Oklahoma

Okla, "people" and humma, "red," in Allen Wright's Choctaw cognomen For this heartland state where the Trail of Tears ended - not for Cherokees Only, but for all Five Civilized Nations, for Sac and Fox, Osage, Muscogee and Modoc, converging on Indian Territory Just as the Red River, the Cimarron, the Washita at length all Resign their names to the Father of Waters ... Founding Tulsey Town, Creeks Smoked a pipe for their "Council Oak," which survived until struck by lightning, Its successor sending roots each year closer to the Arkansas. Good Divider, that, whether flowing or dry, between well-heeled neighborhoods And refineries transmuting black gold into half-timbered mansions Or a sunny Italian palazzo where the foreign transplant views, And may identify with, Tanzio's St. John in the Wilderness. In Bartlesville the copper flanges of Price Tower deflect blinding Summers that till then discouraged highrise construction in pre-A/C Oklahoma. Frank Lloyd Wright's Atomic Age concept evidences The need for pipelines when liquid commodities fill up new brand names Like Phillips and Getty. Wealth would trickle down, too, to Art Deco Tulsa, And to Greenwood's blacktown, bigotry fast on its heels, with how many Houses torched as a dramatic backdrop for lynch law and its strange fruit. Don't worry, someone would develop White City, but someone else, dig, Would make tracks as a singer of swing, the "Oklahoma Nightingale," Burning up the road to Kansas City in an oil-black Packard, then Back down to OKC to gig with the Blue Devils in a Deep Deuce Café where elusive brilliance, beguiling the midnight hour over A scarred deal table, tapped its toe and took notes for Invisible Man. The mapped outline is a schematic hand or gun, with the Panhandle's Index or barrel drawing a bead on former Comanche grasslands. Stolid one-horse towns like Guymon, Beaver, and Texhoma endure that Measureless vacancy, its natural monument the Black Mesa, Noted as the highest elevation and a landmark transition To the True West. Peculiar how four geographic sectors converge On one pivotal state, the pipeline crossroads for an automotive Nation. When Kerouac got his kicks on Route 66, he may have Led Tulsans Joe Brainard and Larry Clark to pull up stakes for the East And become fixtures in New York's downtown arts scene, never mind the fact That I Remember's largely unread in the town remembered in it. Daily you'll hear Westminster chimes on the campus of T.U., ringing "Here in OK - we speak English." And so one does all over the state, But spiked with Soonerisms, as in, "Hit's rainin big," or "The man was Drunker than Cooter Brown," or, "I've seen goat-ropins and worm-wrestles, but Nothing like this,"or "He looked like trouble going somewhere to happen." Which no one said about Karen Silkwood, the night she left a union Meeting in Crescent, invaded by plutonium, the ingested Downer an autopsy detected to date not yet accounted for. Lawton's Fort Sill, Tulsa's Lockheed, and McAlester's ammunition Plants evidence the martial character of a people whose staked claims Were often guaranteed by gunfire, and whose blood paid for conflicting Rebel and Yankee loyalties. No better training for war than team Spirit - just ask Jim Thorpe, or, since you can't, inspect the medals displayed In his house at Yale. Where's the Wrestling Hall of Fame but in Stillwater? Alumnus Garth Brooks could show it to you some Homecoming Weekend, just Before the annual dustup between Cowpokes and Sooners. Notice, On the other hand, Egypto-Great-Plains grandeur as evoked by grain Elevators towering over Elk City and Ardmore. For, when Oklahomans weren't fighting, they were farming vast tablelands whose Waving wheat inspired Prairie School lyrics by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Even if "the wind comes sweeping down the plain" rather understated Those middle counties' weather-breeding propensities. Watch the twister As pure turmoil lowers a drill-pipe to strike a gusher of red earth From drought-struck, depressed homesteads, a bowl that, back in 1935, Yielded no...