The Stars at Night and Other Tall Tales — A Travelogue — Day 3: Oklahoma, USA

OK!

Missed Part 1? Catch up here. Missed Part 2? Read that here. Or don’t. I’m not the cops.

Brian Paulson, tequila expert and me, wearing the Woody Guthrie shirt Jon bought for me in Tulsa. (Note: Brian and I are NOT in Tulsa.)

Bolt upright, at 5 AM. Or was it 4? Or 6? Fuck it. Time, a preposterous human construct to begin with, had now become entirely inconsequential to my approach to being. It was terrifying and thrilling at once — in some serious way I had become unyoked from the clock’s oppressive psychic bondage. They were just numbers after all. It doesn’t take a deep dive into quantum physics to recognize how farcical the whole thing is — “to keep the time.” Ask any major expert on the matter and they will spin your head around with reverse-aphorisms like “the time keeps us.” Stephen Dawson, the Paranoid Style guitarist, will straighten you out about all of this. He drove from DC to — I think it was — Iowa or Indiana, last year to see the full North American eclipse which darkened the path of totality. Understand this — there wasn’t any plan. He just drove until he could find the best vantage point, and then stopped and watched the midday sky turn midnight black.

Paranoid Style guitarist Stephen Dawson explaining eclipses to me before hitting the stage with his popular band, the Virginia Coalition (also: NOT in Tulsa.)

My job was to get seven large bags and a Little Feat poster into the Malibu and direct the Malibu four hours north to Tulsa. Maybe it was the adrenaline, or maybe it was the quality of the tequila, but the previous night’s non-trivial consumption had only invigorated me. Back in Durham, over lunch, I had described this situation to my old friend Brian Paulson, who is in the first picture in this essay. He regarded me with his courtly but always lightly quizzical manner: “Was it dark tequila or clear?” It had been clear and I told him as much. He guffawed cheerfully and explained: “Oh, well clear’s no problem. That’s clean.” Brian Paulson: genius producer, crucial music archivist, taxonomizer of tequila purity levels. But he wasn’t wrong.

Timothy has this thing he does in the car and Jon abets him. Those two are best friends, and they are always gassing on about something that took place in pro wrestling or college football in the ‘80s. That’s not so bad, but Timothy has this shtick he’s developed on the road where he says, basically, that if he doesn’t get Starbucks, he doesn’t feel he can go on. Jon then hops into action, locating every local Starbucks he can find on his phone. Most of the time, there are some, but inconveniently located off of freeways — small towns with unexpected twists and turns. We were one hour into the four hour drive to Tulsa, and Timothy was bitching about the lack of billboards which would have made it easier to locate a Starbucks. He had a theory about the Starbucks app: everyone was using it now, ordering ahead. Starbucks was minting money off this app — “they’re making gazillions!” Sure. That’s how apps work. With all this extra revenue, the theory continued, surely they could afford to spend more on billboards. Jon agreed, although the entire argument was full of conjecture and narrative holes. It was idiocy, frankly, but there was no sense in reasoning with the two of them. Anyway, we stopped at a Starbucks eventually, on the outskirts of North Texas, and in some ways it was true. As simpleton walk-ins having not ordered from the app, we were treated as functional second class citizens. Three modest drip coffees took twenty minutes to produce, as a parade of immaculately coiffed mothers and daughters collected various caffeine drinks of Kantian complexity. The detour had been a hard-learned mistake. For a while Timothy shut up about Starbucks, though Jon did mention Dunkin’.

After that, everything about the drive was fantastic. The route took us through small towns and plenty of ranchland — the regionally specific topography of the state reminding me of the dazzling marshlands and oceans of Georgia’s barrier islands. We listened to Willie Nelson’s cover of “Whiter Shade of Pale” and then we listened to the Box Tops’ cover of “Whiter Shade of Pale.” All was bucolic, but strange too, from an outsider’s perspective. Lots of boot stores, lots of churches, lots of dispensaries. A pretty tough looking prison too. But, honestly, I liked everything about driving to Oklahoma and I liked being there. It was Masters Sunday and I was on the beat. We arrived in Tulsa as the leaders hit the back nine. I was under a work obligation, but even if I had been charged money I wouldn't have missed it. No doubt unnerved by the tension, Jon took off for the Guthrie Center, a brief Uber ride. He came back with this shirt he bought for me — pictured in the first photo — a considerate gesture, maybe a tacit make-good for encouraging Timothy with his Starbucks bluster.

Then came the McIlroy insanity, a beautiful mental breakdown on the back nine — comfortably three shots clear, playing the relatively easy 13th hole, he mysteriously shanked a simple pitch into the water, carding one of the most inexplicable double bogeys in recent memory. After a Justin Rose birdie, suddenly he was tied again, and acting like a man who was very likely to throw away his best and possibly final chance to become only the sixth player ever to complete the career Grand Slam. As a sportswriter, my job is to be objective, and I genuinely like Justin Rose, the charismatic Englishman and former US Open and Olympic champion, who eventually dragged Rory into a playoff. But I challenge you to find a golf writer who wasn’t rooting for Rory that day, a day which repeatedly swung events from a seeming vouchsafed victory to a devastating collapse to a triumph which my amazing Ringer editor Megan Schuster brilliantly summarized as: “he vanquished his own history by packing 11 years’ worth of crushing near misses and bad beats into a cathartic sudden-death playoff victory.” My Irish friend Derek texted me from Dublin’s midnight celebration: “Job done. The hard way. Like all Irish.” My Irish dad, a few years gone, would have enjoyed both the sentiment and the celebration. I published this shortly after the green jacket ceremony in Butler Cabin. Writing on a tight deadline like that can be visceral work to start with, and this was, for various reasons, on the short list of the most emotional sporting events I have ever seen. Tim and I ordered some tacos from a place recommended by a friend and I cracked open one of those can-bottles of Miller Lite that made the journey with us from Dallas.

The next morning — or maybe it was afternoon — it was time to go to the Dylan Center. It bears mentioning that upon pulling up to the Center for our VIP appointment, Timothy insisted that he could not go on if he did not have a Diet Coke right that second. Jon the enabler got on his phone and pulled up a restaurant nearby that served chili dogs that likely would have sodas available. The place was about a five minute walk away, totally massive, completely empty, and they only had Pepsi products. It would have to do. The staff appeared shocked when I ordered a single fountain soda in a go cup, but the idea of gulleting a Coney at that moment to not seem less weird than I already felt sounded revolting, so I just stood behind the courage of my conviction: “Nope, just the Diet Pepsi, thanks.” They obliged and we were on our way, late for our 12:00 or 11:00 or Tuesday appointment.

I forget if we’ve already discussed this, but last year I wrote the liner notes to accompany a massive Bob Dylan box set of his 1974 tour with The Band. It is one of my favorite achievements; probably the green jacket on my personal goal of ultimately capturing the liner notes career Grand Slam. A highlight of the rollout of the box set was getting to go to Americanafest in Nashville, TN to be on a panel to talk about it at Third Man’s Blue Room alongside the director of the Dylan Center, Steven Jenkins.

Photographic evidence of the Dylan panel at the Blue Room in Nashville (not Tulsa). Steven Jenkins is to my right.

Steve was super nice to Tim and me and encouraged us to come visit the Center any time. We took that absolutely literally. When we realized Dallas’ propinquity to Tulsa, I reached out to Steve and asked him if we could come by. He graciously offered to open the center for us on Monday (when it is closed), which meant we’d basically have the place to ourselves. When it came to pass that Steve wasn’t going to be in town for our visit, he turned us over to his amazing colleague, Julia Smith, who warmly welcomed us upon our arrival and patiently shepherded us through the complexities of the self-guided tour, which involved headphones and devices that look like iPhones. The center is incredible and beautifully curated, with lots of interactive installations and cool stuff to marvel at around every corner. We also were fortunate enough to visit the Center while they were running a special exhibit about Jesse Ed Davis, the brilliant Native American guitarist from Oklahoma who had played and toured with everyone from Dylan to the Faces to Taj Mahal to John Lennon and on and on and on and on and on.

A few photos from the Jesse Ed Davis exhibit. They had so much of his gear!

I don’t know when we both broke down, but it seemed to me simultaneous. Timothy was looking at the exhibit where George Harrison had sent Dylan postcards and letters; one was after Dylan’s frightening heart incident in 1996 or 1997. There was some kind of private humor to it — I can’t remember — were they teasing one another about song titles or Wilbury names? “Glad to hear you’re getting better,” was George’s message, he had to admit, though soon George would be unwell. I had an argument with a friend recently: would it be bigger news if a Pope or a Beatle died? Who’s to say? Only four men have been Beatles. Only six men have won the career Grand Slam. How many roads must a man walk down?

Correspondence between George Harrison and Bob Dylan.

The stalwart Paranoid Style Three (aka Tim, Jon and I) reconvened in the Center’s gift shop, where we all larded up on merch: t-shirts, magnets, buttons, whatever we could get our mittens on. We chatted amicably with Julia and the woman who had to come over from the Guthrie Center next door to work the cash register and check us out. Tim and I declared that we intended to visit the Guthrie Center tomorrow only to be told that it was closed tomorrow, but good news: Julia would be happy to let us in and look around. We piled back into the Malibu, already flush with happy memories and souvenirs, and we traded observations about how awesome the Center was.

I didn’t actually take a lot of photos at the Center, because it was too immersive, but also felt driven beyond myself to capture a few memories: Tim and me, Steve Ripley’s paisley Tele (that one was specifically for my Fender friends), a neat interactive replica of the Church Studio where you could mix a few Dylan songs, me just standing in front of a wall of Dylan, handwritten lyrics to “Tangled Up In Blue,” and Jon and me. These aren’t even good photos, really, but I’m glad to revisit them.

We headed back to the place where we were staying — an awesome house with far too many bedrooms, lots of shared living space and a foosball table. Tim and I headed out for a run on a nearby trail and Jon went shopping at Reasor’s, a nearby supermarket, where he picked up some food for himself and another 12-pack of Miller Lite, this time in decorative 16 oz. cans. Upon our return, we discussed getting dinner together. I was on a deadline for the New York Times — I was writing about Tiger Woods’ Instagram announcement that he was dating Vanessa Trump — and had to respond to some urgent requests from the fact checker, so Jon offered to pick up carryout for everyone from a local taco place. He returned with a delicious bounty that we all enjoyed over a couple of beers. Tim then decided it was absolutely time to play some foosball and he and Jon went head-to-head for a few rounds before Tim went to bed. They split a couple games, but I had the light sense Jon might be taking it easy on him. Then again, maybe not. Timothy had a strange style: he would bat the ball around fecklessly, seeming at times to not understand the point of the game, and then suddenly unleash a savage shot on goal after what had seemed like a casual exhibition. This went on for a while until both combatants became exhausted.

Jon and I stayed up for a bit and chatted about Lollapallooza while we finished our beers. Had it not started strong and ended poorly? He left early the next morning, putting us in charge of his stash of couscous, a mango, some salsa and a raft of Miller Lites. He also left behind his copy of David Halberstam’s The Powers That Be — a massive 800 page volume about the American media complex during the 1970s. What a topic! He would later text me about it, something along the lines of, “I don’t really care about the book, but there are some really cool old wrestling postcards inside that I’d love to get back.” That was how the next day began — old postcards, stashed in a book, left on a table in Tulsa. Maybe it was just circumstances, but the thought suddenly felt intensively heavy.

Jon’s wrestling postcards, shoved into the pages of the Halberstam book.

END CHAPTER THREE.

STAY TUNED FOR THE FINAL INSTALLMENT: MORE TIME EXPLORING TULSA, BEDLAM AT THE UPS STORE, THE RETURN TO DALLAS/FORT WORTH, AND FINAL THOUGHTS ON THE MEANING OF TRAVEL.