The Daily Ardmoreite
June 1, 1922
Three black tars under a boiling sun are making Ardmore’s Main Street look like a boulevard.
Since the lone yellow trolley ceased its daily meanderings over the principal thoroughfare and out C Street Northwest, the motorists have had pretty full play of both these streets and may have been the kicks and complaints of chug holes, ruts and protruding trolley rails. All of these will soon be of the past.
Last week the city started a repair gang to work on East Main and slowly they have been working their way out toward the west and will soon be on C Street north to the end of the line. This is in keeping with the city’s program of giving Ardmore citizens better streets and thoroughfares.
The Daily Ardmoreite
July 27, 1922
Home Forum
Trolley Poles
Dear Ardmoreite,
As the streetcar tracks are being torn up in the north part of town is there any reason why the trolley poles cannot be removed from Main Street?
The principal street of Ardmore today looks like the main thoroughfares of a good sized country village with movie picture posters, pictures of candidates for election and every other conceivable form of advertising nailed on these trolley and electric light poles and adorned as they are, they are anything but attractive to a progressive City such as we claim to be. There is an ordinance with a penalty attached for the placing of advertising on any trolley electric light or telephone pole in the city but this ordinance is not enforced and how long are we to continue being simply a country town.
TAXPAYER
The Daily Ardmoreite
June 1, 1922
Business Men To Open Gym at Once
Arrangements for the official opening of the gymnasium of the Business Men’s Athletic Club will be discussed at a meeting of the organization which will be held at its headquarters at 116 East Main Street Friday night at 8:00 p.m. E. H. Royer, secretary of the club, has extended an invitation to all businessmen of the city who might be interested in the work. The outfitting of the gym has been completed and is the finest of its kind in this section of the country. Fred Gilmore, vice-president of the club, has been in charge of the equipment and other details pertaining to the athletic work. At the present time the club has 35 members.
First Concrete To Be Poured Next Week At Lake Murray – Feb 22, 1934
Below is a photograph of the aftermath of the 1915 explosion in downtown Ardmore at Main and Caddo streets.
In the above picture, workmen have installed the new windows on the 3rd floor and in the dome of the Carter County Courthouse. The progress continues.
The Great Speckled Bird recorded in 1936 by Roy Acuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZey2PZeiL4
Some mail from this week’s MAILBAG….
Q. What year did Ardmore’s Jack In The Box first open?
A. 2004
Rocks, rocks and more rocks: In the early 1960s after marrying the most popular girl in Wynnewood, Oklahoma we decided to reside there. She worked there as a lab tech at the local hospital and I worked in Davis. We hadn’t lived there long before I started hearing about the “Rock Man”. H. H. Martin a farmer west of Wynnewood just across the Washita bridge then back south was estimated to have collected in access of one million assorted rocks. Now folks that is a hell-of a lot of rocks. His largest was 5 or 6 giant monoliths which are free standing rocks such as the El Capitan located in Yosemite National Park down to rose rocks the size of a dime. Being an offspring of the Goff family all natural rock hounds I couldn’t wait to visit this place. One Sunday afternoon as my wife was visiting her family there in Wynnewood I decided to visit the “rock man”. He was more than happy to show me all his trophies. In the early 1950s Martin decided to build a home for he and his sister. He thought he would build it from native rock thus began his foray into rock gathering. He held his ventures to basically 10 counties surrounding his Garvin County farm. After building his home he continued his rock collecting until my visit and probably long after. The rock collection covered 5 acres and very few were duplicated. Some of the rocks were uncanny in their resemblance to animals and even humans some having outlines of eyes and mouths enhanced by Martin. The giants were winched from the nearby Washita River bed. There was beautiful granite, marble and sandstone along with one of the largest rose rock collections in the state. All of the rocks were collected in Oklahoma and the collection was featured on a postcard published in the 1960s. I have serious thoughts of the collection. It should at least warrant a historical marker. -Jim Hefley
Below is from my Vol 4, Issue 167 July 1, 2000 newsletter:
A few months ago I read in the newspaper trains were going to start having louder whistles. The past couple of weeks I have heard the train whistle louder then I’ve ever heard it. I guess the trains now are using those louder whistles.
On Thursday June 29, 2000 Gifford Monuments here in Ardmore set a granite marker on the west side of the courthouse (front entrance). Listed on that marker are all the Carter county commissioners since 1907 (statehood). The artwork is beautiful, and the history a person can imagine is awesome. Hope some of you can get by and see the marker in the front of the courthouse sometime.
Last October I told about a historical marker beside the highway in Dickson, Oklahoma (9 miles east of Ardmore). On that sign is the name Rosella Hightower, a Chickasaw Indian born south of there at Durwood, OK in 1920. Rosella Hightower would become a world renown Prima Ballerina. This week on the OETA television (educational channel)… Hightower was interviewed and her life story told. All five prima ballerinas in the 30s were from eastern Oklahoma. Something no other nation in the world could claim. Also interviewed were the other four prima ballerinas…. sisters Maria and Marjorie Tallchief (Osage), Yvonne Chouteau (Cherokee), and Moscelyne Larkin (Peoria).
In 1952 Ardmore Assistant police chief Oscar Wilkes was gunned down in a driveway at 819 Hargrove in Ardmore. The man charged with the murder was John B. Gandy who owned a trucking company and lived at the address. Gandy claimed he and his female companion, Jacqueline Thomas, were in the house that rainy evening when Wilkes drove up. Gandy thought Wilkes was Ms. Thomas’s ex-husband, Raymond Howie, and opened fire with a .38 pistol from the doorway. Wilkes never had a chance, and died sitting in his car, still holding a toothpick in his mouth.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/35207585/oscar-james-wilkes
The heat index is well over 100. It’s so hot here I bought a loaf of bread this morning and by the time I got home it was toast.
See everyone next week!
Butch and Jill Bridges
Ardmore, OK
580-490-6823