by Scott Foster | ||
Uncle John was an early Oklahoma judge, and his law partner, William "Alfalfa-Bill" Murray Known as "the Sage of Tishomingo" throughout Oklahoma, in Little Rock, Austin, Baton Rouge, and in Washington D.C., Alfalfa-Bill was elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-Third and Sixty-Fourth Congresses and was the ninth Governor of Oklahoma during the Great Depression. Uncle John
was a Roosevelt "New Deal" Democrat and this had badly rankled his old partner - as Alfalfa-Bill had run for President against Roosevelt, and of course lost. Later as Governor, Alfalfa-Bill fought every New Deal project that came along, preferring to set up his own versions of Roosevelt's WPA
public employment programs using Oklahoma's enormous oil income.
Uncle John and Alfalfa-Bill's close friend,
Thomas Pryor Gore
Senator Gore's headstone reads, "Great Is the Memory of His Character." While it doesn't, Alfalfa-Bill's headstone could well have read, "He Is The Greatest Character Of Memory." If people were animals, the cantankerous and defiant Alfalfa-Bill would have been a bantam rooster. Alfalfa-Bill began his political career by helping then Governor Charles Haskell to move (some said "steal)" the capitol from Gutherie to Oklahoma City. Local lore recorded Uncle John saying, "Guthrie's too damn far from Tishomingo." So in the middle of the night, on June 11, 1910, the state seal was "moved" to Oklahoma City, and along with it, Guthrie's entire economic base. A "special election" was hastily arranged
The new marble and Tishomingo granite Greek-Revival capitol building Bill Skirvin's daughter, Pearl Skirvin Mesta
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Later, one of the massive anchors from the USS Oklahoma, tragically sunk in Hawai'i during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, would be placed in front of the Skirvin Hotel as a memorial. The ship's 65 pound Gorham sterling silver punch bowl![]() One sticky-hot summer afternoon in 1954, Uncle John and I walked up Main Street in Tishomingo toward his law office. By age ten I knew it could take a while to stroll even a few blocks with "The Judge." People tended to congregate, waiting to pay their respects to the man who had helped many of them hang on to their farms during the devastating dust-bowl days of the Great Depression, later recounted in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Uncle John enjoyed all the fuss, considering it "important local politickin'" - an artform he practiced until a stroke felled him at age 84. Pausing on his office steps, Kerr-McGee Anyway, it took four years to build Kerr's 11,000 square-foot mountaintop estate in Poteau, Oklahoma and for years, Republicans loved to repeat the story that "Kerr's 30-mile driveway" had been paid for by the taxpayers. While not exactly true, it could have been because Bob Kerr - "the king of the Senate" - was, by far, the single most-powerful Senator in Congress; far more influential than Hawaii's U.S. Senator Dan Inouye later became, as Senator Dan would have told you. When asked, "Why in the hell are you going to a little town in Oklahoma to dedicate a road that goes to nowhere?" President Kennedy replied, "I'm not going to dedicate a damn road, I'm going down there to kiss Bob Kerr's ass Willie Murray Now Uncle John had called this august group together because "Ike" (President Dwight D. Eisenhower) had taken the White House two years before -
and the Republicans were stirring up trouble for the Democrats who could not seem to agree on anything, much less a viable political strategy. Glancing up at the two dusty autographed portraits peering down from behind his desk, Uncle John muttered, "It was a damnsight easier under Franklin D. and Harry." According to Kerr, Eisenhower was going to push hard for further funding of the long-debated interstate highway system |
While my eleven-year-old brain could not comprehend everything said that day, I do remember animated hollerin' and cussin' that seemingly lasted for hours - until Uncle John finally brought the room to attention by ringing his cane against one of the large brass spittoons near his desk.
"If he were here," roared Uncle as he pointed to the empty seat across the old partner's desk, "he'd kick our withered butts! We all know what its gonna' take to beat Ike. First it's gonna' take a plan and its gonna' take lotsa' money to beat the Republicans. And its gonna' take the Democratic Party. The Party's our fishin' net, turnin' out folks on election day." And most important, the Party's the safety net protectin' our poor, our old and infirm. Just remember what it took gettin' it all there; minimum wage, Social Security, and protectin' our workers health! The damn Republicans are blastin' holes in us, so can we just lay this all to rest and get on with it?" By then, all heads were nodding in agreement. It's likely I was the only one near enough to hear Uncle John mutter under his breath, "...at least 'til after the next goddamn' election." Alas, the Democrats lost "the next goddamn' election" in 1956 to Ike - who indeed began building his "mostly concrete" highways. But four years later, John F. Kennedy was elected President of the United States and when I recall that hot summer day in Tishimingo, I like to think that it somehow had something to do with it. Willie Murray didn't live to see the Democrats win back the White House, but Johnston Murray, Uncle John, Bob Kerr, William
Fulbright, Uncle Lyndon, and their younger associate
Carl Albert When people can't seem to understand why I view Oklahoma and Hawai'i as being so very similar, I say that I can relate to the strong sense of community and the slower pace of life in Hawai'i, and while not as spiritually based as Aloha, southern hospitality does work its own special magic. Tornadoes like
hurricanes and tsunamis frighten, kill, injure, and do great damage to property and the economy. And the Hawaiian people's fight for sovereignty
reminds me of the plight of the Five Civilized Tribes
Even Hawaii's depressed economy of the 1990's reminded me of Oklahoma. The empty store fronts, "For Sale" signs, and friends moving away were all too familiar. Oklahoma was also a one-industry state whose economy was devastated when the price of oil (made artificially high by the 1970s Arab Oil Embargo) dropped by half literally overnight. There too, many, many businesses failed when the changes wrought by powerful and uncontrollable outside economic forces brought a once-prosperous economy to its knees. The economic cataclysm gave the Republicans enough leverage to elect only their second govenor since 1907, and just a few years later in Texas, the feisty Democratic Governor Ann Richards lost the Governorship to George Bush Jr. Hawaii's last Democratic Governor Ben Cayetano's slim margin of victory in 1998 stirred up unsettling political memories. After thirty years of unparalleled growth, during the '90s a harsh new economic reality established itself in our islands. Just as I had witnessed during the Oklahoma boom & bust, I watched many in Hawai'i who had thought themselves so brilliant slowly realize they were not; they just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Those were particularly uncertain times for the many still locked into old patterns of doing business and politics; one in the same in Oklahoma and Hawai'i. Many powerful folks in Hawai'i remained without a clue as their small, once tightly-controlled worlds crumbled. Many were swept away completely, especially those who speculated too heavily in real estate at the end of the "Japanese-investment bubble." Fear, greed, and nepotism are about the same everywhere, and as the pie shrinks the well-connected continue to vie for less largess and continue to fight new ideas, technology, and against the new people who bring them. As happened in Oklahoma, people in Hawai'i finally became fed up with the cronyism and the resulting bungling of opportunity and so the 2002 election of a Republican governor in Hawai'i should have come as no great surprise. But what really took me back to my years in Oklahoma was watching the H-3 Highway - the very final segment of the Eisenhower National Defense Highway System - being constructed - in Hawai'i! Growing up in Oklahoma, I had watched as Eisenhower's interstate highways accommodated faster and faster cars and bigger and bigger trucks. America's long romance with the automobile really moved into high gear, and as people bypassed the smaller cities and towns, thousands of once-flourishing communities literally withered on the vine. Route 66, once "America's Main Street," died along with our efficient and comfortable passenger trains. Some argue they were "murdered." Of all that can be said, there is no disagreement over the fact that Eisenhower's interstate highway system forever altered the face of America, symbolized, at least to me, in Hawai'i by an enormous gray concrete scar across the face of the magnificent Koolau Mountains. TO BE CONTINUED |