Oklahoma Tough: My Father, King of the Tulsa Bootleggers - Hardcover

Padgett, Ron

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0806135093 ISBN 13: 9780806135090

Publisher: Univ of Oklahoma Pr, 2003

Synopsis

Wayne Padgett was a colorful, charming, and generous man. He was also one of Oklahoma’s most elusive bootleggers and career criminals. From the 1960s into the 1980s, he operated out of Tulsa as a high-ranking member of the outfit known as the Dixie Mafia. In "Oklahoma Tough," poet Ron Padgett tells the inside story of his notorious father and of how he earned his reputation as a Robin Hood "King of the Bootleggers."

"Oklahoma Tough" is also a history of the distinctive mid-twentieth-century Oklahoma milieu that made Wayne Padgett’s life story possible. Ron Padgett brings this vanished world to life with candid and sometimes comic descriptions of criminal life. Particularly insightful and entertaining are interviews in which former bootleggers, family members, friends, and enemies speak openly about their lives.

Combining biography, personal memories, and a history of the times, Ron Padgett bases his story on interviews with police officers and with those who knew Wayne Padgett, whether friend, foe, or family. He also bases it on newspapers and library, historical society, school, medical, and police records (Wayne Padgett’s FBI files run to 1300 pages), as well as on his own vivid memories of growing up with his charismatic criminal father. Twenty-one period photographs enhance the story of "Oklahoma Tough."

About this title

About the Author:

Ron Padgett is the author of more than twenty books, including "You Never Know" and "New & Selected Poems." Padgett was Publications Director of Teachers and Writers Collaborative from 1980 to 2000 and has taught poetry workshops across the country.

From Publishers Weekly:

"I was hit with an intense sensation, the pang of loving someone I don't really know," recalls poet Padgett, of a night nearly two decades ago, which sparked the writing of his father's biography. Alternately describing his bootlegger dad, Wayne Padgett, as a dutiful son, wheeler-dealer, womanizer and hero, the author brings to life the paradoxical spirit of a generous, resourceful man, deeply affected, at the tender age of 11, by his own father's murder. Wayne Padgett, as his son describes, was a longstanding member of a Tulsa, Okla., bootlegging outfit known as the Dixie Mafia. Offsetting any tendency toward sentimentality, Padgett (You Never Know) substantiates with personal interviews with his father's peers, newspaper articles and police records, portraying an outsider and outlaw whose ventures included gambling, cars, stolen merchandise, nightclubs and phone scams, and whose customers extended to preachers, cops and the mayor. Childhood memories and an eye for aesthetic detail bring an immediacy to the era and locale in this beautifully written memoir-accompanied by photographs and personal letters.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ of Oklahoma Pr
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0806135093
• ISBN 13: 9780806135090
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 265