I feel bad about making fun of Gloria Farley years ago. I feel bad about being a wise guy.

One of my neighbors died this month, and my wife and I went to the funeral in Heavener, where my neighbor was from. She was buried in Hill Cemetery. That’s where I saw Gloria Farley’s grave. I didn’t know Gloria Farley died three years ago.

Something about somebody dying makes you regret all the things you’ve said about that person — even if the things you said were fairly accurate.

Death alone is sobering, and there was Gloria Farley’s gravestone etched with “Epigraphic explorer.” All I could think about was how I hurt her feelings.

Gloria Farley wrote me a letter in October 2001. It was filled with pain.

She said she spent many years studying inscriptions on rocks and in caves across America. What studies had I done, she asked.

She said she spent many years studying ancient languages and interpreting markings on stones. What interpreting had I done, she asked.

Gloria Farley campaigned diligently to create Runestone State Park on the mountain east of Heavener. A stone lies on the mountain that Farley contended Viking explorers visited about a thousand years ago. She theorized that Viking explorers etched a message on the rock.

She convinced the state Legislature the markings were runes, Norse writing, and legislators made the area a park and endorsed the stone as Oklahoma’s official Viking site.

Of course, you can convince the Legislature of any untenable thing if it may have economic possibilities.

The state Legislature declared the watermelon the state vegetable in 2007, even though the watermelon plant’s fruit is used exclusively as a FRUIT. Legislators must think Oklahomans mix peas and watermelon just like they mix peas and carrots.

Gloria Farley knew more about epigraphy than state legislators know about horticulture, but that still doesn’t mean Gloria Farley was right about the runestone and other epigraphs.

That’s what I joked about in 2001. While historians agree Vikings made it to northeastern North America’s periphery, not many historians will say Vikings made it down the Mississippi Valley or into Oklahoma. Farley even contended ancient Egyptians, Numidians and Celts made it as far west as Colorado and they left strange markings on rocks in the American West.

My theory’s no better.

I blame things on aliens — when my wife accuses me of forgetting something she told me, I tell myself aliens secretly conducting experiments on me as I sleep wipe out my memory.

I know my theory has holes. But Gloria Farley didn’t entertain holes in her arguments.

Of course, Gloria Farley lived when archaeologists were trying to prove various Europeans and Africans possibly crossed the Atlantic Ocean in reed boats or on rafts and spurred a craze on speculative ancient travel.

We have another craze going now, thanks to Dan Brown and “Da Vinci Code.”

Two Talihina brothers John and Jim Wheat say they’ve discovered cryptological evidence that a little-known pope faked his death, sailed to America with Vikings, and etched sacred secrets on stones, including Gloria Farley’s stone at Heavener.

It’s in their book, “The Whispering Stones.”

I haven’t read the book. I can’t find it. But oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense — a guy who has people revering him like a god and shouting, “Viva il papa,” gives up a life of luxury in Europe to travel with a group of grimy Vikings who don’t know anything about utensils, to come to a sparsely populated continent to write secret messages on isolated rocks for people to read who don’t even have a written language.

I think when John and Jim went to France for research, they were visited by aliens at night.

I’ll probably get a letter from John and Jim.

And I’ll regret saying what I did if someday I run across their gravestones.

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