Day 13 — 9/29/12
By the time he got to Tulsa, I had covered the town. Steve would arrive late afternoon, so I had the day to explore Tulsa.
I opened the sun roof on the car, rolled down the front windows, and cruised downtown on Rt. 66. Tulsa is architectural heaven. Its preserved art deco buildings number over fifty, some downright dazzling. I saw only one police car, and it was waiting for a wedding couple to lead a celebration procession, but if any police had followed me, they would have pulled me over for my erratic starts, sudden photo stops, occasional U-turn, and pauses in odd places to get that perfect shot.
True to my Capricorn sign, the diligent and perseverant goat, I systematically drove up and down Tulsa’s myriad of one-way streets. At one intersection there are four magnificent churches, one to a corner, all praise and glory to their architects. The Adams Hotel is elegant history still operating, but the Queen of Downtown Deco is the Philco Building, not the tallest, but she reigns over the old and new. The PhilCo, as in Phillips Oil Company, uses every art deco motif under the sun, like a lady wearing all her jewelry at once, but carries it off with graceful panache. At city edge is the gigantic, shiny oval stadium that looks like an aluminum egg with a Nike-like swoop. A few blocks away sits the former railway station, today the cool Jazz Hall of Fame, and in front rises a tall, thin, dark obelisk with stick figures at the bottom and handprints as it stretches to the sky. A few feet away is the mysterious “Center of the Universe” which reverberates any words you care to say. I recited “four score and seven years ago” and it floated back to me in seconds. I especially enjoyed the emerging Blue Dome District, named for a 66 icon with a blue dome, with its colorful murals, crazy shops, night spots and galleries. Tulsa is truly an undersung beauty.
Rain started to fall as I headed to the airport to pick up Steve. True to form, I missed a tiny sign and semi-barricaded freeway entrance as the rain came down in sheets. I got there eventually, and there stood my smiling Steve, happy to see and be seen after three weeks apart.
I thought it would be fun to start his 66 time with a Tulsa 66 icon, the giant oil worker at the Tulsa Fairgrounids. As luck had it, the state fair was at the fairgrounds with lanes of cars slogging away to enter. Steve managed to snap a photo and we zoomed away in the opposite direction to Tally’s, a Tulsa 66 spot that draws locals and visitors alike. Tally’s was a great diner; I expected Flo or Alice to appear any second. You couldn’t beat the people watching, and we enjoyed talking to a local who decided he would run for city council to fight the rich guys who want to dam the river and put in an exclusive little island.
A really good day.