Q&A with Kelli Stacy

Kelli Stacy grew up in Choctaw County, Oklahoma, straddling the line between the more diverse small town of Hugo and the surrounding countryside. She went to school in the town, but lived a little further out in the community of Messer.

“It’s very much country and in the middle of nowhere,” Stacy said of Messer. “And so part of me identifies as that country part of Choctaw County, but the other part just doesn’t whatsoever.”

Her parents moved to Oklahoma from New Mexico before she was born, so she doesn’t have family roots in the area. So she grew up in this tiny county of roughly 15,000 people, switching back and forth between the different sides of Hugo and Choctaw County.

Here’s an edited transcript of a conversation we had about her relationship with her hometown.

Jesse: So tell me about Hugo.

Kelli: Oh gosh, okay. So Hugo is a town of about 5300 people, I believe. So it’s very small. It’s the county seat of Choctaw County, and my mom is the treasurer. It’s basically the most diverse town in the county, and obviously it’s the biggest.

We have all of these other really, really tiny towns on the outskirts of Hugo, and they’re all very white and very country, and everyone is obsessed with the PRC rodeo that happens every June. Very, very country.

And then you have Hugo, which, also there are a lot of those type of people in Hugo, and that’s where the PRCA rodeo is held in June … but you also have more diversity. There was definitely racial tensions there whenever I was growing up. I remember there being this big ordeal over this girl being pregnant whenever my oldest brother was a senior, and it was because she was white and the guy was black. And it was like a really big thing. Of course, I didn’t understand that at the time because I was younger.

I think it’s gotten better over the years, but it’s still very much like Hugo is kind of looked down upon by the surrounding towns in the county, and anywhere, really, where we play other schools in sports. We’re looked at as the school that’s like “you’re going to get shot if you go to Hugo,” which is not accurate. Or we’re known for drugs. We do have a high teen pregnancy rate, that part is definitely true.

For most of my life growing up, we were the poorest county in Oklahoma. Now we’re like the second poorest.

Jesse: But the rodeo is held in Hugo?

Kelli: Yeah, the rodeo is held in Hugo. I mean, there are multiple rodeos held in Hugo, but the PRCA is the big one that everyone actually cares about. It’s kind of like a big event. I believe Homecoming is generally some time around there, the same time.

Jesse: Does that change when the rodeo comes in and people from surrounding towns come in? So is it different where you all of a sudden don’t know everybody on the street every day?

Kelli: I mean, a little bit, but at the same time the county isn’t very spread out, so a lot of people from the smaller towns actually end up working in Hugo because — it’s not like we have a lot of jobs, but compared to all these other towns we have more. For the most part, everyone still knows everybody, everyone is related to everyone.

I’m from New Mexico, and so, my family, we don’t really have to deal with that.

Jesse: When did you move to Hugo?

Kelli: My parents moved whenever my mom was pregnant with me in 1995. So I’ve always grown up here, but I don’t have a ton of my extended family living in Oklahoma.

Jesse: So Hugo’s the only place you’ve ever lived, and you brought up that it’s the most racially diverse, something that you seem kind of proud of. So when the rodeo comes to town and everyone else comes in, does it feel for for however long that rodeo lasts that it’s not really your town? That you’re just trying to avoid this thing that happens that you don’t really feel a part of?

Kelli: I don’t know, I feel like I’m used to the rodeo being there every year. Even with me growing up — there’s this community in between Hugo and this town Rattan, and it’s called Messer, and that’s where I grew up, and it’s very much country and in the middle of nowhere. And so part of me identifies as that country part of Choctaw County, but the other part just doesn’t whatsoever. And so the rodeo has never really been a thing for me. I’m comfortable with it. I feel like I could go to a rodeo and not feel like super awkward, but at the same time it’s just something that, I don’t know, almost makes me feel kind of — the other part of me that’s, I don’t know the right word for it, less country and more modern, I guess, just kind of ignores that because all of my friends from Hugo, like 98 percent of them, are black. So the rodeo really just feels like something that I’m not a part of, but I could be if I wanted to, just because I am white and I did grow up in Messer.

Jesse: Is that like a switch that you can flip? Like you can be country for a weekend?

Kelli: In ways, yes. I don’t know. I don’t wear cowboy boots or hats or anything like that. But I still feel like if I wanted to go to a rodeo I would be accepted fully. I feel like, in a way, it is a switch that I can flip, which I guess is kind of helpful because I can identify with anybody in Hugo, but I definitely don’t flip that switch often, not that I’m aware of, at least.

Jesse: So it’s a part of you that you can kind of become when you need to, but it’s something you don’t really like doing.

Kelli: Yeah, in whatever situation I’m in I don’t want to have to think about flipping that switch or being one way or the other. I prefer to be the — I always say that I’m both sides of Hugo — so whatever the middle ground is what I would like to be at all times, but I understand that in certain situations I’m going to lean one way or the other.

Jesse: Was there ever a part of your life where you kind of felt that shift to where you were more inner-city Hugo than the country side?

Kelli: I feel like around my freshman year of highschool I kind of changed the people that I was hanging out with, because I didn’t really share that group of friends’ views any more. I didn’t really agree with them, and up until that point I was very much more on the country side of everything. And then, my friend group kind of changed, and I met all of my best friends and just kind of started hanging out with them my freshman year of high school. So from then on I didn’t really feel like I fit into either category. I kind of just fit in the middle of both of them.