I hate being a newbie. I’m the kind of guy who likes to be the grizzled old-timer who knows where everything is and how everything is done.

So obviously, moving to Oklahoma and starting a new job isn’t the optimal situation for me. I’m learning, but the learning curve is fairly steep.

But I’m learning my way around campus (which, fortunately, is small) and learning the various procedures of a new workplace, and learning how to teach classes I’ve never taught before. One comes to be a quick study in my business, but it still takes some work.

There was a time in my life, early in my career, when a nomadic existence was the norm. Really, from 1977, when I left home for college in Wisconsin, until 1987, when I moved to Fargo, I never lived anywhere I planned to stay for any length of time. After college, I moved to four towns in succession; the longest I ever spent anywhere was about a year and a half. I ended up living in Fargo-Moorhead for 24 years, a little more than half my life by the time I left. I had settled in.

But thank God, I wasn’t done exploring the world yet. And by the time I left F-M, I was ready to leave. New adventures beckoned.

After two years of what I knew was temporary residency in Missouri, I find myself in a small town in northern Oklahoma, about the last place I ever expected to end up. Still, the job is perfect for me and the people are genuinely friendly (no “Minnesota Nice,” again thank God). I feel welcome here.

But even as I get used to living here, in a place that is much calmer but without the conveniences of places I’d lived for the past couple of decades or so, there’s the frustration that comes with not being of a place. I know little of the geography or history of Oklahoma, other than what everybody else who wasn’t raised here knows. I ask students where they’re from and they name some small town; the best I can do is ask which big city it’s closest to.

But there is much yet to learn about the past of the place, the ghosts that haunt its streets, the traditions that shaped its people.

I was thinking about that the other night when I saw “The Grapes of Wrath” for the first time in years. In that story, Oklahoma was the place people left to find a new life in California. But it’s as much about how the Oakies were shaped by their original home and how they dealt with experiences they never dreamed they’d have and tragedies they never thought they’d see.

It’s a very American story. In some sense, it’s the prototypical American story. For whatever reason, life in the original homeland goes to hell and people make the hard decision to pull up stakes and try to start anew elsewhere. The story of the Oakie migration is unusual only because it involved large numbers of people and the reasons they had to leave with both manmade (the Great Depression) and natural (the dust bowl). Once the old life became a perfect storm of rotten outcomes, pursuing a new life was perhaps the only option.

Actually, what makes it an American story is the huge number of Americans who did similar things. My own family’s story is vastly different in some ways but the arc of it is nearly the same. In my case, illiterate Sicilian dirt farmers realized there was nothing for them in the old country and decamped for a new land, where they built a new life. My ancestors took a steamship to their new destination, rather than an overloaded jalopy, but I suspect the trip wasn’t any more pleasant (although I also suspect few Oakies had to deal with seasickness).

As an American, the Oakies already are a part of my cultural and historical heritage. But I hope that the longer I live here, the more they become a part of my personal heritage. I don’t know much about the great migration along Route 66, but I’m hoping to learn – and not just because I’m a history geek and I find the subject fascinating. I will be spending at least the next few years, and quite possibly the rest of my life, among people who have been shaped in part by that experience. I’ll never be a descendant of Oakies (or rather, of people who stayed here rather than migrating), but I suspect that I’ll come to be shaped in subtle ways by that sort of historical memory. I’m betting that it put a stamp on the world view of people here and that world view may someday shape and color my own.

Of course, I’ll always be a (nearly) native Minnesotan and a long-time resident of the upper Midwest. I’ll probably occasionally utter an “uff da” and draw weird looks, or recall those crystalline February mornings when merely taking a breath outside sends the chill drilling into your breastbone (not that I’ll miss that).

I don’t think I’ll change much, but it will be interesting to see what in me will change. And at worst, the very fact of change will make me feel more alive, because after all, that’s what life is about.