I was just a young boy when my family moved to Phoenix from Oklahoma City in March 1957.
My dad got a job in the composing room at The Arizona Republic when he stopped to visit relatives on the way back to Oklahoma from California. He happened to see The Republic was looking for additional personnel in a classified ad in the daily paper.
He had been working at the Santa Monica newspaper the previous year. He originally went to work after the end of World War II at the Daily Oklahoman. He was locked out of his job along with other union employees in a labor dispute in 1955.
As I mentioned earlier, we moved to Phoenix in 1957. That’s not a very long time to develop loyalties to such a thing as a state or city. But, every time I cross over the Oklahoma border I get this feeling that I’m an “Okie” once again.
In general, Oklahomans are very friendly. They endure probably the worst weather in the world. You can have high temperatures in the summer combined with plenty of humidity. Winters can have heavy snowfalls and, worse yet, ice storms that make for stressful driving.
Tornadoes are frequent, unwelcomed visitors there. In fact, more tornadoes touch down in Oklahoma than in any other location in the world.
And you can have a mix of both winter and summer in the same day. I remember days where it was 75 degrees at 5 p.m. and three inches of snow on the ground by 8 p.m.
But this sense of Okie pride took hold when I read that the National Newspaper Association convention was going to be held in Tulsa this year.
It was held Oct. 5 through 7 in the northeastern Oklahoma city. I asked my son, Brent, to attend with me. The first meeting I attended was the foundation board, which I have served on as board member for a number of years. I announced my retirement and was thanked for my years of service.
I almost didn’t make it to the meeting after an incident in an Oklahoma City suburb that delayed our departure the next morning for the hour and a half drive to Tulsa.
Diane and I had checked into our hotel and decided to get a quick bite to eat.
There was a Buffalo Wild Wings across the street from the hotel, but Diane wasn’t in the mood for wings. Neither was I.
We found a good burger place in a nearby shopping center. We drove toward what looked like an exit. It had a large puddle of rainwater covering the area. We later learned that Oklahoma City had a record rainfall that day of nearly three inches.
We proceeded slowly through the puddle when suddenly we heard a loud thunk. Diane first tried to go into reverse. We went nowhere. The same when she attempted to go forward. We were obviously hung up on something. A man riding by on a bicycle asked if he could help. He put some large rocks below our front tires. “Now, put it in reverse,” he said. It didn’t work.
“I think you’re going to have to call a towing service,” he said.
Seemingly out of nowhere, five guys were suddenly in front of our car. Together, they were able to dislodge the car from what turned out to be a concrete street curb. I thought it was odd that as I looked at them through the windshield, each was of a different race. One was African-American, another was Hispanic, one was Native American, another was Asian and the other was the bike rider who had red hair in a pony tail.
I looked at Diane and said, “Were those guys our angels?” They disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared.
The location where we were stuck had previously been an exit, but there were no signs indicating it was now a curb. The day’s rain and runoff had deposited about 10 inches of red clay mud covering the curb.
The next morning while repacking the car, Diane noted there was fluid dripping from the front end.
Before heading to Tulsa, I said we had better get this checked out. About then I looked up and saw a GMC sign. There was a dealership on the other side of the highway.
It turns out we suffered a cracked radiator and a smashed air conditioning condenser. Suddenly our new Acadia was no longer new.
We got a loaner car and drove to Tulsa so I could make the meeting at the convention. Diane drove back and picked up our SUV the next day.
After this incident, we wondered what the next part of our journey would bring us.
