This Town Is Guthrie’s Town, At Last

“Home of Woody Guthrie.”

If you have good eyes and pay attention while driving east on Highway 40 from Oklahoma City, you can see those words on one of the water towers of this faded boom town.

But there has long been a hollow ring to the inscription because Okemah’s 3,500 residents have been notoriously divided over whether the writer of such songs as “This Land Is Your Land,” “Roll On, Columbia” or “Tom Joad” is worthy of honor.

Woody, who was born here in 1912 and died 55 years later of Huntington’s disease in New York, has been widely hailed as the Walt Whitman of song. But local detractors argue that his political views were too radical for him to be considered a good American. The word communist pops into the more heated debates.

When then-Sen. Fred Harris (D-Okla.) co-authored a Congressional resolution in 1971 calling for a national Woody Guthrie Day, the local chamber of commerce opposed it. The vote was 12 against, with six abstaining.

Later, city officials allowed Woody’s family home to be demolished despite objections that it should be preserved as a historical monument.

Carolyn Price, a high-school counselor here, said Woody has been such a controversial figure that teachers think twice about playing his records because they

knew it might draw complaints from parents.

So it was a dramatic moment Saturday night when Okemah (pronounced oh-KEE-mah) welcomed Woody’s son, Arlo, for his first concert ever in his father’s hometown.

Mark Smyth, owner of the 598-capacity Crystal Theater, said some people laughed when he announced the benefit concert, saying he’d never be able to sell that many tickets

The show not only sold out, but dozens of locals complained Saturday that they couldn’t get tickets because Smyth had filledmore than 250 mail orders from outside Okemah.

Suzy Sharp, a nurse from Tulsa, drove 80 miles for the show, even though she could have seen Arlo Thursday night in Tulsa.

“This is history,” said Sharp, 37. “You might even say it is justice because Okemah has been so hard on Woody for so many years. And now they have invited Arlo to sing as a way to celebrate Woody’s memory.”

The crowd wasted no time in showing its affection, giving Arlo a standing ovation when he walked on stage.

And Arlo, a fixture on the pop-folk scene since the late ‘60s, also got right to the heart of the matter.

He opened with “Pretty Boy Floyd” and “Deportees,” two of his father’s most biting social commentaries. The former depicts bankers robbing people of their homes during the Depression, while the latter decries the treatment of migrant field workers.

But it was near the end of Arlo’s 90-minute set that the audience got its chance to fully celebrate the legacy of its most famous son, singing along and clapping in time with the familiar melody as Arlo sang “This Land Is Your Land,” a song that has become in some quarters a second national anthem.

Arlo again stayed true to the maverick spirit of his father. He included a rarely sung verse decrying the way people were shut out from opportunity by powerful institutions:

Was a big high wall there that tried to stop me

A sign was painted said: Private Property

Arlo interrupted the closing “Amazing Grace” to talk about how music can lead to social change by inspiring change in the individual.

Echoing the underlying message in much of his father’s music, Arlo said, “You can’t let cities and towns, countries, continents . . . make us feel like we are too small and insignificant. Thank for you coming tonight . . . and I know that my dad thanks you also.”

Twenty-two years after Woody’s death, Okemah had officially paid its respects to an American hero.

There were good times and bad times for the Guthrie family in Okemah in the early years of Woody’s life here.

The city profited in the early ‘20s from the oil boom in the region. Though not much oil was found in the town itself, its railroad station made it a supply center for neighboring towns.

Today, the land around Okemah is mostly an agricultural and ranching area. There is a small-town quaintness to the city’s main street, but there are also signs of a troubled local economy.

Many of the stores in the series of two-story red-brick buildings are closed, and “For Rent” signs are common.

Woody’s father, Charley, made a comfortable living from real estate, owning as many as 30 farms at one point. But he suffered financial setbacks and was virtually broke by 1923.

Woody, according to a widely admired 1980 autobiography by Joe Klein, became known around town as an “alley rat . . . a loner, a scavenger who went around collecting junk in a burlap sack.”

The youngster left Okemah around 1929 and began a life of rambling, chronicling in song, poems and prose the injustices he saw during one of the most disheartening times in American history.

Though he never actually joined the Communist Party, according to Klein’s book, he sang at some party rallies and briefly wrote a column for the Daily Worker.

Shortly after Arlo’s concert was announced, the town’s long debate over the Guthrie legacy made headlines yet again.

David Cox, a reporter for the Okemah News Leader, a 3,000-circulation biweekly newspaper, ripped down a poster on the local American Legion building that declared, “Woody Guthrie’s No Hero.”

Mortician Bart Webb, who had put up the poster, filed a complaint accusing Cox, 26, of destroying private property. A court hearing is scheduled for next Monday.

“It was just something I did instinctively,” Cox said, sitting in the newspaper office across the street from the Legion building. “I’m tired of seeing Okemah always portrayed as the town that doesn’t even appreciate its own son. I don’t think that is the case. It’s just that a few vocal people over the years have made it seem that way.”

Webb’s mother said Saturday at the funeral home that her son--besieged by the media in the days after the poster incident--is tired of talking about Woody, but she made it clear that she is no fan of the late songwriter.

“A lot of the people who are for him are people too young to remember him, to know what he really represented . . . and who he was involved with.”

But other residents here see Woody in a different light.

Bill Coale, a social worker for the state Department of Human Services, shook his head at the criticisms leveled at Woody.

“My dad was about the same age as Woody and they were just poor kids. Those were hard times. If you worked as a laborer, it was pretty close to slavery. You did what you were told or you didn’t have a job,” Coale, 39, said Friday night, sipping coffee with friends just before midnight at the K-Bar restaurant.

“A lot of people realized that wasn’t right and they talked about organizing and they were called radicals. If Woody were alive today, the worst thing you’d probably call him would be hippie. He just had his own way of thinking.”

Still, the feeling against Woody was so strong that theater owner Smyth said “no way” two years ago when Minnesota-based singer Larry Long proposed using the theater to record a tribute to Woody, featuring children from the area. Smyth was worried he might alienate his movie customers. But he finally relented, and the concert last December went smoothly. An album featuring Long and the children has just been released by Flying Fish Records, and that project was the impetus for Arlo’s appearance.

Arlo kept a fairly low profile in town. He had dinner Friday night with relatives and stopped by the old family house, where only part of the rock foundation remains.

But he turned down invitations to participate in the city’s annual Pioneer Days celebration Saturday--a parade celebrating the city’s 87th year.

He said he didn’t want to appear to be on a crusade to change people’s minds about his father.

“I don’t live here,” he said Saturday, while stopping by the old home site. “I just came here to do a concert. I don’t want to presume to tell people how to think.”

On stage, Arlo was clearly nervous at the start of the show--and he shared his nervousness with the audience.

“I’ll tell you,” he said after the opening number. “I work a lot, about 100 shows a year, but this one’s got me scared.”

After the concert, dozens of fans stopped at the souvenir stand to buy T-shirts featuring a drawing of the “Home of Woody Guthrie” water tower. Those proceeds and the concert receipts netted about $5,000 for the W.O.O.D.Y. scholarship fund for area students.

“I always hated that water tower because I felt it was so hypocritical,” said an Oklahoma City resident in her late 30s as she eyed the display. “Every time I saw it, I thought about how for years you couldn’t even get Woody’s book in the library.

“But I’m proud of the way the town has fought back. They finally made that sign mean something.”

At least most of the town. The woman didn’t want to give her name because her relatives still live here, and some of her friends still think Woody was too radical.

“Time does heal things,” the woman said. “But in a small town, time heals real slow.”