I’ve been home for the last couple of weeks, which usually means there’s not much to write about. A home is familiar, ordinary. I settle into a routine: sleeping in my childhood bedroom, working on my computer during the day, visiting with my parents during leisure time. Sometimes what makes a home special is hidden among what seems ordinary. Your hometown gets ingrained in you in certain ways, and you may not realize your connection to this location until it is pointed out to you. Such was my experience while reading Boom Town, a new book from Sam Anderson which frames Oklahoma City’s fascinating past and present from an intriguing outsider perspective.
Cover to cover, this was my kind of book. About one-third is Grantland-esque long form sports writing, another third Weird History, and the last third Worldly Observations. I can’t recommend the book unless you are deeply interested in either Thunder basketball or the various narratives that shaped the city of OKC. But I can say that the book’s artfully crafted anecdotes opened my eyes to some truly crazy events that happened here. As a result, I now have a greater appreciation for the city, and perhaps more importantly I can pinpoint why I identify Oklahoma City as my home.
From its inception, OKC was a place like no other. It was settled all at once in the Land Run of 1889, the population booming from 0 to around 10,000 in a single day. And these settlers weren’t society’s most esteemed citizens: outlaws, swindlers, and other downtrodden misfits were the ones willing to start anew in this wild patch of prairie. As you can imagine, there was lots of chaos, some Wild West-style justice, and a general distrust of government from the very beginning. Through some grit and determination, Oklahoma City survived extreme adversity during its early years: severe droughts lasting multiple years, floods and severe storms, dramatic booms and busts in its economy, resource shortages, and a lack of order in areas such as urban planning.
Against-all-odds survival aside, the news emanating from the young Oklahoma City was generally negative, a perception that residents have actively fought to shake ever since. In fact, I’d say Oklahoma City is chiefly defined by its quest to legitimize itself as a real city, destination, and non-terrible place to live. The lengths that the city has gone throughout its history to prove its worthiness are unassailable, often involving city leaders making moves of questionable legality and legitimacy. Oklahoma City snatched the state capital from Guthrie in 1910 by holding a referendum then smuggling the state seal in the middle of the night. The plans for the state capitol building were so grandiose that it took over 90 years to complete (they finally put the dome on in 2002, the year I arrived). Often for no reason other than bragging rights, Oklahoma City has had, at one point or another: a world-class streetcar system, an I. M. Pei urban renewal plan that involved bulldozing over half of downtown, state-of-the-art facilities for rowing and whitewater championships, and the largest land area of any city in the world.
But while I lived in OKC from 2002-2010, the city was still largely associated with failures and tragedies. The fingerprints of the 1980s oil bust lingered, as many areas around downtown were abandoned and dilapidated. More imminent was the memory of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah federal building that killed 168 civilians, the country’s deadliest terrorist attack at the time. Then catastrophic tornado outbreaks in 1999 and 2003. The city was in healing mode throughout my childhood, an important growth that I failed to appreciate at the time. We adopted the New Orleans Hornets for two years after Hurricane Katrina, and NBA fever gave the city something to come together and cheer about. A group of local business magnates bought Seattle’s team and (somewhat shadily) moved it to Oklahoma City, and how the Thunder supercharged the city’s renaissance is a central theme of Boom Town.
And my what a renaissance it has been! In just the last decade, hundreds of businesses and thousands of residential units have cropped up in the center of the city. New life has breathed into old neighborhoods like Midtown, Deep Deuce, the Paseo, and the Plaza District. The new Devon Tower hovers over the revitalizing city, visible for 30 miles in all directions. In the early stages of this remarkable turnaround, I was sheepish or ashamed of my Oklahoma roots, preferring to identify with Maine from my earlier childhood. But then a similar growth occurred inside me: I became deeply interested in tornadoes, I grew to appreciate the city’s scrappy yet hopeful attitude, and I began to crave a community where people come together to make special things happen.
Fittingly, to cap off this fulfilling visit home, yesterday I voted in the MAPS 4 referendum. MAPS is an urban renewal initiative central to the recent ascendance of the city, and it’s perhaps the aspect of my hometown that makes me proudest. In 1993, at a low point in OKC’s trajectory, citizens approved a one-cent sales tax on themselves for an ambitious, decade-long civic makeover. They have kept the tax in place ever since, funding massive projects like the Bricktown canal, the Thunder’s arena, the new Scissortail Park, a modern streetcar, and many other improvements. Due to the improbable self-taxation by one of America’s most conservative cities, Oklahoma City has become a place that attracts young people and burgeoning companies. I don’t know whether I’ll call Oklahoma City home ten years from now, but I do know that it will continue to get even better – MAPS 4 passed, promising another 10 years of this fascinating turnaround story.
Worldly Observations 