No one it seems is from Oklahoma except for us and then I grow up and realize everyone is from Oklahoma they just don’t talk about it after a certain point or no one talks about them? Cartoons are not encouraged in my home. They are silly and inane. But then there is the VHS, and that is something on my own time, so cartoons are permitted. Everyone can do what they want, I have the VHS! I am at one with the VHS! I watch Robin Hood the cartoon, and it is totally ok! All the characters are animals, and there are even mice in tea dresses, and there is the rooster who strolls and sings about Nottingham even though he has a drawl. What is this drawling rooster doing in Nottingham, I wonder?
And my mom even sits in the room with me for part of it because the strolling rooster is Roger Miller, and she loves Roger Miller despite all his songs being inane, and even while the rooster is strolling and whistling she starts in on ‘trailers for sale or rent…’ and goes on singing for a while, but does anyone say he is from Oklahoma? They do not. Who is from Oklahoma, I wonder? Is anyone? Is anyone famous from Oklahoma?
We sit there and we watch Rockford Files! We watch it religiously, but does anyone tell me James Garner is from Oklahoma? They do not!
Who is from Oklahoma? Maybe murderers? Possibly thieves? Dipshit conservatives? Racists?
I don’t find out about Woody Guthrie till I go to college! Till college! And even though we watch all the Western movies at home, and I know Ben Johnson is a famous trick rider, I don’t know he’s from Oklahoma until college! And then in college I drive every weekend back and forth through Yale, Oklahoma because it’s on my route, and I am hyperaware of Yale because it is a notorious speed trap, and I even get pulled over in Yale, but do not get a ticket because in those days (and still sometimes) I can bat eyes and act dumb and get out of a speeding ticket if the cop is a guy, and through all those travails with Yale, Oklahoma I never know that Chet Baker is from Yale, Oklahoma. Not for years. But where were all those people when I was growing up? I am a grown-up already when one of my friends tells another of my friends, within earshot, ‘you have to meet her dad, he is like all the best things about Oklahoma.’ She is talking about my dad. It is the first time that I have thought good things about Oklahoma and about my dad at the same time, and I am grown already.
But I remember Della and the Dealer when Hoyt Axton plays it on an episode of WKRP wearing a polyester Western suit that is too small for him.
My dad loves Hoyt Axton. I do not. I think he is not so attractive. He’s fat and he wears too-small Western clothes and his hair is gray. I love Dr. Johnny Fever because I love rock and roll, and because I love Jim on Taxi best, because I already love people who seem fried, and have wild hair, and a hippie-type look, and who are wearing jean jackets and dark glasses. At five I love someone fried? They seem more real to me. Johnny Fever wears sunglasses indoors. He always seems hungover. I love Venus Flytrap, too, even though I have never seen a black person except on TV. Venus wears the Porter Wagoner suits but with more style, I think, as if there is only one step between the Porter Wagoner suits and Venus Flytrap suits. There are so many steps! But how would I know, because in Oklahoma we don’t totally get it about Super Fly suits, even though my dad is liberal because of being a teamster, and he votes for Jesse Jackson when he runs for candidate, and he enjoys Redd Foxx very much, and we watch Sanford and Son in reruns every day, and sometimes dad listens to the albums by Redd Foxx, and also listens to the Richard Pryor albums, in the same way my brother listens to the George Carlin albums, and I get the impression that things coming out of the record player that are not music but are talking are just way raunchy, because I am often repeating these things with enthusiasm and having my mother say, ‘Don’t talk raunchy.’ I also get the impression that elsewhere in the world there are black people making words and records and movies and TV, they just aren’t from Oklahoma, or anywhere around close (and it is not till college that I find out that Ralph Ellison is from Oklahoma City and Langston Hughes is from Joplin, and although, yes, Joplin’s in another state, still, we go there for everything, and I have never seen a black person there, and definitely not a famous black poet. What is going on?)
Both my dad and I love WKRP. Is it nice when my dad and I like the same things? I don’t know. I don’t know about that. I don’t love Hoyt Axton, I know that. He is looking fat in that Western suit. I also don’t love sports which my dad watches a lot of the time. Sports are the most boring and most cacophonous of all things. Our half house is not big enough for all that sound all the time.
I know when I am in high school, and my friend who is older is over and is playing Steppenwolf and The Pusher comes on and he cranks it up so that you can hear the stereo all the way to the street, my mom and my dad come in from watering the lawn and throw a fit and fall in it because the neighbors are hearing the word ‘goddamn’ coming from the house at about eleven. It just sounds better that loud. I don’t think we any of us know it is a Hoyt Axton song. Because we none of us knew he was from Oklahoma, or talked about it.
My brother knew, I think, because he says, later, in a deadpan way: That’s a Hoyt Axton song.
Did he say that? I don’t remember. It is much later, in that time when I am looking everything up, like crazy, because I’m scared I’m losing my memory of this place. I want to look it all up and have it confirmed in my mind. Otherwise, you forget.
Then I realize looking it up is what makes you forget. It just erases the memory.