I was born less than 30 miles from the place I currently live. My parents moved to the "oil capital of the world" in the 1950's, from a farm in Arkansas. Neither were from Arkansas, but WWII broke a lot of ties for people as they went into the military then left after the war ended. My mother was an "elderly prima gravida", i.e., over 30 at her first pregnancy.
Descriptions of life before Tulsa were stark: two people that saw the struggle of the depression just before adulthood, two people that experienced the country on ration stamps after a time when food lines and homelessness and hobo-hood were avoided by rural farm life (plant a garden, raise animals, hunt animals, milk cow, gather eggs.) All clothes were homemade, and for growing people, frequently passed around as growth spurts demanded. Kids got a new pair of shoes once a year, and they became next years everyday shoes, so bought extra big.
People quilted, not as an art form but to make blankets out of the pieces and scraps from flour sacks and worn out clothes. Wood fires in winter, kerosene lanterns till electricity made it to rural areas. Cars and trucks lasted until no one could fix it and lots of mechanics were born of learning to make that old engine and transmission give one more year of life.
Memories of my 1950's idyllic childhood included watching pigs castrated, chicken necks wrung, steers dehorned, manually squishing the water out of clothes after the washing, snapping green beans, picking berries and cherries, canning jar after jar of tomatoes and green beans and anything that could be canned---enough for two years, in case next year was a bad year for the garden.
My first store bought dress was when I was in third grade---for pictures. I watched too many westerns, so it was old fashioned and frankly very homely, but I loved it. I had two childhood friends--a cousin and my mom's best friends daughter that were a year ahead of me, in age and size, and both mom's sewed, so I had plenty of hand-me-downs. When the bags appeared, I could tell where they came from by the way they smelled--one smelled of the farm, one smelled of sandalwood. I learned to iron by 10 because cotton was cheaper than permanent press and wrinkles were a sign of poor upbringing.
We learned fashion rules: no white shoes before Memorial Day or after Labor Day, only dresses at church, hats and purse and shiny shoes on Easter. Curlers and hair spray for family holidays, picture day at school. Take your school clothes off and put them back up when you got home and put on "play clothes" (I would call them paint clothes now, one's not good enough for public, perfect for home).
I survived the civil rights movement, the war protests, watergate, and trickle-down economics without having any of it impact me much at the time. I survived college life in a school with a large Iranian student body that suddenly left with little understanding of the coup in Iran that the USA contributed to. I survived the rise of apocalyptic evangelicalism with little awareness of what that movement was doing to old time religion all over the country. And I survived the change from folks just living their lives to becoming "consumers", like that was a new religion and an act of Patriotism.
When my mother bought my 7 year old son a pair of $150 Jordans, I was shocked. When she bought him a tv for his room, something a had said no to, since we had never had more than a single TV in our house, I thought she had been abducted by aliens. But still, I didn't see what was going on.
My parents got old and sick and died. My children survived their childhood and became productive members of society---good consumers one and all. Then, the twin towers went down and the Wallstreet bubble popped and we elected a black president---and suddenly I could see connections. I could see the connections to all the way back from moving to the booming oil town. All the way back to WWII and the great depression and FDR. AND the Cold War, AND Slavery, AND Colonialism. All the patriotism. All the flag waving.
Suddenly Columbus day was no longer about a great discovery, but about the genocide of a populated continent---populated for at least 12,000 years, with civilizations rising and falling and religions rising and falling and cultures rising and falling, and the invasion by outsiders causing much of that falling.
The Oil capital of the World, in 1950's America, was where the indigenous people who were shoved off their original land starting 130 years earlier, had been pushed. It was given to them. Then, Oil was discovered, like it had been in Pennsylvania in 1859. In case you think this makes us Americans awesome, China used it about 2,000 years ago, and Babylon put it in their asphalt to build with in 459 BCE. The difference in 1859, was the industrial age, and while steam engines worked, the use of petroleum allowed less bulking fuel than wood or coal in trains.
The oil boom, not unlike the gold booms in Colorado and California, directly made both more desireable for statehood. The industrial age was also the birth of the industrial baron families, richer than gods and thus capable of influencing government officials, both legally and corruptly.
What did that oil boom do? Read the "Killers of the Flower Moon" for details. But, the discovery of Oil in Oklahoma was an accident, in 1859, near Salina, in the then Oklahoma Territory, in a well that had been drilled for salt. In 1907, before Oklahoma became a state, it produced the most oil of any state or territory in the United States. From 1907 to 1930, Oklahoma and California traded the title of number one US oil producer back and forth.[1] Oklahoma oil production peaked in 1927, at 762,000 barrels/day, and by 2005 had declined to 168,000 barrels/day, but then started rising, and by 2014 had more than doubled to 350,000 barrels per day, the fifth highest state in the U.S.[2]
In the latter quarter of the 20th century, an average decline of 3.1%/year, until additional drilling led to a temporary increase from 1980 to 1984, followed by a decline at 6.6%/year until the average decline of 3.1% was met in 1994.[3] As of September 2012, 72 out of the 77 counties in Oklahoma have producing oil or gas wells. The deepest natural gas well is 24,928 feet (7,598 m), in Beckham County, and the deepest producing oil well is 15,500 feet (4,700 m), in Comanche County.[4]
Fracking and the injection of the water used to do that created earthquakes, people with well water (oklahoma is rural, many people use well water, hooking up to rural water supplies is expensive and not covered by the government) were experiencing water that was flammable from methane.
So here I am, living in the last land of the Southeast indigenous people since Europe arrived seeking riches. The tribes are still fighting for the upholding of the various treaties that our US government failed to honor when it was a case of natural resources/land that Europeans wanted to make money on. The nonvoluntary African immigrants are still fighting for their right to be treated equally under the law. The Asian immigrants brought with promises of work and livelihood are still fighting for equal opportunities. And despite the right to Freedom of Religion and Separation of Church and State, there are deep prejudices against those of nonprotestant Christian beliefs.
So, now people are calling me "woke". Griping about my "leftist politics", while all I'm doing is trying to make the US constitution as true and honest as the flag-waving, patriotism of my early childhood.
I only offend those that don't believe in freedom for all, equality for all, and opportunity for all. Where am I going?---to keep trying to wake other people up.
