'Buffalo Commons' agitators in good company

NORMAN — History geeks will appreciate this, especially historians and fans of the American West: I scored Frank and Deborah Popper's autographs in a first edition of historian Walter Prescott Webb's influential 1931 work, "The Great Plains.”

The Poppers came to the University of Oklahoma to give an update on their controversial ideas on the "Buffalo Commons,” which first hit headlines — and hit residents of the Plains where it hurt — 20 years ago.

The main idea: The Plains are emptying, with big consequences ahead unless somebody does something — maybe turn all that empty real estate over to buffalo.

The Poppers signed the first page. On the inside cover is one of those ID stickers that says "Buffalo Commons Public Lecture,” below which I penciled my name and "The Oklahoman.” If I ever make the big time, the book might be worth something.

The Webb book now goes alongside my copy of "Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West,” the 1987 work, as important, but in a different way, as Webb's, by author-scholar-uber-Westerner Patricia Nelson Limerick.

Limerick, chairman of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, was gracious enough to thoughtfully inscribe it for me, and engage me in my own primary history interest — the Choctaw Indians in the 19th century — last year at a dinner party in Boulder, Colo.

Mize said with a sniff.

Yes. I can be a history snob, especially when it comes to rubbing elbows with those who have most influenced people's perceptions of the West and Great Plains, my home now for almost a quarter-century.

My first stomping grounds, in the cropland of the Arkansas River Valley and the woods of the Ozarks, in extreme eastern Oklahoma — the South, culturally, geographically and historically — will always be near to my heart.

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