Oklahoma, Bugtusle, Carl Albert,Southern Biggotry
I don't know what made me think of all that this quiet Sunday in Tucson, but I did. Bugtustle, Oklahoma. My God, there is actually a place with that name. I haven't thought about that sleepy little town since I was in it. Carl Albert, speaker of the US House of Representatives under President Ford, both able men, hailed from Bugtustle. I was working in a resort in Chekotah, giving a tour of the place to a group of Tulsa minister's wives when we began chatting about small towns in Oklahoma, and I dropped the name of Bugtustle and how funny it was to roll off the tongue.
Offended at my comment, the woman with the heavy southern accent, flamed at me, saying she didn't need to hear any " lectures from Northern Carpetbaggers." Imagine that I said to her, Northern Carpetbaggers, I interjected...I hadn't heard that expression since high school history class in the late fifties. Did I just drop out of reality into a worm - hole? This was the wife of a MINISTER OF ONE OF THE BIGGEST CHURCHES IN TULSA!! The others just nodded their heads in agreement.
In Tulsa there are churches that jam 1,000 people per service each Sunday and they have " 3 shows" each Sunday. And, I've noticed three or four such houses of worship every five or six blocks. Is this the kind of teaching dispatched from the pulpits, southern style?
PEOPLE, THE CIVIL WAR IS OVER.
Tulsa is the second largest city in Oklahoma, and seemingly one of the most progressive in the state. If "it" is not happening there, it sure is not anywhere else in Oklahoma.
Bugtustle is a weird little town not too far from Tulsa. It is, very much like all the other quiet, weird small western Oklahoma towns in that state. They all look the same - like western movie sets. You would expect to see buck-boards being drawn up the main streets by guys wearing hats and packing six-guns. Such is Bugtustle.
My late wife and I were held hostage in Oklahoma (I exaggerate for effect) while I managed an airport Radisson in Tulsa for the best part of five years. The economy at the time was so bad, we could not escape. We spent the weekends cruising the country-side learning (?) about modern day Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas (heh,heh!!) just to escape the work-day world of Tulsa. An hour north is the Kansas border and a quick jaunt west is Sedan, Kansas, the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder's log cabin from whence she penned some of her famous books.
A dear friend, James Lee (no relation to Robert E Lee, referred to his work place as TULSA, assidously avoiding the word oklahoma, to friends outside the state, for fear of embarassment. To the humiliation of native Oklahomans, we stopped reminding foliks that movie of the same name was NOT FILMED THERE, but in southern ARIZONA, at a location 12 miles north of the Mexican border near Nogales.
The medical care in Oklahoma, my late wife and I were lucky to get a specialist who trained at MD Anderson,(Houston) but alas, too late....some of the vets we were seeing in Tulsa and the mis-diagnoses well.....
My Point: all the towns are alike, they look alike, feel alike, seem alike. I wondered, if that being the case, is it any wonder if they produced people who all thought alike?
On the positive side, Oklahoma produced
Offended at my comment, the woman with the heavy southern accent, flamed at me, saying she didn't need to hear any " lectures from Northern Carpetbaggers." Imagine that I said to her, Northern Carpetbaggers, I interjected...I hadn't heard that expression since high school history class in the late fifties. Did I just drop out of reality into a worm - hole? This was the wife of a MINISTER OF ONE OF THE BIGGEST CHURCHES IN TULSA!! The others just nodded their heads in agreement.
In Tulsa there are churches that jam 1,000 people per service each Sunday and they have " 3 shows" each Sunday. And, I've noticed three or four such houses of worship every five or six blocks. Is this the kind of teaching dispatched from the pulpits, southern style?
PEOPLE, THE CIVIL WAR IS OVER.
Tulsa is the second largest city in Oklahoma, and seemingly one of the most progressive in the state. If "it" is not happening there, it sure is not anywhere else in Oklahoma.
Bugtustle is a weird little town not too far from Tulsa. It is, very much like all the other quiet, weird small western Oklahoma towns in that state. They all look the same - like western movie sets. You would expect to see buck-boards being drawn up the main streets by guys wearing hats and packing six-guns. Such is Bugtustle.
My late wife and I were held hostage in Oklahoma (I exaggerate for effect) while I managed an airport Radisson in Tulsa for the best part of five years. The economy at the time was so bad, we could not escape. We spent the weekends cruising the country-side learning (?) about modern day Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas (heh,heh!!) just to escape the work-day world of Tulsa. An hour north is the Kansas border and a quick jaunt west is Sedan, Kansas, the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder's log cabin from whence she penned some of her famous books.
A dear friend, James Lee (no relation to Robert E Lee, referred to his work place as TULSA, assidously avoiding the word oklahoma, to friends outside the state, for fear of embarassment. To the humiliation of native Oklahomans, we stopped reminding foliks that movie of the same name was NOT FILMED THERE, but in southern ARIZONA, at a location 12 miles north of the Mexican border near Nogales.
The medical care in Oklahoma, my late wife and I were lucky to get a specialist who trained at MD Anderson,(Houston) but alas, too late....some of the vets we were seeing in Tulsa and the mis-diagnoses well.....
My Point: all the towns are alike, they look alike, feel alike, seem alike. I wondered, if that being the case, is it any wonder if they produced people who all thought alike?
On the positive side, Oklahoma produced
- Gene Autry
- An Astronaut
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