Flowers for Stillwater, OK

Before Stillwater was a college town it was a music town waiting to happen — red dirt got its name here, out at the Farm where Bob Childers and a rotating cast of songwriters lived and played, and the sound still spills off the Strip on Washington Street most weekends. The rest of the week belongs to Oklahoma State: some twenty-five thousand students spread between Theta Pond and Boone Pickens Stadium, Eskimo Joe's serving cheese fries two blocks off campus since 1975, and Main Street downtown marking every promotion and retirement with something on the desk. Flowers move to that beat — residence-hall drops during the semester, engagement roses staged at the pond, get-well orders to Stillwater Medical on West 6th, and a graduation crush each May that empties every cooler in Payne County.

Other Oklahoma cities.