New Road Asked For Love County
The Daily Ardmoreite
August 7, 1907
People seek highway connecting Madill with Marietta, it is said.
Building highway No. 77 through Love county has not caused people to forget that one of the greatest needs of that section is a highway beginning at Madill in Marshall county, extending south and west, passing through Lebanon and Enville to Marietta, and thence west to Burneyville and Leon, to the Airline Bridge near Courtney, according to W. C. Payton, president of the Marietta chamber of commerce.
Oklahoma still holds the record having the town with the fastest growth in America. November 22, 1889 – At 6:00am Guthrie, Oklahoma had a population of zero. By 6:00pm that day the population had swelled to 15,000.
1907 – John M. Sprekelmeyer Mgr. Residence 211 G SW
This has to be one of the oldest BBQ joints in Oklahoma (before statehood)
HAM Talk KC5JVT via Echolink
A while back I mentioned the HAM radio repeater in the Arbuckle Mountain was damaged by a big grass fire. That was last Spring. Thanks to Vance Smith and a few dedicated HAMs the repeater is back up and running great. Here are a couple of before and after pictures.
The Mailbag
3 Palacine Oil momentos – Robert Hensley
Below is from my Vol 4 Issue 186
November 18, 2000 newsletter:
I received a letter this week from a reader in Grandfield, Oklahoma. Though she lives in Grandfield, she was originally from the almost ghost town of Bromide, Oklahoma. Bromide is about 20 miles northeast of of Tishomingo, Oklahoma on Highway 7D. I remember when a child, my mother and I and Charlie and Irma Bailey going to Bromide to see somebody. This would have been around 1960. The only thing that sticks in my mind, was going to the outdoor toilet at the residence we visited. It was located out back away from the house, kind of a scary adventure for a city boy.
The reader who wrote me this week about Bromide included a copy of an article in the February 2, 1975 issue of Orbit Magazine. The story was about Bromide, Oklahoma, the ghost town. Around statehood (1907) Bromide was a hustling bustling town with a bank, four hotels, a cotton gin, cotton yard, rooming houses, numerous restaurants, a lime stone rock quarry, and last but not least, the reported healing bromide waters that was plentiful there. Tulsa industrialist Robert Galbreath is given credit for turning Bromide into an overnight sensation. Galbreath was the owner and developer of the first big oil strike in Oklahoma, the Glennpool Oil south of Tulsa. But the recognized Father of Bromide is the Chickasaw Indian judge, W.H. Jackson. From the efforts of Galbreath and Jackson, it wasn’t long until excursion trains were pulling up to the station at Bromide loaded with visitors from Texas and other parts of Oklahoma, ready to soak in the cure-all healing bromide waters.
But as suddenly as it started, the dream ended in the middle 1920s. The trains no longer stopped at the Bromide depot, mainly because of the advent of Henry Ford’s Model “T” had opened up a new adventure to vacationers. The final death knell came to Bromide in the 1930s in the wake of the Great Depression when the quarry and crusher ceased operations. Bromide, Oklahoma would never return to her glory days as she was just a quarter of a century earlier.
The other day I received a letter from my bank telling me how nice it would be to own one of their Check Cards. No more writing checks, no more being interrogated for ID, no more having to give your birthdate, no more feeling like the people in line behind you thinks your a hot check writer, it all sounded great, so I ordered one. A week later I had my handy dandy Check Card and ready to hit the stores. I was in Walmart getting a few items, went to the checkout counter and prepared for a wonderful cashless experience. The cashier swiped my Check Card through the scanner. BEEP. She swiped it again. BEEP. She didn’t know what was wrong. She asked, “you want me to call a supervisor”? Sure. The supervisor swiped it. BEEP. No one knew what was wrong, so guess what I ended up paying for my merchandise with? Good old hard cold cash in the form of green back dollars. hahahahaha. Now I ask you, what good is any Check Card if it doesn’t work in the Walmart scanner? Any lady can tell you, it’s not worth anything.
This week I was flipping through the channels on TV and there was the 1981 movie “The Long Summer of George Adams” starring James Garner and Joann Hackett. The movie centers around the water tower in the town of Cushing, Oklahoma about 1950 and the fact that it no longer had water in it. The city council of Cushing voted to have water piped in from a nearby town. James Garner plays a railroad man who loses his job. One funny part of the movie is where a guy climbs up the water tower and looks out, and says, “I can see all the way to McAlester, Oklahoma.” Now that is some feat, since that would be about 100 miles! hahaha
My friend and fellow Ardmoreite, Gary D. Simmons (1932-2022) has his Ardmore Air Base website up and running. He’s been hard at work on it for several weeks, and boy, does it look great. It is full of information on the former U.S. Army Air Base located at Gene Autry, Oklahoma. He’s got plenty of photos and history about the base including every air crash since it was opened in 1943. Gary is receiving input from all over the country from people who have had some connection to the air base, either stationed there, worked there, trained there, kinfolk there, etc. You can check it all out at the URL below, and pass it along to anyone who might be interested in this one of a kind website!
https://home.brightok.net/~gsimmons/
“This picture below was taken in the 1940’s and shows my little sister-in-law sitting at the base of the bronze colored Indian statue which was a trademark for the Palesine(sp?) Oil Co of Ardmore. (Wirt Franklin was the owner I believe). The site is at the look out of Turner Falls from the Filling Station located in the Arbuckle Mts. The bronze colored Indians were seen in many places in our area but it seems they have all disappeared.” -Ernest Martin
“A while back you ask for the recipe for corn dogs. Well I have one that I got here about 40 years ago. I don’t know if it is the one they used for sure or not. But the name of it is Super Dogs.” bgdoss@brightok.net
1 cup milk
2 tsp Baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 egg
flour – enough to make thick.
Then dip dog in it and fry in deep fryer.
“Butch, I have in safe keeping a document that I came across several years ago, taped to a bottom of a drawer of an old desk I purchased. It appears to be one of the original copies of the court ordered bankruptcy of Tucker Automobile. My curiosity is getting the better of me and I was wondering if one of the T&T readers might have knowledge of this Tucker Automobile that didn’t quite make it. Kindly forward replies to Gerry Stanford.” gas@ardmore.com
The Daily Ardmoreite June 23, 1949
Chicago Illinois
Preston Tucker pleads Innocent
Preston Tucker, his business suit matching the gray of his personal rear-engine car, plead innocent today to a Federal indictment charging mail fraud, conspiracy and SEC violations.
Six of his seven co-defendants in a 31 count indictment also plead innocent before judge Philip L. Sullivan.
The indictment, return June 10th, resulted from a grand jury investigation of promotion of the Tucker automobile. Several handmade models of the novel car were built but it never reached mass production despite an expenditure of $28,000,000,000.
Tucker drove to the courthouse and his gray Tucker as he did when the grand jury began it’s inquiry and when he was summoned to post his bond.
“Butch, In reqards to the picture of the Dow brothers, Bob and the rest. I agree with Bill Montcrief, the man in the lower right hand corner looks like a young Buck Garrett.” bsriner@hotmail.com
“Hi Butch. I was born in Alma OK. Raised in, near, and around Loco, Healdton,. Ardmore OK. I Had never heard of Brown’s Springs until I started receiving your newsletter. A Spring with my name deserves my attention. I will check it out on one of my trips home.” Jim Brown, Odessa, Texas
“What I really wanted to share with you is a link that one of my NY readers sent me concerning a story of one of the survivors of the OKC bombing. Thought you and some of your readers might be interested in reading Richard Williams’ story as a survivor of the Oklahoma City bombing. Here is the link she sent me…. “HI, I was just reading this page about an OKC bombing survivor. I finished reading the paragraph and thought I would share this story with you.”
https://www.thrivenet.com/stories/stories00/stry0011.shtml
Thanksgiving will be here next Thursday. We should all pause a few minutes Thursday and be thankful we live in the land of plenty….. where supermarket shelves are stocked with every kind of food imaginable. If you have some extra thanksgiving dinner, share it with someone less fortunate. We never know the lift in spirit such a simple action can give to someone who feels like know one cares.
See everyone next Thursday!
Butch and Jill Bridges
Ardmore, OK
580-490-6823
