I've been reading this Okemah thread with interest because things have obviously changed a great deal there since 1969 when I made my first visit. At that time, just as Mudjack says, the town barely acknowledged his existence. Now there is a festival honoring him. This may be more than anyone really wants to know about Okemah twenty-five years ago but my fingers have taken over into the thread this goes: In the early 1970's, in July, I was on my motorcycle heading from Boston to San Francisco. I hadn't planned on stopping in Okemah, in fact, I didn't know that I-40 passed by it until I saw the silver water tower from the highway. There was nothing special about the water tower.

It didn't say "Okemah, Home of America's Balladeer" or even "Home of Woody Guthrie". There were just the matter-of-fact black, block letters, O-K-E-M-A-H and I had recently read Woody Guthrie's autobiography so I recognized the name.

I pulled off at the exit and a few moments later I was the main street of a small western town, double-wide and edged with two and three story buildings that seemed to have been built four of five decades earlier. My memory may be playing tricks but I seem to recall that most of them were made from a gray, roughhewn stone. That may have been the only the banks since it was the bankers who built the most substantial buildings in town like this. Of course, that comes as no surprise to anyone who reads or sings the poetry of Woody Guthrie.

I drove up and down Main Street not knowing what I was looking for but pretty sure I'd recognize it when I saw it. Maybe there'd be a Woody Guthrie museum or even a local history museum. Unfortunately, the most promising thing I saw was a restaurant but that wouldn't open for another half hour. I was reluctant to leave without opening myself up to the possibility of some sort of experience in Okemah so I decided to have lunch there and in the meantime to go to a dry goods store I seen down the street. I figured on getting myself a souvenir, a white Western shirt with mother of pearl snaps, to remind me of my visit to Okemah. After I'd found enough space in my overstuffed saddlebags to stow my prized purchase, I headed back to the Okemah Cafe. That turned out to be the best decision I made in Okemah.

While looking at the menu I struck up a conversation with an older couple at the next table and asked them about the Poke Salad that was being offered. Mr. and Mrs. Dill were more than happy to answer to tell e that it was made from a common wild plant and that it was a local favorite. On the slender thread of his first contact we built a conversation that lasted most of the day and took us from the Okemah Cafe to their home.

Mr. and Mrs Dill had spent all of their seventy plus years in Okemah. His father had come to the Indian Territory long before statehood. Although he wasn't clear on details a to just how it happened, he told me how his father had arrived in Okemah at the age of fourteen and not long after that had founded a successful bank. When I asked how it was possible for such a young person to organize a bank, he could only answer, "Everybody seems to have trusted him a lot."

One story I remember Mr. Dill telling about his growing up in Okemah was about Indians. Even though it was officially "Indian Territory", Indians were not universally welcomed. According to him, though, they were welcome at least once a year on his family's ranch where several bands would gather by a small lake, what we would call a pond in New England, for a fish fry. As a young boy, Mr. Dill used to go down to the Indian campsite to watch. He remembered how the Indians would dig up snakeweed, a plant with long, tapering roots that they would wrap it around logs brought to the water's edge for that purpose. When they were ready, the men would heft the logs out into the water where they would float, held in place by other men standing in the lake up to their chests. These men had clubs which they used to beat the snakeroot, releasing some substance into the water. After a while, fish would struggle to the surface, paralyzed by the compound in the snakeroot. The fish were collected and a feast was prepared, a giant fish-fry. Dancing, singing, and eating went on for several days before the Indians picked up their campsite and dispersed throughout the territory. Mr. Dill told me that he felt as though he had been given the opportunity to look at something that had been going on for hundreds of years and perhaps much, much longer. It was with real regret that he told me as far as he knew, there had been no such gatherings for nearly fifty years.

The Dills had a real sense of history that grew out of a family tradition that went back several centuries before the Indian Territory. The name Dill, they explained using a piece of paper to illustrate, was a mistranscription of the true family name which had been spelled Durer. Somehow, according to the tellers of the tale, the umlauts that had once crowned the U, and the two "R"s, had been rolled up into a pair of "L"s. This old rancher and his wife took as much pride in their Germanic artistic heritage as they did for having made a life for themselves in this difficult place during a difficult time.

I wanted to talk about the Depression and about Woody Guthrie so when the inevitable question, "What are you doing in Okemah?" came up, I used that opportunity to bring up Woodrow Wilson Guthrie and his family.

Not surprisingly, the Dills remembered the family and they remembered Woody in particular. I'm really disappointed that I can't recall much of what they said about them but I do remember what they told me when I asked why there was no mention of him in the town, no monument, nothing on the water tower, no museum, as far as I could see, nothing at all. The Dills knew why.

Word started to come back to this town about Woody beginning to achieve some measure of fame through his radio programs at first and then as a songwriter chosen by their hero, Franklin Roosevelt to celebrate the great depression busting projects on the Columbia River at Bonneville and Grand Coulee. However, Woody was remembered as a difficult kid who didn't follow the rules. How could parents hold up such a "troublemaker" as a model for their own children? So most people in Okemah just ignored him.

The Dills didn't tell me this but I would guess that as Woody Guthrie's fame became associated with labor organizing, socialism and communism, the people of Okemah felt even further distanced from him.

Mr. Dill told me that people had occasionally come to Okemah to visit Woody Guthrie''s monument. It turned out that there is a monument to him in Okemah, it's in the cemetery. He's not buried there but a stone memorial in the style of a cemetery marker is there. The legend on the marker is, "Bound For Glory".

Following the Dills' directions I found the Guthrie house. It looked as though it had been abandoned for a long while. The glass had been gone from the windows so long that it was hard to even find broken pieces on the weathered flooring. Trees were growing up through the porch. There was no fence and no door so I went inside across the small front yard and, a little worried that I might fall through the rotting floor which was open to the weather. I tried to imagine where Woody's bedroom would have been. I tried to picture him as an eight year old looking through that window at the stars and trying to understand "infinite", "forever" and "God". I imagined him listening to a railroad whistle as he tried to look into his future and all the places he was determined to go someday.

My motorcycle was parked on the street in front of the overgrown lot but before I left I took a harmonica from a saddlebag and very quietly played "So Long, It's been Good to Know You". Then I drove slowly out of town to the Interstate.