Okie Is OK : Judge Rules Restaurant With Down-Home Name, Farm Girl Logo Can Be Listed on Freeway Signs

It took a year, but things turned out OK for the Okie Girl on Friday.

A Superior Court judge in Bakersfield ordered state highway officials to install four “motorist services” signs that will help direct Golden State Freeway travelers to the Okie Girl barbecue restaurant at the Los Angeles-Kern county line, 50 miles north of the San Fernando Valley.

Caltrans administrators had twice turned down restaurant owner Mary Lynn Rasmussen’s request for the four signs at the freeway’s Frazier Park off-ramp because they objected to the eatery’s name and its logo.

Officials initially ruled that the word “Okie” might be offensive to residents of the nearby San Joaquin Valley, many of whom are descended from the “Okies” who fled Oklahoma and other Dust Bowl states in the great drought of the 1930s. Later, Caltrans objected to a drawing of a reclining, shorts-clad farm girl used as part of the restaurant logo.

Sacramento officials dropped their opposition to the name after Oklahomans--including Oklahoma Gov. David Walters--rallied to the defense of Rasmussen, a native of Broken Bow, Okla.

“If the authorities in California can’t help the Okie Girl Restaurant, then we offer her an invitation to come home to Oklahoma,” Walters told The Times in April.

But officials continued to protest the farm girl drawing as both unseemly and a violation of policy and so Rasmussen, 52, took them to court Friday.

Rasmussen’s lawyer Anthony P. Serritella, accused highway officials of “throwing roadblock after after roadblock” at the restaurant owner.

Judge Clarence Westra Jr. granted a preliminary injunction to overturn the sign ban when Caltrans lawyer Thomas Fellenz was unable to show that Rasmussen’s logo violated state guidelines.

Caltrans spokesman George Hartwell said officials had not evaluated the ruling. But he said the signs could be erected as soon as Rasmussen prepares them and supplies them to Gorman-area freeway crews.

Word of the court ruling prompted a round of applause at the restaurant as diners munched on lunchtime specials of barbecued chicken, ribs and blackberry cobbler.

“This is a victory for middle-class America,” said an elated Rasmussen, who had contended that the signs are needed to help travelers find her restaurant, especially the thousands of tourists she expects in October when the artist Christo plans to cover the surrounding hillsides with giant yellow umbrellas.

The 13-year-old freeway sign program is designed to help motorists traveling along isolated stretches of Interstate 5. Rasmussen said she first applied to have her logo installed on existing directional signposts last summer, six months before her eatery opened for business.

“Okies are strong and determined,” she said. “This proves it.”