Oklahoma Tough: My Father, King of the Tulsa Bootleggers

by Ron Padgett

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.

 

Genres: True Crime, Biography

288 pages, Paperback

First published April 16, 2003

About the author

Ron Padgett is a poet and translator whose Collected Poems won the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America and the 2014 Los Angeles Times Prize for the best poetry book. Padgett has translated the poetry of Apollinaire, Pierre Reverdy, Valery Larbaud, and Blaise Cendrars.

Reviews

[Darla · Rating 4 out of 5]

History, poetry & storytelling. ..an audacious tale

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

The artist Ed Ruscha told the New York Times that this book was one of his favorites so I thought I'd give it a try. I knew nothing about the author and have yet to read his poetry. Ron Padgett writes so clearly and precisely, I felt I knew his dad. Another famous Oklahoman, Barry Switzer, has also written a book about being a bootleggers son. I doubt it's as engaging a read as this book.