Day 13: Oklahoma is one of our most boring states…

…I guess that’s why we sent all the Indians there.

I’m just joshing, everyone. I don’t mean any disrespect to Indians. Please don’t scalp me. Just joshing again.

Today I got up and saw Amarillo by morning, as the song goes. My first stop was the Cadillac Ranch, which is where some eccentric stuck a bunch of cars in the ground. It was kind of eerie because I was the only one there, and the wind was blowing something fierce, and you have to walk a bit away from your car to see it. So it felt less like a goofy roadside attraction and more like a potential car robbery scheme.

Then I saw a sign for the Amarillo Catholic Superstore. Feeling giddy from my pope statue purchase the day before, I decided to stop, thinking that surely a superstore would have statues of all the popes. When I got there, the owner asked if I was a Catholic, and I said no, that I was interested in the lives of the popes and the saints. Well, he smelled the opportunity to make a conversion, so then we had a half-hour conversation where he tried to persuade me that the Catholic church was the best church. He gave me a card that appears to have Jesus holding up a murderer with some words about forgiveness and said he would pray for me on the rest of my trip.

Then I was off through the rest of the Texas panhandle as well as Oklahoma, and as I referenced in the title of this post, it was a bit of a boring drive. In the midst of all the boringness I stopped in Oklahoma City to go to the monument and museum about the 1995 bombing. I’d highly recommend both if you ever find yourself in the vicinity of Oklahoma City. Although the museum is devastatingly sad and anxiety-inducing, it’s also incredibly well-done and a very poignant tribute to both the people who died and the people who were involved in the rescue, recovery, and investigative efforts.

You start the museum by learning about what the federal building was like before the bombing, and what a typical day it was turning out to be. Then you go in a room and listen to the tape of a hearing that was going on about water usage when the bomb went off, so you hear the blast and the confusion. Then you go out and see the images of that day…newscasts, survivors talking, pictures of people dying. It was heart wrenching, but also a tribute to how the people of Oklahoma and beyond mobilized to help in any way they could. It goes through hour by hour, day by day, as people had to give up hope that there would be anymore survivors, but then it goes into how the city decided to honor the dead. They had to give up hope, but they also wrote a mission statement about what they wanted the memorial to be, and they wanted one of the themes to be hope. And they fully admitted that that was a challenging dynamic. So then it goes into how they planned the memorial and what they wanted it to stand for.

The memorial grounds fulfill that mission, in my opinion. There are gates at either end, marked 9:01 and 9:03, which frames 9:02, the minute the bomb went off. 9:01 symbolizes when the world was innocent and 9:03 represents the world forever changed. In the middle, there’s a pretty pond. On one side of that there’s the tree that survived the blast and is a symbol of hope as to what we can endure, and on the other side, where the federal building used to be, are chairs that represent the dead.

The only minute where this place kind of lost me was in the gift shop. I just don’t want a Christmas ornament or a magnet that shows the Memorial Museum. Maybe that’s wrong, maybe I should hang it and remember and think of those who aren’t here, but at the time, it just seemed tacky.

Then I continued through Oklahoma, stopping briefly in Okemah, the town in which Woody Guthrie was born, to take a picture of a statue and mural of Woody. As I was driving through today, it was kind of surreal to think of all the musical talent that Oklahoma has produced. I didn’t see a whole lot to get creative about. Maybe it gets better off the interstate.

This evening I entered Arkansas, and for the first time, had trouble finding a hotel. One clerk told me that there are like four high school reunions going on in the section of the state where I was trying to find a room. I didn’t know people from Arkansas went to high school. Just joshing! Now I'm in Russellville, Arkansas, I think.