We grew up barefoot and full-throttle on the outskirts of Picher, Oklahoma—a town that no longer exists.

Once the lead and zinc capital of America, Picher was home to 20,000 people, hundreds of mines, and mountains of crushed rock called chat piles. By the time we came along in the 1960s, the boom was over. The mines were abandoned. And the chat piles? They became our playground.

To outsiders, Picher was “the most toxic town in America.”

To us, it was home. A dusty kingdom of danger and freedom—where boys like us rode bikes off cliffs, launched BB gun wars from rooftops, and came home with gravel in our hair and stories in our pockets.

This blog is our attempt to preserve those stories—not the headlines, but the heartbeats. The wild, hilarious, sometimes reckless, always unforgettable memories of two brothers and the town that raised them.

We called ourselves Chat Rats because that’s what the kids from neighboring towns called us. Somewhere along the way, we also earned the name The Dirty Little Glover Boys. We wore both with pride.

So welcome. This is where the stories live now.

Hold on tight. There’s no brake on this ride.