They brought in Tulsa’s first oil well in 1901, and Tulsa invited oilmen to “come and make your homes in a beautiful little city that is high and dry, peaceful and orderly, where there are good churches, stores, schools, and banks, and where our ordinances prevent the desolation of our homes and property by oil wells.”
Sunday morning we went to services at Boston Avenue United Methodist Church, which had been pointed out to us on the Gray Line tour. Neither Harry nor I go to church as an ordinary thing, and we weren’t raised as Methodists to begin with, but that’s the whole point of vacation, to get away from the workaday world and experience something different. Why, I hardly ever go to museums in New York, where we have some of the best in the world, but when I am in another city I can’t get enough of them.
That afternoon, though, we tried a different sort of cultural experience and drove over to Bell’s Amusement Park. They had a big old wooden roller coaster, three water slides, a log ride, and a sky ride and a pair of miniature golf courses. It was a little cold for the water slides but we did everything else, laughing and shouting and shoving each other like children. Harry threw darts at balloons until he won a stuffed panda, and then he gave it to the first little girl he saw.
“Now in the future,” he told her, “don’t you take pandas from strange men.” And we laughed, and her mother and father laughed, and we went off to play miniature golf one more time.
There was a restaurant called Louisiane that we’d seen a few blocks from the church, and where we were planning to go for dinner. But after we got back to the hotel we arranged to meet in the bar downstairs, and when I got there Harry was knee-deep in conversation with a handsome woman with short dark hair and a full figure. He introduced her as Margaret Cummings, up from Fort Worth for the weekend.
I joined them for a quick drink, and then Harry took me aside and asked if I’d mind if he took Margaret to dinner. “I was talking to her at the pool last night,” he said, “and the thing is, she’s going back home tomorrow.” I told him don’t be silly, of course I didn’t mind, and wished him luck.
So I ate right there in the hotel myself, and had a fine meal, and then went for a little walk after dinner. At breakfast the next day Harry grinned and said he’d had some fun with Margaret, and she’d given him her address and phone in case he ever got to Fort Worth. We’ve been to Dallas, and enjoyed that very much, and made a visit or two to Fort Worth at that time, taking in the Amon Carter Museum and some other attractions, so I doubt we’ll be ready for the Fort Worth experience for quite a while yet.
“I was sorry to leave you stranded,” Harry said, but I told him not to be silly. “You never know,” I said. “Maybe we’ll both get lucky here in Tulsa.”
We started off the morning with an industrial tour of the Frankoma pottery. We both love industrial tours, and take advantage of them every chance we get. One of the highlights of the St. Louis experience was a tour of the Anheuser-Busch brewery, and we followed it up a day later with a half-hour tour of Bardenheier’s Wine Cellars, followed by a half hour of wine-tasting. They didn’t give you anything to drink at Frankoma, but it was very interesting to see how they made the pottery. Afterward they encouraged you to buy pottery in their shop, and they had some nice things for sale, but we didn’t buy anything.
We almost never do. The National Park Service has a motto—“Take only snapshots, leave only footprints.” (A side trip to Olympic National Park was one of the highlights of the Seattle experience.) We go them one better by not even taking snapshots. My apartment’s too small to clutter it up with souvenirs, and Harry has the same attitude toward souvenirs, even though he has more than enough room for them at the house in Woodside.
As it is, I pick up one souvenir from every trip, a T-shirt with the name of the city we went to. My favorite so far is a fuchsia one from Indianapolis, with crossed black-and-white checkerboard racing flags on it to represent the Indianapolis 500. Most of the Tulsa T-shirts picture an oil well, and Thursday I finally picked out an especially nice one.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?
Monday afternoon we went to the Tulsa Garden Center, and spent several hours there and nearby at the Park Department Conservatory. Tuesday we started out at the Historical Society Museum, then went to a synagogue to see the Gerson and Rebecca Fenster Gallery of Jewish Art, the largest collection of Judaica in the Southwest. From there we went to Oral Roberts University for a brief campus tour, and picked up tickets for a chamber music concert to be held the following evening.
We went to our rooms for a nap before dinner, arranging to meet in the cocktail lounge. This time I got there before Harry did, and I got into a conversation with a pretty young woman named Lylah. We were hitting it off pretty well, and then Harry joined us, and before you knew it a friend of Lylah’s named Mary Eileen came by and made it a foursome. We had two rounds of drinks at a table and Harry said he hoped the two of them would join us for dinner.
Lylah and Mary Eileen exchanged glances, and then Mary Eileen said, “Why should a couple of nice fellows like you waste your money on dinner?”
Well, I won’t say I was shocked, because I had the feeling that they were unusually quick to get friendly. Besides, this sort of thing has happened before. The Chicago experience, for example, included a couple of young ladies whose interest in us was purely professional, but we sure had a good time all the same.
The upshot of this was that Lylah came up to my room, and Mary Eileen went with Harry. I had some fun with Lylah, and she seemed happy with the hundred dollars I gave her. On her way out she gave me an engraved business card with just her first name and her phone number on it. Mary Eileen gave Harry one just like it, except with a different name, of course. They both had the same phone number.
“Take only snapshots,” Harry said, tearing Mary Eileen’s card in two. “Leave only footprints.” And I did the same with Lylah’s card. It wasn’t likely we’d ever be back in Tulsa, and we wouldn’t want to see those girls more than once this trip. The Gilcrease Institute might be worth a second visit, but not Lylah and Mary Eileen.
Wednesday we left town right after breakfast and drove fifty-five miles north to Bartlesville, where the founder of a big oil company set up a wildlife preserve with herds of bison, longhorn cattle, and all sorts of wild animals. We stayed right in the Olds and drove around, viewing them from the car. The complex includes a museum, and the western art and Plains Indian artifacts were magnificent, and just wonderfully displayed. They also had what was described as one of the finest collections of Colt weapons in the country, and I could believe it.
We wound up spending the whole day in Bartlesville, because there were other interesting attractions besides Woolaroc. We saw an exact replica of the state’s first commercial drilling rig, we saw an exhibit on the development and uses of petroleum, and we saw a tower designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. North of Bartlesville in Dewey we paid a visit to the Tom Mix Museum and saw original costumes and cowboy gear from his movies along with film stills and other interesting items.
We finally got around to having dinner at Louisiane that night and just got to the concert on time at Oral Roberts. Afterward we roamed around the campus a bit, then took a lazy drive around Tulsa, just looking at people. There was a shopping mall Harry wanted to check out, but it was late by the time we got out of the concert so we decided we’d save that for tomorrow.
“We’ll do some field work tomorrow afternoon and evening,” Harry said, “and I figure Friday night we’ll go for it.”
I said that was fine with me. He’d been doing all the planning, and the Tulsa experience had been really fine so far.
When I had time to myself I’d read about Tulsa in the guidebook, or in some of the tourist brochures in the hotel room. I liked to pick up whatever information I could.
With the completion of the Arkansas River Navigation System, Tulsa has gained itself a water route to both the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. The port of Catoosa, thre
e miles from Tulsa itself on Verdigris River, stands at the headwaters of the waterway and is presently America’s westernmost inland water port.
Now you might think that a fact like that wouldn’t stay with me, but it’s funny how much of what we do and see and learn on these vacation trips remains in memory. It’s a real education.
Thursday morning we went straight to the Philbrook Art Center after breakfast. It’s set on over twenty acres and surrounded by gardens, and the collections ranged from Italian Renaissance paintings to Southeast Asian tradeware. It took the whole morning to do the place justice.
“I like Tulsa,” I told Harry. “I really like it.”
After lunch for a change of pace we went to the zoo in Mohawk Park. The performing elephants were the highlight, but just walking around and seeing the animals was enjoyable, too. Then toward the later part of the afternoon we went to that shopping mall and wandered around, and that was when I bought my souvenir T-shirt, a nice blue one with an oil well, of course, and the slogan “Progress and Culture.” Harry thought it was a dopey slogan, but I liked the shirt. I still like it. The funny thing is nobody ever sees my T-shirts, because I wear a dress shirt and tie to the office every day, and even on weekends I’m afraid I’m not the T-shirt type. I wear them as undershirts beneath my dress shirts, or I’ll wear them around the apartment, or to sleep in. I like having them, though, and you could say I’m developing quite a little collection, adding a new one every three months.
The Indianapolis shirt is my favorite so far, but I believe I mentioned that before.
We drove around Thursday night. We checked out the University of Tulsa campus and cruised around Mohawk Park. I was really glad we had the big car instead of an economy compact. I think it makes a difference.
I didn’t sleep well Thursday night, and Harry said he was restless himself. We both had the impulse to skip the activity he had planned, but we stuck with it and I’m glad we did. We drove ten miles south of the city to the Allen Ranch, where we were booked for a half-day trail ride on horseback through some really pretty country. Neither of us is much of a rider, but we’ve been on horseback on other vacations, and the horses they give you are always gentle and well trained. I knew I’d be sore for the next week or so, but it seemed like a small price to pay. We had a really good time, and the weather was perfect for it, too.
I showered as soon as we got back, and then I went downstairs for a whirlpool and sauna. That wouldn’t do anything about the saddle sores, but it took some of the ache out of muscles that don’t get much use back in New York.
Then I took a long nap and left a call so I’d be up in time for dinner. Dinner was just a light bite at a coffee shop because we were both keyed up and a big meal wouldn’t have been a good idea even if we’d been in the mood for it.
We went to the shopping mall and prowled around there for a while, but we didn’t find what we were looking for. Then we drove to the hospital and waited in the parking lot for twenty minutes or so without any success. We went back to the University of Tulsa campus and came very close there, but we aborted the mission at the last minute and drove to a supermarket we had researched the day before.
We parked where we could watch people entering and leaving. We were there twenty minutes or so when Harry nudged my arm and pointed to a woman getting out of a Japanese compact. We watched as she walked past us and into the market. I nodded, smiling.
“Bingo,” he said.
He parked our car right next to her. She wasn’t in there long, maybe another ten minutes, and she came out carrying her groceries in a plastic bag.
Harry had the window rolled down, and he called her over. “Miss,” he said, “maybe you can help me. Would you know where this address is?”
She came over for a look. I was by the side of the car and I stepped up behind her and got her in a chokehold and clapped my other hand over her mouth so she couldn’t make a sound. I dragged her into the shadows and kept the pressure on her throat and Harry got out of the car and hurried over and hit her three times, once in the solar plexus and twice in the pit of the stomach.
We’d bought supplies yesterday, including a roll of tape. She was pretty much unconscious from the chokehold so it was easy to tape her mouth shut and get her hands behind her back and tape her wrists together. Harry opened the back door and I got in back with her and he got behind the wheel and drove. I had her groceries in the back of the car with me, and her purse.
Harry headed for Mohawk Park and we drove right out onto the golf course. She came to in the car but she was all trussed up and there wasn’t a thing she could do. When he stopped the car we dragged her outside and got her clothes off, and we took turns having fun with her. We both had a really wonderful time with her, we really did.
Finally Harry asked me if I was done and I had to say I was, and he told me in that case to go ahead and finish up. I told him it was his turn, but then he reminded me that he had done the nurse in San Diego. Don’t ask me how I’d managed to forget that.
So it was my turn after all, and I got the belt out of my pants and strangled her with it. Then I took her arms and Harry took her legs and we carried her off the fairway and left her deep in the rough. You’d have to hook your tee shot real bad to get anywhere near her.
We threw her purse in a Dumpster outside a restaurant on Lewis Avenue. There was a Goodwill Industries collection box a few blocks away, and that’s where we left her clothes. I would have liked to keep something, an intimate garment of some sort, but we never did that. Take no snapshots, leave no footprints—that’s the National Park Service motto as we’ve adapted it for our own use.
I’d bought a Dustbuster the day before and I used it to go over the interior of the Olds very thoroughly. They’d vacuum the car after we turned it in, but you don’t want to leave anything to chance. The Dustbuster went in another Dumpster, along with the roll of tape. And her bag of groceries, except for a box of Wheat Thins. I was pretty hungry, so I took those back and ate them in the room.
Saturday we pretty much took it easy. I went back for a second visit to the Gilcrease Institute but Harry passed that up and hung around the hotel pool instead. We were planning on another concert that evening but we spent a long time over dinner and wound up taking in a movie instead. Then back to the hotel for a quick brandy in the bar, and then up to bed.
And Sunday morning we flew back to New York.
Monday morning I was at my desk by nine, which was more than some of my fellow workers could claim. Sharon said she hadn’t received my postcard, and as always I told her to keep watching the mailbox. Of course I hadn’t sent one. Warren breezed in at a quarter to ten and said he guessed he’d wasted another twenty-five cents on flight insurance. I told him he could try again in August. “I’ll have to,” he said. “I can’t quit now, I’ve got too much money invested.”
Lee asked me where I’d be going in August. “Baghdad? Timbuktu? Or someplace really exotic, like Newark?”
I’m not sure. Buffalo, possibly. I’d like to see Niagara Falls. Or maybe Minneapolis–St. Paul. It’s the right time of year for either of those cities. It’s my turn to plan the trip, so I’ll take my time and make the right decision.
In the meantime I go to my office every morning and read guidebooks evenings and weekends. Sometimes when I sit at my desk I’ll think about the T-shirt I’m wearing, invisible under my dress shirt. I’ll remember which one it is, and I’ll take a moment to relive the Denver experience, or the Baltimore experience, or the Tulsa experience. Depending on what shirt I’m wearing.
Lee can tease me all he wants. I don’t mind. Tulsa was wonderful.
Weekend Guests
We hadn’t been in the house more than five minutes when Pete called. We were in the living room and I was trying to get Roz to calm down when the phone rang. I put her on the couch and went over to answer it.
“I can’t talk to you,” I told him. “We just this minute walked in and we got a little shock. It seems we had c
ompany.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean somebody came calling while we were spending the weekend at the lake. Forced the front door and turned the place upside down. Everything’s a mess and Roz is hysterical and I’m not too happy myself.”
“That’s terrible, Eddie. They get much?”
“I don’t even know what’s missing. I told you, we just walked in. I have to run around now and start taking inventory and they left such a mess I don’t even know where to start. You know, drawers upside down, that kind of thing.”
“That’s terrible, it really is. Look, you got things to do and I don’t want to keep you. I just called to check that we’re set for tonight.”
I glanced over at the couch. “She’s pretty shaky,” I said, “but what the hell, she can always stay with friends if it bothers her to stay here alone.”
“How about if I pick you up around nine-thirty?”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll be waiting.”
I was waiting out in front when he drove up in a large white panel truck. He pulled over to the curb and I opened the door and swung up onto the seat beside him.
“Well, you look real good,” he said. “A few days in the sun didn’t hurt you any. Roz all brown and beautiful?”
“She got a burn the first day and after that she kept out of the sun. Me, I never burn. I just lie there and soak it up like a storage battery or something. We had a great time, but what a shock to come home to the house and find some yo-yos turned the place inside out.”
“They make much of a score?”
I shrugged. “They didn’t get much cash because I never keep cash around the house. I generally have a couple of hundred dollars down at the bottom of my tobacco humidor and it’s still there. Let’s see. They took Roz’s jewelry, except for what she had with her, and how much jewelry do you take to the lake? The insurance floater covers her jewelry up to ten thousand dollars, and I’d guess what she lost was probably worth two to three times that. So in that sense we took a beating, but on the other hand I didn’t pay anywhere near fair market value for her stuff, so it’s not that bad.”