver, a forester's wife, and a German soldier before her last confirmed sighting near Hardheim. 19. The episode uses memoir, travel writing, family memory, and an extended reading of an investigative report. 20. Listeners seeking unresolved family mysteries, Oklahoma place-writing, and historical case files may prefer this episode.

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