Hey y'all: Stronger Together

That’s the thing about this city, I’m in a land-locked prison with the loveliest people, a strange dichotomy to be sure.

For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to leave Oklahoma City. Born and raised in the smack-dab-in-the-middle-city of America, as a creative nature loving kid OKC felt like a sort of prison. All I could feel was gray concrete and felt a longing for technicolor that was somewhere… out there. The ocean, redwood trees, rainforests, snow capped mountains, the colors and textures were all constantly calling and I was determined to answer and go meet them... there wherever they were. I was always daydreaming, and bemoaning my home.

My senior year was coming to a close, I was getting antsy and saving every penny for my plan of escape to Boulder with a buddy. My focus was primarily Radiohead, the Pixies, art projects (mostly to pass the time), disdain for close-minded people, in other words pretty self-involved and in retrospect, developmentally appropriately so (ok maybe a little overboard?). In short, I wanted to get the hell out of dodge and was counting the days.

I remember skipping class, sleeping in. My brothers already graduated and were out of the house, my parents both at work. I was miles away from the ultra-non-exciting downtown with the very medium size buildings. The Devon Tower hadn’t been built yet (the tallest OKC building), the Thunder hadn’t struck yet to bring the allure and acumen of an NBA team, so there was really nothing to boast or write home about in downtown OKC. But there was always this one thing. The friendliest people you’ll ever meet. The grayest place held the smiliest faces, especially pre-smart phone days. What we lacked in, well, everything sophisticated municipal planning, progressive ideas, and quite a lot of other metropolitan savvy features (sadly good school systems included), we made up for in friendly faces, warmth and welcoming “hey y’alls”, twinkles in the eyes, and a frequently experienced old-school style genuine kind-heartedness.

It was these people who on April 19, 1995 as a self- involved senior skipping school, I wanted more than anything to run downtown as fast as I could to be with, help and rescue.  

I felt the earth shake, a giant sounding BOOM... though 15 miles away in my room, my heart stopped for a moment and time seemed to freeze. A strange panic entered my bloodstream before I knew what it was, before I turned on the news. The footage-- the Alfred P. Murrah building had just been bombed and in the slow motion process of crumbling; with the most precious, friendly souls inside, tiny little cherished children included. Sheer disbelief. Then I had to do something.

Just a day before, April 18, I was dying my hair with Kool-Aid, daydreaming about hacky sacking in Boulder, discussing boy problems with my friend over coffee at the Yippee-Yi-Yo Cafe.

A boom and my bed shaking me awake later, and nothing mattered but helping my city in peril and pain. 

From Kool-Aid to delivering coffee to fireman and family members positioned stalwart by the pancaked building hoping to find, hoping, looking for their loved ones.  

I took some blankets from home and piled them in my messy locker room style old black Chevy Blazer. What I saw driving down 6th street, inching to Robinson… ash, tears, firefighters, OCPD, folks holding folks, coffee cups, donut boxes on sidewalks, homeless gentlemen praying for family members waiting, looking for their daughter or son who had been at work that day. 

I parked, grabbed the blankets and walked toward the massive crime scene… every fiber and brain cell in my body was captured by the surreal eerie silence in vast city space. No emotion just a sense of duty, no thought, just observation. Who needed what? How can I help?

There's no way to adequately recount the selfless, determined, Herculean love surrounding this city block where hours before this unthinkable act took place.  

My dad met me there with more blankets. We circled the block for an unidentified amount of time. There was no such thing as weary or wiped out in the time warp of triage tents and ash clouds emerging from the rubble building still giving way. There was handing of coffee, donuts, blankets. There was getting replenishments when we ran out from the Red Cross tables set up outside the Post Office building a couple of blocks away. People from other towns were continuously showing up, bringing in food, coffee, blankets, hugs, helpful items, to the post office makeshift outpost.

We'd head back to the perimeter of the impossible pancaked site, around and around. “Would you like a blanket, some coffee, are you cold?"

Sometimes, just silent standing staring at the scene by someone, while they wept, and then the offering of the blanket, right over the shoulders, a sort of petition to Above for strength and warmth in the wait, that awful wait… the blanket also to shield from some of the ash-y rain. Nothing hurried. Silence, so much silence, but none of us were strangers that day.

That’s the thing about this city, twenty-six years later I’m still here. Fighting for people whose world’s are falling apart. Sometimes I still dream of escaping this land-locked prison, but my vocation is working to help families affected by incarceration. Ironic nearing the absurd, yes I see it too. It's the restless, wanderlust in my bones, and rebel artist in my heart, that I now can find outlets for here and there. Sometimes maybe I'm just a little crazy Okie who needs to get out of town more.

But at the crux of it all: I learned the most important things from the people I spent those surreal days with-- I want to be a first responder, a helper, a healer, a painter of colorful things and dreams in the midst of gray concrete and help change the things that need changing so desperately.

That's the thing about this city- April 19th-- I saw beauty and technicolor in the eyes of strangers, the strength of redwood trees, a coming together stronger than ocean waves, love more lush and palpable than a rainforest. 

The thing about this city, it's home.