Into Oklahoma

 I am fairly confident that Charlie Stross hasn’t been to Oklahoma. (How did he erase that post I made about meeting him in Boston? Magic?) I actually don’t think that Oklahoma represents the future any more than Japan does … but I think he’d find it rather more interesting. It is more interesting! 

 
I am of the generation where the name Oklahoma brings to mind a devasting terrorist attack, the ending of a forgettable Tom Cruise movie, and a very boring musical that I suffered through with the family of a rich girlfriend back in the early 1990s. Plus the Senatorial tag team of Inhofe and Coburn. Mr Inhofe is ... uh. Mr Coburn is much better. I have friends and colleagues who share many of his political beliefs (well, except for the Rachel Carson weirdness, and the high-school-lesbianism-plague thing) and with whom I get along perfectly well. In fact, all accounts indicate that the President of the United States and the junior Senator from Oklahoma get along great at a personal level. In another age, they’d be Johnson and Dirksen redux.

We do not live in that age. The reason, of course, lies in the parliamentary nature of our national parties, particularly the GOP. That said, Oklahoma politics are rather different from what you find in the two states with which I am intimately familiar, Massachusetts and New York. In 2007, for example, the great state of Oklahoma passed an anti-immigration bill that went after businesses that employed undocumented immigrants. Many anti-immigration liberals approve of such laws (or say they do), but the Oklahoma law also banned anyone from providing shelter or transportation in addition to employment and required the police to check the immigration status of any arrestees. (A court recently threw out many of the employer sanctions.) It didn’t quite go quite as far as the current Arizona law, which mandates that the police stop anyone whom they suspect might be in the country illegally or allow citizens to sue the authorities for non-enforcement, but it was certainly a bit more radical than anything you would expect from a Northeastern legislature.  

Oklahoma does have a Democratic governor, Brad Henry, who just vetoed a bill that purported to exempt Oklahomans from gun registration rules and background checks. He also vetoed a bill that would require all women desiring abortions to receive transvaginal sonograms (even after rapes) and force the doctor to describe the image to them. The legislature overrode Governor Henry, and now Oklahoman doctors cannot be sued for concealing birth defects from pregnant mothers. A bill to exempt the state from the Affordable Care Act just passed the lower chamber 71-27, and some lawmakers have begun to discuss creating a state militia separate from the National Guard.

I wasn’t thinking about politics on the flight into Tulsa, but one of the fellows in the row in front of me on the short hop from Dallas turned out to be born-and-raised in southern California. The flight crew of the airplane was based in Los Angeles, so he struck up a conversation with the very nice blonde lady in charge of our cabin. He said to her that he’d never go back and loved Texas. She asked why, and he said, “It’s a red state. Our legislature is part time. They all go home to real jobs.” The flight attendant nodded sagely and turned the conversation to the weather.

Downtown Tulsa is an only-in-America sort of dead. It isn’t a run-down dead, like Buffalo or most Southern small towns. And it certainly isn’t an abandoned dead, like Detroit. It’s just ... empty. The impression is of an old downtown now preserved under glass. Perhaps “undead” is the right word? The people are there, you just can’t see them. A disproportionate number of the few people you see appear to be unemployed long-haired (male) musicians toting guitars and Army-surplus clothes from before 1981. Most of the rest appear to be down on their luck or stealing a smoke. The storefronts are well-maintained, but manage to look vacant even when they’re not. 

The fact is, of course, that downtown Tulsa is not dead in terms of office space. The energy companies that operate here want to be near their in-state bankers and someplace they can convince their out-of-state bankers to spend some time. They also want to be near their competitors and the petroleum club and nice hotels. (Which is why Holiday Inn was just renovated and the Hotel Ambassador a few blocks south of downtown proper is such a success.)

 
Now, to be fair, Tulsa is not downtown. Just a few miles away is a highly manicured upscale collection of shopping malls. It could be one of the nicer parts of California. Drivers are nicer than in California, save for a disconcerting tendency to pull right into the parking spot next to people who are pulling out, and the people at the post office know each other by name. The schoolyards are full of laughing pale-skinned children. A disproportionate number of billboards advertise gun shows and tattoo parlors.

 
Okay, it isn’t as exotic as Dar-es-Salaam, but I liked it.

Comments

[Bernard Guerrero]

Sounds a lot like Fort Worth, FWIW. I like the FW Petroleum Club, we hold off-sites their on occasion.

[Marcia]

Bernard: and I thought it sounded like San Antonio, which in turn had reminded me of Sacramento, where I grew up.

Noel, I like your travelogue posts in general, but the middle-America ones are most fun for me to read.

[Noel Maurer]

Thank you, Marcia! I appreciate the compliment.

Over at another blog, a guy named Spike Gomes blasted me about this post. The blog owner took the comments down since he knew me and knew I'd be bit-chomping to start a flame war, but I'm still wondering what exactly bothered Spike enough to get personal about it.

I think my sardonicism may come across as condescension. There were a few comments alleging that in my Puerto Rico posts. I think I'm going to have to rip into Brooklyn at some point.

Except that wouldn't be fair, since Brooklyn has changed so much since 1988! The spot on Earth most like where I grew up would now be ... Philadelphia.

Dennis?

[Marcia]

You got blasted? Sorry I missed the kerfluffle. Is he from Oklahoma?

I've never been to middle America save for airport stopovers and three visits to Texas. I agree, it's hard to write from a "wow, this is new to me" POV without its being mistaken for condescension.

[Noel Maurer]

I'm pretty sure that he's from Hawaii.

The alternative tone is that treacly "Ain't this all wonderful!" vibe given off by too many travel writers.

What I don't understand is how he got the impression that I think Oklahoma is "quaint." He didn't answer when I asked.

[Jonathan]

I don't think it's condescending. Keep up the good work.