This and That Newsletter
www.OklahomaHistory.net
Vol 11 Issue 547 Circulation 5,000 July 19, 2007
Ardmore, Oklahoma
Jill and I were out and about early Saturday morning and coming into the south edge of Davis, Oklahoma on old Highway 77 and I noticed the 77 Grill on the west side of the highway. It was about 7:00am and the parking lot was packed on all four sides, so I suggested we eat breakfast. I know the 77 Grill has been in that same location nearly all my life as best I remember, but I had never stopped in to eat. Today was the day, and it was not a disappointment. The atmosphere was great, the service fine, and the food was delicous. Jill ordered ham and eggs, and I ordered pancakes. Boy, those pancakes were so light and fluffy, and had that just like home cooked taste. And for $3.25 the shortstack (that's 2 pancakes) was plenty, nearly covered the plate. I snapped some pictures, one of the outside, one on the inside of the diner, and then one of that great shortstack! mmmm good.
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After leaving the 77 Grill we stopped at Grady's Sale Barn between Sulphur and Davis I noticed a cast iron bell on sale there for $150.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/GradysBell.jpg
But what really caught my attention at Grady's Sale Barn was their huge supply of all different sizes of hardwood tool handles. They must have the biggest selection in southern Oklahoma. A handle to fit every size from the smallest of hammers to the biggest of shovels.
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Traveling on to Ada we stopped at the Pontotoc County Historical and Genealogical Society at 221 West 16th street. They have a ton of books and reference materials available for researching one's ancestors from that county and areas. From one of the cemetery book indexes I was able to find one ancestry who died at Ada that I knew nothing about. So now I have more research to do. Here is a couple of pics I snapped of the Pontotoc County Historical and Genealogical Society.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/PontotocSocietyInside.jpg
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/PontotocSocietyOutside.jpg
And while in Ada we had to stop at Folger's at 406 East Main street and tried an old fashion hamburger. It's just a wee place like the Hamburger Inn here in Ardmore, with 12 round stools for sitting, and 3 small tables. I have received emails from several T&T readers the past couple of years telling me to stop in and try a Folger's burger. This famous burger was well worth the $2.90 we paid for it! And let's not forget that hand cut fries too!
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Now to try a burger at Lou's Dairyland and the Hamburger King on a couple future trips to Ada.
In last week's T&T we talked about going to Sasakwa, Oklahoma. Jill and I made another trip through there the other day enroute to Wewoka and I snapped a couple pictures. Sasakwa is pretty much dried up compared to when it was in its heyday nearly 100 years ago. Sasakwa's City Hall is still standing, barely.....
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/SasakwaCityHall.jpg
This is looking south down Sasakwa's Main street.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/SasakwaMain7a.jpg
There is one business in Sasakwa on the highway by the name of Walton's County Store. Its where people in that area stop for groceries, and I see from the sign out front hunters can get buy required permits for hunting deer in season.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/WaltonsSasakwa.jpg
Our next stop was the beautiful little town of Wewoka, the county seat of Seminole county, we stopped at the Wewoka Public Library and talked with the long time librarian Carolyn Trimble. Carolyn helped us with some genealogy research question, but she also gave us a book 'Poetry With My Love', a collection of poems written by Josie Crump Trimble of Wewoka. The book is dedicated to her memory (Josie Trimble 1882-1940). If you are in the Wewoka area, stop by the Wewoka Public Library and get a copy. They are free for the asking. Tell Carolyn Trimble, the librarian, I sent you.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/PoetryWithMyLove.jpg
By the way, I didn't take a picture of the Wewoka Library, but I wish I had, it's one of the most beautiful libraries I've seen in these parts.
While in Wewoka we stopped at the Seminole county courthouse. Its a beautiful building inside and out. One thing that caught my attention was the revolving door at the courthouse entrance. Don't see many revolving doors anymore. The old Ardmore Hotel on Main Street had a revolving door at the front entrance. It was removed when the building was remodeled into the present day Lincoln Center Building.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/WewokaRevolvingDoor.jpg
This is a picture I took looking down the street in front of the courthouse in Wewoka.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/WewokaDowntown.jpg
Across the street from the Wewoka courthouse was a nice antique store Jill had to check out. It's been ran by 3 generations of the same family. Here are some newspaper clippings on the store's history.
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This is a pic of Jill paying out at the cashier. It takes her a while to go through a store like the Gatsby, but she's got a real eye for a winner.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/WewokaGatsby7d.jpg
I saw an interesting old item at the Gatsby..... an antique Jockey statue selling for $350 dollars.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/WewokaJockey.jpg
But I did get a laugh out of one item in the Gatsby.... a quote on a pillow.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/RaisingKidsQuote.jpg
Wewoka, Oklahoma: County seat of Seminole county. Record town for recording District 13, Indian Territory. Capital of the Seminole nation. Post office established May 13, 1867. The name is an ancient place in Elmore County, Alabama, and is a Creek word meaning "roaring water". -from 'Oklahoma Place Names' by George Shirk.
From Wewoka we went west into Seminole. This is a picture I took on the east side of Seminole, Oklahoma but my camera was not adjusted right, so the picture is fuzzy. Its a picture of several murals painted along the east wall of a building as you come in to town on the highway from Wewoka.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/SeminoleMurals.jpg
This is a pic looking down Main street Seminole.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/SeminoleDowntown.jpg
Southwest of Seminole is Maud, Oklahoma. In Maude we found a 1928 building with two bells mounted in front, so I had to stop and take a pic. In the window was a 1939 Maud Daily Enterprise newspaper. Maud must have been a thriving town back then, to have a daily newspaper.
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One thing I noticed in the wee town of Maud, last Saturday they had the cheapest gas of all the towns we went through.... $3.04 a gallon. Go figure. Here is a pic looking down Main Street.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/MaudOK071607.jpg
Leaving Maud we traveled southeast to Konawa, Oklahoma where I spotted a big bell mounted in front of the First United Methodist Church, and you know me, I had to stop and take some pictures. Its a beautiful old cast iron bell.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/KonawaBell7a.jpg
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Duane Goggans south of Durant sent in some great photos of the building of Lake Texoma this week.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/texoma/
Speaking of Lake Texoma, there has been lots of pictures taken of the high waters the past few weeks. A T&T Reader sent in a photo of the Roosevelt Bridge east of Kingston. The water reaches almost to the bridge.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/RooseveltBridgeHighWater.jpg
Sometimes the simple things in life works best. This seems to be the case when it comes to cleaning the nearly 100 year old marble walls inside the Carter county courthouse. I know through the last 10 or 12 years there has been several chemicals and cleaning agents tried, but nothing really worked. I can even remember the maintenance supervisor back in 1998, Dalton Cain, trying to clean the marble with a poultice of bleach and lime. He would make it into a thick paste, and leave it on the wall for about 24 hours as a test, and even though it did work somewhat, the fumes and all just made it impractical to use in a confined area.
A couple of weeks ago they tried plain old baking soda and water, made into a paste, and it worked wonders on those dirty dingy yellow walls of marble. So they have been busy the past couple of weeks applying it to the first floor walls, and everyone is amazed how much cleaner they look, almost back to their original white state. The paste is left on the walls for 48 hours then removed with a putty knife. So if you know any old courthouses with yellow marble walls needing cleaned like ours did, tell them to try using a paste made from baking soda and water, it may be just what the doctor ordered.
A home in southwest Ardmore was bulldozed this week to make way for more parking for the First Baptist Church. This is a photo of the home that was located at 108 D SW before being torn down.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/108_SW_D_2004.jpg
And this is a pic I took Tuesday after the home was removed.
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/108_SW_D_071707.jpg
MAILBAG
"In your last newsletter someone asked where the water from Turner Falls originated. I think I can answer that. When I was in the Boy Scouts in Ardmore back in the fifties all the camping was done at Lake Murray. My friends and I always liked to camp in the Arbuckle Mountains. We did a lot of exploring there, especially in caves. One weekend we decided we wanted to find out where the water for the falls came from. We camped up above the falls and then followed the stream back from the falls. A few miles back from the falls (I don’t know how many, but it wasn’t a long hike) we came to a cave. The water was coming out of the cave. We were able to get into the cave and explore it. We went back into the cave as far as we could and finally got to a point where it was full of water. We returned several times and explored that cave and others close by. In dry seasons we could get further into the cave than we could in wet, rainy seasons. Someone had painted a name on the cave. It was called “Bitter Enders”. The guys who went with me most were Grady Nickolson, Marion Patton and Lawrence Stallcup. We had a lot of fun in those days exploring the mountains and caves." -Herb Linder [email protected] http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos/bittere2.jpg
"Butch, the headwaters for Turner falls originates in a cave SW of the falls a few miles. The water flows from an underground river out of the cave. I have been in this cave many times. The name of the cave is Bitter Enders. It is what we call a wet cave. Meaning it fills up when water table rises. Not a good place to take shelter from a rain storm." -Rome Ingle, Tulsa
"Some pictures for the future history books. These pictures were taken at 5:30 P.M. 7-10-2007 when Walnut Creek over flowed its banks into Purcell, Oklahoma and the south Canadian jumped it's banks south of Lexington, Oklahoma. The Walnut Creek didn't crest until between 9 pm and 10 pm that night. Lots of water." -Linda Hamner http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/PurcellWalnutCreek71007a.jpg http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/PurcellSaleBarn071007.jpg http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/LexingtonMileSouth071007.jpg
"Dear Butch, The mention of Danny Hodge the past couple of weeks brought back memories of watching him on WKY-TV Saturday nights on the wrestling show hosted by Danny Williams. It was always a hoot to watch Danny almost become a punching bag for that week's bad boy wrestler. Occasionally Danny Hodge would wrestle on the show and he was always one of my favorites. It seems like the sponsor was Big Red Furniture in Oklahoma City. The only other wrestler I remember from the late 50's/early 60's was "Spider" Galento. I remember him as being a ferocious competitor. There was also a gentleman on the WKY broadcast by the name of McGuirk. I don't remember what his job was but it seems like he had been a wrestler and had been hurt. You could watch WKY on Saturday night and then there was Paul Boesch on Channel 11, KTVT (the station that brought you Icky Twerp's Slam Bang Theater every weekday afternoon) out of Fort Worth. You had to have the Vumore cable to get Fort Worth. Those matches were held in the Will Rogers Coliseum where the WKY matches were held in the studio. I don't ever remember seeing Danny Hodge wrestle on KTVT. It wasn't until I moved to Houston in 1976 that I discovered that Boesch was a huge name in the wrestling world. Houston was his home town. My mother never watched the matches from OKC, but she seldom missed the Fort Worth matches." -Monroe Cameron
"Francis, Oklahoma was once a busy place, a division point on the Frisco and had Frisco shops. When I had The Konawa Leader in the early 1950s one of my printers lived in Francis. It was a desolate place even then." -Wes Leatherock
"The county seat of Seminole County is Wewoka, not Seminole. I was the publisher of The Konawa Leader many years ago. Sasakwa was certainly in our circulation and news coverage age." -Wes Leatherock [email protected]
"Bob's at Ada has THE GREATEST, chunk BBQ plate. And those hand cut fries!!!!!!!!!"
"hi butch, i need your help again trying to find out who the person is in this photo. we think the man in the picture is my brother-in-law's dad, but we're not sure. if this is him his name was marshal farrell. maybe some of your readers might recognize the man in the photo. we do know that he was related to the man who at one time ran the store in Healdton name taliaferro grocery. i believe his name was red farrell. thanks for all the help." - betty daniels [email protected] http://www.oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos7a/MarshallFerrall.jpg
"Tracing Family History and would love a old pic of Bridge Creeks first school 1n 1923-? My Mother went there and also Snowhill school...both in Oklahoma." [email protected]
"Butch, if you have any readers who are car buffs, I went to the Riviera Owners Association's national meet the last week in June in Asheville, NC. Here are pictures from the meet. We had all years of Riv's there from 1963 to 1999 models." -Jayson Pruitt [email protected]
"Butch - I do believe the T&T readership could help this lady get at least
one Carter County scan on her site, don't you? I'll be digging in the old
cedar chest this weekend for sure." -T.E. (Thal) McGinness, Houston, TX
http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/special/ppcs/ppcs.html
The Community Choral Society Inc., under the direction of Wes Singleton,
will present a one-night-only concert at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday July 21 at Northwest Baptist Church, 1709 Robison St. in Ardmore. The title of the event is "A Jubilant Song." This will be a concert in honor of Oklahoma's Centennial, Ardmore's birthday, the local Black Gold Festival and our country's birthday. It will consist of music in America by American composers. Featured musicians will be a dueling piano quartet comprised of Cyd Allen, Diane Boland, Lori Lemons and Wes Singleton, and John Emery on the cello. The chorale includes the vocal and musical talents of approximately 45 singers from Ardmore and across southern Oklahoma. Because this is a one-night event, there will be no prior ticket sales.
Admission will be $10 at the door. Everyone is encouraged to come and enjoy this celebration event.
"Raising kids is like being pecked to death by a chicken."
See everyone next week!
Butch and Jill Bridges
http://www.OklahomaHistory.net
Nashobish Ikana
PO Box 11
Ardmore, Oklahoma 73402Save on long distance calls, just a couple cents a minute!
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Oklahoma Bells: http://www.OklahomaHistory.net/bellpage.html
American Flyers Memorial Fund - Administration Webpage
http://www.OklahomaHistory.net/crash66.html
Official American Flyers Memorial Website
http://www.brightok.net/~wwwafm
Ardmore Army Air Field/Ardmore Air Force Base Website
http://www.brightok.net/~gsimmons
Mirror Site of the Ardmore Army Air Field/Ardmore Air Force Website
http://www.OklahomaHistory.net/airbase/
Carter county schools, past and present
http://community.webshots.com/user/oklahomahistory
Carter County Government Website
http://www.brightok.net/cartercounty/
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