Five Oh

At some point for some Americans, visiting all 50 of the states that make up our nation becomes a thing. I'm one of those Americans. I guess it became a thing for me in about the mid-1990s when a trip to the upper Midwest had me traveling to and through Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois in a single week. Now, I realize four of 50 in seven days or so might not seem like a lot of progress, but at that point, I thought the end goal of the whole half century was probably achievable if I set my mind to it. 

So I did. Not every year, necessarily. It came in fits and starts. I made a push in 2001 when I knocked off Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Nevada in two jaunts out west and really put the pedal to the metal on a cross-country drive in 2011 when I picked up Missouri, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho and Oregon. That gave me 40. Within spitting distance, as you might say.

It's been super tough since then. It took me 32 years to get to the first 40. 12 years after that east coast to west coast drive, I had only picked up eight more to get me to 48. Louisiana. Utah. Alabama. Hawaii. Alaska. North Dakota. Arkansas. Nebraska. All in the books. And if the age math doesn't make sense (since I'm 56 now), I didn't start this thing until I got to the United States in 1979 when I was 11.

And so at the beginning of this year, it was down to the last two: Kansas and Oklahoma. If there was a silver lining to those two being the last two, it was that they are next to one another.

The Outsiders House Museum, used in the filming of the movie of the same name, Tulsa.

With just two left, it was kind of time to end this thing. 

So last month, we hopped on a plane at National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, and landed in Kansas City, Missouri. The next day, we drove west to Lawrence and then Topeka in Kansas and then headed south for Tulsa. At 6 p.m. on Friday, May 24, we hit the border of Oklahoma. 50 states. Done!

I feel like I really accomplished something here. I mean, how many people really do this in their lives? I know maybe two or three people who have done this. It's definitely a club that not a lot of people will join. Most Americans will never get there. I made it at 55 years old (OK...almost 56), although (again) I didn't even get to this country until I was 11. There's no doubt that this is a marathon-type of task. I'm glad I did it because I've been chasing it for so, so long.

But honestly, this didn't feel like I thought it would feel. I wasn't super elated and I didn't really feel an amazing sense of completing something epic when I crossed into Oklahoma, although one could argue that's exactly what I have done. Maybe it's the fact that that 50th trigger was literally driving over an imaginary line and stopping at a pretty graphically uninspired-looking sign (see above). Maybe it's because it's been so long coming and had started to feel a little like a bit of a chore. Or maybe, it's because it was Oklahoma, and Kansas before it, and these two were clearly last for one reason and one reason alone: we really couldn't think what we'd be doing there if we ever visited.

I know that's unfair. And I now know it's a total misjudgment. At least of Oklahoma (sorry, Kansas) where we spent three days exploring after crossing the threshold.

Buck Atom, Route 66, Tulsa. One of the many repurposes muffler men out there in the West.

Let me say three things before I move on and/or forget to write these three things.

First, I tried to do this the right way. I didn't count fly throughs and I wouldn't count a state as visited unless I did something tangible and memorable when visiting. No just driving over the border for some lunch or driving through a state. Stopping and visiting something related to tourism or real life in the state was required. 

Second, all the "we" words in the narrative about getting to the border of Oklahoma is important because it wasn't me getting to 50 states. We've spent a lot of effort over the last couple of years getting my wife caught up to me so we could do this together. At the beginning of this year she had one more state than me left: the two I was missing and Missouri. Which is why we went to Kansas City first.

Third, this quest has been very much an immigrant's quest. I remember very distinctly our arrival to this country in Boston on July 25, 1979. Or maybe that's not quite right. Maybe it's that I remember three things very distinctly about our first moments in Massachusetts. These are (1) I'd never been anywhere so hot; I think the temperature and humidity were both north of 90 that day; (2) I'd never been in a car with air conditioning, which, you know, was appreciated that day; and (3) I'd never been anywhere so green. England is often referred to as green but I'd never seen forests like I saw alongside of I-90 that day. 

I love this country and I'm glad I've seen a bit of all of its 50 states.

The scissor-tailed flycatcher, Oklahoma's state bird. Somewhere near Pawhuska.

So about Oklahoma being awesome...I think I would have been way more excited to enter my state number 50 if I knew how much I'd get out of my time there. I mean it ended up being one of those places that astonished me. I connected so well with a lot of what we found and did there. 

It happens. Every so often we find someplace that we end up loving way more than we possibly could have imagined. I think the last place we felt this way about was Rapid City, South Dakota. If I had known everything we'd find in Oklahoma, I would have been elated to cross that border. Like most places we travel that we haven't visited before, we usually end up finding something that changes our perspective. That too was true of Oklahoma.

So why was Oklahoma amazing? How about music? How about birds? How about pop culture? 

We actually had a bird quest in Oklahoma. We were on a mission to find the state bird, the scissor-tailed flycatcher somewhere in the state. And we found one. Or more than one. Several actually, along with some eastern meadowlarks, a nighthawk, our first indigo buntings of the season and what is likely to be our new species obsession: the painted bunting. We've already earmarked a swamp in the Everglades where these birds, which look like they've been hit by a rainbow that stuck, spend the winter months. These trips keep popping up.

We found music in the Woody Guthrie Center. We skipped the Bob Dylan Center, but swung by the Church Studio where Leon Russell, Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, J.J. Cale (of course!) and others have recorded without going in (closed on Memorial Day). We also found a cool place to hear live music in the Mercury Lounge where we also appreciated their very loud and clear message of inclusiveness and not being a jerk. OK, so the Lounge used a different word.

And for pop culture fans (and for very different sorts of pop culture fans actually) we toured The Outsiders house in North Tulsa and spent a half day or so out in Pawhuska, which is the center of The Food Network's Pioneer Woman (a.k.a. Ree Drummond) empire. Both are very different kinds of pilgrimages. The Outsiders House is just a labor of love that's been embraced by about everyone who had about anything to do with the movie adaptation of Tulsa's own S.E. Hinton's novel which she started writing when she was 15. The staying power of that work and the movie Francis Ford Coppola made out of it is impressive.

The interior of Greenwood Rising, preserving the memory of Tulsa's Black Wall Street.

And if all that weren't enough, Route 66 goes right the way through the state, entering Oklahoma at the very northeast corner and extending all the way to the western border before passing into the Texas panhandle. And the eastern end of that road has what have to be some of the Mother Road's kitschiest and most classic attractions. 

Blue Whale of Catoosa? Visited! And let me say that attraction is the most amazing and most useless thing all at the same time. Why someone would build this thing in the first place is way beyond my ability to comprehend but I'm glad it's there. And I'm glad we visited to see beyond the one classic view of this place (which I have duplicated by my own hand below). Yes, it's silly and nonsensical and yes, it's totally worth visiting.

A little bit west of Catoosa in Tulsa (and a little bit off Route 66 to be honest) is the Golden Driller, a monument to Tulsa's original source of wealth. This one built in 1966 is actually the third golden driller and it's the largest free-standing statue in the world at 76 feet high. Yes, that's a real oil derrick his elbow is resting upon.

Then right in the middle of Tulsa on Route 66 there's a former muffler man turned space voyager outside Buck Atom's Cosmic Curios. One day, there's going to be a blog post from me about muffler men. These things are icons of the American west road trip. I just need to see enough to write something meaningful (right now I'm at two).

Look, I get that there's nothing to do with these things except just look at them or walk into them a little bit (Blue Whale) and then turn around and walk out again. But this stuff is part of American roadtripping history. Before videogames or iPads or GPSes and whatever else occupies our time when on the open road or tells us where to go, these side of the road attractions were landmarks when traveling between Point A and sometimes very distant Point B. They matter.

So admittedly not everything that we encountered in Oklahoma was wonderful. It never is when we travel. There's always something, it seems. Our something in Oklahoma had nothing to do with the people that we met or what happened to us while we were there. It had to do with the place's history. Tulsa is the site of one of the worst race riots in the history of the United States. And considering our country's history with race riots, that's saying a lot.

Oklahoma was settled effectively by sanctioned land grabbing. I'm dumbing this down a lot but the state was opened up to settlement on a first come, first served basis for anyone who wanted to plant a flag in a plot of land and farm it. There was literally a single start time where settlers lined up at a sort of starting line and rushed to get their land once the gun went off. Sure, some jumped the event by a day or so (the "Sooners") but the starting line thing is basically how it worked. Or at least that's how I understand it. I am sure I am way, way off.

Not all the land in what would become the State of Oklahoma (state number 46, in case you were wondering...) was desirable. So when it came time to welcome resettled native Americans and freed former slaves into the state, the leftover, less desirable land got given to those groups. Only it turned out to be not so undesirable because the powers that be had actually conveyed oil rich lands into the hands of those they meant to really not give anything valuable to. 

Oil led to wealth, and failing to find white businesses to take their money (every time we find out about segregation in this country, it's so disappointing, stupid and shortsighted), the black oil-rich landowners built their own business community which thrived better than most other places in the State of Oklahoma and really likely most places in the United States.

Then in 1921, a misunderstanding, a few lies and rumors and a whole lot of white jealousy and hate exploded into the wholesale destruction of the neighborhood that had been built in the Greenwood section of Tulsa, along with some out and out murders and really no consequences faced for those that started or participated in all the crimes committed against the city's black residents that day and night. It continues to amaze me how people can unleash this kind of violence on fellow people because their skin is a different color. 

The whole ordeal, including the events and conditions leading up to the riot and the completely unsatisfying aftermath, is documented in the pretty new Greenwood Rising Museum. Stroll around outside before or after your visit and read the plaques in the sidewalk detailing all of what used to be there and was never rebuilt. It's important we not forget these things.

And I thought there was nothing to do in Oklahoma. No reason to visit. Wrong! Wrong! And wrong! Oklahoma gave a good accounting for itself. It was worth saving until last, even if that wasn't my intention in any way.

The Blue Whale of Catoosa. A Route 66 classic since 1972.

But my most vivid memory of Oklahoma is also my worst memory of Oklahoma. 

On our first full day in the state, we took a drive from Tulsa to Pawhuska to do all things Pioneer Woman and maybe a couple of other things prairie-like for the day. Our route out there took us from Oklahoma State Routes 75 and 11, passing small town after small town on the way to a town about the same size as all those we passed. At one point on our drive, we encountered a detour that wasn't on Google Maps. No issue, it was simple enough to drive around. As we detoured, we rubbernecked a bit and tried to see what was going on. We ultimately passed by supposing that the center of town was off limits for some Memorial Day weekend event and we kept going to Pawhuska.

While in Pawhuska, we learned that a town named Barnsdall nearby had been hit by a tornado just the previous week. The stories sounded heartbreaking. An octogenarian who refused to leave town found 2-1/2 miles from the town courtesy of the tornado. A four year old who walked away without a scratch while both his parents were in the ICU and not yet conscious. Homes wiped out leaving survivors with nothing. We wondered if Barnsdall was the town with the detour and that it was not some celebration that was causing the re-routing of traffic, but the scene of a natural disaster. 

Sure enough, on our way back down Route 11, we passed by Barnsdall with an unexpected detour. From the west side of town you wouldn't have known anything was amiss and when we passed along the south perimeter, we could see a tree or two downed.

But when we came around the east side of town, we saw what had happened. We came across downed trees at first and seconds later noticed an entire swath of wooded area with trees that were stripped bare. There was not a single leaf or any small branch of these things, just trunks and substantial limbs completely denuded. Behind the trees, clearly visible, was a hill of shattered and shredded building materials. Anything and everything that can be used to make a house just in an untidy pile and not suitable for any sort of reuse. We had driven right by all this on the way to Pawhuska and hadn't noticed any of this.

The worst was beyond the naked trees: an entire section of town gone. That mountain of building materials? What used to be people's homes on what now were just empty lots. There was nothing except a masonry church. Everything else was gone. The devastation and precision with which this funnelcloud took from the families who used to live there was shocking and jarring. I've seen news footage of the type of destruction that can be caused by a tornado. It's way worse in real life. What are these survivors supposed to do? Mother Nature is still the boss, no matter how much we think we own this planet. It's a heck of a memory to leave Oklahoma with but at least I got to go home. My heart goes out to that town. Chilling.

No pictures of this one. Didn't think it was appropriate. But there is plenty of footage of the aftermath on the internet. I'll leave it to you to search for it. Tulsa and every part of Oklahoma we visited was amazing. Barnsdall is my most lasting memory. Sometimes when we travel we find things that we don't expect. It's all worth it, even if it's sometimes heartbreaking.

Foreshadowing. Not Oklahoma. Seen at the Kansas City airport.