9 Things Oklahomans Miss Most After They Leave the State

A cooler goes into the back of a moving truck outside a Braum’s on the edge of Norman, packed with one last half-gallon of butter pecan ice cream for the drive to Colorado.

It won’t survive the trip, and everyone loading that truck already knows it.

They pack it anyway.

These are the things Oklahomans miss most once their home state is in the rearview mirror.

1. Braum’s

Braum’s ice cream and hamburgers only exist within a 330-mile radius of the company’s dairy plant in Tuttle, so every store still gets fresh milk within about 36 hours of the cow.

That radius covers five states: Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, Missouri and Arkansas.

Cross out of those states, and the chain disappears completely.

No substitute exists.

Someone who left Oklahoma will time a visit home around a Braum’s stop the way other families time a visit around a holiday, hot fudge sundae included.

2. Wind That Never Quits

Missing wind feels like a strange thing to long for, yet many Oklahomans can relate to the feeling.

Oklahoma’s official state song is about the wind, and anyone who left the state understands why lawmakers chose it in 1953.

The opening line describes wind sweeping down the plain, and that isn’t poetic license.

A gust bends the wheat fields sideways, and the wind slams a screen door shut without anyone touching it.

Every time.

Flags stand straight out from the pole more days than not.

Local forecasters call it “breezy” at wind speeds that would ground kites anywhere else.

3. Bedlam Saturdays

Every fall used to bring Bedlam, the football rivalry between the University of Oklahoma (OU) Sooners and Oklahoma State University Cowboys that started more than a century ago.

The Sooner Schooner, a covered wagon pulled by two ponies named Boomer and Sooner, still rolls onto Owen Field after every OU score.

That part hasn’t changed.

The annual football matchup has.

OU joined the Southeastern Conference (SEC), and the last Bedlam football game happened in November 2023, with Oklahoma State winning 27-24.

Scheduling conflicts keep football off the calendar until at least 2031, though the basketball rivalry resumed at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City in December 2024.

That first Saturday in November used to be spoken for automatically.

Now it’s just another open date on the calendar.

4. Thunder Up

The Oklahoma City Thunder is the state's only major professional sports team, and Oklahomans treat every game like it matters that much more.

The franchise moved from Seattle in 2008, and it took until June 2025 to bring Oklahoma City its first NBA championship, a Game 7 win over the Indiana Pacers.

The whole state watched.

"Thunder Up" shows up on billboards, church signs and pickup trucks from Guymon to Idabel.

The team's only other championship banner belongs to Seattle, from 1979, back when it still went by the SuperSonics.

5. Fried Onion Burgers

El Reno cooks started smashing shaved onions straight into the beef patty in the late 1920s, and the trick spread across the state from there.

Depression-era cooks needed a smaller patty to feed more people, so onions did the stretching.

Cheap food became a signature dish.

Everybody wins.

Sid's Diner, Johnnie's Burgers and Coney's, and Robert's Grill still griddle it the same way in El Reno today.

Order one without the onions, and the cook behind the griddle will ask if you're feeling okay.

6. Redbud Season

Oklahoma made the redbud its official state tree in 1937, the legislature's pick over dozens of native options.

Redbuds grow across much of the central and eastern United States, so the tree itself isn't exclusive to Oklahoma.

The state's claim on it is the designation, not the species.

Every March, the highways still make the case for it: Redbuds bloom pink and purple before their leaves even open, turning whole tree lines and creek banks the same color for a couple of weeks.

Then the color's gone.

Interstate medians, backyard fence lines and empty pastures all catch it at once, so a normal commute turns scenic for two or three weeks every spring.

For those few weeks, it's hard to drive anywhere in the state and miss it.

Somewhere without redbuds, that same week in March just passes as an ordinary one.

7. Rush Springs Watermelon Festival

Rush Springs calls itself the Watermelon Capital of the World, and the town has thrown a festival to prove it every second Saturday in August since 1940.

The event pulls in about 25,000 visitors and goes through roughly 50,000 pounds of watermelon in a single day, with a seed-spitting contest and a Watermelon Queen pageant rounding out the schedule.

Small towns don't usually pull crowds that size.

Rush Springs does, every year.

Someone who grew up going every year and now lives somewhere without a single roadside watermelon stand feels that absence hardest right when the festival would have been.

8. Chicken-Fried Steak

Oklahoma has the only official state meal in the country.

The state legislature adopted it in 1988, and chicken-fried steak anchors the whole spread.

The full lineup runs from barbecued pork and sausage with biscuits and gravy to fried okra, squash, grits, corn, black-eyed peas, cornbread and pecan pie.

Gravy isn't optional.

Cream gravy is the part nobody agrees on, thin and peppery in some kitchens, thick enough to stand a spoon in at others.

Every Sunday buffet in the state still sets it right next to the fried okra, same as it's been since the meal became official.

9. Red Dirt

Cross back into Oklahoma, and the highway shoulder turns from tan to a deep rust red within a few miles.

Longtime residents say that color is what tells them they're home, faster than any road sign does.

That color comes from ferric oxide baked into sandstone and mudstone laid down across the region during the Permian period, the same red-bed geology that runs south into Texas too.

Not a coincidence.

Oklahomans didn't just live with the color. They named a whole music genre after it.

Red dirt music grew up in bars around Stillwater and Oklahoma State University, built around a two-story house called The Farm, where Bob Childers, the scene's acknowledged godfather, hosted informal jam sessions for two decades.