Below is an awesome picture postcard of a Kansas, Oklahoma, and Gulf Railway (KOG) freight train crossing the tracks of the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad (MKT) at the switching tower in Durant, Bryan County, Oklahoma, Choctaw Nation. Photo taken in 1948 by Preston George and made available by the Oklahoma Historical Society at the Gateway to Oklahoma History.
-from the Red River Historian website
Since Tuesday week ago the Ardmore area has received over 7 inches of rain, at least that’s what my rain gauge showed from two separate events. Someone posted this picture they took of Turner Falls 18 miles north of Ardmore last Saturday, the falls were really flowing good.
From This Weeks Mailbag
There are several unclaimed insurance accounts with the name Lawrence Wells at 1321 Bixby SW in Ardmore. There are also over 25 accounts being held at the State Treasurers Office in OKC with the last name Wells of Ardmore, Oklahoma.
https://yourmoney.ok.gov/
The Arno Art Club was a prominent, long-running civic art organization based in Ardmore, Oklahoma, active throughout much of the 20th century. It played a central role in fostering local art appreciation, supporting regional artists, and enriching Carter County’s cultural life.
Starting in the early 1950s, the club organized popular annual art festivals, often hosted at the Lake Murray Lodge. These festivals featured exhibitions of work from artists across southern Oklahoma and provided a public platform for local art talent.
The Arno Art Club regularly sponsored community art projects, hosted educational lectures and demonstrations, and purchased notable art collections to showcase publicly—such as displaying rare native art portfolios at the historic Carnegie Library in Ardmore.
Over the decades, the club established and funded local art scholarships (such as the Johnny Dixon Art Scholarship) to encourage young talent in Carter County.
Listed alongside historical Ardmore institutions like the Civic Chorus, the Rotary Club, and the YMCA in official Carter County histories, it served as one of the primary social and cultural hubs for Ardmore artists and patrons.
The Arno Art Club’s Downtown Ardmore sidewalk art show took place in “blithe informality” in front of Webb’s Printing & Office Supply on North Washington (across from Hamburger Inn).
The Tech Corner
I decided the other day to check the recycle bin on my Lenovo computer. Wow, there were 81 Gigabytes in the recycle bin. I guess it had been 2 or 3 years since I emptied it and day after day, file after file, during that period I was just hitting the Delete key to get rid of files I no longer wanted. I was not doing the CTRL-DEL key to permanently delete all those files each time to get rid of them. With 81 Gigs in the recycle bin, no wonder my computer was slow. I right-clicked on the recycle bin icon and then clicked on Empty Recycle Bin. It took several minutes to remove 81 Gigs from my computer. So a word to the wise: empty your recycle bin on a regular basis.
Ham Radio
When I got my first HAM radio license in September 1994 one of the first HAMs I made friends with through our monthly meetings was Charles Dibrell. Charles had his shop on the north side of the B Street NW tennis courts. Decades before I meet Charles Dibrell he installed and maintained the police and sheriff office’s communication equipment and radio towers for a 50 mile radius of Ardmore. Charles was the first in southern Oklahoma to do a new thing called Motorola two-way radios. One time he told me he was up in the Carter County Courthouse dome installing the sheriffs office radio tower. While he was there the big Seth Thomas clock bell went off and it scared him so much he nearly had a heart attack. There was no covered dome at that time (about 1931), all open to the air with pigeons everywhere. Charles also worked as an engineer for KVSO radio.
W5BLW
“What is a soul? It’s like electricity – we don’t really know what it is, but it’s a force that can light a room.” –Ray Charles
See everyone next week!
Butch and Jill Bridges
Ardmore Oklahoma
580-490-6823
https://oklahomahistory.net
