Falling in Love with Tulsa in 18 Trips
How the most inexplicable city clawed its way into my heart
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When I was in second grade a new girl was placed in my class. She was from Oklahoma and one of the snotty kids told me that everyone she’d met from Oklahoma smelled bad. The new girl didn’t smell bad, but that comment still lives in my head.
A few years later, on a family road trip to New Mexico, we stopped in Tulsa. Or maybe it was Oklahoma City. We were just there to eat at the far lesser Casa Bonita than the one in Denver.
And so I spent nearly 40 years thinking that would be the sum total of my Oklahoma experiences.
I have never, ever been more wrong about anything. Here’s what happened.
March 2012—During a rough spell in my life I distracted myself by reading and writing about Woody Guthrie, the Oklahoma folk musician who wrote “This Land is Your Land” (the ultimate American travel song) and influenced some of my favorite musicians. I landed a freelance writing gig covering a symposium and concert in Tulsa to mark Woody’s 100th birthday (He died in 1967). Tulsa didn’t impress me much, but I was blindsided by a life-changing trip to his hometown of Okemah 65 miles away. You can read about that in my Woody Guthrie book. Eventually.
July 2012—I stayed on the southern end of Tulsa to get to the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Okemah to hang out with Billy Bragg. I slept in Tulsa, and ate barbecued bologna for the first—but certainly not last—time.
March 2014—My “distraction” with Woody Guthrie turned into a full-fledged manuscript. I had friends scattered around the world I had met through my Woody travels in 2012. Two of them, Tim Z. Hernandez and Lance Canales—were in Tulsa to perform at the brand-new Woody Guthrie Center. Tulsa is 400 miles from my home, putting them practically in my neighborhood. I’m pretty sure Sterlin Harjo recorded their performance for a now-gone local indie publication. Afterward, Tim, Lance, my blog friend Debbie, and I spent a lovely evening over drinks, awaiting a rare snowstorm that wound up keeping me in Tulsa an extra day. I was staying in one of the beautiful Art Deco buildings downtown and spent the snow day working on my manuscript in a magical late-winter wonderland. I was developing a crush.
April 2016—A few months earlier, everyone I’ve ever met sent me a news story about unlikely presidential wannabe Donald Trump (hahahahahahahaha*sob*), and how his father was Woody’s landlord. Woody wasn’t a fan. But hey! I know the guy who broke the story! I met Dr. Will Kaufman during my 2012 research, so I reached out to congratulate him on a find in the Woody archives that would surely sway the Republican primaries (I don’t want to talk about it). In our conversation, he told me I should come to Tulsa in April when the center throws its birthday party with speakers and live music.
So I went. At the first talk of the day, I found myself sitting behind one of Woody’s nieces. She introduced herself and asked what brought me to the talk. I told her about my manuscript. She asked if I’d met Mary Jo, Woody’s youngest sister, then gave me a business card with Mary Jo’s address at an assisted care facility west in Shawnee. “Just show up,” she said. “She absolutely loves company and talking about Woody.”
The next day instead of going east toward home, I went west. And I spent a once-in-a-lifetime day with my hero’s baby sister. She was 94 and mostly bedridden, but mentally? Definitely sharper than me.
At one point she was talking about a time when Bob Dylan visited her. She pointed to the armchair where I was sitting and said, “Bobby was sitting right there and I told him…” I don’t remember the rest. Pretty sure I blacked out, sitting in Bobby’s chair.
Ok, Oklahoma. We’re in a thing now.
April 2017—I spent the week leading up to the Guthrie Center’s birthday celebration in Tulsa. My friend Tim’s Woody Guthrie book, All They Will Call You, had been released on Trump’s Inauguration Day. I attended an event for him early in the week, and then spent a few days editing my book. During that weekend’s events, I was introduced to David Amram, a musical powerhouse and one of the last living members of the inner circle of Beat poets and artists. He’s the one who set music to Jack Kerouac’s readings. And that day he gave me his number in case he could help with my book. And again, memories are fuzzy because blood stopped coursing through my brain.
The next day a massive storm moved our outdoor live music into a small back room at one of the coffeehouses where I had been writing all week. Will Kaufman was there, along with a couple of other fellows who approached me. “You’re Robin Wheeler, right?” I felt like the Woody Guthrie police had finally caught up with me, realizing I was a hack and a fraud, and were there to eject me from the festivities. That couldn’t be further from the truth. They were Woody researchers and scholars, Drs. Mark Fernandez and Gus Stadler. Professors. By the end of the night, they convinced me to apply to research in Woody’s archives, which are a part of the center. “But I don’t know what to look for,” I said. “Don’t worry. You’ll find what you need.”
January 2018—My application to research in the archives was accepted on the Tuesday after Labor Day. I submitted it the Friday evening before. For two weeks in the freezing wind of Oklahoma winter, I fought migraines while putting my eyes on priceless works Woody and his wife Marjorie had written. I found the thread my book needed on the first day. By day I researched. At night, I wrote, figuring out how to incorporate my newfound treasures into my manuscript.
The first Saturday, a very hung-over tattoo artist inked mistletoe on the inside of my left wrist. It used to be the Oklahoma state flower, growing wild on trees in the winter. White colonists who moved to the region, displacing Indigenous tribes and post-Civil War Black towns, would put it on the graves of their people who didn’t survive the winter. So Oklahoma and I became a permanent thing.
April 2018—Another spring, another birthday celebration. I spent the weekend with my friends Mark, Gus, and Lance. We’re family. When you get serious about researching Woody, it comes with a slew of people who share the kinship. I’ve always struggled to feel like I belong. But here, in Tulsa with my Woody people, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
May 2018—Another two weeks in the archives to finish something I started on my last day there in January. I stayed in three different apartments, sweated a lot, ate gravy burgers at Brookside by Day, and accepted that Woody’s ghost might follow me for a long, long time.
July 2018—In the spring a group found its way into my Facebook feed—Woody Guthrie Poets. Each year they choose a Woody lyric or writing, and poets submit thematically similar works. I’m not a poet, but I gave it a shot and submitted a poem about police brutality in St. Louis tied to the theme, “What are you waitin’ on?” And they picked me. Every year on the weekend of the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, the 45 poems are divided into three groups. One reads on Friday in Oklahoma City, another on Saturday in Okemah, and the last on Sunday in Tulsa. I was going to be on the stage at the Woody Guthrie Center for the first time. I decided to make a week of it, taking my kid CJ, who was a very ripe 14, along for a little vacation.
On our first day on the road, I got the news that my beloved grandmother was dying. Our vacation was a tear-streaked, grief-stricken nightmare. Except for that Sunday, when I read my work on that stage. On the same stage John Doe of X, one of the most influential bands of my youth, would play later in the day. He told me he liked my dress. I heard nothing but radio static for the next three days.
April 2019—Another birthday! Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth was researching at the new Bob Dylan Archives at Tulsa University. Gus and I saw him and his wife perform in a room of 150 (maybe) people, and I made friends with an artist named Dean while we stood in line to meet Ranaldo.
June 2019—I lured my non-traveling bestie Suzie to Tulsa with Ani DiFranco tickets. She insisted on driving so I spent the ride high in the passenger seat. I’m probably lucky I wasn’t abandoned along I-44. We’ll talk about this on the podcast soon.
October 2019—Oh shit this is a big one! I’ll save the bulk of it for its own post but, my favorite band (Wilco) played Tulsa’s legendary Cain’s Ballroom on my 47th birthday. My friends Connie and K joined me for a couple of days. We ate. We drank. We hung out backstage with most of the band after the show. Best birthday ever? It’s up there.
And, well, we all know what happened next.
September 2021—A few months before I did my first research stint in the archives, I suffered a fall that fucked up my knees. That’s a story for another Substack. By this trip, I was reliant on a cane to make walking a little less painful. I had to sit down repeatedly at the center. I slept a lot. But I made it to Greenwood, the site of Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre to spend an evening in a church for a performance of the No Tears Project. It was a solemn trip, but I was so content to be back.
July 2022—Woody Guthrie Poets reconvened after two years off for Covid. I sported two brand-new knees, so fresh I was still moving slowly. But I walked onto the stage without my cane, and that was a victory. My poem, written during the opioid recovery period, was not. But I was welcomed nonetheless.
And so it’s gone. In May 2023, we had the center’s tenth birthday party, which appears to be the last. The Bob Dylan Center opened next door in 2022, which is wonderful but overshadows Woody a little bit. That’s okay. I love it, too. I read with the poets in 2023 and 2024, with Tulsa feeling like a home base where I don’t need to break my neck trying to see and do everything.
But then I lost my job in March of this year. A month later I was making the trip to Kansas City to visit CJ at college. Since it’s not that far, I decided to go to Tulsa for a few days. Nothing big was happening. No one was visiting from out of town. I just needed to be there, licking my wounds, and getting my bearings as an unemployed writer. And sure enough, in Tulsa’s coffeehouses, warmed by the love of my friends Sam and Quinn and Holly at the Bob and Woody Centers, I found my voice again, lunging into a full rewrite of the manuscript that started with a trip in March 2012, in an unassuming small city that’s neither north or south or east or west. Where the gravy is delicious and pecan farmers sell their goods at the farmers’ market. Where I found a home and family I never could have fathomed until they were in front of me. All led by the spirit of a person who was full of words and ideas and love for the world.
I’ll be in Oklahoma the weekend of July 11th for this year’s Woody Guthrie Poets gathering. Only this time, I’m able to go to the readings in Oklahoma City and Okemah, too. I have a lot of necks I want to hug.
Then yesterday, I got an email from the Bob Center. They’re celebrating the 60th anniversary of Dylan going electric at Newport with a supergroup featuring members of a bunch of bands I love, led by Lee Ranaldo. Of course, I’m going. Two trips to Tulsa within two weeks is just fine with me. Just put my RAV4 on I-44, point me west, and I’m off. And not a moment too soon. I miss my best pal when I’m away for too long.
