Tulsa is my home. No matter where I live, Tulsa will always be home. I grew up there, went to school there, had my fondest childhood memories in Tulsa. True, I wasn’t born there, but neither were a lot of people my family knew as I was growing up. Regardless, Tulsa has always been ‘where I’m from’.
McKinley, on the ‘North’ side is where I went to elementary school. We lived nearby so I spent many long childhood days playing in the schoolyard with the neighborhood kids. Days were spent climbing on the monkey bars, playing tag football on the East lawn, skating on the asphalt playground. There wasn’t one square inch of the school grounds we left unexplored. I was sad when they took away the prefab buildings. We used the porches to play house. The buildings were our village. There I discovered that unripe persimmons were very sour when a buddy dared me to pick one off the tree in the corner and take a bite. Just recalling a few memories of that time opens the flood gates.
Now, when you drive by the schoolyard is fenced in 6 foot chain link. It looks more like a prison than a school.
A few years ago I visited losttulsa.com. I found myself in tears as I viewed a slide show of Bell’s Amusement Park: the place that is no more. As badly as I would like to visit the site for old time’s sake, I don’t know if I can. My heart is broken. The Phantasmagoria is gone. Never again will I come around the corner and have a bus blaring its horn, flashing headlights and scaring the water out of me no matter how many times I ride the ride. It was in the dark tunnel of that ride that I was first groped by a boy. Granted, he exited the ride with a split lip, but it was one of those firsts that you never forget. Even if I WAS 22 at the time. (Teehee)
Hmm. That brings a tsunami of memories from Jr. High at Hamilton. Maybe someday I will tell you about the time I missed the bus home because #1 crush popped my bra and it came unhooked, the curse of the girl with bodacious ta-tas. Name that Okie….
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