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Below is July 3, 1999 to September 25, 1999.
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Saturday, September 25, 1999 Vol 3 Issue 127
Last week I mentioned the free internet access with altavista.com and others like it. My friend Jackie Bates with the Ardmore BrightNet Oklahoma office sent me email bringing to my attention some very interesting things about the “free” internet. After reading his revealing email, my mind flashed back about 20 years when Chock Thompson was the “hamburger chef” at the legendary Hamburger Inn located at number 27 North Washington here in Ardmore. I had gone in there that day to buy a couple of their famous “burnt onion” burgers. I loved the taste of the burnt onions, so I asked Chock to put some extra burnt onion on them. He looked at me and said, “more onion, little piece of meat”. Reading between the lines I knew, there’s always that trade-off. And that same lesson applies to free internet access. Jackie Bates has helped me several times in the past, and believe me, he knows the trade-offs. Here’s the email Jackie sent me this week regarding Altavista’s free internet.
http://www.brightok.net/~bridges/access.txtJust a little additional info about Chock Thompson at the Hamburger Inn. About 1972 Chock got mad because the then owner, Jimmy Brown, would not give him a pay raise. So Chock quit and went across the street from the Hamburger Inn and opened up his own burnt onion hamburger place. Not too many months went by and Chock decided he’d close his hamburger joint and go back to work at the Hamburger Inn. I talked to the original owner of the Hamburger Inn, Ernest Brown, this week. He and his wife Lillian opened their first Hamburger Inn across the street from its present day location. The first one was opened by Brown in 1938 at #32 North Washington. Ernest built the present Hamburger Inn at #27 North Washington in 1956. Here are photos of both establishments.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/hambur47.jpg
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/hambur56.jpg
By the way, the Hamburger Inn has 13 round stools lined along the length of the counter…. that’s all the seating.An internet wide attempt to stop unsolicited email.
http://www.OptList.com/
Here is the link to the “stop email statistics”
http://www.optlist.com/chart.aspCharlie lives in the Mojave desert. Six miles from his house in the middle of nowhere is a bullet riddled telephone booth. For a long time now, Charlie stops at the payphone to answer the hundreds of calls it receives daily…. people calling from all over the world, just to call Charlie and see how its going in the middle of the Mojave desert in CA. Charlie is fast becoming an international celebrity! The number is 760-733-9969. When I get hold of Charlie, and find out the latest, I’ll let everyone know… hope the line ain’t busy! haha
http://www.cardhouse.com/g/moj/mojave.htmCarter County Undersheriff Earl Russell was mentioned in the Tulsa World newspaper last week when he assisted an amnesia patient.
http://search.tulsaworld.com/archivesearch/default.asp?WCI=DisplayStory& ID=990916_Ne_a1angelA friend sent me two more pics of bells in Oklahoma! Plus a clock tower at the Enid, Oklahoma courthousee. First, this is Methodist Church Bell, Okeene, OK on E. Grant Ave & 5th St., SE corner.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/okeenebe.jpgSecond, here is the bell at an old church undergoing restoration in Watonga, Oklahoma… 2nd and Weigle Street. The church is across the street from the courthouse in Watonga.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/watongab.jpgThis is the tower clock in front of the Garfield County Courthouse in Enid, Oklahoma. I wonder how old the clock is? I assume it rings out the time? Does anyone know about this clock?
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/enidbel.jpgThe Daily Ardmoreite featured the cleaning of the courthouse dome in their Monday, September 20th issue.
http://www.ardmoreite.com/stories/092099/new_dome.shtml
Close-up of the dome being cleaned by Dalton Cain and other workers. This is a nice photo the Ardmoreite took last Saturday.
http://www.ardmoreite.com/images/092099/dome.jpgI still have not figured out why those of you who have webtv can not see the pics on my xoom website. Strange.
HURRICANE WATCH
With the recent attack of Floyd on the Carolina coastline, and the impending arrival of Gert, you may want to closely track this season’s tropical storms. With Eye of the Storm, active storms are displayed on a three-dimensional map. The coordinates and details (such as wind speed, direction, and pressure) are retrieved from the Internet and automatically displayed. Eye of the Storm displays storm tracks, and calculates a storm’s distance from your home location, or from any city. http://www.starstonesoftware.com/eots/
SOME LETTERS FROM THIS WEEK’S MAILBAG
“Enjoyed the picture of the General Store in Gene Autry in 1907. I had kin in that area in that time period. I was wondering if whom ever the picture came from might have information as to who the people are in this picture. I enjoy reading your mailing each week. As in the past I have seen things that I have seen in person.”
[email protected]
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“Butch. Nothin also known as Charlie Dennison works at Uniroyal Tire Plant has for the last 25 yrs. I went to school with him at AHS in 1962-63.”
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“I really enjoy your T&T. But I can’t get your x-zoom pictures. I was really interested in the Big Explosion. My Grandfather was killed in that Explosion. Thanks for all you have brought to us.”
http://www.brightok.net/chickasaw/ardmore/county/locomo.html
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“Adolphus “Doll” Bridges. Do you recognize this name? I am into genealogy and hope that you can give me a clue as to this person. He married Nora Maddox and they had one son that I know of– James Bridges. A time frame is only a guess. Nora was born Oct 1879 and died 1939 and is buried in Stephens Co., OK. I have been told that Nora and Adolphus married in Carter Co but I do not have a marriage license. Also believe that he (Doll) is buried in Carter Co. Nora was also married to John R. Sanders at one time but do not know who was the first spouse. Please help if you can and I would appreciate your response. (Connected the name Bridges thru your mailing of This and That. Thank you for keeping the news coming out of Carter Co.” [email protected]
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“On another note, I am working up a page (or two) that will pay tribute to the SHERIFFS OF LOVE COUNTY, Oklahoma. However, my resources are limited and I need help with some dates and such… am hoping some of your readers might lend a hand. The url is: http://freeweb.pdq.net/bsriner/sheriffs.htm If anyone has anything they would like to contribute, I can be contacted at:
[email protected] Thanks, Steve Riner”
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“Well Butch: Looks like all through these years I have been living under the allusion that the east side of the old building on the NW corner of Caddo & Main was badly damaged upstairs & therefore the brick replaced the sand stone in the 2nd floor level. Although the picture makes it appear sound, I still believe the damage was worse than it appears & caused the upper structure to be redone in brick. Actually the picture in this weeks T&T, also shows that the Whittington Hotel, which was across Main street to the south, appears to be in recoverable shape. But, Mrs Whittington told me that the uppermost part of that building was so badly damaged that those floors were removed and the Hotel was renamed “THE NEW WHITTINGTON HOTEL”. That name remained on the old building until it was closed & dismantled many years ago. I remember the Whittington Hotel served many people that were arriving on the train. It was very plush and also accommodated many a traveling salesman that remained loyal throughout its remaining years. Now, for the so called old Hardy Hospital building, its lower floor on the west side of the stairs housed a cafe known as the Innman Inn when I first knew of it. The east side of the down stairs, housed Drug stores for most, if not all, of its years… That part of the building was leased at the time of the Explosion (1915) by Mr. Adcock, an old-time Pharmacist. Mr. Adcock told me that at the time of the explosion, all of his fixtures fell face down to the middle of the floor. He leased the Drugstore from a Mr. Ramsey who would only lease the Store for 5 years at a time. Mr. Adcock said that after he suffered through the damage of the explosion & his 5 years time was up, that Mr. Ramsey would not renew his lease. Years later, in the 1930’s, my Dad acquired interest in the McCan & Stewart Drug Store which was in that building. Mr. Ramsey’s estate still owned the place & Dad continued to lease from his daughter for the rest of his life. The Drug Store went under the name of Martin Drug Co. until his death in 1968. The Pharmacy is now gone & the building remains empty at this time.”
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“My name is Chris Bartell. I currently live in Portland, Oregon. I am working in some genealogy work on my mothers side of the family. I just received a death notice for my grandfather Burton N. Blythe. It said that he was a retired law enforcement officer. I was wondering if you could help me find out where he worked and if I can find out more information about him. He died in 1966 in Ramona, Oklahoma at the age of 81. He is buried in Ramona. He is a registered Cherokee Indian. I have more exact dates if needed. I wanted to see if you could point me to a place that I might find more info. I have a school record for my mother that places him in jail or in prison somewhere around 1944-1945. If he was a law enforcement office that sounds unlikely that he had been in jail. Burton’s Father was Napoloean B. Blythe.”
Chris Bartell [email protected]
————————————————————- “I really like the quote you closed off with in your T&T this week and was wondering if you knew who indeed said it. I would like to use it as my e-mail signature.”
To the world you may only mean one person,
but to one person you may mean the world.
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“Butch: Some time back you were speaking of the Indian Statue at the Arbuckle Mountains Look-out station. Today, I ran across this snapshot which was probably made around 1947 or 1948. The girl is my young sister-in-law, visiting here from Mississippi. This is the statue that was used by the Palacine Service Stations – owned by Wirt Franklin. (I think). My sister once had a heavy bronze colored cigarette ash tray, fashioned in it likeness, that was heavy enough to be used for a door stop….or to crown someone with. She no longer has it, nor knows what has happened to it. Maybe one will show up at the Southern Oklahoma Historical Museum someday, I hope.”
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/how!.jpg
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“Here’s a picture of the Ardmore balloon Kaleidoscope being filled at the Campflite balloon meet at Western Lodge on Ft. Gibson Lake near Wagoner, OK. Aug 27th, 28th, and 29th (1999). The picture was taken by team member Barbara Riley of Ardmore. Hope you can add these to your ‘This ‘n That’ newsletter. Thanks for all your hard work putt’n your newsletter together and sending it out to all us ‘Okies’. Keep it up!!!!! from a fellow history buff.. near Russett… Jerry Dodds mailto:[email protected]
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/kalei99a.jpg
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“Hey Butch, here’s a picture from the Ardmore Balloon Kaleidoscope at Western Lodge on Ft. Gibson Lake near Wagoner, OK. The event was Campflite, on Aug 27th,28th, and 29th (1999). The pictures were taken by balloon team member Barbara Riley of Ardmore.”
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/kalei99b.jpg
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“What about that bell thats in front of the house about 3/4 mile north of 70 on Newport Road, in Lone Grove? Have you seen that one?”
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“…there is a bell behind a stockade fence on the southwest corner of G Street NW and 11th Street in Ardmore… you can see it sticking up over the fence, you may already know this.”
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“I came across your web pages and got so intrigued with reading your “delightful” information, that I really spent too much time on the computer. I told my son that I could have read forever. The reason I was searching OK to see if I could find any information about a trial that was held in the early 30’s. It involved 2 policemen shooting a Mexican boy (who was the relative of some Mexican ruler). The boy and two others were students at a Catholic college in Kansas and were on their way home to Mexico. Have you ever researched this? It happened in Ardmore. If it is already on one of your past newsletters, could you let me know? By the way, I subscribed to your newsletter.”
http://www.brightok.net/chickasaw/ardmore/county/rubio.html
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“I had an elderly neighbor from Ardmore, OK….Zora Palmer and Bill Palmer. She left OK and lived in Fontana and then Rialto, CA. She told me an interesting story about 4 years ago about her father (a farmer) being shot in his wagon because of some land dispute. This was probably in the 20’s. I don’t know what her maiden name was… and in the meantime, she passed away.”
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“Last night at sundown I attended an Equinox celebration. There were about fifty folks there, sitting on benches around a wonderful fire which smelled wonderful. There were ceremonial items on tables and big glass bowls of water which two ladies hit with a stick much like a drum to make a ringing tone. It was interesting. A lovely young woman sat next to me and told of a vision quest she had experienced last summer lead by the local Apache medicine man. After this we all had potluck dinner. I had carried a home made fresh apple pie. Fun.” N. Carolina
=============================================================Last week my beloved pickup almost met its Waterloo. It was parked on the east side of the courthouse and the workers who are cleaning the Dome, lost a wire brush off their electric cleaner. It fell, striking my windshield. But everything worked out. I had a new one in a few hours. And also this week I had a tooth pulled. Things didn’t go too well, a piece of it broke off as my dentist pulled it, so he had to “dig” it out. Not a good week.
http://www.brightok.net/~bridges/my74trk.jpgNo wait, not all week was bad. A friend at the courthouse had a 1.44 diskette crash on which 20 or so important documents were stored. I was able to recover nearly every file using Norton Utilities. She was so happy she brought me a coconut cream pie! And her husband said he didn’t care either. hahahaha Friends….. they make life worth living.
“We don’t remember days, we remember moments.”
Cesare Pavese 1908-1950See everyone next Saturday.
Butch Bridges
Ardmore, Oklahoma
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Saturday, September 18, 1999 Vol 3 Issue 126
I’ve added a couple more bells to my “bell website”. They are located in Marshall county, Kiowa county, and Woods county. That makes 33 bells listed from 19 counties. I know there are a lot more bells in Oklahoma…. so please help me locate them and get photos of these pieces of the past.
http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/italy/56/index.htmlEast of Ardmore 9 miles is Dickson, Oklahoma. A former Ardmoreite sent me the URL for the Dickson Comets and its a really neat site. Even tells what’s on the school lunch menu! Here’s what they’re having for lunch Monday: Crispito, Spanish Rice, Chili Beans, Mixed Fruit and Oriental Express Bar. Boy, the Chinese food sounds good!
http://ardnet.com/comets/index.htmI have several friends telling me about using altavista.com for their free internet access. It’s paid for by advertisements. I find it hard to believe, but they say it works great including several towns in Oklahoma for access numbers. They don’t have email right now, but will soon. So, if you have a friend with a computer and modem but not able to pay the monthly charges incurred by the traditional IPs… this may be the answer. Just remember to use your friend’s name when you download his installation software. Ardmore, Enid, Lawton, Tusa and OKC have local access numbers. http://microav.com/
But let’s not write-off worldspy.com either. This October they will be offering free internet too, email, and NO annoying advertising banners, they claim. So, it looks like in the months to come…. they sky’s the limit!
http://www.worldspy.comSomething I failed to mention last week, was there are updates to Windows 95/98 to insure Y2K compliancy. But I have had a Windows 95 computer running for over a week with the date started March 13, 2000 and it has had no problems. Even internet access has been working fine. So this computer thinks it is already the year 2000 and is operating flawlessly as far as I can tell. I’ve even ran WordPad, created a letter, saved it, and the file shows it was created March 16, 2000. And this is all with Win95 installed straight off the CD, no updates. So, who knows. For info and updates just go to Bill’s website.
http://www.microsoft.com/y2kA friend of mine here in Ardmore has a pretty neat website and offering some unique items for sale over the Net. I guess I need to check out selling something on the Internet. Maybe I could be a bell distributor. hahaha
http://www.mrwholesale.com/18 miles NE of Ardmore is Gene Autry, OK. Before 1940 it was known as Berwyn, Oklahoma. If you go to Gene Autry today you will see a number of residences, a couple churches, a post office, and a schoolhouse among other things. But the most prominent feature you see is what was known as the Gene Autry General Store. In 1907, the year Oklahoma was admitted to the Union, this building was a bank.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/berwbk07.jpgThis a 1956 photo of the ATSF FT #160 at, Ardmore OK. The photo was taken by A.E. Brown.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/atsf1956.jpgA couple weeks ago a reader wrote in saying he thought the reason the east side of the old Hardy Sanitarium at Caddo and Main was only original rock on the first floor wall, was the second floor may have been destroyed during the Great Explosion of 1915. Another reader send it a photo of the Great Explosion and it shows the entire east wall to be in good shape? Maybe it survived the explosion and the second floor wall was replace at a later date?
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/explo1.jpgSOME LETTERS FROM THIS WEEK’S MAILBAG
“The community of Wilson creek is still there. At the time it was regarded as a town it was known as Wilson. Nothing remains of the town but a cemetery and of course the creek that is known as Wilson Creek. I think the actual postoffice location was west of the creek. George H. Shirk’s book “OKLAHOMA PLACE NAMES” states the following: “”WILSON. In the southeastern Carter County, 7 miles southeast of Ardmore, A post office from April 4, 1888, to Aug. 15, 1907. No longer in existence. Named for J.H.Wilson, local merchant.”” The town of Wilson, 17 miles west of Ardmore is not to be confused with the above mentioned post office location. This town, once known as New Wilson did not become known as Wilson until 1/28/1920. Wilson (creek) location is: Carter County, Section 29 Range 5 South Township 3 East”
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“Hi Butch, You know, it seems like that I remember ‘nothin’ (the Dinnison boy) skating at the old rink, he was a real good skater. My sisters and I used to go there. It was an old rickety place but it was fun at the time. We also used the swimming pool several times, also the small pool in the park. Wasn’t ‘nothin’s’ name Charles??? Thanks for the memories.”
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“I really enjoyed the T&T this week. I remember well the old swimming pool and skating rink at Whittington Park. The Skating rink was the place to go on Saturday night before the “Preview”. In case you don’t know what the “Preview” was it was the preview of Sunday’s movie at the Tivoli Theater. It started at 12:00 AM every Saturday night. That was where everyone went. I remember at one time the Cochran family owned the skating rink. They had a daughter “Cherry”. We went to school together. That was in the late 40’s. Good memories.”
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“Love your weird stuff! Wanna know what I thought of when I first got to the site that sent me here? I’ve lived in Houston a long time and when it said “Carter County”, first I pictured a bunch of cars with “CR-” license plates and then looked around to see where I was, Ardmore, of course. Since I haven’t read all your stuff here yet, you’ve probably touched on old license plates in Oklahoma, but if you haven’t, please do! It used to be so much fun to drive from my house in Bartlesville, as a kid, to my grandmother’s in Chickasha and then maybe to Norman for a football game or to Dallas for Texas Weekend and guess all the county plates. Now we’re in Washington, now we’re in Tulsa (they had those ZZ’s that didn’t make sense), now we’re in OKC, with their XX’s, now Grady Co. (the old-time women were horrified when they had to go to GD from their original GR ‘cuz the county was growing), now ST, Duncan, now CR, Ardmore, etc. Don’t ya miss not knowing where people are from when you’re driving along the highway? We went to the New York World’s Fair in 1964 and stayed at some Holiday Inn on the outskirts of NYC somewhere and there was a Bartlesville car parked right next to ours the next morning–and it belonged to friends of mine. The worst was, we had to go on out to the Fair before we ever saw them. So, on the way back to Oklahoma, we went to spend some time in Williamsburg, VA– you guessed it– they were parked next to us there, too, and we finally got to visit. Is it a small world? Thanks again for a fun time here.”
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“In those days, you could be sure the tag was purchased in Carter County only by the CE,CR or CRR. Also another interesting thing to know is that the tags were made in batches of 10,000 each – therefore Carter County probably only had 30,000 Car tags (or less). The system used now is much different because maybe for the same reason we have changes in area codes so often.”
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“I forgot to ask you if “The Gourmet” is still there and if the lady who used to run it (she was mayor at one time)–whose name totally escapes me–her brother was named Major or Lieutenant or something and had a BBQ stand in town, too–are they all still there and cooking? During the Boom, she had filet mignons on the lunch buffet–all you could eat for $5–and those little steaks were good! Oh, also, I must tell you that I am a connoisseur of fine dining and whenever anyone asks me about my favorite hamburger, to this day, I tell everyone it is Bill & Barb’s educated cheeseburger. I have been known to make very long trips out of my way to eat at Bill & Barb’s. Last time I went was probably in 1992, bringing my niece with me to Chickasha for my grandmother’s funeral. Seems like it was closed for remodeling or just closed, period. Is it? Oh, I’m getting so hungry thinking about it now.” Note: Mazola McKerson owned The Gourmet Restaurant. Her brother in Law owned Lieutenant McKerson’s BBQ on east main.
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“In a previous issue of T&T, someone asked about the old pool at Whittington Park. Here is a picture of that pool. You can see the slides in the background. This pic was taken in 1920.” http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/whitpool.jpg
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“I also have a few pictures of the explosion at the railroad. Not sure what the quality will be like, but I’m scanning them to pass along so you can share them with your readers.”
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/explo1.jpg
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“Hi Butch. Sure do enjoy reading the This & That here in Algiers. Thanks for including the words to “Oklahoma Hills” in the last issue. About a year ago or less, I had dinner at a club in Australia where Arlo Guthrie, Woody’s son was singing for one night only. It wasn’t publicized very much so there was a relatively small group of people there that night. We all sat around after dinner and sang along with Arlo while he played a lot of his own and his dad’s old songs including Oklahoma Hills. Woody was quite a writer and Oklahoma Hills was one of his best.”
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“I wanted one just the other day, and the closest I could find one, was at the little store on Hwy 77 @ Oswalt Road. I called the Monitor, and this is the closest place to Ardmore. See ya.”
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“My dogs’ web page is featured this week on JunoLand http://www.juno.com/junoland/. The page is listed under “This Week in JunoLand.” My dogs are world famous internet movie stars!”
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“We invite you to explore the convenience of electronic legal research through the best new system in the industry: Loislaw.com. Now more than 60,000 lawyers, judges, and librarians are using LOIS, and the numbers are growing.” http://www.loislaw.com
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This week my beloved pickup almost met its Waterloo. And it wasn’t doing anything but sitting beside the courthouse. I wont reveal this almost earth shattering event right now, but I will next week, along with some other good news.
Hurricane Floyd has come and gone. If you are a praying person, we need to do just that for all those affected by this record monster of a storm. Life is so uncertain.
I have a friend in Texas who sometimes feels like the world is against her, and a smile is hard to find. So I’m going to dedicate the quote below to her……
“To the world you may only mean one person, but to one person you may mean the world.”
See everyone next Saturday.
Butch Bridges
Ardmore, Oklahoma
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~From: Butch Bridges
Saturday, September 11, 1999 Vol 3 Issue 125
This week I had the need to buy a paper from the little nearby town of Marietta, Oklahoma. It was Saturday and I thought…. Where can one buy that weekly newspaper in Ardmore, Oklahoma. My mind flashed back to the 60s when the bus station was across the street east from City Hall. The buses would bring in newspapers for hundreds of miles around and stack them in neat little piles on the floor in the southwest corner of the bus station. After making several calls around town, now I know those days are gone. They call it progress.
This is the Elks Hall in Ardmore before 1920.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/elks20.jpgThis is a 1940s photo of the Chickasha, Oklahoma hospital.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/chickhos.jpgThis is a interesting link sent to my by a friend for those wanting to search the Bible. It even lets you search by 7 different version i.e. KJV or NIV, etc. A powerful search engine.
http://bible.gospelcom.net/The Tech Corner
It’s been some time since I talked about the Tech Corner. The past month I bet I have received 50 emails from people telling me Window 95/98 is not Y2K compliant and the date is incorrect. Each email said everyone needs to check their “Regional Setting” in Control Panel and change the 2 digit setting to the 4 digit date so Windows will be ready for January 1, 2000. Hahahahaha. Windows ’95 and ’98 are both Y2K Compliant. The date that windows keeps ‘inside’ is a 4 digit date. It passes the 4 digit date (as well as accepts the 4 digit date) to and from applications. The “Regional Settings fix” is only what is displayed to the user within Windows. It isn’t a ‘fix’ for anything.
I forgot to tell everyone last week when I traveled down Oswalt Road there is one thing that stands out. One quarterhorse farm after another. I’m talking about nice spreads too. If you ever want to buy a quarterhorse, just travel west a couple miles from the I-35 and Oswalt Rd exit. The exit is 12 miles south of Ardmore. Down that road are plenty of quarterhorse ranches!
One more thing about Oswalt Road west…. it is a beautiful rolling hills countryside. On some of the hilltops a person can see several miles!
Last week I told about the Ella Hunter building on Caddo Street here in Ardmore. The date at the top of the building is 1933.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/hunter33.jpg‘OKLAHOMA HILLS’ Words and music by Jack Guthrie and Woody Guthrie
Many months have come and gone,
Since I wandered from my home,
In those Oklahoma Hills where I was born.
Many a page of life has turned,
Many a lesson I have learned,
Yet I feel like in those hills I still belong.
CHORUS:
‘Way down yonder in the Indian nation
I rode my pony on the reservation,
In the Oklahoma Hills where I was born.
Way down yonder in the Indian nation,
A cowboy’s life is my occupation,
In the Oklahoma Hills where I born.’But as I sit here today,
Many miles I am away,
From the place I rode my pony through the draw,
Where the oak and blackjack trees,
Kiss the playful prairie breeze,
In those Oklahoma Hills where I was born.
CHORUS
Now as I turn life a page,
To the land of the great Osage,
In those Oklahoma Hills where I was born,
Where the black oil rolls and flows,
And the snow white cotton grows,
In those Oklahoma Hills where I was born.”
CHORUS“OKLAHOMA HILLS” was written by Woody Guthrie, on February 23, 1940. Woody moved with his parents to Oklahoma, settling in Okemah, during the ‘great depression.
Below is a heart touching email I received this week. Mel Clark was on my Emergency Medical Technician Association board back in the mid seventies and represented the Oklahoma Panhandle. Besides operating the funeral home in Beaver, Oklahoma he also operated the ambulance service. He had a passion to help people… always striving for better trained EMT personnel onboard Oklahoma’s ambulances. Here is that email I received this week……
“Butch, Thanks for all of the issues of This & That. I have my late husband, Mel Clark, to thank for all of these great weekly events past and present for my enjoyment. Mel was a true Okie from the day he was born in Cherokee, Oklahoma until his death this past year. Mel has traveled all over Oklahoma, with him being not only a funeral director and embalmer he was also on the American Heart Association among many other things. You have mentioned so many things that triggered his memory on lots of things that took place during his travels. He would relate these thoughts and so my life was enriched even more so just because of all his memories. I just want to send a special thanks to you for bringing forth so many happy thoughts to him and giving him sort of another chance to relive all of his experiences. For myself, I am a transplanted Texan from the great state of Arkansas, but have lots of family living in and around various parts of Oklahoma. Mel enjoyed reading all of your weekly news and although he himself said he was computer illiterate would go into any and all of the websites that you posted and it brought back great memories for him. I have just this year started reading all of your news and I now understand why he enjoyed them so much. I generally clean house on Friday nights and so I have taken up the habit of taking a break just at the time that you send your weekly out. Makes my break really enjoyable. I just wanted to tell you that you are doing a great job and to keep em coming. We Texans enjoy all of these memorable things that you write about. Thank You.” Pam Clark in Texas
As I mentioned above, Mel lived in the Panhandle of Oklahoma, in Beaver, Oklahoma to be exact. It was called No Man’s Land because 100+ years ago, it was a lawless area of Oklahoma. Even today it is an almost forgotten part of this state. It least it seems that way sometimes. Years ago the people who lived in the Panhandle even thought about de-annexing from the state and become a part of Kansas or Texas. I had one friend who lived in Guymon, Oklahoma… thats just before reaching Colorado. She and her husband transferred to Guymon from south central Oklahoma for his job continuance. She told me a couple of years later, “Butch, there is nothing up here”. To even find a descent movie theater, shopping mall, or big hospital, they had to travel 100 miles south to Amarillo, Texas. It’s wide open country…. where you can drive 50 miles and not see a house. I wont forget my friend Mel Clark, who lived in Oklahoma’s No Man’s Land. I’ll see you in that big round up in the sky old buddy.
Oklahoma Panhandle…. What and where is Oklahoma’s No Man’s Land.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~okbeaver/NoMansLand/nomansld.htmNo Man’s Land Museum (Oklahoma Panhandle) in Goodwell, Oklahoma
http://www.ok-history.mus.ok.us/mus-sites/masnum19.htmResources, resources and more resources, this URL has them all! No matter what you want to find, these links will get you there!!
http://www.cen.uiuc.edu/SOME LETTERS FROM THIS WEEK’S MAILBAG
“Butch. Drive down A St. (Caddo Street) N.E. by Ella Hunter’s building and you will be able to better read the date inscription on the building. I know it is hard to read because if is not written too good. The date is 1933. Take my word for it, or go read it yourself”
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“That sounds just like that sweet Mary Wilson. She would do anything for anyone.”
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“Butch, I just saw the letter from the man that was talking about the old skating rink and pool in Whittington Park. Don’t know if this is the information he wants or not but this is what I know. My parents were the last owners of the skating rink. Their names were Louie and Faye Cummings. They bought it from Jack Floyd in 1953 when I was 18 months old. Mom said it was run by Mom and POP Floyd for years. They did not have it very long before the old building was condemned. She thought it was torn down shortly thereafter probably around 54 or 55. She doesn’t remember the pool being used when they bought the skating rink. She said Bob Lee and Pete Dennison’s brother worked for them. She doesn’t remember the Dennison boy’s name but they all called him “nothin”. I slept in a bassinet in the corner of the concession. She said it was amazing that I could sleep thru all that. Daddy fixed some skates that would not roll for me and the kids would take me out to the center of the rink and let me “skate”. When they condemned the building, They did not have another place to go so they did not open up another skating rink anywhere. She said it was not too long tho until Ray and I don’t remember his last name, opened a skating rink out at the old armory. Mom is going to see if she has any pictures to send to you. We really enjoy reading your articles everyweek. Keep up the good work.”
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“I had a Grandfather who fought in the west in the Civil War, Monroe McMurtrey, calvary. I am told by my uncle that he had a first cousin, in Snyder, OK who was an outlaw, called Oklahoma Slim. In your diggins, should you come up with anything on these, I am all interest.”
[email protected]
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“About your wanting to take a vacation, my wife and I just took a trip to Colorado, Wyoming, and S. Dakota. Absolutely beautiful areas, and we enjoyed our trip immensley. We left on fri., stayed in Amarillo, sat. nite in Cripple Creek, Colo. Did the Royal Gorge thing, then the Pro rodeo cowboy hall of fame in Colorado Springs, Spent Sun. nite in Denver, then up to Buffalo Bill Codys gravesite and museum on lookout mountain w. of Denver. Then off to Wyoming, where we did the Yellowstone Nat’l Park, Cody, Wyoming(fell in love with that town, and wanted to stay) also visited the frontier Wyoming state prison where Butch Cassidy was once an inmate. Then to S. Dakota where we visited Mt. Rushmore, saw the president’s in stone, as well as the Crazy Horse Memorial, (under construction) and museum. Then headed south for home, driving all across Nebraska (who cares), and into Wichita, Kansas on thursday night, and home friday. 8 days, saw a lot of interesting things, enjoyed the cooler weather, and it was quite an experience.”
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“You need a vacation??? well, we will be having our Pre-1840 Trader’s camp at Bison Lake at Woolaroc, OK on the Oct 1 – 3rd Woolaroc does have a web site to tell more about the place. it is a wildlife reserve set up by the Phillips family.”
http://www.woolaroc.org/index.html
Woolaroc is about 10 miles southwest of Bartlesville, OK
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“My mother was born on Sept 22, 1886 at a place called wilson creek, Ardmore Indian Territory. do you know where it is located?”
[email protected]
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“Here in Gainesville, Texas they have moved a portable building (like they use at schools for extra rooms) next to our depot for the passengers to wait in if the weather is bad. It’s only temporary until they get finished with the depot. Which looks like that will take forever!!!!”
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“A friend sent me a copy of your newsletter, and i wish i could be on the mail list. Very interesting stuff. I’m glad i’m not the only one who thinks brown springs, up by thackerville is a strange place. About 23 years ago, me, my wife, and her brother, were riding around, and ended up at that place. Middle of the day, parked the car at the bottom of the hill where the water comes out. climbed up the hill, was only one faint trail into the woods, over the barbed wire fence, into the cemetary. the farther we walked in the trees, the darker it got. then we started noticing graves that were dug up. A few bones scattered. we got spooked and headed back to the car. Only to find NOW the trail was full of sticker patches, and i was barefooted. The stickers weren’t there going in??? then, the car wasn’t where we left it. It was down the road a ways.. can’t explain it, but we all remember it. got the heck out of there, haven’t been back. We still get chill bumps when we talk about it.”
http://www.brightok.net/~bridges/brownspr.html
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=============================================================It looks like the world made it through the 9-9-99 commotion. I laugh when alarmist and doomsday predictors believe the world is coming to an end or whatever when something like 9/9/99 arrives. I think I will make a prediction here…. plan on going to work on Monday, January 3rd, 2000 just like you always have, unless you have a hangover from all the partying thats going to be taking place a couple days preceding Monday. hahaha
No, wait, let me back up… maybe the world did come close to coming to an end. Our local McDonalds did have a computer system failure early Thursday morning (the 9th). For a while there everyone who came through got their orders free, since the employees couldn’t ring it up. Maybe the alarmist were right about 9-9-99. hahahaha
The ladies at the DA’s office here in Ardmore are excited over the 7 new computers the Oklahoma DAs Council installed for them this week. The new computers on a Windows NT Network allows them access to email and the Internet.
http://www.odawan.net./“When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property. -Thomas Jefferson
See everyone next Saturday!
Butch Bridges
Ardmore, Oklahoma
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~From: Butch Bridges
Saturday, September 4, 1999 Vol 3 Issue 124
Last week I told about Love county Deputy Sheriff Walter Tate being killed in the line of duty in 1917. I went to Oswalt last Saturday and found his grave. South of Ardmore about 12 miles on I-35 is the Oswalt Road exit. If you go west about 11 miles you find the intersection of Oswalt Rd and Hembree Rd. Turn north and go about 1/4 mile curving back to the west is Oswalt cemetery. I found Walter Tate’s tombstone near the south end of the cemetery. His marker was not resting on it’s base, but was laying flat on the ground. I aaasked myself how could I get his marker back to it’s base. A couple days later at a local auto parts house, and met Mrs. Mary Wilson, owner of Wilson Monuments in Lone Grove, Oklahoma. I told her the story and she ask me to draw her a map where Walter Tate is buried. She said they had a monument to sit in Leon, Oklahoma and would drop back by Oswalt cemetery and fix Deputy Tate’s tombstone free of charge. Here is the full story of Deputy Walter Tate’s death.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/wtate17.txt
Here is a photo I took of Walter Tate’s tombstone at Oswalt.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/wtate17.jpgJust NW of Lawton, Oklahoma is the small town of Mountain Park, Oklahoma. The United Methodist Church at Mountain Park has a nice bell mounted beside their church building.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/mtpark.jpgOn East Main in Ardmore, just a few feet west of Caddo street, is a building that for years has housed the Stag Bar. It is reported the building is the oldest building in Ardmore. Just to the right of the Stag Bar building on the corner is the old Hardy Hospital 1907. If you look the corner building over closely, one will find on the west side second floor (in photo) white sandstone. But on the other side (east side) second floor is newer brick. The reason is the east wall was destroyed in the Big Explosion of 1915. Here is the story on the 1915 Big Explosion on the railroad track.
http://www.brightok.net/chickasaw/ardmore/county/explo.html
Here is a pic of these two buildings on East Main.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/stagbar.jpgIn 1883 an English colony was incorporated near Harper, Kansas and was known as Runnymede. It was named after the Runnymede in England (the famous place where King John signed the Magna Carta 1215). A few years later, in 1893, the colony of Runnymede would be moved from Kansas to Alva, Oklahoma. Here is a photo of the present day Runnymede building in Alva. The citizens there are discussing converting it into a Cultural Center.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/runny.jpg
Here is the complete story of Runnymede.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OkieLegacy/woods/runnymede.htmlTalk about Alva, Oklahoma….. How about this big beautiful bell in front of the Administration Building on the campus of Northwestern State University in Alva? Nice.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/alvabell.jpgA friend in Ireland sent me this “cow” link. moooooooooo
http://www.cowsonparade.net/The Carter County Clerks’s Office here is now doing some high tech file transmissions via modem. The county barn at Healdton (western Carter county) is transmitting daily by modem their Purchase Orders to the clerk’s office for processing. This saves employees having to drive the 50 mile round trip to hand deliver the POs to the courthouse. It’s working flawlessly!
Speaking of the County Clerk, Cynthia Anderson, she now has an email address. I finally got her computer on the Internet but not after calling tech support at Compaq. I will say this, the tech support people at Compaq were terrific! Cynthia’s email addy is [email protected]. Send her some email and welcome her to the Net! Also you can find her email addy at the bottom of her Page on the Carter County Government website.
Boy did I make a mistake in last week’s T&T. I typed Gainesville, Oklahoma instead of Gainesville, Texas. There is already bad blood between the two states…. that is evident at the OU-Texas football games. I could have started a war. I’ll be more careful.
Maintenance crews at the Carter County courthouse have been busy the last couple of weeks redecorating the Honorable Judge Charles Tate’s courtroom. New carpet and a new coat of paint on the walls sure has brightened up the Special Judge’s courtroom
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/tatecrt.jpgAlso James Lindsey in Maintenance has done some staining on the handrail that goes from the first floor to the second floor in the Carter County Courthouse. It sure looks nice with a fresh coat of dark stain. James is a true craftsman. He can fix or build almost anything that is given him to do.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/handrail.jpgSOME LETTERS FROM THIS WEEK’S MAILBAG
“Butch, I am sending you a copy of a letter received in your this week’s T&T – It is of particular interest to me because I was the State Senator that caused the road on the east side of Lake Murray to be completed from the Old Rock Tower site to it tie in with what is now HW 70 east. I took a map of Lake Murray & presented it to the State Highway Commission, along with my proposed route drawn on it to show where the road should be excavated & completed…. I should mention that I knew the Paschall’s well & it was through inspiration from them that motivated me to pursue the effort. By the way, the route was charted by flying over the area with a helicopter. The Superintendent of Lake Murray, Junior Dobson, actually drafted the route as he flew over the area with the helicopter pilot.” Ernest Martin [email protected]
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“I also get a kick out of the infinite amounts of stuff one can find online. But for those interested in obtaining information about a person (mostly dead) the following site offers a wealth of links. It has really been helpful to me for my ancestry search. When you scroll down about a quarter of the way, you’ll come across the actual index of sites.” http://www.cyndislist.com/index.htm
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“I enjoyed the pictures and notes about Alva, Okla. My home town. I am in Colorado now and don’t get back there as often as I would like. I have a brother and sister in Alva. Then have my three children and grandchildren in the Bartlesville area so the info. on that was nice also. Other grandchildren in Okla City area. We lived in Edmond for seven years. So you might say I have family scattered all over Oklahoma. Thank you for filling a empty space in my heart.”
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“I need some help in trying to locate a half brother of my husband and don’t know where else to look. The brother we are looking for Elwood Caton Hunt birth 6-1-1940 has not been heard from since 1978. He was released from prison in Calif in 1978. Thank You”
[email protected]
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“I was born in Gene Autry, Ok. in 1940. I grew up in and around Ardmore and attended Dickson High School for the entire 12 years. I now live in Bastrop, Texas, about 35 miles southeast of Austin. A friend forwarded me a copy of you This and That. I love it and think you are doing a great service to Oklahoma and Oklahomans. Hope you keep it up”
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“I want to compliment you on your fun web site. Really enjoyed browsing through it. I happened upon it because I was trying to track down info on the old Confederate Home in Ardmore. I guess it isn’t called that anymore – must be an “Old Soldier’s” Home I guess. My great great grandmother lived there for a number of years, passing away in 1934. Her name was Lucy Mitchell. If you happen to know of how to track down old records from the Confederate Home I would appreciate the info.” [email protected]
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“3 bells donated by the czar of Russia to a church in San Francisco (1888) have been stolen. don’t let anyone try to sell you any bells!” NOTE: This week the bells were returned according to the news reports. No, I didn’t take them. hahahaha
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“Butch, Someone asked me if I had a picture of the Ardmore Swimming Pool that was once located at Whittington Park. It was a very popular pool that catered to all ages. I remember a large slide that was mounted on a tower in the middle of the pool that ran down hill to the east. There was also a springboard diving platform on the east end of the pool, where the board was located pretty high. Actually the water in the deep end of the pool was probably not much more than 6 ft. and it was not uncommon for some divers to hit the bottom of the pool when diving. I remember being there on one occasion when a young man struck his head on the bottom & had to be rescued. The dressing rooms for the pool were located in a two story structure on the west end of the pool area. Upstairs was used for a skating rink. I was not here when they dismantled the old structure & filled the pool with sand, so therefore don’t know when that was done. I do know that the skating rink and pool were still in use during WW-2, at least it was used when I was home on furlough during the summer of 1944. QUESTION IS – DO YOU HAVE SUCH A PICTURE IN YOUR ARCHIVES?”
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“Here are the LINKS to the Waynoka, OK Santa Fe Depot & Harvey House that I promised you.”
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OkieLegacy/image/Waynokadepot.jpg
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OkieLegacy/image/waynokasantafe.jpg
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“Here are front and back LINKS to a 1938 Penny Postcard of the New Science Hall, Northwestern State Teachers College, Alva, Okla.”
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OkieLegacy/image/ntn1938sciencehall.jpg
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OkieLegacy/image/ntn1938science2.jpg
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“KKAJ radio in Ardmore, Oklahoma will be “LIVE AUDIO STREAMING” beginning THURSDAY, Sept 1, 1999. Tell everyone you know AROUND THE WORLD to log on.” http://www.kkaj.com
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“Butch, You had better not remove me from T&T, I love it. Are you keeping all the County employee’s straight? Come by and see me sometime when you arn’t on the computer.”
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“Hey Butch, I’m taking a hint from one of your readers and getting an address on yahoo so I can hopefully see ALL the pictures. Thanks for the story on Castle on the Hill. A neighbor was on a discussion list from Ohio and asked about what a “normal” school was. Glad to be able to forward your site over to her. Thanks and keep up the great work.”
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=============================================================A GLIMPSE INTO THE PAST
On Caddo street just north of the present day Caddo Cafe, is an old rock building with the following inscription at the top: “Ella Hunter – 1939”. Ella Hunter was an early day business woman of Ardmore, Oklahoma. She was a boarding house owner and also owned a small cigar stand in the corner of the Whittington Hotel at Caddo and Main. One long time Ardmoreite told me Ella Hunter would buy property anytime she had some extra cash, eventually even owning property as far away as Houston, Texas. Ella was a young widow and reared three children- Virgil, Amelia, and Maude. Amelia Hunter Hall would go on to be renown throughout the country for her theater and musical talents. In the link below the date looks like 1999, but it is 1939. Ella Hunter 1864-1952 The Ella Hunter building is at A Street and 2nd Northeast.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/hunter39.jpgI ordered me another playpretty this week. It’s IBM’s ViaVoice 98 Home Edition. The program let’s you speak into a microphone, and it puts the words on the screen. It will even put them automatically into MS Word 97. Comes with a lot of features for only $25. I’ll let everyone know how well the product works. For slow typist like me, it may come in real handy! I can talk real fast, especially when I have had some chocolate. hahaha
http://orders.xoom.com/via98h/rxmvia98h0901hw/We have a lady at the courthouse named Juanita who takes care of some of the janitorial needs in the building. She has been telling me for a long time, “Butch, those computers are going to drive you crazy”. After this week, she may be closer to the truth then she knows. This week I had promised friends I’d take care of some things for them while they were gone to Las Vegas a few days. I told him I would do it Thursday evening. I lost track of time and didnt even know when Thursday got here. He called me from Las Vegas Friday and then the truth came out. I was 24 hours late in doing what I promised, thinking it was Thursday, when really it was already Friday. I sat down Friday night and starting counting the computers I provide TLC for at the courthouse…. I was dumbbfounded… 95 and still counting. Boy, I think I need to slow down a little. Anyone know some good places to take a vacation? I don’t care if I have comp time or not. Think I will listen to some Celine Dion CDs and let the world go by.
I want to dedicate this issue to, who in my opinion, was truly the Queen of Hearts. There has been no lady in this generation that equals Princess Diana. She lost her life August 31, 1997 and is still missed around the world. She was and still is, the peoples Princess.
http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Lagoon/1888/A-Diana.html“Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law: it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justified the means– to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal– would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face.”
-BRANDEIS, J., dissenting, Olmstead v. United States,
277 U.S. 438, 485 (1928)
http://tqd.advanced.org/2760/olmstead.htmEnjoy the holidays with friends and family, see everyone next Saturday!
Butch Bridges
Ardmore, Oklahoma~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: Butch Bridges
Saturday, August 28, 1999 Vol 3 Issue 123
I had a visit from a T&T reader from Lexington, Oklahoma this week, and she brought something very interesting to my attention. She has a distant relative who was a deputy sheriff in Love County in 1917. He went to Oswalt, Oklahoma, another town just outside Marietta, to serve an arrest warrant. While trying to serve the warrant, he was shot through the stomach by the man he was trying to arrest. The deputy died four days later in the Hardy Sanitarium and Hospital here in Ardmore. I went to the link below, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund in Washington DC, and guess what? He was not listed as killed in the line of duty. So I’ve started communication with the NLEOMF to get his name added to the Wall of Honor in DC. I’ll have a lot more info at a later date, including all the details of this murder of a deputy sheriff in Love county, Oklahoma. http://www.nleomf.com/
I never cease to be amazed at the information becoming available on the Net. Below is a link that lets you search over 421 million U.S. Voter Registration and Motor Vehicle Registrations for a person using only their name. Better searches can be made if the person’s date of birth is known. Cost? $39 http://www.locateme.com/
This is a very old 1 qt. can of “MERIT” Paraffin Base Motor Oil made by the CATO Oil & Grease Company in Oklahoma City. It also says: Manufactured from 100% Pure Virgin Stock
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/meritoil.jpgA reader wrote in this week telling about some bells in the towns of Muskogee and Chouteau, Oklahoma. These two towns are in FAR northeastern Oklahoma, hundreds of miles from me. Since some of these great pieces of Oklahoma’s past are so far away from me, here’s what I will do, just so we don’t missed those snapshots: At Wally World, Bill’s Dollar stores, and stores like it, they sell disposable cameras with film for less then five bucks. If you have some bells or historical things of interest, and don’t have a camera, I will reimburse you for the expense of taking the pics for me using one of those one-time use cameras. Just mail it to me and I’ll get the film developed. I will try to keep this offer open until I run out of money or the end of the world, whichever comes first. But I ask you to send me email telling me if you have something of interest and no camera, so I can let you know if it’s something I would like photos of. Any help is appreciated.
This is a beautiful and unusual check on the Ponca Agency, Oklahoma Territory 1892. “J.H. Sherburne, U.S. Indian Trader.” Dealer in Ponies and Cattle. Check for $11.75. Drawn on the First National Bank, Arkansas City, Kansas.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/traderck.jpgHere’s the scoop on the 1935 fire that destroyed that beautiful “castle on the hill” in Alva, Oklahoma. Very interesting!!
http://members.xoom.com/OkieLegacy/woods/ntn1935.html
http://members.xoom.com/OkieLegacy/woods/ntn1897.htmlI need to correct something from last Saturday’s T&T. Ada, Oklahoma is northeast of Ardmore, not NW:
“60 Miles NE of Ardmore is Ada, Oklahoma. Here is their depot”.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/adadepot.jpgHere is a great place to step back in time and listen to some radio broadcasts from the bygone years. Metro Golden Memories. You will need RealPlayer to listen to the actual broadcasts.
http://www.mgmemories.com/RETRO 70’S FASHION – Now you can re-live the early 1970’s era with this collection of desktop LED watches. LEDWatch I and II recreate red, green, or blue LED watches with silver or gold faces. LEDWatch III displays a more realistic watch face, and has optional sound effects.
http://www.netins.net/showcase/patrickd/pdproga.htmlThis is a really neat photo of the Union RR Station years ago at Bartlesville, Oklahoma!!
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/bartdepo.jpgAnd here is the depot in El Reno, Oklahoma years ago. Nice pic.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/renodepo.jpgNorman is the capital seat of Cleveland county in Oklahoma. The Cleveland County Sheriffs Department now has a website thanks to the work of my friend Mike Holt. Mike helps keep all the sheriff’s computers running at Cleveland County and he is using homestead.com for their website. Homestead makes Page making easy!
http://www.homestead.com/clevcountysheriff/RocketTalk is a free service that lets you send and receive voice messages over the Internet to anyone with a RocketTalk or Email account. Both the Software and the Account are FREE! Download RocketTalk Now at http://www.RocketTalk.com
SOME LETTERS FROM THIS WEEK’S MAILBAG
“You, my friend, are amazing! Loved your newsletter this week. Where did you get the postcard of the Castle on the Hill? If you were to be in downtown Alva, Oklahoma on sixth street (College Avenue) and look south up the street, you would see the Northwestern Normal School on the horizon. Downtown Alva is down in a bowl type valley near the Salt Fork River. We have a downtown square which use to have businesses across the street all the way around. Now alot of the buildings are empty. Average age of Alva is 60. All the young people leave for the City to make a living. And Walmart superstore has a shopping center on the east edge of town away from downtown traffic. A lot of the people in this town don’t like change for fear of losing their power. It really is a shame. The town is slowly dying off with NO younger couples hardly around to keep it going.” “Castle on the hill” – Northwestern Normal School in Alva, OK
http://mx8.xoom.com/OkieLegacy/woods/ntn1917.html
http://nwalva.edu/pubrel/history.htm
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/alva20.jpg
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“I can tell you a little something about the Northwestern State Normal School in Alva, Oklahoma. I’m not sure what year because I wasn’t even a thought or seed in my parents eyes back then and my parents weren’t parents 🙂 BUT whatever year it was “The Castle on the Hill” (that’s what it was called) burnt down. They rebuilt, but it doesn’t look anything like that now.”
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“Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. The Castle burned in the early morning hours of March 1, 1935. Cause of the fire has been largely a matter of speculation ranging from faulty electrical wiring, to spontaneous combustion in a janitor’s closet to a carelessly tossed cigarette. The Castle was dedicated on March 9, 1900 by President James Ament. The cost of the structure was about $100,000. After the fire, the Castle was replaced by the Jesse Dunn building, which still serves as the main classroom building today.”
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“Hey Butch, …I noticed when going through Muskogee, Oklahoma on the southern part of town, there is an antique shop that has a wooden fence lining their walkway. All on top of it are bells. Also, going into Chouteau, Oklahoma at one of the restaurants, is a huge bell on a stand out by the highway. If you ever go road-tripping, may want to go up that way.”
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“Had to tell you .. the Alta Vista translator is AWESOME ..and you don’t have to DL the software ..it’s so neat just to do it online, send to clipboard and send a msg in whatever .. also, will be great using it from my newsltr which is fast becoming Bi Lingual.” http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/
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“My “viewing” problem has been solved. Now that I’m receiving T&T from a YAHOO address, I’ve got the blue print and lines. Now I can “TOGGLE” till the turkeys come home. Being an “okie” from the history fertile soil of Oklahoma, I really enjoy being able to view the pictures, even the one of the sun-glassed mastermind of this publication. Yep, I’m as happy as a bull in a barn full of heifers. KEEP UP THE EXCELLENT WORK.”
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“NetProfits is our weekly radio and internet talk show featuring the most interesting and informative Internet Entrepreneurs available. We offer practical advice about how to market your products, services or inventions in this growing frontier called cyberspace. NetProfits also offers Internet Marketing news and feature stories of successful webpreneurs to educate, inform and entertain you.”
Broadcast Live Weekly Saturdays 6-8 p.m. ET Must have RealPlayer.
http://www.netprofitsradio.com/
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“Two of the best webcrawlers I have found for searching information are: http://www.askjeeves.com and http://www.learn2.com You may wish to add them to your list of informational channels.”
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“Butch, Found your email address on the this and that pages. I am looking for a contact for Ardmore High School Reunions. I’m from the class of ’67. Got any ideas?”
[email protected]
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“Lots of good pics. Thanks. I knew I should never have left OK. You moved Ada from 20 miles East of Pauls Valley and now it is NW of Ardmore! How many nit-pickers noted that, I wonder?”
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“I have a German friend in CO and tried the translation web and wrote to her in German. Haven’t heard from her yet as she doesn’t get on the net much. When I do I’ll let you know how good it is. I look forward to your E-mail news each week. I think we are all still stuck on Brown Springs! That was some story and gives me the chills each time I think of it. Places like that were so much evil was done in the past seem to keep drawing evil people like flies. Keep up the good work!
http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/
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“This is to let you all know that the Ardmore High School Class of 68 website is back on the internet. You may view it at:” http://www.musicmessage.com/tigers68.html
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“Thought you might want to share this with your “T&T” readers. A website to find lots of LIVE CAM shots in various areas!” http://www.cammunity.com/
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“Hi Butch: Really enjoy “This and That”. My wife and I were married in the First Baptist Church in Ardmore June 1, 1950. That same summer I took this picture of Turner Falls. It was a favorite swimming hole in those days. Haven’t seen the falls in years. We always take the I-35 cutoff these days. I well remember the old “hairpin” curve. It was tortuous if you got behind a long-haul truck going up the hill. I’m impressed with the work you are doing for the county.”
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/tfalls50.jpg
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“This is a photo taken the summer of 1950 of “2 Lakes Skyway Courts” located at the SE corner of Lake Murray State Park. My in-laws, Bert and Mabel Paschall, operated the courts for years. It was built in 1948 when there was very little activity over on the SE side of the lake. The paved road in the park stopped at the state cabins then. That’s where the lodge is these days. Few people came over to the SE part of the lake then and we pretty well had that part of the lake to ourselves most of the time. When 2 Lakes Skyway Courts first opened for business there was an airplane landing strip in front of the store. After two plane crashes within the first three years which killed some people, Bert closed the air strip, changed the name to Paschall Village, and planted peanuts where the air strip was. When the state finally paved the road all the way around the lake more and more people came to the SE part of the lake and frequented the store. Weekends during the summer were really busy. My wife and I would sometimes come to visit for the weekend and would end up working most of the time. If you ever came over to that part of the lake and stopped at the store, I probably at some time gassed your vehicle or sold you some minnows. Bert and Mabel sold the store and cabins in 1972. They are no longer with us and the store has long since burned and been torn down so we haven’t been there in years.”
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/skyway50.jpg
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“I am proud to announce that TopCops on the Internet has obtained it’s own domain name, TopCops.com.” http://www.topcops.com/
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“Hey there Butch, This web site was sent to me and I thought I’d share with you. You may already know about it, but I found it very interesting. http://www.highschoolalumni.com Take care and keep up the great news! I love hearing all the stories and seeing the pics that you send.”
=============================================================A GLIMPSE INTO THE PAST
Just 40 miles south of Ardmore, across the Red River into Texas, is Gainesville, Texas. In 1880 my mother’s grandparents moved from Altoona, PA to Gainesville and that was our start in this area. Gainesville is the county seat for Cooke county. The Cooke county Courthouse has an original working clock still in their courthouse. In February 1920 the people of Cooke county started a fund to purchase a clock and put it in the courthouse as a memorial for those of that county that gave their lives in World War I. In April of 1920 county commissioners award a contract of $2,800 to the E. Howard Clock Company to install the clock as a memorial to those of the great war. In December that same year the clock arrived at the courthouse. In January 1921 the clock in the dome of the Cooke county courthouse started ticking. Here are several pics of this historical masterpiece.
http://www.brightok.net/chickasaw/ardmore/county/gainesck.htmlFrom 1970 to 1985 during my employment with the Southern Oklahoma Ambulance Service I responded to 1,000s of vehicle accidents. One thing associated all those accidents. Speed.
A friend lost her job this week, and I’m dedicating this week’s quote to her……
“When one door closes, another opens. But we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we fail to see the one that has opened for us.” -Alexander Graham Bell
See everyone next Saturday!
Butch Bridges
Ardmore, Oklahoma
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~From: Butch Bridges
Saturday, August 21, 1999 Vol 3 Issue 122
Several of you wrote in about the Brown’s Springs article. I was in a research mood, so I used several major search engines and did a search for Browns Springs and then Brown’s Springs. Guess what? My favorite http://www.metacrawler.com didn’t find it, but http://northernlight.com sure did! All the others failed. So try several search engines because just one maybe not be the one that finds that piece of info you are searching for.
A 1915 photo of the Institute of the Feeble Minded in Enid, OK.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/feeble15.jpgNorthwestern State Normal School in Alva, Oklahoma – 1920. WOW!! This is or was a magnificent building. Wonder if it is still there?
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/alva20.jpg60 Miles NE of Ardmore is Ada, Oklahoma. Here is their depot.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/adadepot.jpgThis is a great 1914 photo of the Anadarko, Oklahoma depot!
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/anadepot.jpgHere is a map of Rosehill Cemetery in Ardmore, Oklahoma
http://www.brightok.net/chickasaw/ardmore/county/photos/rosehill.jpgThe Oklahoma Department of Corrections has a new URL.
http://204.62.19.52/On August 10, 1983 on an oil lease south and west of Ringling, Oklahoma Kevin Magee was injured working on a rig. My friend Joe Pack was working on the ambulance that day. The Quintin Little Oil Company here in Ardmore had a helicopter at that time and sent it to the scene. It was decided to transport Magee in the helicopter instead of the ambulance. Joe gave me the following picture of him at the helicopter. It was Joe’s first and only ride in any aircraft. He told me he really didn’t care to take another ride in a copter. Joe’s the one in the center holding the Ambu resusitator.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/packhelo.jpgFor those of you with vivid imaginations, here is a URL that was sent to me this week. Interesting to say the least. Elvis? Alive?
http://www.4conspiracytheories.com/North of Ardmore 15 miles is Turner Falls. This is a pic of the “horseshoe curve” in front of the Falls entrance (Highway 77). I sure hated running Code 3 (red light and siren) through those curves. I-35 was not finished through the Arbuckle Mountains until the Fall of 1970.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/ucurve.jpgTalk about Turner Falls, here’s some great pics sent to me:
Turner Falls, Oklahoma, July 1999:
The Cave at Turner Falls
http://wwwpubco.com/image/turnerfalls1.jpgOne of the Falls and swimmers at Turner Falls, July 1999.
http://wwwpubco.com/image/turnerfalls2.jpghttp://wwwpubco.com/image/turnerfalls3.jpg
View from the Turner Falls Ranger Station Lookout.
http://wwwpubco.com/image/turnerfalls4.jpgLooking through the hole in the rock towards the Ranger lookout station across the way.
http://wwwpubco.com/image/turnerfalls5.jpgThis is a 1907 street scene of Cordell, Oklahoma
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/cord07.jpgAltavista has a great language converter. You enter the word or phrase and it will convert it to or from 10 different languages. A person can even have it translate an entire webpage. Here is my Page on Browns Spring in Spanish. Maybe someone who knows Spanish can write and tell us how good a job Altavista’s translator did on the Browns Spring article?
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/bspanish.txtHere is the Altavista translator webpage.
http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/The Grand River Dam near Vinita, Oklahoma….. 1940s.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/vgrand40.jpgSOME LETTERS FROM THIS WEEK’S MAILBAG
“Butch in your this and that you had a piece about a bell from Tyler that is now in McMillan could you tell me exactly where McMillan is It may be the town I have been looking for, my grandfather is buried there I think, I have been looking for a town I thought was called McMullin. I had the wrong spelling? he would be west of town on a hill in an old Pioneer Grave Yard. He was a Deputy U.S.Marshal for the area when he died sometime in 1899.” Paskell J Poindexter
[email protected]
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“Butch, I’ve meant to ask this before now, but time wouldn’t permit me to sit down long enough this past week to sit down and send this e-mail. Someone mentioned the “doodle bug” thing in the last week or two. There are several of us from southern Oklahoma that also did the “doodle bug” thing when we were kids, but we can’t remember all the words. I don’t believe the words to this were written on your “This & That”. Do you know all the words to it? I just always kinda figured it was a southern Oklahoma “thing”. Maybe not… You put a lot of work into “This & That” – has a lot of great stuff in it. I always enjoy going through it and see what interesting info you have for all of us. Good job!!!”
http://enteract.com/~mswanson/antlionpit/folklore.html
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“hi butch…even tho i am a member of zoom, we still can’t get your pictures. i don’t know if it’s because of the webtv or not.”
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“Dear Butch, I checked out the website www.4free.net. It got me to register via an email which i had to respond to, and then i filled in a form to get a free mousemat. It was only when I submitted the form did it tell me that I have to put in a state! I don’t live in a state – I live in a county in Ireland! Why is it that websites have the ignorance and audacity to presume that the only people in the world who use computers are either American or Canadian? This makes me so cross! It has happened to me several times! It is a complete waste of my time; why can they not tell you at the start that the offer only applys to USA residents? Perhaps someone knows of some free stuff available to all? One frustrated and cheesed off Essex”
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“Hi There! I love your “This N’ That” of course and thought I would send you some trivia I got in a mailing. You, being a big bell buff, might already know this but here you go… Why is the famous London clock called Big Ben? This popular misconception is a great trick question to stump any bothersome know-it-all. Few people realize that the name belongs not to the clock, but to the bell in the clock tower that’s been ringing out the time of day since 1859. Its familiar sound began to gain international fame and familiarity when it was first broadcast on the radio in 1923. The bell is big, all right: seven and a half feet tall, nine feet in diameter, thirteen and a half tons. But that’s not how it got its name. Its installation was supervised by the Commissioner of Public Works, Sir Benjamin Hall. Sir Benjamin’s height and waistline were both substantial, earning him the nickname of “Big Ben.” The press and members of Parliament affectionately gave that name to the new bell, and it stuck. (Source: THE WORLD BOOK ENCYCLOPEDIA)”
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“I want to thank you very much for your “This & That”. It`s a little piece of home for me, I`ve not lived in Oklahoma for a long time, But as you know, borned a Okie- always Okie. I wish you a very good day and keep up the good work.” -from Germany
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“A good Sunday Morning to you Butch, Was just reading your t&t news letter and especially liked the story about Brown’s Springs….that is really interesting and sounds like it would make a good movie. A few years ago I saw a movie called “The mountains have eyes”. The movie took place out west in New Mexico or Arizona where some mountain people would kidnap unwary vacationers camping out by their motor homes and travel trailers. They would cook and eat their victims.”
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“Have really been enjoying your newsletter each week…give us some more info on the Brown’s Spring story…. (Big Foot maybe?) You’ve really wet our appetite!!!! See the attachment for a picture of the Russett, Oklahoma school house that I took back in the springtime. Russett is located 5 miles east of Mannsville in southwestern Johnston Co.”
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/russett.jpg
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“After reading the stories about Brown Spring’s, brings back old memories. One Halloween my friend and I went riding around with some guys from Thackerville, OK. They decided they would take us to Brown Springs to scare us. We were trying to act brave, so I started up the hill to the old grave yard to show them where it was, (I had been there in the day time) over half way up we hear chanting and see smoke from a camp fire, I thought I was being set up for the ultimate scare, so I was being brave and trying to play along, till we came to a knife stabbed in a tree, with fresh blood on it. We all saw it at the same time, I blamed it on the boys, but after seeing the look on their faces, I knew it was time to get out of there!! All four of us were so terrified we could not even scream, we got in the truck, and no one said a word till we were back on highway 77 headed to town. I was told later that devil worshiper “wanna be’s” went up there and sacrificed small animals as a part of a seance type ordeal. I didn’t care what it was it terrified me. That was back in 1990. I have been up to the cemetery again since then in the daytime “only” and found some pretty neat history as far as the tombstones. My husband and I have drove on that road a hundred times going to the river to fish, and camp just southeast of the Springs, and have never had anything crazy happen, but that doesn’t mean the hair doesn’t stand up on my arms everytime we are there!!”
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=============================================================A GLIMPSE INTO THE PAST
On January 21, 1984 a 14 year old from Lone Grove, Oklahoma traveled with her dad, John Simpler, to Nashville, TN to record her first album. That young lady was Lori Simpler. Below is a link to a 18 second clip I made of her song “Someday”. You will hear a voice that’s as beautiful as the young lady herself. But first here are the words to the song she recorded titled “Someday”.
“Someday”
By Lori Simpler
Lone Grove, Oklahoma
Songwriters: Danny Puckett, Lone Grove
and Greg Jean, Ardmore
Recorded January 21, 1984“It hurts me to see you unhappy,
Someone like you shouldn’t be,
If I could change the hands of time you’d be with me,
And I’d give you the love you’ve needed so long.Yes baby you know that I love you so,
But there’s too many hearts in the way,
But baby, who knows, some where some way,
Maybe you and I, maybe some day.It’s hard being lonely, no one caring,
When we have love we should be sharing,
You remember when he forgot,
You gave me strength when he would not,
So tell me if I’m wrong for loving you.Yes baby you know that I love you so,
But there’s too many hearts in the way,
But baby who knows, some where some way,
Maybe you and I, maybe some day.
Maybe you and I, maybe some day.”An 18 second clip (wav) of “Someday”. Takes 2 minutes to load.
http://OklahomaPast.webjump.com/someday1.wavHere is a photo of Lori Simpler from the insert of her album.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/simpler.jpgSo much for this week’s T&T. I appreciate everyone who sends me email. I try to answer them all, but sometimes I get behind. Not a week goes by I don’t receive requests for my little newsletter. It’s exciting and humbling at the same time. I hope everyone enjoys reading it, as much as I do doing it. Here’s the little quote I try to put at the end of each issue:
“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.” -George Washington Carver
See everyone next Saturday!
Butch Bridges
Ardmore, Oklahoma
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~From: Butch Bridges
Saturday, August 14, 1999 Vol 3 Issue 121
Last weekend my photos and links I had on Xoom.com would not pull up for nearly 48 hours. I don’t know why…. something wrong on the Xoom Server. Several of you wrote saying how much you wanted to see that photo of the 1974 train derailment at the Ardmore depot. Here is that pic again……
http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/italy/56/photos/ardrr74.jpgCrews have been busy the past month cleaning the old coats of paint off the copper dome of the courthouse here in Ardmore. After the old paint comes off, removing the old green stuff will be next. But you know, some people pay money to put that green stuff on their copper. It’s call patina I wonder if we should just leave the green patina alone?
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/courth12.jpgTONIC is a course of instruction on using the Internet produced with support from JISC for the UK higher education community. The Online Netskills Interactive Course is an easy-to-understand, structured course, offering step-by-step, practical guidance on major Internet topics, ranging from basic through to advanced. The course as a whole is intended for beginners to networking, who have some familiarity with computers. And the best part it is FREE….. so let’s go to school!
http://www.netskills.ac.uk/Here is one beautiful 1910 photo of the Waynoka, Oklahoma Santa Fe RR reading room. You got to see this one!
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/waynread.jpgWith Y2K quickly approaching, here is a link for all of you who wanted to make lye soap, but didn’t know how. Kathy Miller has it all right here on one website. How to make every kind of soap imaginable… using Crisco right on up to the more exotic, like palm oil and almond joy!
http://www.silverlink.net/~timer/soapallveg.htmlThis photo was taken about 1982 near Pecan Grove at Lake Murray, just south of Ardmore. It is a motorcycle-auto wreck. One man lost his leg, the other man lost an arm. I was the ambulance attendant and Bill Lewis was the driver. EMT volunteer Dennis Dill, far left, was helping that day on the ambulance. Dennis worked at the guard shack at Uniroyal Tire, and helped us on the weekends. The Trooper in the pic is Terry Dickson. He and I only lived a couple of blocks from each other during childhood days.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/dill82.jpgJust 50 miles east of Ardmore is Durant, Oklahoma. This is a 1912 pic of the Union Station at Durant.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/duradepo.jpgThis week I received the publication “Oklahoma Living”. In this August issue was a nice write-up about several Oklahoma courthouses along with photos. They had a beautiful photo of the Marietta, Oklahoma courthouse (Love County) along with the following caption: “The dome atop the Love County Courthouse holds the Marietta equivalent of Big Ben, a very large clock. While a few other courthouses in Oklahoma boast clock-domes, Love County’s advantage is that theirs actually works.” For the record, the clock in the dome of the Love County courthouse hasn’t worked in many years. I went down there about 2 years ago and looked at it three Saturday’s in a row. I was able to get it working but it was way out of calibration. It would only run for a couple days and quit. It is going to take time (and some money) to get it back to keeping time as it should be. I hope that someone will come forward and get this tower clock working again. Now this is the gospel: Carter County has the only still working original courthouse clock in Oklahoma. Here is some info on the clock in the dome of the Love county courthouse.
http://www.brightok.net/chickasaw/ardmore/county/morclock.htmlAbout a month ago I told everyone I got a photo of the old Tyler, Oklahoma school bell from years ago. The bell is now at a residence near McMillan, Oklahoma. Tyler and McMillan are only about 5 miles apart, both just a few miles west of Madill, OK. When I think of McMillan, Oklahoma my mind flashes back to the early 70s when we had a hightop Cadillac ambulance. There was an old maid (never married) who lived in McMillan. She had been retired from, I think, the Air Force for many years when I picked her up in the ambulance at 5am that morning to take her for admission to the VA hospital in Oklahoma City. Beside her bed was a photo of her when she was young wearing the Air Force dress uniform. She looked so beautiful and when I put her on the stretcher that morning she pointed that photo out to me…. she was so proud to have served her country and wear that uniform. It was so many years ago, I can not remember her name but one thing I know, in McMillan, Oklahoma once lived a proud patriotic lady. And now for a pic of that beautiful Tyler, OK school bell.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/tylerbel.jpgAs most of you know I have a link on my home page about Brown’s Spring in the southern end of Love county. I knew there was an evil something connected to that place and this week I received the following email which enlightened me about Brown’s Spring:
“The tale I got about Brown’s Spring involved a nameless family in southern Oklahoma at the turn of the century. These kind people would kill unwary travelers and rob them. The men in this clan of evil people would imprison, torture, rape, and eventually kill any unwary women that they had a chance to capture. The patriarch of the family would “Break In” the females born to the clan and then pass them around to the other uncles, brothers, cousins, etc. The story goes that one day a Choctaw girl was abducted by the patriarch and raped. The girl fled after she escaped and the elders of her family came back, in the night, and captured the patriarch. The girls family staked the evil man to the ground and sliced open his belly so that Hattak Offi/The Man Dog of that area could have a good meal with out having to work for it. Another name for Hattak Offi is Nalusa or Nalushka Falaya which translates to Long Evil Being or Long Wicked Person. (Bigfoot?) Anyway, the girls family came back the next morning and sure enough the evil man’s soft organs, (heart, liver, kidneys) were missing and his entrails were spread all over the place. The girl’s family then took the body of the evil patriarch and threw it into Brown’s spring to curse the spring to any that would rely on it for water. (Namely the bad guys in the area.) It is said that the evil patriarch’s family still has descendants in the area, and that his ghost haunts that area at night. I learned this in a gang rape investigation in January of 1985 when I worked at Healdton Police Dept. I arrested a descendant of the original family on a rape complaint and in the ensuing investigation dug up some really wild sounding stuff.”
http://www.brightok.net/~bridges/brownspr.htmlA GLIMPSE INTO THE PAST
On November 29, 1967 little 6 year old Scott Allen Compton was stuck by a pickup truck driven by 19 year old Jerry Wayne Kendrick while crossing the street at Lake Murray Drive and “C” Street SE here in Ardmore. The Compton child was unconscious and not breathing as a result of his injuries. Patrolman Ed Burton, an Ardmore police officer, was on patrol that afternoon and worked the accident. But what no one knew at the time, except for the guardian angel of little Scott Allen Compton, was that Bill Allen, the only respiratory therapist for a 50 miles radius was behind that pickup truck and witnessed the accident. Bill jumped from his car and went to the aid of the boy who was not breathing. Bill administered resuscitation and went along in the ambulance with the boy to the hospital. My friend Bill Allen had just moved to Ardmore one year ago. No ambulances or hospitals in our area had respiratory therapist prior to 1967, although Pauls Valley hospital and Purcell hospital were starting to use R.T.s from Oklahoma City to some degree. Bear in mind that when a person was brought into the emergency rooms in our area not breathing, such as Scott Allen Compton, there was no sophisticated equipment like there is today to start that person breathing again nor respiratory therapist on staff. The only piece of equipment in the hospitals at that time to hopefully revive a non-breathing person was a piece of equipment called the E&J Resuscitator. Very seldom did it bring a person back from the brink of death.
On January 15, 1968 Bill Allen received a recognition award from Woodmen of the World representative James Floyd here in Ardmore for his heroic efforts. Little Scott Allen Compton lived.
Twenty eight years later, Bill Allen would have a brush with death while working at the Guest Inn here in Ardmore on Father’s Day 1995. Bill was doing maintenance on an elevator and something went wrong while he was under it. The elevator took his arm off. Surgeons would successfully re-attach Bill’s arm. What is ironic, is a man came to Bill’s aid and helped stop the bleeding, who was a member of Houston’s Guardian Angels. He was Mario Castillo. Mario was working on a construction job at Uniroyal and temporarily staying at the Guest Inn. Mario Castillo probably saved Bill’s life while waiting on paramedics to arrive. Today Bill Allen, also known as Willie Lump-Lump, is doing fine, and he’s more ornery then ever! This is a 1967 photo of William “Bill” Allen.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/ballen.jpgSOME LETTERS FROM THIS WEEK’S MAILBAG
“I noticed that someone wrote to you about chocolate gravy. I grew up on that stuff!! My husband is a Yankee and never heard of it before we got married. It must be a Southern thing. Here’s to the South!!!!!!!!!!!”
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“Butch, I think I will pass on the chocolate gravy, go for the home-made biscuits, and then get a hot-fudge sundae when I am needing to tame the chocolate urge from within, haha.”
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“Not sure if you have ever posted a photo of the old Washita River Bridge north of Mannsville, Oklahoma. Was messing around the other day with the new digital camera and thought the old bridge would be a good shot. Back in the 70’s a gangster movie was filmed in the area. One of the scenes was of an old car being pushed off the bridge.” (The movie was Dillinger – 1973)
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/washbrid.jpg
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“How disappointed I was this morning when I can not open your xoom.com photo’s. I love old houses, beautiful houses, and different houses. Here in Juneau, Alaska, we have a house that is made out of California Redwood but it was a “wine vat” before it became a house. It was torn apart, floated to Juneau, Alaska, then put back together. It is beautiful. On warm days, you can still smell the aroma of “Chablis”. It also has the steel rods around the outside. They use to have tours going through it but I have not heard of any lately. I am sending a picture of a log house just built here in Juneau. It is made of pine logs from Canada and barged here and set up. It is very beautiful inside as well as outside.”
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/loghse3.jpg
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“…If you ever really want to know the truth about Brown’s Spring get ahold of me and I will tell you about it. It involves witchcraft, a giant hairy creature some call Bigfoot and…”
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“Hi Butch I am trying to figure out the best way to connect my computer in the house with the one in my garage.”
http://www.digitalmx.com/wires/peer.html
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“I have added a HUGE picture of Pawhuska, OK (1906 I think) to my website….”
http://www.freeyellow.com/members5/ocns/paw.JPG
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“We have been in and out of town and then three weeks ago, Hazel was out watering some trees at 4:30 a.m. and when she leaned over to turn off the water, she lost her balance and fell. She lay out there for several hours until a construction man drove in and found her. She broke her right leg pretty badly, it is the second break for that leg. The surgeon removed some bone from her left hip and grafted it….. Naturally her biggest problem right now is that she is really disgusted but she is determined to work on her therapy so she can get out of there. One thing that has cheered her up is “This and That”. I have been printing them and taking them to her. She really enjoys them….”
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“Butch, my name is Patti Rail. I am the owner of Shear Designs in Ardmore. Just want you to know how impressed and proud I am with the website for Carter County. GOOD JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have only been on the net a short time and was very pleased to see the hard work that has been put into this site.”
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“Reference your recent newsletter note suggesting a check of the “northernlight” search engine…. Dogpile found a gold mine of what I was looking for (“insect recipes”) (no, I don’t eat them….) That got me to wondering about how many search engines exist over and above the “standards” like Yahoo, Excite, etc. Tried “search engines” on dogpile. Astounding is the only word for the result!”
http://www.dogpile.com
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“I have diabetes, and if I behave myself, no big deal. But, I’m sure missing some of the foods I used to be able to eat. Recently, I was watching a health report on tv concerning a new treatment for diabetics that had just been approve by the FDA. It is supposed to be on the market soon. I was prepared to write down the name and other info of this medication, when a customer walked in and distracted me. I hit the record button on the vcr, but it was on the wrong channel. Anyway, if anyone knows anything about this medication, or have access to an area I might look, I would appreciate the info. The thing I did get, is this medication eliminates the need for diet. As long as I take it, I can eat any and all the food I want, including potatoes, corn, candy, CHOCOLATE PIE, LEMON PIE, soft drinks, peaches, grapefruit, bananas, oranges, my wife’s’ CHOCOLATE PIE, I think you get the idea. I appreciate any help, and I might even share a piece of my wife’s CHOCOLATE PIE.” [email protected]
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“This is a pretty neat site. Thought y’all might want to check it out. Really has alot of free stuff. I love free stuff. I’m always getting my stuff in the mail. I just keep ordering more. It’s alot of fun!!”
http://www.4free.net/
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“Now you can surf the web from Ardmore and most other cities for free!!! Alta Vista has started free internet access. Just download their software at http://microAV.com help available toll free and at http://microAV.com/help no sign up or monthly fees to pay, works on home computer with Internet Explorer or Netscape, and has local dialup number to access (not long distance). Some Problems to get software to install, but easy to correct with minor upgrades from microsoft. I had to upgrade windows95 dial-up networking to version 1.3 which can be downloaded from here.
http://support.microsoft.com/support/downloads/LNP195.asp
What’s the catch? You have to interact with this little tool bar, i.e. click an ad or something every now and then to stay connected.”
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Let me take just a minute and tell everyone there are a lot of smiling faces around the courthouse right now. Last Tuesday voters approved a 1/4 cent sales tax for Carter County Government. We’ve been told it should bring in $700,000 to $1 Million Dollars a year, to be split three ways…. 1/3 to roads, 1/3 to law enforcement and 1/3 to the courthouse. The reason I’m mentioning this, is a lot of people worked hard to see the proposal a success. But I want to give special recognition to the following 57 Carter county government employees who donated some of their evening hours manning phones and preparing flyers:
Cynthia Anderson, Theresa Jackson, Ruth Holley, Beth Allen, Cleta Wood, Marilyn Palafox, Juanita Conway, Karen Volino, Teresa Morgan, Nancy Miller, Jeannie Harper, Debbie Douthit, Joan Smith, Jodie Jones, Pam Taylor, Daria Porter, Don Waters, Barbara Eads, Allen Flowers, Brenda Waller, Lori Jones, Sam West, Norma Robinson, Trish Darity, Carolyn Davis, Joleta Duck, Gary Matthews, Jim Rozzell, Kim Cain, Sheryl Wood, Jay Christian, LaDonna Miller, Marsha Collins, Linda Hunt, Jane Cummings, Lori Cain, Joe McReynolds, Cheryl Rogers, Jerry Eubanks, Doyle Hamilton, Don Mitchell, Keith Smith, David Fuller, Mary Allen, Joyce Harris, Helen McReynolds, Kevin Robinson, Jon Walker, Chuck Stewart, Justin Kyle, Larry Milson, Dale Ott, Tammy McClendon, Donnie Collins, Butch Bridges, Phyllis Russell, and Michelle Bray.
Winner of the two tickets to Dizzy’s Miniature Golf is [email protected] and [email protected] is the winner of the two tickets to Lake Country Speedway.
“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” –Benjamin Franklin
See you all next Saturday!
Butch Bridges
Ardmore, Oklahoma~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: Butch Bridges
Saturday, August 7, 1999 Vol 3 Issue 120
Ken Updike in Lone Grove, Oklahoma has been taking photos of old houses in this area for many years. He sent me this one, an old house just south of here in Love County. Wouldn’t it be fun to be an artist and paint this as an oil painting or charcoal or water color? Anyone interested in his old “house pics” can email him at:
mailto:[email protected]
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/updike.jpgCleveland, Oklahoma High School, 1942.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/cleve42.jpgThis is a bank check, First National Bank, Davis, OK 1914
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/davis14.jpgA 1908 photo of the “north addition” of Frederick, Oklahoma.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/fred1908.jpgHow about his beauty, the Sapulpa, Oklahoma Depot about 1920!
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/supde20.jpgIn October 1930 Alton Edgar, a Marshall county farmer, had been missing for several days. Law enforcement officials had been unable to find the missing man. An Ada, Oklahoma Negro mystic by the name of Ed Kelley finally showed searchers where the body could be found. I have always wondered what happened to this Mr. Kelley, what he did in following years, and where he was buried. Maybe someone in the Ada area will do some research. He must have been a remarkable man with an unexplainable gift.
http://www.brightok.net/chickasaw/ardmore/county/mystic.htmlWaynoka, OK High School, 1914, and it has a belfry too!
http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/italy/56/photos/waynok14.jpgFour old photos of Waurika, Oklahoma, the rattlesnake capital of the world. The pics are: $5000.00 Steel Bridge Crossing Big Beaver to Sycamore Heights Addition to Waurika, OK. Cotton Compress, Waurika, OK. Stuard Opera House in Waurika, OK. and the Scene on Capitol Hill, Waurika, OK.
http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/italy/56/photos/waurika.jpgJust a few miles southwest of Tulsa is Kiefer, Oklahoma. This is a fantastic photo of Kiefer and it’s oils wells in 1909.
http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/italy/56/photos/kiefer.jpgThe Oklahoma Association of County Commissioners recently added a website. It’s still new, but growing.
http://www.okacco.com/A GLIMPSE INTO THE PAST
At noon Monday, January 14, 1974 a southbound Amtrak passenger train jumped the track at the depot here in Ardmore. Myself and Bill Lewis were on duty at the ambulance service. When we arrived at the station, several of the cars were off the track and tilting at a 45 degree angle toward to east. The cars would have completely fell over on their side, except they were held in this precarious position by those cars that were still upright on the rails. The thing I remember most working that accident was how everything was leaning so when we were inside the cars, that both myself and Bill Lewis developed equilibrium problems. Weird. We had to break windows out of the passenger cars and extricate the victims on spineboards out the windows to waiting rescuers. This is a pic of some of those helping with the rescue, include District Attorney Investigator Wayne Warthen, City Electrician James Blalock, and Respiratory Therapist Bill Allen of the Ardmore Adventist Hospital. Also there was my co-worker Joe Pack of the ambulance service, but on this day he was working part-time at the Ardmore Hospital in Respiratory Therapy and responded with a second ambulance.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/ardrr74.jpgSOME LETTERS FROM THIS WEEK’S MAILBAG
“I have a secondary email address that I’d like to use for T&T… The reason I’d like to use it is that my regular email program is old (like me) and to go to the many neat links you have I have to cut and paste and go over to Netscape to view them whereas from Yahoo I can do it direct.”
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“Within your newsletter I find alot of useful computer info….and would like to pass on a trouble shooting program as a way of saying “Mahalo” for the information I’ve received from your sources. Not sure if you have a Zip or Jaz drive but if you know anyone that does…this page http://grc.com/clickdeath.htm has information and a trouble shooting program on the Iomega “click of death” dilemma. I ran the “trouble in paradise” program and *phew* found no errors! Hope it saves someone the frustration of finding out too late that they may be in for the “click of death” …”
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“I read some of your stories. Will read more later. But just wanted to let you know we still have Horny toads in Ada, OK also. Not many but we see them sometimes. Also I had no idea anyone else besides me and my siblings did the doodle bug thing! Did you also eat chocolate gravy for breakfast?”
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“…..wanted to let you know that http://www.virtual-ardmore.com site has been updated and some new things added. Check it out and let me know what you think.”
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“Now, do you have the URL where you can get the updated drivers for printers. My printer is acting up and there might be some updates that could make the printer well again.”
http://www.connectworld.net/c9.html
“Great job! I was looking for a nice town and courthouse to get married in on our way to Dallas to catch the flight for our honeymoon and your’s was the only site to have so much detailed information. Even pictures of other town’s courthouses! Carter County (and yourself) did good. 🙂
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“We really enjoy your newsletter– thought you might like to know that my uncle has lived at Nebo, Oklahoma almost all of his life– over 80 years and he says that the cement building between Sulphur and Nebo was an old whiskey store on the whiskey trail.”
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=============================================================The two winners for the Frontier City Tickets in Oklahoma City are
[email protected] and [email protected]Next week we will have another special drawing. This will be for tickets good only in Ardmore, Oklahoma. 2 Free Passes to Lake Country Speedway, 2 tickets each good for one free skating lesson at Skateland, two tickets “buy one get one free” at either a ride at Dizzy’s Go-Karts or a round of miniature golf at Dizzy’s Miniature Golf. Remember these tickets are only good in Ardmore. We will draw 3 names for these three sets of tickets. Send me email before Friday Aug 13th for these tickets and TELL ME WHICH OF THE 3 DRAWINGS YOU WANT ENTERED.
Speaking of drawings, a friend of mine here in Ardmore is going to have a drawing for 5 acres of land in Colorado. Jerry Royall owns these five acres. Here’s the details he sent me:
http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/italy/56/photos/essay.txt“Literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor.” -Justice William Douglas
See everyone next Saturday!
Butch Bridges
Ardmore, Oklahoma~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: Butch Bridges
Saturday, July 31, 1999 Vol 3 Issue 119
I’ve read a couple articles this week saying the Number One search engine on the Net right now is Northernlight.com In November 1997 my cousin in FL sent me email saying Northernlight was an excellent search engine. I mentioned this in my T&T that month, but for some reason never used it much. But I’ve did some searches, and sure nuff, it does a great job!
http://northernlight.com/But as a follow-up to the above paragraph, I’ll have to say the search engine Metacrawler is nothing to sneeze at either. When I did a search for “deputy ranger”… northernlight.com did not show a three week old local newspaper article about the new deputy Ranger program I talk about below, yet Metacrawler did. So, try several search engines for the best results.
http://www.metacrawler.comMonths ago I mentioned I’d like to have a mirror site for my T&T newsletters and pics. Someday, when for whatever reason, I can’t pay my brightnet account, it will all be deleted. But now I do have it all transferred to XOOM and hopefully my Xoom account will be there for as long as the world turns. It will take me a few weeks to get everything mirrored there but I will. T&T Mirror Site:
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/This is an old pic of the Station Hospital at Ft Sill, Oklahoma
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/sillhosp.jpgLast January 8th one of our local DJs, Al Hamilton, did a live broadcast on Elvis’ birthday from the courthouse. Besides the great music of Elvis, what the listeners learned that morning was about a room called the Elvis Room. It’s really the copier room, but on display in that room is tons of Elvis memorabilia. Court Clerk Karen Volino gave her permission to introduce this so called Elvis Room to the rest of the world. Just click on the link below and move your way down to the bottom of her website and enjoy this presentation like nothing else in the state. And if you want to tap your toe to the music…. go ahead!
http://www.brightok.net/chickasaw/ardmore/county/crtclerk.htmlA 1908 photo of a 4th of July celebration in El Reno, Oklahoma
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/elreno8.jpgThe sheriffs department here has started what may be a first in Oklahoma. It’s the Deputy Ranger Program. Employee Lori Jones has created a website to tell about this new endeavor to introduce and educate young people to law enforcement.
http://www.homestead.com/cartercounty/deputyrangerThe Christian Church in Anadarko, Oklahoma years ago. Is that a belfry I see?
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/anadchu.jpgSo you’re looking for a high-paying cushy government job? Well here, knock yourself out!
http://www.govtjobs.com/A 1908 pic of the Frederick, Oklahoma library.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/ferickl.jpgLast week the Oklahoma County Works magazine for the Summer came out and in it was a nice write-up about our webtsite for Carter county Government.
http://www.brightok.net/chickasaw/ardmore/county/photos/cworks2.jpgAbout 35 miles southeast of Oklahoma City is Asher, Oklahoma. In 1908 they had the largest ear of corn in the world. hahaha
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/asher08.jpgEvery Sunday morning early at Sulphur,OK they have what is called a Dog Show or Trade Day. It draws a large crowd of people looking for bargins. But here is a Trade Day scene in Duncan, Oklahoma taken back in 1923.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/duncan23.jpgJust west of Ardmore in Stephens county is the wee town of Loco, Oklahoma This is a pic of a lighter advertisement from years ago. Printed on the lighter is H.D. Lawrence Hot Oil Service of Loco. Since it used the letters in the phone number instead of all number, I believe that would date the lighter pre 1960 era.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/locolit.jpgSOME LETTERS FROM THIS WEEK’S MAILBAG
“You are never too old to have fun on your birthday, Celebrate, Celebrate Celebrate! And drink a DP for me!”
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“Butch, would you have the address or the email of the person that wrote about living near the Bill Guess family. I would like to reach them. Bill Guess was my uncle and “Doodle” was my cousin. I am always interested in anyone that knew any of my family. Thanks a lot. Jo Barton, Rt 7 Box 1, Center, TX 75935.”
[email protected]
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“…When I was in college, I worked on a highway crew one summer, and we were assigned to Ardmore for several weeks. We would eat breakfast at the Hilltop about 5:30 a.m. before going out on the road. The supervisor was a gruff old man, and one day he gave the waitress a hard time. The next thing I knew we were thrown out, which may make me one of the few sober people ever to have been thrown out of the Hilltop Cafe.”
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“I was online when you sent out your T&T and my oh my what a surprise! I checked out the Free Stuff Site you provided your readers a link to and you hit the nail on the head when you said to check it out if you had the time!! It is now 2:34 AM and I am surfing the site up a storm… I am so amazed at all of the “free stuff” that is here! Thank you so much for your letter and information you provide to us. I look forward to reading it each week! Thank you so much.”
http://www.freestuffcenter.com/
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“How about a picture of the bell from the U.S.S. Cairo. The Cairo was a civil war gunboat that sank in the Yazoo River back in 1862. The ship was raised back in the early 1960’s and is now on display at Vicksburg, MS. I have a picture of the ships bell that was recovered after being submerged for over 100 years.”
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/cairobel.jpg
“I built a Cairo Home Page awhile back and have included the URL
for it.” http://members.tripod.com/trp180/cw.htm
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“I have been using InoculateIT for 4 months now and it has saved my computer 3 times. It is great. Make sure to keep checking for the new upgrades. The only problem we had was make sure all your programs are closed. If one is not closed, it will tag on to it and then that program will not work very well. Thanks for T&T. I really enjoy it here in Alaska. My Dad spent 3 3/4 years at Fort Sill as a Military Police from 1941-45.”
http://antivirus.cai.com/
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“I thought I would get a little news from OK. I was born in OKC. Lived in Healdton a long time and still have folks there. I live in Germany now. I moved here in 1964….get a little news from my family and all the other OKIES.”
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“Your lye-soap awards remind me of one of the things I used to wonder about as a kid. Remember when KXII had a local daytime show called “Woman’s World,” hosted by a pleasant matron named Dorothy Cox. And once a week, Dorothy would pull a postcard out of a fishbowl to determine that week’s winner of a bottle of Adams’s Vanilla Extract. I could never imagine just who would bother with sending a postcard in in hopes of winning a bottle of vanilla. I mean, I like and use vanilla extract myself, with some regularity, but when I enter a contest, I want one of those Publisher’s Clearinghouse millions, maybe a boat and trailer, or a trip to London. It’s a shame all those locally produced shows are gone, all over the country: even in little towns like Ardmore, there was always a local kiddie show, and sometimes a “talk” show like Woman’s World. Everybody over 35 remembers “Miss Carol’s Clubhouse,” I trust (we were always using her to find homes for the produce of our remarkably fecund cats and dogs). And how about “Mr Peppermint” and “Icky Twerp’s Slam-Bang Theater” from Dallas, and “Miss Fran From Storyland” out of Oklahoma City. “The Hudson Brothers Show” on Channel 10 on Sunday afternoons? Now it’s all canned cartoons, unemployed idiots with bad teeth and stringy hair telling Jerry Springer about their sex lives, and reruns of sitcoms that weren’t very funny the first time out.”
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“Butch, I got around to putting that story I found about the last days of Bud Ballew on the net. It was written by an old rodeo cowboy they called “Navada Dick”. I think it is more fiction than fact, but an interesting story none the less. The files are large and will take a minute to load–but worth the wait if your a fan of Ardmore’s legendary lawman, Bud Ballew.”
Page One http://freeweb.pdq.net/bsriner/ballew3.JPG
Page Two http://freeweb.pdq.net/bsriner/ballew4.JPG
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“Take a virtual tour of Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site in Colorado http://www.homestead.com/bentsoldfort. The site is a noncommercial collection of photographs of this National Park.”
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“Some changes have been made. The ARL-23 in Vietnam Home Page is now at http://www.usssatyr.com and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper 180 is now at http://www.usssatyr.com/ohp.htm The old URL’s are still active but wont be for long.”
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“Re the section concerning “Ricks Roost’ section of last sat. T&T, that picture appears to be a postcard of a picture. Do you know what year the picture of Alvins was taken? It has some early 50’s cars sitting outside. A friend of mine thought one of them might be his, as he hung out in there quite a bit.”
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/alvins.jpg
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“I ran across a very interesting site on the net regarding the Korean conflict and the many upcoming events to commerate the 50th anniversary. It is worth the time to check it out.” http://KOREA50.army.mil
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“Hi Butch: Just thought I’d let you know about my free voice mail number. It’s toll free and you can leave voice mail for us anytime you want. I will be able to hear it on my computer. You may have heard of this. Beth got it first, and I just got it myself…. Thought you might want to give it a try and tell others about it in your newsletter. Right now I’m downloading another program they have called Assistant. It comes on at start up and notifies you of any voicemail, or email.”
http://www.excite.com/Info/mail/vmail_welcome.html
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————————————————————-Thanks to everyone who sent me a birthday wish. You’re all truly wonderful. Friends really do make life worth living.
I’ve updated my Oklahoma Bells website. There are 33 bells in 16 Oklahoma counties there for the viewing. If you have any bells in your area of Oklahoma, I’d love to hear from you. Maybe we can get a pic of it somehow.
http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/italy/56/index.htmlThis week a “going away” party was held at the sheriffs office here for Deputy Steve Henson. I first met Steve way back in 1969 when his mother worked at the Ardmore Seventh Day Adventist Hospital here in Ardmore in the Respiratory Therapy Department. Steve joined the Sheriffs Department in March 1982. All through these years, Steve has never changed. Just been Steve and a friend. Steve is moving to North Carolina August 1st to be with his aging father. Myself and a lot of others will miss this long time friend. He was a good officer.
We’re going to have a special drawing for two tickets to Frontier City in Oklahoma City. There will be two names drawn. Each ticket will admit one person to Frontier City for only $2.00 plus tax. Send me email before this Friday at 5:00pm (8/06/99) if you want in this special drawing!
http://www.sixflags.com/frontiercity/“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.” –Justice William O. Douglas
See everyone next Saturday!
Butch Bridges
Ardmore, Oklahoma
(all previous issues of This & That can be found on my Home Page) (feel free to forward this message) (mailouts: over 600 people) To be removed from my T&T mailings, just send me email!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: Butch Bridges
Saturday, July 24, 1999 Vol 3 Issue 118
You just never know what devious minds are planning on someone’s birthday. I thought I had made it through mine ok…. until this week. Tuesday the Sheriffs Office called for me to be there at EXACTLY 1:15pm to look at a computer. I should have known something was in the air when they insisted I be there at a precise time. Anyway, they had a delicious chocolate cake and Dr Pepper waiting for me! A great bunch of friends there. And that’s not all:
The next day (Wednesday) the gang at the commissioners office had beans, cornbread and chocolate cake waiting for me at noon to help celebrate my birthday. And I was trying to forget it. hahahaha Friends, they make life worth living!
Living in a small town can have its advantages. That was my experience this week. A friend had bought me a birthday gift ($42) from Kriet’s Western Auto & Appliance down on Main Street. John Kriet has been the proprietor ever since I can remember. The birthday gift was not exactly what I wanted, so I returned it and asked if I could do an exchange. “No problem”, was John’s reply. My mind flashed back to 1972. My x-wife and I had just got married, and we didn’t have a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out. We needed some household things like all newlyweds do. My takehome pay from the ambulance service was about $190 every two weeks. John extended me a line of credit so we could have those items. Friends are a valuable commodity.
Here’s a pic of an old rusty tractor a friend took in Shawnee, Oklahoma. I can imagine the plowing it has done in some hot Oklahoma field. Hot and dry… that’s what it is here in south central Oklahoma. I was over east of here this week in Madill, Oklahoma. I noticed while traveling the 25 miles how the ponds were so low on water. Normally the ponds are clean looking. But this week they all seemed to be murky and swampy. It may be a long dry summer here in Oklahoma. Now for that tractor pic.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/tracshaw.jpgSpeaking of Madill, Oklahoma a reader told me where I could get a pic of the Tyler, Oklahoma (just west of Madill) school bell from years ago. Sure nuff, there it was….. I’ll give everyone a peek when I get the roll of film developed in a week or so.
I have this small “butter tub” I use to feed my neighbor’s dog sometimes. This week it came up missing. Another neighbor told me that a black bird swooped down, picked up the tub, and carried it and the dog food in it, plumb across the street into the next block. Can you believe that?
So you want free stuff? Okay, you got it. Just do it when you got plenty of time. This website is awesome.
http://www.freestuffcenter.com/In Davis, Oklahoma’s early days, there was a proprietor by the name of Paris Price. He was a broom maker in Davis. His son carried on the trade and their brooms were sold all over the country. There is a nice display of the equipment they used in their broom making at the Davis Historical Museum on Main Street. Here is a pic I took of the Price father/son display there.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/price.jpgLast week eFax had an update to their fax viewer. I think eFax is one of the best things to come along…. for people who need a fax now and then, but for whatever reason don’t have one. You can check it all out at http://www.efax.com
I found another bell… right here in Ardmore, Oklahoma. It’s in the front yard of 920 9th Southeast. It’s a beauty.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/9thsebel.jpgHere’s where you can do a search for someone or something on AOL ‘s members Pages. You can even search for someone’s screen name. http://hometown3a.aol.com/
Here’s a bell that’s located right in front of an antique shop in Davis, Oklahoma (500 block of Main Street)
http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/italy/56/photos/davisbel.jpgTalk about bells, this week a friend sent me the following pics of bells they took while on vacation in south Texas….. A bell at a Catholic church in Refugio, Texas.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/refubell.jpg
Baptist church bell that’s been in Corpus Christi, TX for 121 years
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/corpbell.jpgFor my Page on Oklahoma Bells……..
http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/italy/56This is an old pic of the Kiowa, Oklahoma public school
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/kiowa2.jpgSearching for music on the Internet just got a whole lost easier with MP3 Fiend. This free file finding savant helps you locate and download MP3 audio files. MP3 Fiend works by querying up to 11 different search engines at the same time. It locates files on both FTP and HTTP servers, and when it finds the same file on more than one server, it shows you the one with the fastest speed. For reliable downloading, MP3 Fiend can work alongside a download manager such as GetRight or Go!Zilla. Freeware.
http://www.mp3fiend.com/A GLIMPSE INTO THE PAST
It is Wednesday, September 21, 1927. Cass Key Murphree of Ardmore was killed at the refinery. The next day the Daily Ardmoreite posted the following:
MURPHREE DIES FROM INJURIES. Employee of Pure Oil Refinery Fatally Injured in Fall From Ladder. Cass Key Murphree, 41, died at Hardy sanitarium Wednesday afternoon as the result of a fall from a ladder at the Pure Oil company refinery northeast of city.
Murphree with two other men was engaged in cleaning a still when he fell from the 12-foot ladder and his skull was fractured.
Funeral services will be conducted from the East Ardmore Presbyterian Church this afternoon at 4 o’clock by the Rev. Thomas Carey. Interment will be in Rose Hill Cemetery.
Deceased had been an employee of the refinery for some time. He leaves a wife and three children, Christi, Ivadee, and Samuel, besides four sisters and one brother. END.
And now the rest of the story: Cass Key Murphree’s wife was named Bam. She was from Oakland, Oklahoma. When Cass died, she no longer wanted the three children… Christi, Ivadee and Samuel. They were from Cass’s first marriage to Nida Fuller, who had died. Bam took the three children to Ardmoreite Ida Murphree Miller, and never returned for the children. Bam would later move back to Oakland, Oklahoma. Ida Miller would raise the three children by herself. Ida Murphree Miller was my Great Grandmother. Ivadee Murphree Vojtek is my cousin, and she is still alive and living in Eureka, California. I haven’t seen her in 32 years. She is a wonderful lady. This is a 1942 photo of Ivadee when she worked in Ft. Worth, TX.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/ivadee.jpg
This is my Great Grandmother Ida Miller, age 90, who raised those three children alone back in 1927. She died in 1965 at 92.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/miller1.jpgSOME LETTERS FROM THIS WEEK’S MAILBAG
“Butch, I graduated from Ardmore High school the same year your Uncle Doyle Bridges graduated (1940). I have always regarded him as a friend but I don’t see him often these days. Doyle was an important member of a boys quartet at Ardmore School & should emphasize that they were exceptionally talented – their singing harmony was outstanding. Doyle Bridges, Robert Gardenhire, Holcom Crawford & Charles Wilbanks were the members and were under the direction of the very personable, attractive & greatly talented direction of our music teacher, Mrs Geraldine (York) Rawlins. We always called on them (sometime begged) to sing for us when we had our Class reunions & they remained very good. When Charles died our class lost a wonderful blessing, but we shall always be thankful for them & remember them with affection.”
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“The name of the place you mentioned in your column was called” WITTS END” located at 106 1/2 East Main St. – They specialized in Gifts & Stationery Mfrs. The business was operated by two very capable business Ladies – their names were Lynn Gruwell & Mabel R. Stong. They were still in business when I came back to Ardmore in 1950. Yes, they were indeed ahead of their time because they indeed produced wonderful printed novelties. To me that was not a long time ago – it seems like only yesterday.”
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“When I was growing up on 12th. Ave. N.W. – Ardmore, Okla. the Bill Guess family lived somewhere close by. Close enough that just two houses west of us (probably 413 12th. Ave. N.W.) there was a group of large trees in the back yard. Doodle was among the kids that were climbing around in the trees like monkeys. Doodle was eating a large piece of chocolate cake when he climbed the tree but when he reached the outer branches, a limb broke & he came crashing down to the ground – it seems that he landed on his back, but he simply got up, brushed himself off & without a word picked up his cake and proceeded to eat it as nothing had happened.”
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“…thanks to the reader who ‘plugged’ my business A1 mini storage. I was glad to hear a little more history about this area. I remember eating in the original Hilltop cafe when I was on the police dept in the late 60’s. Of course, it had been here for a long time before that.”
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“Butch my first dealings with computers was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma 1962. We spent six months setting up the Fort Sill supply system to use an IBM360 I retired in Jan 1969…”
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“Hi Butch, I don’t know if you have time or inclination to check out this site or not. It’s a new CD by Chris Kingsley from Victor, Montana. The music is mostly folk/country. There is no doubt he’d REALLY APPRECIATE a plug in “THIS AND THAT”. The URL is: http://www.cybernet1.com/chriskingsley . Thanks, your e-friend in Montana, Karry Zimmerman” mailto:[email protected]
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“I found another file that T&T readers might find useful. It’s a free virus program called InoculateIT. This free version is for personal use only and as far as I can tell it never needs to be registered which is the part I like best. I’ve tried various commercial versions of McAfee and for some reason they all slow my system down to a crawl. This free program doesn’t do that so I installed it today and so far it appears to be okay.”
http://antivirus.cai.com/
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“Just got a photo scanned of Gov. Edmondson, John F. Kennedy (nominee for President), and Gene McGill (Democratic State Chairman) that was taken during a motorcade through Oklahoma City, 1960. Kennedy is looking down at my Dad (Gene McGill) while Gov. Edmondson is sending envious looks in Gene’s direction.”
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OkieLegacy/woods/gene2.html
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“butch, check out this url… a true oklahoma crime story”
http://208.170.203.68/kensington/searchitempg.icl?itemid=3211&orderident ifier=ID9320065792817A5D2D
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“Remember the Salina, Kansas Police Officer who has the Courthouse website “The Bullet Trap”? I surfed back to his page the same night I did yours AND HE HAD ALSO JUST UPDATED….”
http://netspaceonline.com/~ggsoldan/
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“It was called Rick’s Roost in the ’50s.”
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/alvins.jpg
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“I would like to invite everyone to stop by our renovated TopCops web site.”
http://www.inch.com/~lawwoman/topcops/
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————————————————————-The Ranchman’s Lye Soap winner is: [email protected]
Now I’ve had a taste of what it would be like to be forced into an early retirement. I had several days vacation left and I had to take them or lose them. So I opted for three day weekends even though I didn’t really want to take those days off. Those three day weekends were rough. hahahahaha
This week a friend here in Ardmore told me her mother had a picture postcard of my Dad with his guitar from the 30s. I also learned from her my dad, R.V. Bridges, not only had a weekly radio broadcast from KVSO here playing his country music, but he had a weekly tv broadcast doing the same thing in Oklahoma City way back in those days. You just never know where a piece of the past is going to come from. Here’s that picture postcard my dad had printed.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/rv1930.jpg“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.” –John F. Kennedy
See everyone next Saturday!
Butch Bridges
Ardmore, Oklahoma
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~From: Butch Bridges
Saturday, July 17, 1999 Vol 3 Issue 117
In a T&T last year I included the follow email from a reader: “….could I have the address of the person who wrote the newsletter with a query concerning the book “An Oklahoma Tragedy”? I would love to correspond with this person. My husband’s favorite uncle was William Edgar “Bill Guess”! He visited in our home up until his death. Also his son Doodle, Oleta, and Randy Guess, visited with us until Doodle passed away. The price is less than ten dollars, the ordering address for this book is: An Oklahoma Tragedy, by Abraham Hoffman…”
This week I received the following email from the author, Abraham Hoffman, who found my T&T through an internet search:
“I note your mention of my book in a column last year and that one of your readers wanted to contact me about it. So here’s my e-mail. At the time I did the research for the book (1971-1973) I was very impressed with the number of people who were still around after more than forty years… Also, a summary version of the book appeared in Chronicles of Oklahoma, Summer 1973 issue.” – Abraham Hoffman
[email protected]A friend snapped the pic below of Olustee School just SW of Altus, Oklahoma. When he saw it, and the 1930 date on the outside, he thought of my grandfather, Stanley Carmon. My grandfather built 29 schools in Oklahoma during the period right after the crash of ’29. This could be one of those schools, since he built many of them in that area.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/olustee.jpgThis week I saw on an Oklahoma City TV news station about a new scam going around. Its high tech too. Waiters and waitresses at some restaurants have in their pocket a very small electronic gadget called a “skimmer” or “wedge”. When the person gets through eating, and hands his credit card to the waiter, he takes it to the counter. When no one is looking, he takes the skimmer out of his pocket and scans the credit card. Now the skimmer has all the needed info from the magnetic strip on the back of the credit card, to do dastardly deeds. And the credit card owner doesn’t even know….. it’s not stolen, he still has the credit card. So watch that credit card if you hand it to an employee who might have ulterior motives.
What I go through just to bring a piece of the past to everyone. Last Sunday I stepped on a cow patty trying to get a pic of Cobb Springs in Davis, Oklahoma. I obtained a copy of a pamphlet about Davis, Oklahoma, and in it was mention of Cobb Springs. Cobb Springs, along with Turner Falls, was the two primary things that drew people to Davis, OK around 1900. Nearly everyone in this area has heard of Turner Falls, but Cobb Springs??? That was a new one for me too. So we stopped at the Davis Museum (depot) and this most gracious lady there volunteered to take us to Cobb Springs.
Cobb Springs lies at the dead end of Swanda Drive in SW Davis, just south of Green Hill Cemetery. Had it not been for this Davis historian, Opal Heartsill Brown, we never would have found the Springs. It was behind some private property. What Ms. Brown told us was Cobb Springs was really a set of springs….. maybe five, where each one created a little lagoon of its own behind this property. I was able to walk down to one of the lagoons, after jumping over an electric fence used to keep the cattle in, and stepping right smack dab in the middle of a stinking cow patty. Oh brother. But it was worth it…… here is the pic.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/cobbsprg.jpgHere’s the Davis, Oklahoma Museum (train depot).
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/davisdep.jpgWe stopped in several antique shops on Main Street in Davis. Here’s an ‘automatic” clothes washer made way before 1900. If I remember right the shop owner was asking around $325.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/oldwash.jpgNortheast of Tulsa is Rogers County (Claremore, OK). Here is the Assessor’s website, including downloadable maps!
http://hometown.aol.com/fmorgan272/assessor.htmlI ran across this while surfing this week…. the salaries of every employee at Canadian County, Oklahoma (El Reno).
http://www.3ctn.co.canadian.ok.us/government/county/employee.html
I see their webmaster and in-house computer technician is paid $34,606. Hummmmmm. Sounds like I am a little under paid. hahaThe Honorable Judge Lee Card’s courtroom here in Ardmore received some remodeling this week. Years ago the banisters and railings were painted with a dark brown paint. Now the natural wood grain shows through. Very nice.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/cardcrt.jpgA GLIMPSE INTO THE PAST
In 1930 there was an all out war being waged in Ardmore, Oklahoma on slot machines. Parents were mad that their children were using lunch money on the slot machines in local eating establishments. Ouster proceedings had been brought earlier against former sheriff Ewing London of Carter County, mainly because he would not enforce prohibition laws and do something about the slot machines operating within the county. Here is the complete story:
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/slotmach.txtTalking about the prohibition wars around 1930…. the assessor’s office at the courthouse here, in a room with windows next to the street, is a piece of the past. Back in those days, when drive by shootings with Thompson submachine guns were common in the big cities, I guess being afraid it might happen here in Ardmore, they installed a heavy duty roll down metal curtain. This “metal curtain” rolls up into a large round holder where it is kept out of the way. I guess if a shooting was suspected, they’d quickly pull down the metal curtain, complete covering the window to the street. I”ll get a pic of this unusual piece of Carter county’s past.
SOME LETTERS FROM THIS WEEK’S MAILBAG
“Butch I remember the place called Ricks Roost. It was about where the A1 mini storage now sets. It faced the SW and it did look a little like the Hilltop Cafe but was down the hill north on the east side of highway 77. I sure hope my memory serves me close.”
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“I grew up across the street from Ms. Ella Bone. (We lived on F street) I remember going to her back door for a little “visit” in the afternoons. She always had a treat and a story for me! She also made these little pajamas out of Handi-Wipes that had a poem attached to them. She gave them as gifts to neighbors and friends. Wonderful lady….fond memories. Thanks for reminding me about her.”
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“butch, please enter my name for a bar of lye soap. always enjoy your newsletter and had my feelings hurt somewhat last week when it didn’t arrive. haha.”
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“I hope you might be able to help me locate a high school that may have existed here in Oklahoma. My father worked for the State of OK roads and grounds department mostly in the SE part between Ada and McAlister. He found a high school ring that I would like to know where it came from. It is a gold ladies ring with a square blue stone with an Indian head embedded on the center of the stone. There is a banner at the base of the Indian head that reads BRAINTREE. Other markings are 1955 and HS. There are also initials inscribed inside the ring of M. E. M. I can’t seem to locate a Braintree H.S. or town. If you have any clues to the location of this town/high school I would love to hear them. I know that a lot of older schools in OK no longer exist and that this ring might be from some other state. However, the Indian leads me to believe that it is from OK. Thanks for any help you can offer.” [email protected]
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“A belated, but big thanks for running the story of Mena Walters. My puter was not feeling well, so I sent it in for a little minor surgery while I was away on vacation. Well, its now home and I am getting caught up on T & T. Its still the best thing out of all the other things I read on the web each day. Reading all the good info your wonderful readers send in re-enforces my belief there are still a lot of good everyday people in this world. Its kind of like hearing the news from home.”
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“I had gotten this Thursday and forwarded it to two of my friends. In the mean time I completely deleted it from my files. Saturday when I got your T&T and read the short article on John Ross, I was mad because I had deleted mine and could not send this to you. Bright Idea!!! I called my friend and had her to forward it back to me so I could send it to you. I thought you might enjoy reading more on John Ross.”
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/johnross.txt
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“This will blow your mind”
http://www.trinityumc.net/youth/cool.htm
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“Know anything about cameras? I run across an old Kodak of my Dad’s that we think is going on 50 years old, but not sure. It’s a 35mm with lots of gadgets on and around the lens. The serial nbr. is C32684. Figured if you didn’t know about them, you could tell me where to go on the net to find out….”
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“The Indian statue in the Arbuckle Mountains. I remember the statue, the upraised hand was a sign of welcome. That meant he was ‘friendly’ and bid welcome, etc. I saw one similar to it a few years ago in Gladewater, Texas at a junk store, but it was not for sale. Instead of an upraised hand, the right hand was clenched in a loose fist in front of his stomach area, such as you would carry a bouquet of flowers to your favorite girl. But, instead of flowers, about 3 cigars was displayed in his hand. Thus, the term cigar store Indian. Keep up the good work”
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“Butch, You will recall that some time ago I wrote to you telling you about an old Indian Legend that I heard when we lived in Okla City. The story goes that tornado’s are more likely to happen south of the North Canadian river & therefore the Indians would make their camps north of the river and not on the south side of the river. Now, in today’s Daily Oklahoman there is a copyrighted story that deals with certain Indian legends – I am pasting the headline to that story in this note & if you are interested & have access to an Oklahoman (Today: July 15th. 1999) it is there for you to read”
http://www.oklahoman.com/cgi-bin/shart?ID=345691&TP=getarticle
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“With MediaRing Talk, you can make FREE international and long distance calls from your PC to any other PC on the Net. There are no subscription fees or time-based charges! It is free to use and distribute!” http://www.mediaring.com
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“Butch, My only suggestions, which I will send to him, are check with the County Clerk, and the County Court Clerk, for records. Also the Cordell Beacon is on microfilm in the Library at Cordell. And contacting Wayne Boothe, Washita County Museum, P.O. Box 53, Cordell, OK 73632”
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Cordell, OK Library: http://www.pe.net/~rksnow/okcountycordelllib.htm
Cordell, OK Online: http://www.pe.net/~rksnow/okcountycordell.htm
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“History of Cordell, pictures of courthouse, and other buildings can be found on: http://www.cordell-ok.net Don’t know if you have that or not.”
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=============================================================The winner of the Ranchman’s Lye Soap is: [email protected] Next week we will draw another name for a bar of lye soap!
Tomorrow I’ll reach the half century mark. I guess I’m in pretty good shape for the shape I’m in. hahaha
Speaking of my birthday, I had a nice surprise phone call Friday. My uncle, Doyle Bridges and his wife Metta were in Ardmore attending an Ardmore School Alumni function and Ardmore Birthday celebration. They live in Oklahoma City. He called and said they wanted to take me to dinner, in celebration of my birthday. It was great! I met some friends of theirs too, and one of them told me about when she was a teen in school…. probably the 40s, there was a business above the Texhoma Office Supply on East Main here in Ardmore called the Witts End. Witts End was a novelty printing shop, and ahead of their time according to her. Maybe someone out there remembers this Witts End printing shop in Ardmore long ago?
I’ve been using the free version of Aureate Group Mail to send out my newsletters since February 6, 1999. It has done a marvelous job too! I can mail out over 550 in less then four minutes!! So, this week I decided to go ahead and register the program. It cost $49.95 but after all these months, I’ve already got my moneys worth out of it. You can download the free version and try it first. But if you already mail or plan to mail out a newsletter for your club, church, school, civic club, business, etc., I recommend buying Aureate Group Mail!
http://www.group-mail.com/buynow.html?clicktrade=237515“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
Patrick Henry – March 23, 1775 at the Second Virginia ConventionSee everyone next Saturday!
Butch Bridges
Ardmore, Oklahoma
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~From: Butch Bridges
Saturday, July 10, 1999 Vol 3 Issue 116
Last Saturday my Mailer sent out my T&T to 450 people and just stopped. At least 100 or so didn’t get their T&T last weekend. I think I figured out what happened, and I hope it doesn’t happen again. If you didn’t get yours, you can go to the special link I created below and read last Saturday’s T&T.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/tt070399.htmlThe winner of the bar of lye soap is Angie Cox, [email protected] Since my Aureate Mailer did not work right last week, and over 100 people did not receive my T&T, let’s have a second drawing this Friday for another bar of old fashioned lye soap. If you want in this drawing, get your name in to me by Friday at 5pm Those that entered last week will remain in the hopper for another chance!
South of Ardmore at the edge of town on Highway 77 used to be what was called the Hilltop Cafe back in the 60s. I ran across this pic of Alvin’s Chicken in the Rough restaurant and it looks exactly like I remember the Hilltop Cafe when I was a teen. Alvin’s was located on Highway 77 south too. I believe it is the same place.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/alvins.jpgThere is now a live video cam at Dealey Plaza in Dallas. It lets you see the streets around the plaza from where JFK was shot. Maybe someday the truth will be known.
http://www2.earthcam.com/jfk/This week I saw a photo of the Second Ward School here in Ardmore, also known as Washington School. The photo was from many years ago before the brick Washington School now called Early Childhood Center on 5th NE. I attended Washington School. In 1907 my grandfather Stanley Carmon lived in Gainesville, Texas with his parents. He was a teen and came to Ardmore as a bricklayer to work on the new 2nd Ward School. My grandmother, Addie Wilson was a student in that school. Stanley was laying brick on the outside and noticed this young lady inside, and had an eye for her. 60 years later a lady who lived at F Northeast and 4th by the name of Ella Bone would tell me she sit next to the window and passed the notes back and forth between Stanley and Addie. Addie would soon share his last name, Carmon. Here’s a pic of the Second Ward School on 5th NE.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/2ndward.jpgWith Ativa Dial Up Networking Meter, you can keep a close eye on the data flow, bandwidth and throughput of your Internet connection. This compact tool displays an animated graph of your throughput along with vital connection statistics (such as your current IP address, the duration of your call, and the number of bytes sent and received). It even comes with a few handy utilities, including an e-mail notifier that tells you when you have new mail, an auto-ping tool that keeps your ISP from dropping your connection, and a meter that can play a sound after a certain amount of data is transferred.
http://www.softsol.cx/ativa/index.htmThis is an extremely rare and historic composite image of the ten principle Chiefs of the Cherokee Nation made in 1909 by O. W. Osborn of Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Center figure is the famous Chief John who served under Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812 and led his people during the “Trail of Tears”, the Cherokee removal 1838-1839. The principle chiefs depicted are John Ross from 1828-1866, Lewis Downing 1867-1871, William P. Ross 1871-1875, Chas. Thompson 1875-1879, Dennis W. Bushyhead 1879-1887, Joel B. Mayes 1887-1891, C. J. Harris 1891-1895, S. H. Mayes 1895-1899, T. M. Buffington 1899-1903, and W. C. Rogers 1903-1909.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/cherokee.jpgLast week our local OSU Extension office at the courthouse Annex received new carpet throughout their offices. That old carpet was so old and ragged, they sure were needing it. I know Leland McDaniel and the rest of the gang there are proud!
http://www.okstate.edu/OSU_Ag/oces/
[email protected]M.E. Methodist Church South in Altus, Oklahoma long ago.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/pcaltch.jpgThe Hugo, Oklahoma Depot around 1910. Is that a belfry?
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/hugodep.jpgThe Maire Hotel in Bartlesville, OK many years ago.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/maire.jpgHere’s another super nice photo of our courthouse in 1923. It shows the dark copper dome and cupola very clearly. Speaking of the dome, crews started this week cleaning the old paint off the dome, down to the bare copper.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/carter23.jpgThe Logan County courthouse, Guthrie, Oklahoma in 1925.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/logan25.jpgThe Bass Building years ago in Enid, Oklahoma
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/bassenid.jpgA few miles east of Ardmore is Milburn, Oklahoma. Here’s a rare photo of the Milburn, OK depot years ago.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/milbrnde.jpgA GLIMPSE INTO THE PAST
For three years I have been searching for a photo of a man named James Cruce who was sheriff of Carter County for 30 days back in 1925. Thanks to my friend Ernest Martin, and a book he found titled “Carter County Schools 1923”, I now have a photo of this mystery man. Sheriff Ewing London was ousted from office in 1925 and James Cruce was installed as a sheriff temporarily until after the litigation. A judge in Purcell ordered Sheriff London re-instated, so James Cruce was only sheriff for 30 days. Here is a pic of Mr. James Cruce, the mystery sheriff everyone forgot about until I ran across his name in an old Ardmore Statesman newspaper…. what a find!
http://www.brightok.net/chickasaw/ardmore/county/photos/cruce23.jpg
Here is the complete story of Mr. Cruce being sheriff.
http://www.brightok.net/chickasaw/ardmore/county/cruce.htmlSOME LETTERS FROM THIS WEEK’S MAILBAG
“Butch, there will probably be many people still out there that will remember the great Indian Statue that was once located on a rock pedestal at the Turner Falls Look-Out & I know they too will tell you that there were many of those bronze colored metal statues located around the countryside. For many years one was located on Main street in Ardmore at the Service Station that was on the SE corner of Main & D Streets S.W. where the late Exchange National Bank is now located. Others will likely know much more than I do about the significance of these bronze giants. I remember that this same symbol was cast in bronze type metal & its base was fashioned into an ash tray. It seems to me that they were used as a trade mark for the Palasine Oil Co which I was told belonged to Wirt Franklin of Ardmore. Fairly recently I remember seeing some cans of oil with the Palasine trade mark on the label displayed at the Greater Ardmore Museum.”
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“Are you gonna be able to get around to celebrate the l00th Anniversary of Ardmore City Schools? Registration & Reception for all Alumni & Former School Personnel at 9:00 AM July 17th @ Ardmore High School Cafeteria Hwy 142.”
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“Butch, Here is a URL you might add to T&T. See how many people will register their names in the high school listings.”
Http://www.asd.com
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“Butch, watch out for those beanies. Ross and I started with a bat and went nuts from there!!!”
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“I was going to write you and tell you that the beanie baby looks just like you. HA! Ya put my name in the pot. I have never won anything in my life and a bar of Lye Soap might be just the thing.”
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/butchb.jpg
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“Frick-Reid is listed on a poster in the Healdton, OK Store pic, so I am assuming that it’s the outside of the same store. Rexroat, OK picture has my grandfather, Freeman Bray, he’s 88 now. Born in 1911, so I am guessing that the date would be about 1923-1924… it say’s junior high on the back. Freeman is number 5 either direction. Would love to know who some of the other people are. James Ernest Reeves (aka Blackie) born in 1889 in the Frick-Reid picture according to family members.”
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/frick.jpg
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/heal1920.jpg
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/rex1923.jpg
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“I wonder if you can tell me more about the outlaw Bill Washington. A friend of mine at work, tells me he used to work for a man who lived in Washington’s house. This was near Marietta, Oklahoma. Washington was an outlaw. The house had walls 12 inches thick and filled with sand to deal with gunfire. It was also ornately furnished. Have you heard of him?”
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“Sometime back you had in your This & That how to check your computer to see if it was Y2K ready. I have gone through all of my copies, starting with Feb 27th and cannot find it. I am missing a couple of issues and what I am needing was probably in one of them. Could you please send that to me so I can check this computer out. I have a different one, much faster and alot nicer than the other, but I want to make sure everything is going to be okay in 6 months.”
http://www.accute.com/accuteyear2000/y2ktest95.html
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“Free Internet and email. http://www.netzero.net/
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“For about two weeks now I’ve been using a freeware Zip program, EasyZip, that operates much like WinZip with the primary difference being it is freeware instead of shareware. Anyone wishing to try it can find it at:
http://members.xoom.com/ipsoft/index.html
For zipping files I still drop to DOS and do them the old fashioned way with Pkzip but for opening newly downloaded files EasyZip seems to work just fine. The biggest difference I’ve noticed so far is that EasyZip wont automatically recognize other archive formats such as ARJ whereas WinZip will.”
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=============================================================Friday I was at the 42 mile marker north bound….. and saw a pickup have a blowout, shred the tire, run into the median, and even set the grass on fire in several places. I picked up my c-phone and called 911. Now picture this, I am at the north edge of Ardmore. The 911 operator answers and says: “Sulphur Police Department.” Hey, that’s 32 miles NE of where I was. Yikes! Technology run amuck. I was in the Ardmore City Limits and should have gotten the Ardmore Police Department. January 1st come on…. let’s get it over with. hahahaha.
Like many of you I get a lot of URLs in ICQ, I can not find the time to go visit them all. But this past week I received a URL from a friend in Israel. She had told me how she wished her and her family could sleep at night without fear of bombs going off, how death seemed so close sometimes. She wished they could go were there was peace. The URL she sent me spoke of the circle of life….. how we take what life deals us and hope it is good. When I saw those words “circle of life”, my mind flashed back to the mid 70s when I was transporting a well known Ardmoreite several times in the ambulance. He had cancer and as a last hope, family members were secretly going to Mexico to lay hold of apricot seed extract (B-17). His condition continued to deteriorate. On the last trip to the hospital he was comatose. As we came rolling through those automatic sliding doors in the ER that Friday night at 7pm, he raised up from the stretcher, and with a voice so loud as if God himself was speaking, he spoke these words, “God, the eternal circle”. Everyone was so startled, we all just stood there speechless for a minute. Doctors and nurses and people looked out from the rooms and hallways. He lay back down and never said another word. Maybe in his own way he had a message to deliver….
“In the circle of life, its the wheel of fortune,
It’s the leap of faith, the band of hope.
‘Til we find our place on the path unwinding,
In the circle, the circle of life.”http://nikita.acmecity.com/valentine/161/life.html
See everyone next Saturday.
Butch Bridges
Ardmore, Oklahoma
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Subject: This & That
Date: Sat, 03 Jul 1999 01:01:52 -0600Saturday, July 3, 1999 Vol 3 Issue 115
I had a problem with my Aureate Emailer this issiue. After some fixing on it, I was able to get it to mail to 450 of the 550 email addresses I have. If you didn’t get one this weekend, forgive me. I hope it is all working in a few days.
I’m still trying to get my pics to load from xoom.com and thanks to a friend in Marietta, I believe they will now. She talked to xoom several times about pics not loading, and they said to put /_XOOM/ right after the .xoom.com and they should load. It seems to be okay. Let me know if you have any problems loading the photo links on my xoom webpage.
It’s nice to get a present when you least expect it. That’s what happened to me this week. My uncle Donald Bridges and his wife Ly-ying, mailed me a beanie baby. Now this is no ordinary beanie baby…. it’s “Butch the Bull Terrier” beanie baby. I didn’t even know such an animule existed. And I want to make one thing perfectly clear, this is my first beanie baby. hahahahaha
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/butchb.jpgLast Wednesday, June 30th, Royce Moser left her office of County Clerk at the courthouse here in Ardmore for the last time. She was Clerk about 12 years, and with the Office of the Clerk 30 years. There was a reception party held for Royce the Friday before… and the line of friends and well-wishers seemed endless. Her smile will be missed.
http://www.brightok.net/chickasaw/ardmore/county/photos/moser1.jpgWe had another courthouse employee retire June 30th. LaVera Gibson in the Assessor’s Office turned her keyboard in. There was punch and cake with lots of visitors coming by to wish her the best. She’s just going to enjoy the good life for awhile.
I received a call the other day from our local “train nut” Dwane Stevens. He’s wanting to get back to walking the rails and snap some more pics, but his wife doesn’t want him too since that serial killer is still at large. Until he can get us more train photos, here’s one that he took some time back. It’s a train coming through the “cut” in the Arbuckle Mountains north of Ardmore. Awesome.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/cut4.jpgHere is another one of those magnificent photos by local train nut Dwane Stevens.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/crusher.jpgAnd how about this pic by Dwane Stevens… a railroad crew repairing a broken piece of rail near Ardmore.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/brokrail.jpgAn old pic of the Blackwell, Oklahoma High School.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/bwellsch.jpgAbout 15 miles north of Ardmore, Oklahoma is Turner Falls. When you stop along State Highway 77 in the Arbuckle Mountains where people look down at Turner Falls, at that stopping place, is a rock building. You can get a good idea what it looked like in 1932 from the photo below. In the pic you will see a statue. To me it looks like an Indian brave holding his hand in the air? I wonder where that statue is now???
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/palacine.jpgAn old photo of U.S. Indian Hospital in Claremore, Oklahoma.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/clarhosp.jpgAn early day pic of Grandfield, Oklahoma. Grandfield is a few miles southwest of Lawton in SW Oklahoma just before the Texas Oklahoma border.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/gfield.jpgHere’s a URL a friend sent me this week. It tells about those 90 gig capacitor hard drives coming this Fall.
http://www.accpc.com/tcapstore.htm#tcapI appreciate all of you who wrote wanting a chance at my uncle’s old cast iron pots. Of course, they went fast. I even received email from my friend in Ranchman, Texas, Dave Ross, the lye soap maker. In case you don’t know where Ranchman is, its just outside Denton, Texas north of Dallas. He was probably needing the pots to make more of his clean, white, lye soap.
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OklahomaPast/photos/ranchman.jpgSpeaking of lye soap, we haven’t had a drawing in a long time. Friday July the 9th at 5pm let’s have a drawing for a bar of Dave’s lye soap. Just send me email before then, and I’ll put your name in the hopper for the drawing. The winner of the free bar of lye soap will be announced next Saturday.
Retired Senator Ernest Martin’s “Legacy Page” now has a Table of Contents thanks to Linda Wagner of Alva, Oklahoma. She’s the artist behind the webpages and a good one at that!
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/OkieLegacy/carter/martintoc.htmlA GLIMPSE INTO THE PAST
Copyright The Daily Ardmoreite
Ardmore, Oklahoma
Tuesday, September 17, 1907DENISON, TEXAS OFFICER DEAD
EX-POLICEMAN DIES OF WOUNDS
RECEIVED SEVERAL YEARS AGO IN FIGHTDenison, Tex., Sept. 16. – The sudden death of John Crane, an ex-police officer, last week at his home, No. 331 Chestnut street, recalls to the mind of Denison people the tragedy which occurred on the same street seven years ago when Crane was shot in the right leg above the knee while attempting to arrest George Puryear. His death is attributed to the wound received at that time. The assailant of Crane was followed to the Indian Territory by a posse headed by W.B. Craig, now chief of police of Denison. In recounting the shooting Officer Craig said:
“It was just about seven years ago when some small boys told me that a man riding a horse was down on Chestnut street standing in front of a house and displaying a six-shooter. I was then a deputy constable but I went in search of the man. As I turned the corner on Rusk avenue and Chestnut I was joined by Officer Crane. We walked together until within a short distance of one man when a street light disclosed the identity of Puryear.”
“Puryear at once raised up in his saddle and leveling his weapon at the officer fired. Crane staggered and a moment later fell to the ground. I fired my pistol several times but none of the shots took effect. A posse was hurriedly organized and as Puryear went in direction of his home at Willis Ferry in Indian Territory, we at once took up the trail towards Red River.”
“When the posse reached the river it was divided in three sections and scattered out in different directions in search of the fugitive. It was the second morning after the shooting when Puryear was discovered walking along the banks of the river. One of the members of the posse who saw him, called to Puryear to throw up his hands, but in return he was answered by two pistol shots fired directly at the posse. Two Winchester reports rang out a few moments later, and the other two branches of the posse arrived on the scene just in time to see the body of Puryear placed in a buggy. One of the bullets penetrated the heart of Puryear, killing him instantly.
“Shortly after this, Frank Puryear, a brother of George, was slew to death at Gainesville in a street duel and was using the same gun with which his brother shot Crane.”
“Crane recovered slowly from his wound and the city has given him a light duty to perform ever since the shooting. He was police clerk in police headquarters up to last May but the wound troubled him to such an extent that he was obliged to take to his bed.”
Mr. Crane was born in New Orleans in 1870 and came to Denison eight years ago. He was employed by the Katy as a brakeman and later resigned to accept the position on the police force. He was a member of the Woodman of the World and the funeral will take place tomorrow under the auspices of that order. Interment will be made in Maple Grove cemetery. Rev. Lee of the Christian church will conduct the services at home and grave.
SOME LETTERS FROM THIS WEEK’S MAILBAG
“Butch, Really enjoyed seeing the inside of the courthouse dome, bell, and clock. I couldn’t view any item with xoom.com in the URL. Growing up, my dad’s parents lived at 825 B St SE about two blocks from the railroad tracks. My grandpa would always pull out his pocket watch to see how close to schedule it was. Enjoyed hearing the train rolling over the tracks. Thanks for the memories.”
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“they have all came to Sacramento for Rail Fair 1999. We have steam locomotives in all shapes and sizes. Some by their own power over the serrias. My Dad was a fireman on the old MKT line. I used to listen to his stories about the big train wreck he was involved in. 18 cars plied up just before the red river. Quite a story. I miss the old steam engines”
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“I grew up with George Selvedge Jr., later he became president with Peoples Federal Loan Co. here is Ardmore. As a child his family home was on the SW corner of 10th and D St. N.W. A sign painted on the west side of the Selvedge Business College building is still visible. Go about a block west of Washington St. on Broadway & look back to the upper part of the old building & you will see it. I think I took a picture of it one time. George Jr. was mayor of Ardmore at one time.”
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“Hi there everyone! Just wanted to say “hello” and let you know about the new http://www.virtual-ardmore.com page It is still in the “infant” stage but I am crossing my fingers that it will grow fast. If you have time, go and check it out. Have a nice day and I will chat at you later!”
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“http://www.web-access.net/~elliott/ heartbeat’s One & Two – 50’s & 60’s – mel’s Drive-In …. some one sent me this and I’m exploring it right now. Thought maybe you might like to listen some oldies. hahaha.”
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“You mentioned his name last week and while my wife…. was going through some old pictures today she found a certificate approving her advance to High School, from Mt. Washington School, and signed by Mr A.L.Senter. (his signature did not show an “s” on the end of his name). Also I have been copying all of the news about the train and keeping up with it. Even bought a magnet of the depot from the Ardmore Main Street Authority and anyone interested in the history of this depot would probably appreciate having one of these for their own. They are colorful.”
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“…during the depression the family was forced to sell my grandmother’s steinway grand piano. (her name: kathryn tweed stonum zumwalt). anyway, it has haunted me all my life wondering who bought her piano and where it would be today. wonder if it is still in ardmore, oklahoma.” [email protected]
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“I have been following your letter about these 10-10 phone numbers. I thought I would clear up a couple of points. The 10-10-636 is a very good number to use when you are calling another state. The cost is a nickle per minute. If you use this number to call within the state the cost is fifteen cents per minute. There is another number we use. It is 10-10-811. This cost you a dime per minute both in state and out of state with a minimum of 3 minutes each call or $.30. We actually use 10-10-636 for our out of Oklahoma calls and 10-10-811 for our in Oklahoma calls. I just thought I would pass this along to you.”
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“Great job, as usual on T&T. Always look forward to my Saturday email because of your T&T. You might want to let ppl know about the new Website for Pauls Valley, Oklahoma. I think its pretty good.” http://www.paulsvalley.com
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“You mentioned memories 96.7 out of Flower Mound-Dallas a week or two ago, thought you might want the website. I listen to it while I’m reading my mail or just crusin’ the net.” http://www.memories967.com/
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————————————————————-I hope everyone is enjoying the Independence Day holidays with family and loved ones. These are special times, enjoy them.
Step back to September 13, 1814 to Fort McHenry, MD. The British has bombarded the fort for 25 hours. Francis Scott Key and others watched the battle through the night, and then in the wee morning hours, silence. Had the fort fallen to the British? Then at the dawn, they saw that special made flag, with stars that were two feet across, still waving high from the fort. As we enjoy the fireworks displays around the country, we need to remember the battles that have been fought so we can do just that, enjoy our freedoms, go where we want, do what we want, be what we want.
http://www.icss.com/usflag/francis.scott.key.html“Oh, say! can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming;
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there:
Oh, say! does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”By Francis Scott Key (a prisoner on a British ship)
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2975/usa-na.htmlSee everyone next Saturday!
Butch Bridges
Ardmore, Oklahoma
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Oklahoma History
Online since April 6, 1996
This website expires
Feb 8, 2032
Oklahoma History Website Continuance Fund
James A. Clark
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A Home Grown Home Page
“What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us,
What we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal”