I Should Have Been a Rock Stra- Home Sweet Oklahoma

Home Sweet Oklahoma

I think it was the spring of my sophomore year at Sterling College when we, a few of the guys at school and I decided to travel to each other’s hometowns. I was a friend with guys from Kansas City, Missouri, Chicago, Marion, Ohio, Detroit, and Holton, Kansas. We were a diverse group brought together I that little farm town right smack dab in the middle of Kansas and almost the geographic center of the continental United States.
For a place that was in the middle of everything, it was very much not in the middle of much as far as “happening.” Sterling was small and quiet, much like my hometown in Kiefer, Oklahoma. Although, Kiefer was about 20 minutes form a town the size of Tulsa and you had to drive over an hour to find the same from Sterling.
It was that spring when we loaded into my car, a 1970 Ford Maverick referred to as Bessie the Wondercar and headed south toward the land of the Dugans. The drive was about five hours and we were packed in. Te maverick was probably not built to haul a bunch of college football players, but somehow, we made it work.
There had been other trips, loaded down as well, when our collective weight made the car rub on the tires on bumps and dips. But, Bessie struggled valiantly to get us to the Promised Land and we arrived there just in time for dinner. Mom always had a spread of Oklahoma inspired cooking when we pulled in with whatever collection of guys had traveled with me. The first trip I took home during my freshman year brought three Yankees to the Dugan house, one each from Chicago, Detroit and Kansas. There, they were confused by white gravy and the fried chicken, but adjusted soon enough to devour everything she prepared.
After eating, we loaded back into Bessie for the 4 mile drive to Kiefer. Our house sat on top of a hill in the middle of Dugan Road. Dugans had lived in this area for so long that eventually the country road there became formally labeled as “Dugan.” It was a road I had jogged earnestly summer after summer in preparation for the line of football seasons I was to bulldoze through. It zigged and zagged downhill, over railroad tracks and then on a small highway into the town.
To drive around Kiefer was not a time consuming event. It was a town that might have held 1000 people. At one time, it had been a thriving oil boom town with thousands of people, saloons, movie theaters and banks, but when the Glenpool oil fields played out, it became a slowly dying oil town, with a few remaining companies which maintained the shrinking number of pumping wells. It was morphing into a bedroom community for people who wanted to live in a country town and commute to work in Tulsa or Sapulpa
We drove past the essential tour sites.. the football field, high school, the old drug store which still had ancient soda fountain chairs, tables and stand. The Fountain stand was no longer used, but the owner, Minerva, also Kiefer’s oldest living graduate at the time, kept it intact while doing the business of a general store. The tour was short, but the evening was good and we drove, windows open for a few more laps around the town’s downtown area.
It was there we were hailed and stopped by my high school buddy, Larry Lutts. This was Larry’s first year out of school. He graduated the year following me. We had been friends since we were 6 years old.
Larry got out of his car and walked to our window. “hey, Charles! You’re back in town!”
We talked for a few moments. It was obvious that Larry had been at a party. He definitely smelled like the Budweiser that I knew he loved. But, he had big news for us that he was obviously excited about.
“Leon Russell is playing in that old auction barn in Glenpool! You’ve gotta go see him!”
Leon Russell was the Tulsa musician who was big on the music scene at that time. He had released several great hits including “Tight Rope” and “Lady Blue.” He had been in George Harrison’s “Concert For Bangla Desh” and toured and wrote for Joe Cocker. Leon even lived in Tulsa and rumor was that he drve around in a pink Rolls, supposedly even stopping at the Kiefer dairy Queen at one time. He was the Tulsa Sound.
But, in Glenpool? At the auction barn? Glenpool was our sports rival, only 6 miles away on highway 75. It was a town not much larger than Kiefer and had obviously left its better days behind in the oil boom. The auction barn was a large garage type building that sat in a gravel lot right beside the highway leading into Tulsa. Inconceivable to me that Leon would be there.

“Larry, you must be drunk.” I said. “Leon in Glenpool?”
“I might be, but he’s there, “ Larry insisted. “What can you lose to drive over there and find out?” he argued.

I looked around in the car at the rest of the guys. It was Scott who said, “Yeah, let’s give it a look.” Funny, because I think Scott never owned a record or stereo until we became roommates. But, he was up for a look to see if we would find a world famous musician in a barn in Glenpool, Oklahoma.
So, we took the dark 2-lane road from Kiefer east to Glenpool. Turning up highway75, we cruised into the gravel lot adjacent to the barn. There were several cars lined up in the lot, and there seemed to be lights on inside.
When I stepped out of the car, I was met with a familiar sound. Leaning on my open door as the other guys piled out, I heard the words, I’m A Stranger in a Strange land” booming out of the barn, and piano and guitar waling right along in tune. And, it sure sounded like Leon’s voice.
The other guys looked at me. “It sounds like Leon,” I said. I had heard enough of his music that I could tell the difference between a live song and the LP, and so as Larry walked up to join us, and pointed toward the door, we began the walk toward the music.
Timidly, almost reverently, we pushed the door open. There, at the opposite end of the barn stood a collection of musicians playing drums, guitars and tambourines. Around the low stage area and stretching back to the door, some forty or fifty people lay or sat in various recline, listening to the band.
At the right side of the stage, in cowboy hat and sunglasses, long gray hair streaming down his back, sat Leon, pounding at the piano as if he were in a Pentecostal revival! “Told you it was true, “ Smiled Larry.
Leon always played like it was hell fire and brimstone revival time. The story was that he cut his teeth playing the piano in church as a young guy in Tulsa. It truly reminded me of the music I heard when I went to hear a sermon by our team running back, Larry Dashiell.
Larry had the appropriate name and therefore nickname for a college running back- “Dash.” The guy could fly on the field, but he also spent is time as a pastor of a local AME church in town. We went to hear him one week, and were greeted with a sensory event new to a boy raised in a tight lipped Southern Baptist church. The crowd was rocking and swaying while dash preached the word! The pianist, another college student named Brian, played that thing like it was in a Honky Tonk. We three were the only white people in the crowd, and our starched shirt upbringing was most apparent in the exhausting rocking service.
That was like Leon’s music.

We crept in like mice; sitting quietly at the back as he finished the song, talked to the other musicians and played several others. A roadie brought in beer for the band stacked high on a dolley. Leon stopped, strolled around the stage. His daughter, a little girl, climbed onto his piano seat, and began pounding the keys, while singing a kid’s church song into the mike.
Finally, seeing that things were winding down, we crept out as quietly as we had slipped in. returning to the car, we gushed about the cool experience of seeing Leon, live and in person in such a relaxed setting. We stood and gossiped with Larry before finally resettling in Bessie to make the drive back to Dugan house.
I have seen Leon live many times, both before and after that event. He had rented the Glenpool auction barn to rehearse for an upcoming tour. It was still a strange thing since eh owned his own recording studios in both Tulsa and at Grand Lake. Why was he there? I never found out for sure, but it was an unexpected bonus for me, for Larry and the guys who had driven that long road form Kansas to come to little Kiefer.