By Landry Brewer
Cordell, OK – Washita County Undersheriff Rusty Cannon and his wife, Carol, met a famous actor at the sheriff’s office a decade and a half ago.
The celebrity was in Cordell then because of something that happened 40 years earlier.
In his recently-published memoir "Entrances and Exits," actor Michael Richards, best known as Kramer on the sitcom "Seinfeld," writes about the time he was incarcerated in the Washita County seat.
In the summer of 1969, long before he was a Hollywood celebrity, the 20-year-old aspiring actor had failed to find stage work in New York City and wanted to travel home to Los Angeles. With no running vehicle and only $5 in his pocket, he hitchhiked west.
A truck driver dropped him off somewhere near Oklahoma. He hopped in a car with a "career criminal and certified whack job" and his wife, and the trio crossed the state line and made it west into Washita County.
"Drunk and dangerous, they get me involved in a petty theft of a car tire after one of ours gets a flat, and we all end up in a small-town jail in Cordell, Oklahoma," Richards writes on page 53.
Charged with grand larceny, he spent more than a week in the Washita County Graybar Hotel.
He was scared and bewildered and missed the college actress he’d developed feelings for, so for much of that time behind bars in Cordell, he was in tears.
“The jailer’s wife felt so sorry for me, she brought me a can of peaches every day and some ‘Field and Stream’ magazines,” Richards writes.
The sheriff learned that the whack job was wanted for murder in another state, and he realized that Richards was just a college kid who'd gotten caught up in a bad situation not of his making while at the mercy of incompetent outlaws.
So, Richards was released.
He eventually found acting work in Hollywood.
From 1989 to 1998, Richards played Kramer, one of the most famous characters in TV history, on "Seinfeld," one of the most successful and popular sitcoms in TV history.
Then, in about 2010, Richards returned to the scene of the crime and punishment.
Rusty Cannon was Sentinel Police Chief then, and one day he was visiting his wife, Carol, at her workplace—the Washita County Sheriff's Office in Cordell—when a stranger with a mildly-familiar face approached.
"He asked if we recognized him, and Carol said he looked familiar but couldn't place him," Rusty said. Richards then introduced himself as the man who played Kramer on "Seinfeld."
Richards was retracing the steps of his misspent youth, which brought him to the town where he'd spent more than a week in jail.
He told the story to the Cannons.
"He was great," Rusty said of their time visiting with the famous actor.
Richards didn't have any photos that he could autograph and give to Rusty and Carol, so he said that he'd mail them one.
He made good on his promise.
