This popped out last night and I wrote it down!

We were traveling down the highway on our way to one of the Mecca’s of our counter culture. I sat in the backseat of the car contemplating the country side. If you have not lived on the plains then I doubt you could ever understand the feelings they can create. The trees grow in the gullies at the bottom of the hills and then its scrub oak thicket that you can’t penetrate without being covered with sticker weeds and ticks. If you walk on the prairie land in the summer sun you will more than likely wake the next day with your ankles covered with chiggers. I sat there wondering what it was like to move into this country in the late nineteenth century. The lands outside the window were the last to be officially civilized in the continental US because they were deemed unworthy of occupation by white folk in the time of Andrew Jackson.

I listened to the sounds of the Last Lonely Eagle and Dirty Business on the drive with Jerry Garcia’s psychedelic pedal steel guitar blurring the images in my brain of Indians and outlaws and the similarities and differences between the past and the future. I was in heavy contemplation as we pulled off the highway at the Okemah exit. It was a typical highway filling station we stopped at for relief and to get our bearings. It was the only building on the south side of the highway from Okemah and it seemed to act as the tollgate as we entered the town. On the men’s room door was a huge poster of a marijuana leaf with a circle and a diagonal across it. In bold letters it stated “THIS IS THE ENEMY”, this message courtesy of the US Department of Agriculture. It seemed to be directed right at us as a warning or provocation and yet we reacted with uncontrolled laughter as the attendant looked on.

There we were in downtown Okemah around 11 am in search of the boy hood home of Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, I had been exposed to a few Woody Guthrie songs all my life (we sang them in grade school along with Erie Canal, 500 Miles, Comanche and Blowin’ in the Wind). In the late sixties early seventies Woody had become more than a legend to me. The collection that I was most familiar with was a Country Joe McDonald sings Woody songs that my brother picked up around this time. We played it over and over and figured out the chords and runs to our favorite songs. These songs had become a fundamental part of our persona along with the Grateful Dead, the Kinks (Muswell Hillbillies was worn through and through) and the regional favorites (Michael Murphy, Willis Alan Ramsey, Jerry Jeff and John Hartford) by the time we made this trip.

There was another recording of Woody songs that inspired me at that time, the Carnegie Hall Tribute. I could listen to Will Geer forever. I would play Grand Coulee Dam as loud as the stereo allowed and sing along trying to sound like Bob Dylan. In honesty, it was Bob Dylan, and his impact on us, that brought us to Okemah that day. The three of us, my brother Dennis, my friend Donnie and I, had, over the previous three years, developed images that couldn’t have startled the Okemah natives anymore if it had been Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia and John Lennon walking down the street. We walked up and down asking for directions to Woody Guthrie’s house. The people shied away with a glazed look without responding. We walked side by side down the street in the morning sunlight and it seemed as if we were the Clantons entering Tombstone looking for the Earps, with people peering out windows as we walked by. My mind kept wondering, how much of this would Woody recognize and how much of this would recognize Woody.

We entered the downtown Café at lunch time, and I felt as if someone had just turned the sound down in the entire world. It must have been a site, three long hairs entering the sacred domain, the downtown café, of conservative small town Oklahoma. The only table was way in the back of the room. A waitress called out breaking the silence, ‘boys, come on back here and have a seat.” You can imagine the visual noise we created as we crossed that room. I had been eating in places like this all my life and had never once felt the tension we created that day. I had a chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and white gravy and a side of green beans and ice tea to wash it down. It was pretty good but it wasn’t like moms. Gradually the background sound resumed with talk of blown clutches, jobs across town and the high school football team but always with an eye in our direction.

We left the café and stood in front for a minute or two. We had absolutely no idea where to go. Finally a fellow came out of the café in a less than conservative suit (sort of like the scene in easy rider with Jack Nicholson approaching Fonda and Hopper on the street) and, without a word from us, he told us to walk up north a block turn right (I believe it was the corner with the library) and walk east to second street (I believe it was second but its been along time), Then turn back up north and you will see on the hill an old shack that is way beyond its time. He said with a smile, “that is what you are searching for.”

Well, we found it there right in the middle of the hillside facing east. It weren’t much to look at. There was a basement dug into the hillside with broken walls and rubble strewn about. The house proper was three small rooms from the best I can remember. It wasn’t much to look at for such a journey. We walked from the basement to the rooms and from the rooms to the basement. We didn’t know what we were looking for or what we expected. The walls were covered with graffiti from the pilgrims of the world. Finally I sat approximately where Woody was in the picture I had scene of his family lined up in front of this house when he was about 10 (I guess), the one with his mother contorted with her hands behind her. I just sat there looking down the hill across the flatlands heading east from Okemah.

I thought of my family. I had a great grandfather from Pateau, a similar town just a few miles down that highway heading east. I had a grandfather born on the Washita River in Custer County on the other side of the state in 1901. I had family from the Boggy Country to the south and from right in Capital Hill in the center of the state. I thought of my grandfather, Pop, telling me stories of his life. Tales of growing up in the country, trading animal skins for spending money, pictures of him in a Ford with his hound and shotgun next to him lookin’ for a woman and getting into trouble when drink was involved. How he raised a family in the dirty thirties. How he hated FDR because he had a family when he lost his job grating roads to boys in the WPA. How he ran a filling station in the thirties and how people would honk and holler and he would bring soda pop to the cars. He told stories of leaving the family behind to help build lake Carl Blackwell near Stillwater. How he beamed with pride after he failed his security check when he applied for a job at Tinker Air Force Base in 1942 because he was not born in a State, he was born in Indian Territory. Tinker Field finally allowed him to settle in a house in OKC with my grandmother, aunt and mother (12 at the time). These are the things that filled my mind as a sat on that hillside that afternoon so long ago in a space once filled by Woody Guthrie.

I had to write something on those walls before I left. I remember writing: Hey Hey Woody Guthrie Bob wrote you a song. I finished that verse and to the best of my recollection was quite witty. We went to the cemetery and saw the headstone on an empty grave. It had been freshly laid at the time and it was quite controversial. Folks in those parts were all of the opinion that Woody was a communist. That is why they did not know what to make of us when we walked into that town in reverent honor of his memory. Those people in that Café and on that street had probably all voted for Richard Nixon twice in the recent past. Many probably hated me for what I represented (I wasn’t even sure what that was). I cultivated and relished that hatred. I was proud to dissent. But, as we drove away from that town, I realized these are my people. Pop would fit right in at that Café, right down to the silence and the stares as I walked in that door. They represent who and what I am as much as Woody Guthrie ever did. On the way to the car, two small boys aged around 7 rode up to us, flashed the peace and cried out mockingly, “Peace Hippies.” They rode away fast as if they feared retribution.

I learned something that day that I know old GWBush never learned, division and fear our powerful emotions that are nearly impossible destroy. Those people feared me because they were uncertain of what I represented. That is the world we live in today. Had we chased those kids down and slapped the hell out of them for mocking us the fears of that entire community would have been realized. They would have hated us, truly, deeply, potentially irreversibly hated us and all we represented. So violence does not seem to be the proper approach. However, don’t miss understand me, I have no intention of appeasing people like Pat Robertson and Osama Bin Laden. I am confrontational by nature. I had then and have now a low tolerance for those who profess righteousness and condone violence because God is on their side. It is the method of confrontation that is at issue. I know GW does not understand and I will vote for Kerry and hope he does. In 2004, no matter who wins this election, I am asking myself how can we, as people, communicate and develop rational approaches to eliminating the hatreds and fears that exist within and between Jews, Muslims, Christians, Nationalists, Socialists, Militarists, Pacifists, Whites, Blacks, Reds, Purples, Libertarians, Republicans and Democrats.

Hey PS...
Wow... you blew me away with your description of your visit to Okemah. I am a recent "convert" and have been to Okemah only the last two years. The people there seem to have embraced Woody and his legacy now.

Like you say, it is the divisiveness that hurts the most. Woody was one for 'the people'... ALL of the people... and we are the people!

Thank you!

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by Wyldflower on Nov 02, 2004 ---</FONT></center>

PS: You ought to get those thoughts published. The great unifier, dubya, turned out to be the great divider, and you hit lots of nails right on their heads.

Thanks for the comments. This rant just popped out I swear! I don’t know where this stuff is coming from. It is true. My grandfather did lose his job to the WPA when my mom was two back in 1932 in and around the area of Blanchard Oklahoma. The two little kids on bikes did shoot the peace sign and say “peace hippies” in a mocking fashion. I was 14 years old sitting on that hillside in Okemah thinking about these things all those years ago. I know there is a yearly Woody Guthrie festival in Okemah now (I have many friends and relatives who routinely attend). Those Red Dirt Musicians that are always there, the older ones anyway, I used to see in places with names like the Bar Ditch in Stillwater and the High Horse in Normal(n). I keep saying next year, I promise. But, I have moved to the east in search of fortune (the beautiful Susquehanna Valley). My migration east began with a trip to NYC in 1975 to understand Bob Dylan. Talk about a lofty goal but that is another story. My brother Dennis always gravitated west to the sound of the Dead (he stuck his thumb out on I-40 headed west one day when he was 15 and I guess he liked it out there in California). Oklahoma is a land we both dearly love though. I often tell people I meet here in the east what Hoyt Axton said, “Oklahoma is the Cultural Center of the Universe.” They look at me as if I jest. I mean it ever bit as much as Mr. Axton did! Before Dennis and I headed out on our respective migrations, we attended the first Woody Guthrie Memorial Festival in Oklahoma. It occurred on July 22, 1979 in the OKC Zoo Amphitheater. I was part of a movement to name this amphitheatre the Woody Guthrie Memorial Amphitheater when it opened in the seventies (it was built by WPA but had been in disrepair for years) but Woody’s name was to controversial at the time. The line up included Ramblin’ Jack, Sonny and Brownie and Arlo. Arlo was great (has anyone experienced a bad Arlo show?) but he didn’t sing Oklahoma Hills. As the theatre was emptying, Dennis and I started singing Oklahoma Hills at the bottom of the stage and we had plenty of people join in. It was a good time. I am telling you for sure, if you never saw Sonny and Brownie you missed an experience. These two cackled at each other like old hens who had shared a roost for 50 years, then Brownie start up playing his guitar and singing in that baritone voice and Sonny start up that Whoopin’ Doopin’ Harmonica Holler of his and my God it was cosmic. Sonny, he’d say, “Ol’ Woody liked it when I hollered it’d tickle him and he’d laugh and laugh and say holler again, he loved it when I hollered.”

<center><FONT COLOR="#000080">--- Edited 1 times, lastly by PSBeaty on Nov 04, 2004 ---</FONT></center>

a lot of people are going to Okemah soon. i was thinking about things from my youth and trips to Okemah and stuff and I was hearing some recent attacks on people from the Conservative Think tanks on the right. I heard this AM talk show thing going on where I swear it was out of that Randy Newman song about Lester Maddox and some smart ass New York Jew. The Lester character on this show was describing a good principled Jew like Leibowitz or Ben Stein who stands up for the wars against Islam, no matter who is fighting them. Jews a good Christian can be proud of not those damn liberal jews like Streisand and Springstein. A truly bizarre show. He went on to talk about how hypocritical the bad jew is and how they hide their money in Swiss bank accounts and don't live up to their principles. Then I ran on to this column about Bertoldt Brecht where they were giving him the same treatment. I remember an interview of Brecht I read once where he was proud to have a political exile from Nazi Germany, the USofA and East Germany during his lifetime. How does this remind me of Okemah, well, when I was a kid, there was a small minority of people in Oklahoma who wanted Woody recognized as a native son. Of course, the backlash was he was a communist but they also used that unprincipled communist arguement based on the Oklahoma Hills royalties controversy. I just remember these things, god knows why? (maybe sleeping pills will help?)

I also remember Arlo's mother on the Danny Williams show in about '72 or '73. She was in Oklahoma to gain support for a Huntington's Foundation of some sort. Danny (or 3D or Willard as he was known to the young of OKC, google him go ahead) was pretty cool even though he worked for Gaylord and was even married into the family I believe, when he talked of how Woody should be recognized as a native son of the state for what he did for Okies. I recall he said not in his lifetime would he expect that. Well, he is still on the radio in OKC (KOMA instead of WKY) and there is a big doo goin' on in Okemah. so who knows?

http://www.dddynamo.com/3dclr.html

just because it defines the times i suppose!

http://www.geocities.com/Nashville/3448/okemah2.html

at the time i was the only one used that bob wrote you a song meter on those walls, no one even cared somes up my vist, I wonder hmmmm? they say its changed though

It has changed. The street that takes you into town is Woody Guthrie Ave. They don't have a Woody Guthrie day; they have a Woody Guthrie week. "Welcome Woody Guthrie fans" is painted on store windows. An occasional kid driving by the Crystal Theatre yells, "Hippies!" thinking that it is a perjorative. The nicely coifed ladies titter at being called hippies and everyone else just grins. They love Woody now; of course, he brings a fair amount of business to the town. But mostly I think the change is heartfelt. The house burned, but the foundation stones are there, and this year someone has planted flowers and put in much-needed rough stone steps from street level to house level. We were there yesterday when Mary, Woody's first wife, came with relatives to visit the house site. She and Mary Jo are much revered and to be a Guthrie is quite a thing here, now.

are there any good enchiladas or chile relleno's?

I need to know they have finally gone civilized!

did you ask Randy Crouch if he was gonna play his trombone?