This Is How Stories Happen
I’ve always had something of a love/hate relationship with my home state. I think this is due largely to the fact that I’ve always had a healthy case of wander lust, but too few opportunities to satisfy it. I have as a consequence lived my entire life in Oklahoma, a state which tends to be the butt of jokes and redneck stereotypes. To be fair, the things we often make the news for aren’t really things to be proud of. It has a certain amount of culture, but it’s also sorely lacking in important things like Ikea and In-N-Out Burger and truly excellent pizza. The weather here is subject to unpleasant extremes, which provides for pretty good conversation-starters but isn’t all that fun to live through. But on the other hand, it’s quite a pretty state, especially up here in the Northeastern corner of the state where I live. There’s a reason they call this part of the state Green Country.
I grew up in a rural housing addition nestled atop a set of cliffs overlooking Oologah Lake, just a few miles across the shore from the birthplace and boyhood home of Will Rogers. Yes, that Will Rogers, the cowboy philosopher, vaudeville entertainer and movie star, the one with the Broadway show about his life, who never met a man he didn’t like. About eight miles up the road from my neighborhood in the opposite direction sits the Will Rogers Memorial Museum, where he and his family are buried. Growing up halfway between the man’s birthplace and final resting place, it’s kind of hard not to know a little bit about him.
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