I didn’t take many photos on this trip to Oklahoma. This being my 21st trip to Tulsa, it felt a bit like I didn’t have anything left to photograph, although I know that’s not true. It had more to do with balancing being busy with taking care of myself after my day in Hell on July 4.
Originally I planned to drive from home to Oklahoma City on Thursday, July 9, but I changed my mind at the last minute. Having spent eight days on the road the previous week while wrangling my migraines, I realize that driving more than seven hours isn’t great for me right now. Without stops, it’s seven and a half hours to OKC. That’s pushing it.
Since I had a follow-up with my vestibular therapist 45 minutes west of home on July 8, I opted to leave from the clinic, driving half a day to spend the night in Joplin, then heading to Oklahoma City on the 9th as planned.
It was a good plan, because I was pretty well wiped out by the time I checked into my hotel in Joplin. As soon as I got into my room, I hit the bathroom then threw myself across the bed, where I stared at a small crack in the popcorn ceiling.
A crack with two little offshoot cracks.
I took this photo to zoom in for a better look.
I was still telling myself this was a ceiling crack when I stood up to get a closer look and faced my reality: There’s a motherfucking slug on the ceiling above the spot where my face would soon be sleeping.
I fucking hate slugs. Yes, I know they’re not harmful, and they’re good stewards of the earth. But that’s where they should be—in the earth. Not hanging out on the ceiling of room 132 at the Sleep Inn.
I don’t know why I called the front desk for a slug. But I did. It went like this:
Me: Hi. Um, I'm not upset and don't need a different room but, um, I thought you should know there's a ... slug? Slitering across the ceiling? So maybe, uh, have maintenance check the ... window? Desk Clerk: Good lord! I thought you were going to say you had a gecko in your room! We get those!
WHAT ECOSYSTEM AM I STAYING IN?
Is this an artifact of the tornado 15 years ago, stirring up all the critters who haven’t yet found their way back to where they belong?
Of course, that thought stirred up everything I read a few months ago when I hyper-fixated on the Joplin butterfly people. Between that, the ceiling slug, and the potential for a gecko invasion, I didn’t get a great night’s sleep.
Maybe the fear jostled my still-lagging appetite, because the next morning I woke up ravenous. I hadn’t really been hungry at all since throwing up all day on the 4th of July. Terror or slugs or whatever pushed me to the hotel’s adjoining truck stop diner, where I ordered the only food that had sounded remotely palatable since I got sick—pancakes.
My lord, I had forgotten how good truck stop food can be. They’re certainly not the same as they used to be, back in my trucker grandpa’s days on the road. I’m sure Good Time Charlie wasn’t eating gravy from a can, or Sysco frozen fried chicken when he was on the road. But the pancakes—sweet and fluffy, speckled with powdered sugar—and juicy pork sausage patties studded with whole fennel seeds gave me a twinkle of truck stop diner hope.
The jet black diesel-strength coffee put it over the top. As did visiting with my server. A young Indigenous woman who’d only lived in the Joplin area for a year or so, she talked about being excited for an upcoming road trip with her brother. They were driving to Washington state. Back home. She gave the Midwest a chance and wasn’t happy.
I gladly listened to her story as I ate, surprised that, by the time she finished her story, I had finished my plate. I can’t remember the last time I finished a plate of food, especially one this huge, but I was finally satiated. I left the server a ten for the company and for the road.
With the entire day ahead of me and only three hours on the road to Oklahoma City, I stopped in Tulsa for the afternoon. Sure, I could have gone to OKC, which isn’t nearly as familiar to me, but the connection to Tulsa reeled me in. I went straight to the Woody Guthrie Center, originally planning to grab a copy of the new book about Mermaid Avenue, which wasn’t stocked yet. So I grabbed another new book about Woody’s time in Los Angeles in the 1930s.
While at the center I hung out with my friend Sam, who’s the head of guest services, gives the most dynamic and interesting tours of the center, has registered a LOT of Oklahomans to vote, and is just about one of my favorite people in the world. Ask him what’s new, because he knows. This time, he told me about a documentary called Looking for Laura Nelson that’s being made by Bruce Nelson, one of her descendants. Laura and her son L.D. were lynched in Woody’s hometown a couple of years before his birthings 1912. It’s always been rumored that Woody’s father Charles was involved in this act of racial violence. I’m so glad the Nelson family’s story is being told. It’s one of those stories that people don’t want to face, but until we do, things won’t change.
And then I got walloped out of nowhere by a migraine because I’d been standing and walking for longer than my brain can keep track of my position. A bottle of water from Sam, a mint, and a seat in the Dust Bowl virtual reality exhibit prevented me from vomiting in the Son Volt exhibit. Begrudgingly, I left the center to recover at DoubleShot Coffee and work on an article for The Pickup.
Of course, as I always do when I’m at DoubleShot or staying in my favorite little guest house down the street, I had to text Suzie and tell her I was once again in the shadow of the Tulsa Murder Tower.
At first I hated this building because towers built without neighboring tall buildings make me nervous. That’s a weird aspect of my megalophobia (as opposed to all the things that are normal about being afraid of big stuff). Even though it’s home to luxury condos, something about it looks derelict, like it might crumble to the ground, likely while I’m under it.
But then it got worse, and this is why I always have to text Suzie, who loves true crime, when I’m near the Tulsa Murder Tower. A few years after first seeing the Tulsa Murder Tower, which I hadn’t yet named, I saw some true crime show about a pregnant woman throwing her husband from a window in the high rise. She later died by suicide in prison.
I’m not a true crime person but I got sucked into that show because it was in Tulsa. And then, back in 2022, I booked the cutest little guest house without realizing that it’s right in the shadow of the Tulsa Murder Tower. I couldn’t remember the particulars of the murder, so I texted Suzie, who is a total murderino, and babbled something about staying under the fucking Tulsa Murder Tower. And sure enough, three minutes later she texted me with all the grisly details.
Fucking Tulsa Murder Tower.
And I really like that guest house, and DoubleShot, plus there’s a really handy gas station nearby so dammit, I swallow my weird fear and spend a lot of time around the Tulsa Murder Tower.
sigh
Anyway, I always have excellent writing sessions when I’m there. Maybe fear motivates me. I got a lot of work done then hit the road for OKC in time for an onion burger for dinner around a lot of squat, slug-free (to my knowledge) buildings.