Welcome to Nowata

My wife and I used to make a circuitous route from the town in Oklahoma where we lived to visit family in southern Missouri. Each time, we would pass through a particular town that stood out among the rest only because there was nothing about it that made it particularly interesting. There was nothing of it that would catch the eye.

It’s a no-man’s town, a place where now only a few remain after the farming and timber boom of the early 20th century died down. Struggling ma-and-pa shops find themselves next to long-abandoned warehouses and boarded-up structures. Houses seem old – not so much as in age, because you think that they could be made new again, antique and classic even, but rather in soul, as if the owners, if they exist at all, have long ago given up on strong look of solid brick and the clean curves of Doric columns and the fresh feeling of gardens and cut grass.

I remember a gas station on a corner. It remains open only because there is still a road that makes its long stretch between real destinations right through the town’s middle – still keeping the town alive but oddly lifeless, like the spinal cord of a quadriplegic. Its name was given to it at its birth, some 120 years ago, and its Indian ancestry has spiritual roots, and I laugh every time I hear it: Nowata. It’s prophetic, I think. We make jokes, matching its name with another Oklahoma town, “Don’t slip on Nowata, Eufala down.” but they never quite fit right, like mocking the homeless or shaming the sinner. It was only later that we learned the name was a mispronouncement of a Delaware word meaning “come here” or “welcome.” Welcome… to what?

We would zigzag through its heart as we glimpsed the occasional American flag in a front yard, a faded and dented stop sign marking its center, an old railroad track reminding us of its vital days when the St. Louis & Iron Mountain Railroad Company extended its line down from Coffeyville through Nowata County and on south to Fort Smith, Arkansas, shipping cattle and farming supplies between three states, straight through the heart of Indian Territory. And, ironically, the town thrived precisely because there was an abundance of water from the Verdigris River that fed the abundant prairie grasses with much-needed nutrients. That, and the discovery of oil a hundred years ago.

But what had happened since? What’s its true story? How did it find itself where it now is, and what kind of summer would have to blow in to revive the trees, to clean the streets and alleyways of debris, to caress and invite green life into bloom, bleach the buildings, intoxicate the people? What kind of wild wind and strong storm could sweep the place clean of weariness, of days upon days of hot Oklahoma-sun dreariness, and revitalize its soul from a long, dry drought? Are they ready for a storm like that?

Am I?