Take Me Back To Tulsa

I haven’t had much to say lately, which is a new feeling for me, but I’ve been sort of busy. It’s a surprise to me too. Last weekend I went to Tulsa for my best friend Casey’s birthday, which was a dream come true for me. For one thing, I have a serious crush on Tulsa. I’ll admit it. And I think it’s okay. Someone told me recently that Tulsa is reputedly becoming a “Little Austin.” That’s not surprising. Some of your very favorite musicians are from Tulsa, you probably just don’t know it. But while the trend in recent years has been to move away to say, Austin, there is a new wave of musicians who are staying local and keeping it fresh in the Big T. I’ve read it in a couple of magazines, but also had a genuine Austinite telling me last week how much he loves Tulsa and the totally legit music scene they’ve got going. So there.

I would love Tulsa even if not for these things though, simply because it was my second home growing up. Its cool new rep gives me an excuse to love it when I’m trying to justify it to outsiders, but my adoration is more sentimental. That’s why, as much as I loved going to the cool new bar in the Blue Dome district to see the rock band play, I think I had more fun at the Caravan Cattle Company, which is a cowboy dance hall of the highest esteem. I spent all of last week looking forward to the retro boot-scootin’ scene that I’d get to soak up under the guise of celebrating Casey (like I can’t do that from home?). Growing up in Arkansas I visited a few dances at American Legion and VFW buildings, attempting to two-step around a dance floor and line dance with the best of them. But these were small, community places where everybody knows your name, or will call you one if they don’t. The idea of the Caravan is enticing to me though because it’s in Oklahoma, where my parents lived in the early 80’s, back in the heyday of big country dance halls. It was on a trip to OKC a few years ago when I discovered that they used to go out to those clubs all the time. When I learned we’d be going to the Caravan I pulled out old photo albums to pore over pictures of them with my dad dressed up in his trademark plaid and my mother with big, big hair. Visions of Urban Cowboy danced in my head, I could almost smell the Bud Light as I went to sleep at night. I couldn’t wait.

Mom and Dad way back when

And it was everything I hoped for. There was a sea of flannel shirts and cowboy hats, there was swirly, twirly two-steppin’, there was loud country music, a guy with a mustache asked me to dance. There were some things that seemed out of place, like the Affliction tees and the brief hip-hop interlude where we got to feel fly like a G6, and my friends and I got to dance and shout to a Ke$ha song with the joyful abandon of youth after all, so that dream came true in the unlikeliest of places. But those things make sense actually, since really it is the Caravan that is probably out of place. The very reason I wanted to go there is because line dancing went out of fashion 15 years ago. The giant dance hall can stand strong against the Oklahoma winds but even the Caravan can’t withstand the winds of change. Ke$ha will find you wherever you go. Playing old Alan Jackson music and line dances can create an atmosphere for a while, but seeing more people out on the dance floor for “We R Who We R” the place still looks like 2011. I can wear a western shirt and a year’s worth of eyeliner, but I’ll never be able to tease my hair as big as my mom’s. I would have loved to look the part, but when I was clumsily trying to hop around and stomp the dance floor, ultimately I just looked like myself.

I rocked plaid all the time in the 80s

(yes this was taken in Tulsa, duh)

(I drew an arrow for you)

 Hope you all had a weekend as cool as mine.