In the wrong place?

 At the archives of the Tulsa Public Library, I found the shocking news that my grandfather E. S. Hutchison had his brains blown out by a jealous husband in front of the post office in down town Tulsa Oklahoma in 1925. Then a few days later in a speech at the Tulsa City Club, his brother, L.L. Hutchison denounced my grandfather as a womanizer and said he got what he deserved. As Ye Sow So Shall You Reap.

I wanted to try to find out more about my grandfather and his murderer, so I drove downtown to the Tulsa County Court house.

At the County Court house, I tried to trace what happened to the shooter, Charles Eugene Purdy, who killed my grandfather. I couldn’t find out if he was convicted or not. Perhaps I went to the wrong department.

In a very big thick black book, that was too heavy to lift, I searched and did find handwritten references to probate records for 1925. But the records were not kept at the county court house.

To see the probate records, I was sent to an annex in a temporary building in an industrial area. Thanks to the GPS, I found it on the outskirts of Tulsa. The annex was a nondescript building with a small parking area. There were no clear signs indicating what was in the building. I knocked on a few doors and finally found the probate records annex.

After writing a request for the probate records following my grandfather’s murder, I sat down on a metal folding chair and waited. I felt isolated and alienated in the bare surroundings with no signs indicating where I was or what was the purpose of the space I was in. I controlled a feeling of hopelessness telling me to get out of there.

Just as I was wondering if I was in the wrong place or if the files no longer existed, a clerk came into the room carrying a thick book of records. Glancing quickly through the files, I shouted out in a very loud voice, What? The startled clerk opened the door to the adjoining room to ask if I was okay. I reassured him that I was.

What caused me to shout out loud and startle the clerk?

Find out in the next blog.

Author: Pamela Collett

I was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. I have a B.A. from Stanford University and a M.Sc. from Cornell University. I have lived and worked in San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland, California as well as in Washington, DC. Outside the United States, I lived and worked in Venezuela, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Uganda, Somalia and Kenya. I currently live in Canberra, Australia. I edited three books: Bold Plum: with the Guerillas in China's War against Japan by Hsiao Li Lindsay; Peace and Milk: Scenes of Northern Somalia by James Lindsay and Fatima Jibrell; and Solo vale si piensas rápido by Mehedy Lopez, a book of poetry in Spanish. In 2016, I published a book of my poetry and drawings, Silence Spoken. I have taught communication skills, English as a second language, and English for journalists (in Beijing, China) at university and secondary school levels. I was a features writer for the Daily Journal, (Caracas, Venezuela), and The Chronicle of Higher Education. I am a member of the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) Writers Centre, active in a writers’ group and a contributor to poetry readings, That Poetry Thing, in Canberra, Australia. View all posts by Pamela Collett