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Wind Is Picking Up
With energy discussions continuing to increase throughout the nation and the state, many are glad that one energy source is finally providing a breath of fresh air.
Over the past decade, wind power has swept across the country, and many are convinced that this source is the future of renewable energy.
Due to the instability of the oil industry, alternative energy sources are becoming more of a priority to many state and local governments. The advantage of wind power is that it is abundant, and thus much more consistent in cost than other sources. Another aspect of wind energy that is particularly beneficial to Oklahoma is that it does not need water to operate, so droughts have no effect on its functionality.
For this and other reasons, Oklahoma has seen a huge jump in wind power in recent years. According to the American Wind Energy Association, the state ranks fourth in the nation in wind capacity. In Oklahoma, wind energy also generates enough electricity to power one million homes.
Oklahoma seems ripe for future growth in this industry.
“The bottom line is that Oklahoma is a windy state, and developers are very attracted to Oklahoma,” says Laura Fleet, policy director at The Wind Coalition. “The state of Oklahoma has done a great job in helping the industry get a firm foundation since 2003 through targeted tax incentives, which have allowed Oklahoma to compete for new projects with neighboring wind-producing states like Texas and Kansas.”
Despite the applause, there are some who aren’t quite as impressed. Many state lawmakers believe that the generous tax breaks given to the wind energy industry years ago are not in the best interest of Oklahomans.[pullquote]Wind energy provides county governments and school districts with more than $40 million annually, and rural landowners receive $30 million each year in royalty payments.[/pullquote]
In April, the state congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of cutting tax credits to wind energy companies, and a number of other bills presented to the state legislature this year call for more regulations on the industry.
This ideology is not exclusive to Oklahoma, either. This year, the Texas senate passed a bill that would end its wind energy mandate, and West Virginia lawmakers repealed a renewable energy standard that required utilities to receive 25 percent of their power from alternative energy sources over the next 10 years.
Wind advocates believe that wind energy could be exactly what Oklahoma’s economy needs.
“Since 2003, the wind energy has invested over $6 billion in Oklahoma, including paying more than $340 million in wages over that time period,” Fleet says. “Wind energy provides county governments and school districts with more than $40 million annually, and rural landowners receive $30 million each year in royalty payments.
“In addition, the cost of wind energy is low and, through developing technology, could go lower. However, it will never rise,” she continues. “It provides commercial, manufacturing and residential customers with predictability and long-term price stability.”
This predictability and stability can lead to more jobs and less panic, unlike the oil industry.
Ultimately, only time will tell if this energy source becomes a staple of the state and nation’s economy and culture or if it is just another resource that blows by.
Mutilations Ruminations
Photos courtesy Shelly Reynolds.
In the course of her job as an accounting analyst at a Tulsa-area oil and gas company, it’s very unlikely that Shelly Reynolds comes in contact with many people who know of her cinematic past. To put it another way, most of her business acquaintances might be surprised – or even shocked – to know that a generation ago she starred in a science-fiction-horror feature that has gained an underground cult following.
That picture is Mutilations, a direct-to-video movie shot in Tulsa and released nationally in 1986. Under her maiden name of Shelly Creel, Reynolds played the lead ingénue, one of the few survivors of a ferocious attack by an alien presence that’s also been mutilating cattle in the area. (The idea of alien-induced cattle mutilation, which some took as fact, was so big in the ‘70s and ‘80s that even MGM got into the act, releasing the mutilation-themed Endangered Species – featuring Robert Urich, JoBeth Williams and Oklahoma-native stars Hoyt Axton and Gailard Sartain – in 1982.)
Spring 2016 will mark the 30th anniversary of Mutilations’ two-week shoot. With that in mind, Reynolds wants to see how many people from the film’s cast and crew she can get together for a reunion. It’s an idea she came up with after talking to members of Tulsa’s Hixenbaugh family, whom she has known since well before the Mutilations shoot.
“Norman Hixenbaugh and I were in band together at Edison Junior High, and I graduated from Edison High School with his brother Matthew,” she explains. “We all knew each other – we were kind of the geeky people, the computer-club kind of kids – and we became friends.
“Their mother, Annette Hixenbaugh, did a lot of charity work. One year, she was involved with the March of Dimes and had a booth at the Tulsa fair. There were a lot of other charities to compete with, so to get people’s attention she dressed her sons up as characters from Star Wars. People came flocking to her booth. They just loved those characters.”
Soon, the Hixenbaughs formed a Star Wars troupe, appearing in costume at birthday parties and charity events.
“They all created their own outfits,” Reynolds recalls. “At first, Mrs. Hixenbaugh was the Leia character, but then she said, ‘Let’s get some of your friends from school to do this.’ So I became Princess Leia, with the bun in my hair and all that. It was really their costuming, though, that made it work.”
Since all of the principals were still in high school at the time, they usually did their Star Wars appearances only on weekends. Sometimes, they would enact scenes from the movie. Other times, they’d simply appear as the characters and interact with the audience. Of their dozens of gigs, Reynolds remembers one in particular: It was for the Perinatal Carnival at Tulsa’s Saint Francis Hospital, and the whole crew was flown in via helicopter.
Meanwhile, tremors had begun shaking up the entire movie industry – and the epicenter of the quake was Tulsa. In 1985, Bill Blair of the Tulsa-based video distributor United Entertainment (now VCI) and the husband-and-wife production team of Christopher and Linda Lewis had unleashed a little horror film called Blood Cult. What was revolutionary about it was that they eschewed a theatrical release, concentrating solely on the video market – making Blood Cult the first-ever made-for-home-video feature. Its huge return inspired other area filmmakers to see about getting in on some of that action, and one of them was a man named Larry Thomas, the producer, director and writer behind Mutilations.
“Annette Hixenbaugh knew Larry, and when Larry decided to shoot his movie, he went to her and said, ‘I’d really like to have a group of kids who know each other, who don’t have to figure out how to work with each other because they’ve already done it. I’d like your group of kids.’
“We were young adults by then,” Reynolds continues. “I was 20 years old. Matt Hixenbaugh was already cast, and Larry kept calling me, saying, ‘Shelly. Just look at the script,’ and I was thinking, ‘Oh, my goodness, what’s going on here? This is weird. I’m not an actress.’
“I finally looked at the script, and I thought it was kind of funny. But Larry said, ‘No, no, no. It’s serious.’”
Finally, she remembers, she and some of the others recruited from the Star Wars troupe figured “this could be a really good cult-classic kind of thing.”[pullquote]I always say if it wasn’t for [Star Wars creator] George Lucas and Larry Thomas, we never would’ve met.[/pullquote]
“I drug my heels a little bit,” she adds, “but I ended up saying yes. That was in the fall of ‘85, and then we started shooting around March of ‘86.”
In the movie, an astronomy professor (Al Baker) and his girlfriend (Katherine Hutson) take a group of students on a field trip to investigate a possible meteor landing. Instead, they encounter a mutilated cow (done in stop-motion animation by Texas-based effects creator John Fischner) and a UFO attack. Comedy relief comes in the form of a pair of guys who run a remote diner (Bill Buckner and Harvey Shell) and shoot at the aliens with shotgun shells stuffed with biscuits. Also on hand is a creepy old guy (John Bliss) in a deserted house who rambles a lot about the Book of Mormon between monster attacks.
During the shoot, Reynolds says, “I learned the meaning of ‘hurry up and wait.’ We’d hurry around, get into makeup, meet up and then wait for some of the sets to be built. Eight hours later, it was like, ‘I’m tired. I’m starving.’ Long hours – but it was fun.”
Something that made it especially memorable for her was the participation of cameraman Brett Reynolds, who was a principal at the time with Tulsa’s Take One Productions. As he recalls, he came in, in the middle of production “to help out,” bringing along a state-of-the-art Panavision camera.
“The first time I saw Brett was when we were filming the diner scene,” says Reynolds. “We’d just come in after being terrorized by the alien, and we were all sitting around a table. I thought Brett was one of the best-looking guys I’d ever seen – but I didn’t know if he thought I was all that,” she adds with a laugh.
He did, though, enough to eventually propose.
“Every time I turned around, Shelly was smiling at me,” he remembers, chuckling. “So I smiled back, and the rest is history. I always say if it wasn’t for [Star Wars creator] George Lucas and Larry Thomas, we never would’ve met.”
Brett has stayed in the business, shooting a number of movies – including the 1999 Tulsa-based production Chillicothe, which played the Sundance Film Festival – and music videos, traveling the world with contemporary Christian artists like Michael W. Smith and working as a lighting director for ESPN. Following Mutilations, Reynolds starred in Larry Thomas’s The Change, a drama with horror overtones that has yet to find a distributor. Except for a small role as a waitress in Chillicothe, she hasn’t otherwise been involved in movie acting.
Reynolds has, however, remained in contact with the Hixenbaugh family, who not only got her started on the path to Mutilations, but was also involved in it themselves.
“We talk pretty frequently, and we realized that it’s been 30 years, and it’d be really good to reach out to the rest of the cast and crew, get their take on things, have fun – and laugh,” she says. “If we have nothing else, we have good memories.”
Those who worked in any capacity on Mutilations can contact Shelly Reynolds at [email protected].
Green Corn Rebellion
It sounds like something straight out of a Marx Brothers movie.
Hundreds of Oklahoma farmers, American Indians and African Americans, armed with shotguns and pitchforks, planned a walk to Washington, D.C., to protest President Woodrow Wilson’s enactment of the draft and plan to enter World War I. Protestors planned to sustain themselves during the march by living off the land, including eating green corn.
For a week in August 1917, southeast Oklahoma lived in terror as armies of citizens roamed the countryside putting down the Green Corn Rebellion.
It was a very different Oklahoma prior to World War I as Nigel Sellars’ The IWW and the Green Corn Rebellion illustrates in the spring 1999 issue of the Chronicles of Oklahoma.
The majority of the state’s agricultural sector was poor tenant farmers raising cotton. Land prices had shot up by 246 percent from 1900 to 1915. Most farmers could no longer afford their own farms. Many sold out and ended up working the land they had owned. The crop lien system and merchant credit between harvests kept tenant farmers in debt to their landlords.
The Oklahoma Socialist Party proclaimed they would expand public lands for tenant use and initiate a cooperative marketing system. At a Sallisaw convention, many also joined the Working Class Union under the leadership of Rube Munson and Homer Spence.
When the 1916 presidential election took place, Socialist Party presidential candidate Allan Benson won 15 percent of Oklahoma’s vote while winning only three percent nationally. The Socialists won 25 percent of Seminole County and 22 percent of the vote in neighboring Pontotoc County.
Falling cotton prices had heightened tensions in southeast Oklahoma. Dewar’s water tanks were dynamited, there was a gas explosion at Kusa and Henryetta’s sewer mains were sabotaged.
Then, in the summer of 1917, Wilson signed into law the Selective Draft Act of 1917 in order to gather troops to fight Germany in World War I. Many farmers refused to register, seeing the conflict as a rich man’s war.
An elderly farmer named John Spears raised the red Socialist flag over a bluff on the Little River outside Sasakaw on July 27 and called for volunteers to march on Washington.
Seminole County Sheriff Frank Grall and a deputy rode out to investigate. On Aug. 2, they were ambushed in a hail of bullets by five Socialists, barely escaping with their lives.
Munson and Spence held a revival meeting during the night on a sandbar in the South Canadian River to convince farmers that it was time to act. Under the cover of darkness, phone lines into Francis were cut, and the railroad bridges as well as an oil pipeline were destroyed. They met in the morning at the Spear farm where a wagonload of corn and roasted beef waited for them. One of the rebels likened it to a picnic. Nearly a hundred men assembled on the farm.
An informant told Pontotoc County Sheriff Bob Duncan where the rebels were. Duncan led a posse of 25 men on a charge of the Spear farm and captured 10 of the rebels.
During those critical six days following the raid, the Ada Weekly News reported on a series of shootouts and raids in southeast Oklahoma.
Shootouts took place during the following night at Stonewall and Francis. Sixty men were rushed by train to Konawa to prevent rebels from seizing the town. In a shootout nearby, W.T. Cargill, secretary for the rebels, was killed, shot in the back by a posse.
The Ada newspaper recorded that at a rural school south of Spaulding, rebels and a posse clashed Aug. 5, leaving a rebel farmer dead.
A separate shootout took place at a roadblock south of Holdenville, killing a rebel who refused to stop his vehicle. He was riddled with bullets, according to the Ada Weekly News.
A train took 56 captured rebels from Holdenville to McAlester the next day.
Eventually, 450 farmers were arrested and 150 convicted. Munson and Spence were tried for conspiracy and sentenced to prison. They were pardoned by President Warren G. Harding in 1921.
The rebellion allowed both the state and federal governments to clamp down on the Socialists in Oklahoma. By the end of World War I, the Oklahoma Socialist Party was gone, while nationally the Socialist Party was discredited. It was never again to poll double-digit numbers in presidential elections.
The Key Players
Rube Munson: One of the organizers for the Working Class Union, a Socialist organization for tenant farmers, was brought in from out of state by the Industrial Workers of the World organization. He was out on bail for obstructing the 1917 military draft. Munson was the instigator of the idea of marching to Washington. Tried in Enid, he was sentenced to 10 years in Leavenworth Federal Prison.
Homer Spence: One of the organizers for the Working Class Union and out on bail for obstructing the 1917 military draft, he was sentenced to serve 10 years in the Leavenworth Federal Prison.
John “Old Man” Spears: Local county Working Class Union organizer, he raised the red banner of revolution over his farm where tenant farmers were organizing their march on Washington. He received a two-year prison sentence.
Sheriff Frank Grall: A former U.S. Deputy Marshal from Arkansas and police chief of Shawnee, Grall was already famous for being part of a posse that killed a band of train robbers in 1893.
Sheriff Bob Duncan: Originally from Missouri, he had already served nearly a decade as county sheriff when the Green Corn Rebellion took place. He died in 1935.
Uniquely Oklahoma
El Reno’s Grascar races are certainly a unique cultural phenomenon, but it’s not the most well-known event in this city of just more than 17,000. The first weekend in May brings thousands to the city to celebrate El Reno Fried Onion Burger Day, which includes a Bun Run, car show and the celebration of the famed burger, which began in the Depression era.
El Reno is not the only Oklahoma city home to unusual cultural celebrations. In Beaver, Okla., the World Championship Cow Chip Throwing Contest, referred to by locals as the Cow Chip, is a week-long celebration in April that attracts contestants from all over the country looking to fling cow chips the farthest distance.
The World’s Largest Calf Fry Festival and Cook-off happens each June in Vinita, Okla. Teams cook countless calf fries in a battle for the best recipe. Other contests, including best cobbler, cowboy bread, beans and salsa, draw hungry festival-goers who may not have acquired a taste for fries.
It’s a tournament so famous that they made a documentary. The annual Okie Noodling Tournament, held each June in Pauls Valley, invites the best noodlers from all over the country to take part in hand-fishing to see who pulls in the biggest catch. Thousands attend this festival to take in the spectacle of huge catfish and those who love the sport.
Mowing For Speed
For many, using a lawn mower is an unwelcomed chore, and the faster the job is completed, the better. A group of hobbyists in El Reno takes the concept of speed mowing to an entirely different level. Here, lawn mowers are a form of entertainment, but with a new purpose; they are raced.
At a bimonthly event dubbed Grascar, participants from all around Oklahoma, and sometimes from surrounding states, race lawn mowers around a track. Grascar runs, weather permitting, from March through early November.
Grascar Vice President Michelle Mayfield says the tradition began about 15 years ago when a few townspeople wanted to pass the time in a unique way.
“A few guys were sitting up in the VFW in the bar, and one had the idea to get their mowers out and see whose was the fastest,” Mayfield says. “Well, after their first race, one of them got to thinking that he wanted his mower to be faster than the others’ mowers, so he started tinkering with it without his friends knowing. That’s how the whole thing got started.”
Mayfield admits that the concept does sound strange at first.
“When you first hear about it, you think, ‘Now what is really going on here?’ But it’s really just a lot of fun. It’s not a redneck thing,” Mayfield says with a laugh.
Grascar has evolved to include 11 classes of mowers, from basic stop mowers up to an unlimited class that features complicated machines with souped-up motors. But in all of the classes, the basic function of the lawn mowers is altered.
“The blades are taken off, of course. You don’t cut the grass. You redo the motors so that they go faster, depending on what class you race in,” Mayfield says.[pullquote]Racing is a family deal that started when my father was little, and it’s been passed down ever since. The neat thing about Grascar is that it’s all about family.[/pullquote]
Mayfield, who lives in Oklahoma City, says she first heard about Grascar from one of her best friends.
“He actually later got married out there on the track,” she says.
Mayfield has been involved with the sport for five years, and her boyfriend has been named champion in his mower class several years in a row. Mayfield has served as vice president of Grascar, a nonprofit run entirely by volunteers, for the past two years.
“There is a powder-puff class for women for mowers, but basically I got bored of standing around and watching, so I decided to step in as vice president as a way to be more involved,” Mayfield says. “In the past three years, Grascar has grown tremendously. It went from a track with hay bales around it, to tires surrounding it, to the fenced track we have today. Over $10,000 was spent a few years ago to make the track that we have now.”
When she tells people about being vice president of Grascar, Mayfield says she often gets similar reactions.
“Some people are surprised, number one, because I’m female. I tell them that Grascar is a nonprofit, and it’s very family oriented. And then people always ask, ‘You really race mowers?’ And when I tell them yes, they ask how fast they go. It all depends on how much work you put into your mower; they can go from 10 miles per hour to 55,” Mayfield says.
Actually seeing and hearing the mowers shatters expectations. Mayfield says that most of the mowers are eye-catching and very loud.
“Some of them … almost sound like a Harley [motorcycle]. It’s all adrenaline when you get out there and watch,” she says.
In addition to mower races, the event has expanded to include regular racing carts and cars of various sizes and classes, says Grascar President Richard Jarvis. Many of the car racers are children, with classes designated for various ages. Children as young as 4 can race, and Jarvis says the oldest Grascar participant is a 75-year-old mower racer.
This is Jarvis’ first year as president of the group, but he knows how Grascar impacts El Reno.
“Grascar brings a lot of money to El Reno since it brings so many people in. The city council and everyone involved seems to think that Grascar is a really good deal for the town,” he says.
Jarvis has been a racer all his life, he says, though not on lawn mowers. Now, he has passed his love of racing on to his children and grandchildren, many of whom participate in Grascar.
“The rules in Grascar are just like regular racing,” Jarvis says. “It takes a lot of work to build these machines and get them running, so it’s great for kids to learn.”
Tommy Kirk, who lives in Yukon, agrees with Jarvis that Grascar teaches children important lessons. Kirk and his family are long-time Grascar participants.
“I have grandkids that range in age from 7 to 15 that race in Grascar,” Kirk says. “Racing is a family deal that started when my father was little, and it’s been passed down ever since. The neat thing about Grascar is that it’s all about family. And it teaches responsibility to the kids. They are held accountable to their vehicles and have to work on them. They also have to learn the boundaries of what they can do.”
Kirk says that in his family, children who want to race must maintain at least a B average at school. For him, another benefit of this extracurricular activity is its relative low cost.
“As far as getting young kids involved, it’s something they can get started in pretty inexpensively. I think that’s one reason why racing is growing nationwide. That, and the kids love it. My grandkids all say they love the speed,” Kirk says.
For spectators, general admission to watch the races, both for lawn mowers and regular racing, is always free. Any money Grascar brings in through its members and the concession stand goes straight into the maintenance of the track, Jarvis says. Race winners receive trophies and bragging rights.
Letter from the Editor
Having choices is a luxury in life, but it can also be overwhelming. I cannot count the times I have scrolled through my social media accounts and seen posts from friends looking for reliable handymen, plumbers, hair stylists – you name it.
We all want the best: the best service, the best bang for our buck, the best our money can buy, and many times we rely on recommendations for help. Yelp, Urbanspoon, Angie’s List and other peer-reviewed sites can offer insight into how smoothly a restaurant runs or speak to the integrity of a home contractor.
Each year, we give our readers the opportunity to weigh in on their bests: attorney, aesthetician and auto service to wireless service, wedding photographer and even women’s boutique. We received thousands of votes, tabulated them, and now present Oklahoma Magazine’s annual The Best of the Best, a reader survey of the best of everything Oklahoma has to offer.
We have made every attempt to be as comprehensive as possible in our 142 categories. But if you see that something is missing, let us hear about it. Visit www.okmag.com to contact us if you think there’s a category we should consider including in next year’s survey.
Also in this issue: We can all appreciate the beauty and elegance that goes into the design and architecture of a luxury home. Oklahoma Magazine takes you on a tour of five such homes in Tulsa. From modern to traditional, colorful and muted, these homes represent what luxury means to homeowners, designers, builders, architects and more.
There’s never been a better time for beer in Oklahoma. Breweries, both large and small, pop up on a regular occurrence. We chat with some of the state’s newest breweries to find out how they’re making a go of it in the Sooner State. Happy drinking.
Jami Mattox
Managing Editor
Chase Bryant
Wednesday, June 24 –
The 22-year-old Texas native experienced his first top 10 single this year with “Take It On Back.” The single off his self-titled EP is his first penned song to appear high on the Billboard charts and has sold more than 85,000 downloads. The country singer, who made his debut on the steps of ValueBank in his hometown of Orange Grove, Texas, has quickly become known as one of the industry’s best-dressed young acts. Bryant contributes his style to ‘50s icons James Dean, Elvis Pressley and Jerry Lee Lewis, and he continues to get recognized for his skill on the strings, saying he sets out to not only be praised for his vocal power but also for his unique guitar playing. Enjoy his talent in person as he makes his way to Tulsa. For more information, please visit www.thevanguardtulsa.com.
LibertyFest 2015
Wednesday, June 24 – Saturday, July 4 –
Named one of CNN and USA Today’s top 10 places to be in America on July 4, LibertyFest entertains an annual average of 125,000 attendees with a celebration of America and the state of Oklahoma. Festival events include a car show, kite fest, rodeo, concert in the park, Parkfest at UCO, fireworks and Taste of Edmond, while also hosting the state’s largest hometown Independence Day parade with more than 100 entries. The patriotic festivities conclude with entertainment and fireworks the evening of July 4. For more information, visit www.libertyfest.org.
Wynonna & The Big Noise
Thursday, June 25 –
Five-time Grammy Award-winner and New York Times best-selling author Wynonna Judd blazes The Joint stage at the Tulsa Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. In the ‘80s, Wynonna and her mother, Naomi Judd, signed to RCA records as the duo The Judds. During their stint together, The Judds charted 23 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs, with 14 number one spots. They also recorded eight studio albums and sold more than 20 million records worldwide, winning more than 60 music industry awards. Due to medical issues, The Judds disbanded in 1991, and Wynonna signed to MCA records as a solo artist. With her commanding voice, Wynonna has released eight studio albums, a live album and holiday album. Her first four singles – “She Is His Only Need,” “I Saw the Light,” “No one Else on Earth” and “My Strongest Weakness” – all reached number one on the U.S. top country singles charts in 1992. On Thursday, June 25, along with her husband, Cactus Moser, and The Big Noise band, Wynonna will sing a medley of her greatest hits. For more information, visit www.hardrockcasinotulsa.com.
