This is my good friend Woody:

He’s from Lexington, Kentucky, where he was raised on a horse farm that is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. Now he lives in Atlanta; he came to visit me just before the New Year. He’d never been to Oklahoma, but he has to hear me talk about it all the time, and I guess I piqued his curiosity. Also, the last time we’d seen each other was when we went to the Wake Forest Lovefeast in December 2007, and that was just entirely too long.

Woody said he wanted to see cool spots in Oklahoma, but more than that he wanted to see places that were important to me. “I want to see your high school,” he said. “Take me on a tour of your life.”

Can do, friend.

Woody’s first introduction to Oklahoma was at the UCO Jazz Lab, where we took him directly from the airport to watch our buddy K.C. Clifford and her husband David make some beautiful music, along with K.C.’s dad’s band, Mountain Smoke, who play bluegrass. Being from Kentucky, Woody was right at home. We enjoyed some of Oklahoma’s best pizza (Hideaway) and heard some of the state’s best musicians, and Woody got to meet my awesome friends Laurie and Jaye and Cheryl.

The next morning I thought I’d start Woody off by showing him some of the local sights. We had breakfast at the Red Cup, and then visited the State Capitol:

Woody’s heard me bitch about how I hate our state Capitol dome. It’s magnificent and beautiful but we were the only state without one and I liked that about us, and anyway, if we had $2 million to spend on a dome why couldn’t we give teachers more money? Anyhow; we nosed around the state Senate and House chambers for awhile, me telling him cool stories about Oklahoma history and politics.

After that we wandered downtown for a bit. I showed Woody the building where Brian and I lived when we first got together, and since it overlooks the Oklahoma City National Memorial, we walked around that for awhile. It’s really a must-see for people coming to Oklahoma City for the first time, but as a resident I have to say it never gets easier talking about the bombing or explaining the symbolism of the whole thing. After that I thought we needed a little bit of fun, and so we strolled through the Skirvin Hilton and then got lost in the downtown tunnels (which is where I took that photo of Woody up at the top, there), Myriad Gardens and Bricktown. We got lost down there for quite awhile, finally emerging at Leadership Square. It was the first time since my senior prom that I’d been there.

We met up with Laurie and enjoyed lunch at Cafe Antigua, our favorite little Guatemalan restaurant near Mesta Park, then went home to prepare a fantastic meal, as we’d invited some dear friends over to hang with Woody and generally sit around and be cool. We had a cooler of beer, grilled skewers, and K.C. brought dessert of cookies & cream ice cream, which was perfect. I’d had a pretty rough few days leading up to this, and a gathering of dear friends was exactly what I needed. So – Thank You.

The next morning I’d promised Woody to drive him to see my hometown and the prairies I love so dearly. My hometown of Weatherford is now home to one of Oklahoma’s largest wind farms, and Woody was about as excited about seeing this as I’d ever seen anyone get:

That photo doesn’t really give you a sense of how humongous this wind farm is; it’s basically circles the entire outside half of the town. We stood there for quite awhile taking photos (which I’ll be sharing in the coming days).

The only thing that sucked was that we both realized afterward that we’d been shooting in a 1600 ISO, so a lot of the photos, when blown up, look pretty grainy. It’s OK, though, because I still think they’re great. I took him into town after that to show him around the college campus where I spent most of my childhood. My dad’s old building was unlocked, so we went and looked around:

Also it bears mentioning here that Woody is the single most photogenic person I know. I have yet to see a bad photo of him. I mentioned this to him in college once, and he said, “Okay, I’ll make a face, and you’ll take a picture, and then we’ll have a bad picture of me!” Except that it turned out to be the best photo of him yet.

Anyhow, we poked around Weatherford for quite awhile, including the dorms where I lived during science and math camp, which is where I met our mutual friend Summer. One of those dorms is Thomas Jefferson Hall, so Woody decided to do his Thomas Jefferson Pose in front of the sign:

I drove him past my old school, my old house, and that’s all part of another story about how You Can’t Go Home Again, but suffice it to say we had a wonderful time. On the way back to the city Woody slept and I listened to Patty Griffin and longed for my childhood, which is pretty typical when I go out there.

That night we took Woody to his final Oklahoma Initiation: Eischens in Okarche. He and I had driven through Okarche on our way out west (interstates? What are those?), and I rounded up as many people as I could and Laurie’s brother-in-law Rob landed us a table at the legendary Oklahoma joint, which, for the uninitiated, serves the following: fried chicken, fried okra, pitchers of beer, and white bread with pickles and onions on the side. It’s INCREDIBLE. If you ever come here, I’m totally taking you there. We stuffed ourselves, and Woody and I played songs on the jukebox (me: ”Mustang Sally” by the Commitments; him: ”The Taliban Song” by Toby Keith. Discuss).

The next day was my grandfather’s funeral, and Brian and I dropped Woody off at the train station on our way out of town. He was headed to Austin to spend New Year’s Eve with three of the coolest people we know and I was totally jealous, and also a little disappointed that we’d had only a couple days and that he wasn’t going to experience his first Flaming Lips concert that night.

I’d say the most important thing about all this, about my good friend coming to see me, is that we got more time to talk than we’ve had since college, at least in person. It was healing and restorative and hilarious at times, and I am so glad our friendship has grown and deepened despite the constant physical distance between us.