Can I Write Oklahoma?

GREAT BOOK, BAD OKLAHOMA

If you've not seen it yet, editors Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey put together a fine new hardcover book State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, with essays by 50 writers of the 50 states. It's fashioned -- with its neat cover and concept -- as a reprisal of the WPA Guides, a Federal Writers' Project during FDR's administration. Some pieces are great -- Dave Eggers' spirited case for why Illinois is the best state (because of skyscrapers, Lincoln, license plates, friendliness) is hilarious, and rather convincing.

Others are misfires. Anthony Bourdain reinforces the image of Jersey suburbia -- a slave to New York City -- in his ultra-personal history of New Jersey, and misses an opportunity to talk of its actual rural heart (unseen from the turnpikes). His call, I guess. Meanwhile, Said Sayrafiezadeh from New York's Lower East Side stumbles through the most obvious South Dakota sites, akin to 'City Slickers,' without saying anything meaningful of a state with pink highways or touching on anything beyond the obvious. OK, maybe, in another venue, but unsatisfying for the purposes of this book.

The worst, so far (I'm not finished reading), is Oklahoma's chapter, written by Tulsan SE Hinton, who remains Oklahoma's turn-to writer though she's only known for a handful of teen books written three to four decades ago.

Of course I'm an Okie, so I take it the most personally.

In her four-page entry (the briefest in the book), she explains why she still lives in Oklahoma. She quotes Will Rogers a few times, talks about how meteorologists are 'demi gods' there, throws an offhand note that 'no state is prouder of its Native American heritage'. That's fine enough, but it all comes off a bit like back-cover blurbs, designed to sell a guidebook ('Oklahoma has all kinds of terrain...'). That she wrote it (in a day?) while being iced in her Tulsa home during the December 2007 ice storm makes it feel more like a break from her boredom. A crossword puzzle for her to pass the time.

Other writers bother to return to their homes for the story, talk with locals to give life or other perspective.

Suggestions for what SE Hinton could have talked about:

* Oklahoma has the best state shape in the country. And the reason is because Texas wanted slaves. After the Missouri Compromise forbid slavery over the 36-30 parallel, so they just sliced off the top of their panhandle.

* Oklahoma has the best state flag in the country. And the only one devoted to Native American themes.

* Rand McNally once famously forgot to include Oklahoma in a road atlas.

* John Steinbeck immortalized Dust Bowl Okies' move west in The Grapes of Wrath, but didn't bother to check much about the setting. He described a dusty flat plains for the Joads' hometown, but placed it in the hilly, green east of the state.

* Oklahoma is named for the Choctaw word for 'red man,' has more Native Americans than any other state (per capita), is planning a huge Native American museum in downtown OKC, and the state's nickname openly acknowledges law-breakers, the Sooners.

* That Oklahoma, like Kentucky, is a state without a clear region. It's sort of Great Plains (but with a FAR more diverse population than any state north of it), too western to be Midwest ultimately, and not south at all. In the end, Oklahoma is part of what I call the Texas sub-continent, linked to its rival big brother more than any of its other neighbors.

* Oklahoma's 'black towns' like Boley, which hosts a 'black rodeo' annually -- all legacies of towns settled shortly after the Civil War.

* Oklahoma is redder than any state -- election-wise (all counties went McCain in 08) -- yet OKC did the unthinkable by voting in a one-cent sales tax that helped improve itself more than any other American city in the past decade (eg Art Museum downtown, new library, putting water in the river, Bricktown canal, Ford Center, Flaming Lips Alley...)

SE Hinton calls Oklahoma a 'great place for a writer, a free place for a writer.' It may be so, but it's too bad she apparently made her case without leaving her home. A missed opportunity.

State by State, can we do this one over?

Rugby Flashback

MORE FROM NORTH DAKOTA
I went well out of my way, on May 10, 2001, to reach Rugby, ND, the geographical center of the North American continent. A little on a Great Plains map can mean hours -- and I didn't question my decision for a second. This is my journal entry:

The Rugby visitors center is why you travel.

Located across the road from the cute stacked-stone geographical center of North America marker, the worker here -- dressed in a 'Rugby - Geographical Center of North America' jacket -- is a serious, bald, 35-year-old local who sells Mexico and Canada flags along with US ones to keep the North American focus. He takes that seriously. He pulled out travel planners he's painstakingly collected from all 50 US states and much of Canada -- to have onhand, as a defacto representative of North American travel, here in a sad wind-swept town far from an interstate.

'It's something,' he said in an eager monotone, with a trace of a Fargo accent. 'You really learn which states have the highest tourism budgets and which don't.' Which have the least? 'Oh Virginia, definitely. They sent us just one guide. Said if we wanted more we'd have to pay postage,' he added without a trace of resentment. 'But New Jersey, they sent us cartons of magazines and brochures. They sent us 1000 New Jersey maps.' I laughed at this, but he clearly saw no humor in it.

Rugby wants to create a new visitors center, but ran out of money. He showed me three separate artists' renderings of a new proposed center. I left to check out the North American stone marker across the street, first asking if it really was the real geographical center.

'Oh no,' he said. 'The actual spot is 16 miles south -- in the middle of a swamp.'

North Dakota!

The USA's least-visited state -- sometimes misinterpreted as the coldest of the contiguous 48 (Maine is colder, for instance), and made fun of by a movie that takes place in next-door Minnesota (Fargo) -- is getting the last laugh on the rest of us, it appears. According to a New York Times article a few days ago, North Dakota is, more or less, taking a bypass around the recession. It enjoys a $1.2 million budget surplus, the nation's lowest unemployment rate and a recent rise in real-estate values. Good for them.

I've particularly been a fan of the state's punk-rock threats of renaming its state -- from 'North Dakota' to simply 'Dakota,' which pops up in its state legislature every couple years. Predictably South Dakota -- the more famous twin -- gets furious over the notion, but I can't help but wonder if more states should remain fluid with its nomenclature.

Some examples:

*New Jersey --> York. The only thing that could possibly make New Jersey cool is upsetting New York (the Boss certainly hasn't done it). Another option would be simply Manhattan. Clearly 'Jersey' isn't working.
*West Virginia --> Authentic Virginia. No one will know which came first after 80 years.
*Oklahoma Panhandle --> Actual Massachusetts
*Michigan's Upper Peninsula --> Better Wisconsin
*Drop the New. Why does every 'new' state (eg New Hampshire, New York, New Mexico) feel the need to qualify itself with an adjective? Think anyone will confuse New York with the old one anymore?

I should also note that Virginia and Georgia are the laziest state names in the US. Maybe we can do something about that.

In the innocent-and-free days of early 2001, Lonely Planet offered me two projects: island hopping in the Caribbean, or driving around the USA's Great Plains. And I immediately took the latter, the 24,000-mile drive still remains my favorite trip I've taken. I had a great week in North Dakota, stopping in Grand Forks for lame university-troupe comedy and a bowl of cream of wheat in its birthplace. I saw Sitting Bull's grave, the wonderful badlands of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, and went well out of my way to the clunky International Peace Garden that straddles Manitoba/Dakota lines -- it was built to show the world how peace can last, just before WWII broke out. My car was searched crossing back from an hour in Manitoba. The most intense border experience of my life.

I arrived in Fargo the day its brand new tourist information center -- fashioned from a giant grain elevator -- was launching a seasonal 'visit North Dakota!' campaign. The staff were down though, as that day FUJI film deemed Fargo as the 'least photogenic' city in the country. That's just mean. You'd think a film company would appreciate the trials and tribs of good photography, rather than taking an easy kick at a three-legged dog.

No more FUJI for me!