The Center Of The Universe

They say the universe is ever expanding, but the cultural center of the universe is conveniently located closer than you might think. withinpodcast.com

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The Center of the Universe

 

Welcome to the 101^st episode of Within The Realm, I’m your host Steve Garrett.

It’s a big proposition to get started on the next 100 stories from Within The Realm. Some may wonder, how does a fella have so many tales tucked away in his mind. Folks that know me well, know that I have a million of ‘em and they wish I would hush, at least for a little bit. Well, the good news is that today is not a day I feel inclined to hush, so we’ll move forward with our story for today after we hear from the good folks that help me bring you our show. After that I have a story about the center of the universe, it’s closer than you might think.

(music/Commercials/stinger)

Thanks for inviting me back to your podcast listening device. Be sure to check out the show notes in the info on this episode for news about the show & how to contact us. We would love to hear from you.

This episode might reveal my roundabout way of dealing with a story. I can’t seem to follow a straight line from one end of a story to the next, but hopefully that makes them interesting. I tell stories that come from the place where the Great Plains, the Ozark Mountains and the Indian Territory collide. A lot of people refer to it as “Fly Over Country” and for a lot of folks they do exactly that, Fly over it on their way to more supposedly interesting places.

One thing those people don’t know is the Center of the Universe lies beneath them as they jet from coast to coast. The Center of the Universe is in Tulsa, just off 1st and Boston. At this location there is a small circle of concrete in a wide spot on a walking path where a person can stand & hear their conversational tone echoed back to them, but then step off of that circle no echo is produced. Folks come from near & far to hear for themselves & leave satisfied they have experienced something weird.

There are those that try to explain away the phenomenon, saying it has something to do with the curved concrete seating on either side of the spot constructed several years ago that produces the echo. They can try to explain it with Science, but those that reside Within The Realm know it’s a mystery of the ever expanding variety.

But the first to point out Oklahoma’s centralness to the Cosmos was the great Oklahoma folksinger, songwriter, actor & quantum philosopher Hoyt Axton. You may remember him as the Dad in Gremlins or from his song Della & the Dealer from the 70s. You DO remember him as the songwriter that gave us Never Been To Spain, The Pusher & the one about the Bullfrog named Jeremiah, Joy To The World.

Hoyt was often quoted as saying Oklahoma was the cultural center of the universe. Now that always got a laugh from the folks on either coast, thinking about this place as devoid of anything good. After all the bright lights are in New York and LA.

On this one, I’m a disciple of the Bard from Duncan, if we push the boundaries out to incorporate all of that place I call Within The Realm, I think I can make a pretty strong argument that Fly Over Country is, in fact, the cultural center of the universe.

This part of the world has been settled for some time, but really didn’t fill up til late in the game. It was very much a part of that frontier that Fredrick Jackson Turner based his thesis on, the one Professor Greg Jackson reminded us in the last episode went something like “the frontier made America or the Frontier was the most American thing that America ever America’d.” I put it another way, many of those folks were kicked out of every other decent place in the world and came here.

This place was diverse, culturally speaking. Just taking that Center of the Universe location in Tulsa as an example, within just a few blocks of that site, you have the Muskogee Tribes Council Oak, the place where the members of that band of Native Americans met and conferred long before Oklahoma was a State. Within Walking distance from there is the Greenwood District, the Black Wall Street, where a vibrant African American community thrived. And of course downtown Tulsa, owing its very existence to those that came here to make a living from what came out of the ground. Many communities in this vast part of the country had similar communities.

Not everything was perfect, but strong communities existed in this place. Out of those strong but separate cultures came the Negro Baseball Leagues, Wild West Shows, Kansas City Jazz & Western Swing. Those same communities produced Will Rogers, Walt Disney, Woody Guthrie & Langston Hughes.

And as all that was brewing, Railroads funneled people through Kansas City and Route 66, the Mother Road was built right through the Ozarks, Indian Territory and the Great Plains in the 1920s. This was the road that the “Okies” used in their escape to California in the Great Depression. The term Okie, at least to the Californians who saw them as undesireables in their fair State, applied to all those that came through Oklahoma on their exodus to the west, be they from Texas, Arkansas or Missouri. But once it was all said and done 15% of the population of Oklahoma had headed for the jobs in the fields and the cities they hoped awaited them in the Golden State.

This was the first great export of the Within The Realm culture. The Okies took with them their culture just as Will Rogers was the number one box-office draw and Walt Disney and the slew of Kansas City animators like Fritz Freeling and Ub Iwerks, were revolutionizing animation. Count Basie was spreading the popularity of the Kansas City style jazz & radio Station KVOO, the Voice of Oklahoma, was broadcasting the music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys across the west.

But even after the Depression & World War II, folks from this part of the world made an impact everywhere. The folk music trend of the 50s & 60s was greatly influenced by Woody Guthrie, Oklahoman Jimmy Webb penned some of the greatest love songs of the 60s, including Wichita Lineman & By The Time I Get to Phoenix about a lovelorn Okie headed back to Oklahoma.

Newscaster Walter Cronkite, science fiction author Robert Heinlein & radio commentator Paul Harvey spread their Fly Over Country sentimentality to their audiences. S. E. Hinton, a young writer from the middle of nowhere wrote “The Outsiders” that influenced generations of young people.

Long before Garth Brooks was the biggest thing ever in Country music, Ozarkian Porter Waggoner delivered Dolly Parton to the World and Eric Clapton regularly scoured the Tulsa scene for backing musicians. Leon Russell, the Master of Time and Space, influenced passels of musicians including a young Reginald Kenneth Dwight, who later became known as Elton John.

And we’re only scratching the surface of what this place has offered to the rest of the world. I haven’t even mentioned Cherry Mash, the ICEE or Kool-Aid.

So, for those of you who live Within The Realm, you know who you are, there’s lots of history and background in this area. It’s more than just trivia. It’s a part of the fabric of our country, a country that has an outsized impact of the world. The influence of the people of the place even stretches into the depths of space. Remember it was a Kansas farm boy that discovered Pluto & four men from our little region have walked on or orbited the moon, Alan Bean, Edgar Mitchell, Tom Stafford & Ronald Evans.

And then for you folks that have never known the pleasures of living in this stretch of country, those of you who wonder what in the world those folks you are flying over might be doing down there. You might be surprised to know how much the music you listen to, the literature you read and content you consume was created right here...or even how the ability to fly over said region was developed here. There’s always more to the story here Within The Realm, the Cultural Center of the Universe. Plenty more stories for another 100 or so episodes. (music)

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Within The Realm is written & produced by me, Steve Garrett. Our theme music is provided by 5561/2,

Join us in another two weeks for a trek Within The Realm. And as always, thanks for listening.