Back in February 2007 Chuck Stallcup created an interactive Google Map showing the location (and some historical info) of all the schools in Carter County, past and present. Wow, that was 18 years ago. I shared the Map on my website at that time. Well, Chuck has contacted me saying he has updated the map, and it’s much better and easier to use then it was in 2007. Check it out at the link below.
About 1965 when I was a barely a teen, I built a BIG tree house nextdoor to our house at 805 3rd NE in a tree using lumber from my grandfather’s Carmon lumber yard. I ran a 110v line up to it from the house. When me and other neighborhood kids got out of school at 3pm we’d head up into that tree house and turn on a radio tuned to KOMA in OKC. Fun times!
Q. I was asked this week the name of the school that was located in the northwest corner of Prairie Valley Road and Kings Road northwest of Ardmore.
A. The answer is Prairie Valley School.
Note: The red bricks from the old Prairie Valley School was later used by Vernon and Elizabeth Haws to build their new home at 301 G SW here in Ardmore. Later owners of the home were William “Bill” Prosser and Carol Prosser.
From the Mailbag
Actually Cuz, the Ranch where Roy and Dale were married is a little Southeast of Davis and North of Doughtery.
Our family cleaned all their wedding clothes; Roy, Dale, Gabby, and Sons of the Pioneers.
Our Cleaners was named Ford’s Cleaners. The day they came in to pick up their clothes Mom sent my Brother to get me and all of my Roy Roger’s comics: 20 or so.
I ran to the Cleaners with my comics and German Shepherd (Tony), as I rounded the end of the counter Roy reached down to pick me up and Tony growled. Roy asked my Mom who the dog belonged to and she said you were about to pick him up. Mom and I told Tony it was okay, Roy sat me on the counter and signed everyone of my comics Roy Roger’s and Trigger.
I told him that Tony is going to be famous as the dog who almost bit Roy Roger’s. He invited me to come out to the Ranch that afternoon where he let me sit on Trigger. I had just turned five that Christmas so I got the best gift ever.
Years later when I was in Korea, Jennifer had just starred 1st Grade and everyone had an end of Semester to turn in something about someone famous. I took a chance and wrote a letter to Roy asking if he remembered me and why I was writing. Three weeks later we received a letter from Roy and included with the letter was a photo of Roy, Dale, and their cat, signed on the back was: Happy Trails, Roy, Dale, and Trigger, this was in 1987.
Now you have a true version of where Roy and Dale were married, he also made a movie in the area called: Home to Okkahoma that contains footage of Turner Falls before it became commercialized, in it’s true natural setting. -Poss Bridges
My dad built the first house at Lake Ardmore and he told me that it was cold enough in the winter for people to drive their cars on the ice covered lake in the winter. We moved into that house some time in 1948 after Sharon was born and lived there until just before I started school at Lincoln. I never saw the lake frozen over. -Monroe
I found this photograph of the Wilson Depot in Wilson, OK, March 18, 1914. -Larry Paul
Death of the Great Healdton Oil Field
The beginning to the end of the Great Healdton Oil Field, one of the nation’s greatest oil discoveries which had produced an astounding 320,753,000 barrels of crude oil by the close of the first half of the 20th century began in earnest in 1969 when a salt water well for the purpose of waterflooding the Healdton Oil Field was drilled on the south west corner of West Pine Street (County Road E. 1950) and North First street in Ringling, Oklahoma. From there I help lay a 12-inch John Manville Asbestos Cement (AC) pipe, also known as “transite.” It was laid north, northeast to the western edge of Wirt, Oklahoma (RagTown) where we built a pumping station on the North side of Texas Street across the road from where the old Shell Oil Refinery was once located.
In the oil industry, waterflooding or water injection is where water is injected into the oil reservoir, to maintain the pressure (also known as voidage replacement), or to drive oil towards the wells, and thereby increase production.
Normally only 30% of the oil in a reservoir can be extracted, but water injection increases the recovery (known as the recovery factor) and maintains the production rate of a reservoir over a longer period.
The old band wheel rod line power houses and rod lines were torn down and a large number of the oil wells had the pump jack, pump, rods, tubing and well casing removed, and cement was pumped into the wells to plug the hole.
A. O. Smith Red Thread Fiberglass Pipe was used to deliver the salt water from the pump station to the strategically located once producing wells turned in to injection wells. Collector headers was built to route the recovered oil from the remaining producing wells to common storage tank batteries.
Today out of the hundreds of oil wells that once dotted the Healdton Countryside along Texas St. there is hardly a visage of the once great Healdton Oil Feld that remains. -Larry Paul
I was talking to another old-timer whose family also listened to old radio programs during the 50s. I’m sure a good portion of your readers will remember such, as TVs were still in their infancy. By the late 50s the Vumore cable company made TV programming more accessible in Ardmore. Until pappy had Vumore installed at the house, we listened to radio programming a great deal. One such program that was popular during this era was ‘Inner Sanctum Mysteries’, complete with the voices of Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. One of my favorites, as the sound of that formattable squeaking door started off each episode. With radio, your imagination played a major role in your listening. That squeaking door sent chills up your spine. Something that was lost when radio programs made the transition to TV. Mystery type radio programs were very popular, as they kept the listeners hanging on the edge of a chair. For a tutorial, RadioHorrorHosts.com has a complete history. Go to the Main Index and scroll down to Inner Sanctum Mysteries. Click on this for an informative history of this popular radio program. An interesting read indeed…… -Steve Miller
RadioHorrorHosts.com
HAM Talk by KC5JVT via Echolink
Hope some area HAM friends can reach the Repeater in the Arbuckle Mountains and check-in to the 970 Net this coming Sunday at 8:00pm. See you there!
Below is from my newsletter dated
Issue 198 February 3, 2001
My great grandmother, Ida Murphree Miller, died here in Ardmore in 1965. One of the items I kept of her’s was an old Queen Anne oil lamp (model 2). I do not know how old the lamp is, but I would guess it at least 75 years old. The kerosene in it (we called it coal oil when I was a kid) is still the same kerosene my great grandmother had in it when she died. Boy, I still remember her giving me a teaspoon of sugar with a few drops of “cole oil” on it for sore throat. haha. Anyway, the lamp sat so long its wick and burner kinda solidified. I thought, where in Ardmore am I going to find the burner mechanism for such an old lamp. I did some searching on the Net and found the parts ranging from $11.50 to $16. I thought, if there is any business in town that might have the parts for a Queen Anne lamp, it would be Stolfa Hardware on East Main. I checked and sure enough they did, and the burner and wick only cost $2.35 including tax! So there are still things to be bought for less at the local family owned stores! The parts are made by Lamplight Farms in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Here’s a pic of that beautiful Queen Anne lamp.
IrfanView is a great Freeware program for working with pictures. For many years I used LView but when it wouldn’t pull up a pic someone sent me this week that was 1.2 megs in size, I started looking around for another program. IrfanView works a lot like LView and its pull down menus are similar. It has four pre-set image resizing formats that will work 99% of the time with jpgs I’m working with. I use either the 640×480 or the 800×600 pixels when I’m resizing. Plus the picture keeps its clarity when you enlarge it. Someone in Bosnia wrote the program. If you work with a lot of pics, and need something fast and simple to manipulate those pics, try IrfanView.
The Daily Ardmoreite, Ardmore, Oklahoma, Friday, October 31, 1930
Seminole Deputy Sheriff Injured
Oklahoma City- E. W. Collins, 40, Seminole county deputy sheriff, stationed at Konawa, was reported in a “very serious” condition today at a local hospital and four women were held in county jail for investigation, as the result of a fight here last night.
Stanley Rogers, Oklahoma county sheriff, said Collins and J.E. Kennedy, Konawa chief of Police, came to Oklahoma City last night to arrest a man. Officers were informed the fight occurred after Collins stopped at a house to call on Miss Edith Clifton, about 26 years old, who, with three other women, was held for questioning.
A search was being made for three unidentified men said to have been at the place when Collins was stabbed in the abdomen. At the hospital, Collins refused to identify himself or any of his companions when questioned by county officers, and issued orders that no reports on his condition be given.
“Butch, does anyone remember “Skips Potato Chip”. It was located in the back of a house that must have been on C or B S.E. I can remember when I was a kid and I believe we lived on D S.E. in the afternoon smelling them cooking. We could take our own sack and going over and for a nickel you could get a “peck” sack full right out of the cooker. Probably why my cholesterol is always too high. But you have never eaten chips unless you tasted those hot for the cooker.”
“Butch; I have been looking for the gravesite of my gg-grandmother, Mary Ann WILLIAMS VREDENBURG COURTNEY, who died June 13, 1911 in Davis. Her obituary says she is buried in Walnut Cemetery, but no one has ever heard of Walnut Cemetery. I had expected her to show up in Greenhill, thinking that Greenhill had been renamed, but she isn’t there.”
“A long time ago when I asked my dad where she was buried, he thought she might have been in a cemetery that was moved when the lake went in. So lately I have been checking to see if anyone remembered a cemetery being relocated when Lake Arbuckle was made. I have had a couple of folks tell me that there was a cemetery in the flood plain that they think was moved, but where, is the question. Does anyone remember what this cemetery was called?”
“Mary Ann lived around Hennepin, old Fort Arbuckle, then Davis in her later years. Her husband, Henry C. DECOURTNEY aka Henry D. COURTNEY lived in Courtney, Love Co after they split the sheets, though never divorced. According to his pension papers, this was “on account of him associating with other women”, but that is another story. . . She may have been part Chickasaw, although I have no proof. I have searched all of the cemeteries around these parts and still haven’t found her. This family is known for somewhat lavish tombstones, so I can’t imagine her being buried without one. Thanks for any insight that can be given on this.” Candace Gregory
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/63366188/mary-ann-courtney
“Butch – Your reminiscence regarding Roy Rogers made me think about my friend Ray Jacoby in Oklahoma City, whom I met in the late 1970s in my first job after college as an advertising director for LSB Industries. Ray had a long career as a commercial photographer with his studio, at least in the latter years, on Shartel just north of NW 5th. He seemed to know EVERYBODY – and I can’t even recall how many famous or near-famous folks I met while at his studio.”
“His great love was aerial photography, and he kept a specially fitted Cessna 172 in a hangar at Oklahoma City Downtown Airport for use in that pursuit. I was privileged to fly with him on several occasions. He no longer flies, but left that great love as one of the oldest active pilots in the country.”
“Ray’s son, Randy, was a highway patrol trooper before he went to work for CLEET, but also served awhile as a lake patrolman on Lake Murray. Ray once told of a job evidently flying daily movie footage back to Oklahoma City to put on the trains to California during the time when Roy and Dale were married on the Healy Ranch (I assume they must also have been making a movie at that time.) When he found out about the wedding, he asked if they would allow him to take photographs along with their Hollywood photographers and they agreed. Apparently they were so pleased with his work that they bought all the photos he shot.”
“As a young fellow, Ray also knew Wiley Post, who, as I recall the story, helped him get a job as a mechanic with Tom Braniff’s Braniff Airways at old Oklahoma City municipal airport. He once showed me a photo of himself and Wiley during that time standing together in front of one of the hangars at the airport. I also recall his being asked to fly up to Point Barrow on an Air Force transport with a group of family and friends of Will and Wiley’s for a memorial service on the 50th anniversary of their deaths.”
“Ray is one of those vigorous, seemingly ageless fellows you sometimes meet. He’s now retired and lives “where he’s always lived” in Oklahoma City with his wonderful wife Winnie – except when they’re out in Ruidoso. If memory serves me correctly he’ll be 92 this February 20th. Hopefully we’ll meet for lunch sometime around then and visit over a burger or two.”
“By the way – I seem to recall a 2-story stone building several blocks south of the old Pak-a-Sak on Lake Murray Drive where my folks bought big 5-gallon metal cans of Morton Potato Chips. Boy, were they good. For a while they also made a sort of seasoned potato crisp that came in a potato chip-like bag which was just out of this world. -Tom Elmore in Moore, Oklahoma.”
“Hi Butch! Thanks for sending This n That! The picture below was taken from the Ardmoreite on Nov. 22, l983. I thought with all the discussion on Ferrys you or some of the readers might find it interesting. Courtesy of Bud Boyer, Herculeaneum, MO.”
“Sorry for the confusion last night, so you don’t know what a dolls hospital is. This is a place where children can take there broken toys and have them repaired, such as eg, a teddy bear’s arm or leg fell off or even if it’s eye came out, or if a dolls hair came loose, you would take it to the doll’s hospital so they could be made as good as new. Actually I think they may not be as busy in this day and age, but we still have them ha ha. What bought this to my attention was a search I was doing on the net, for hospitals, when all the doll hospitals popped up too, and took me back to my childhood, anyway after this useless bit of information, I will let you carry on with what you were doing.” -Judith in England
“The picture below is one I took at the Washita River Bridge just south of “Big Canyon Area” or about 5 miles north of Gene Autry, Oklahoma and appears on the month of May in the new Heartland Flyer Calendar just published by the Oklahoma Dept of Transportation. The calendars are available on the train and at Judi Elmore’s antique shop on #10 East Main in Ardmore 580-226-3490 [email protected]. She will mail them for any of your out of town readers. The cost is $11.84 which includes shipping. The $10 cost of the calendar goes to ODOT. These areas are beautiful and very scenic and can be accessed only by the Flyer (no roads), unless you want to hike a few miles like I do. Ha! As you can see I’m trying to use these photos to encourage folks to ride the flyer. There are scenes right in our own back yard, so-to-speak, that you just won’t normally see from a car or a plane and you don’t have to go to Colorado.” -Dwane Stevens
Q. “Hi. I stumbled onto your site by doing a search on Russett, OK. Do you have ANY information about this little town? I grew up there but it was during the 70s. I remember playing around the torn up school house etc. I would love to know more about this little town.”
A. Here is a link to a webpage on my website created by Paula Stout who hails from Russett, Oklahoma. Russett, Oklahoma webpage
“Butch: I was wondering if any of your readers might be interested in a 1968 AHS Class Photo from the 98 reunion. Might make someone want to come to the next reunion. -Schahara
Old Rivers by Walter Brennan 1894-1974
How long has it been since I first seen old Rivers?
Why, I can’t remember when he weren’t around.
Well, that old man did a heap of work,
Spend his whole life walking plowed ground.
He had a one-room shack not far from us,
And we was about as poor as him.
He had one old mule he called “Midnight”,
And I’d tag along after them.
He’d plow them rows straight and deep and I’d tag along behind,
Bustin’ up clods with my own bare feet, old Rivers was a friend of mine.
That sun would get high and that mule would work til old Rivers’d say,
“Whoa!” then he’d wipe his brow, lean back in the rains,
And talk about a place he was gonna go.
Say, one of these days I’m gonna climb that mountain,
Walk up there among them clouds,
Where the cotton’s high and the corn’s a-growin’,
And there ain’t no fields to plow.
I got a letter from back home the other day, they’re all fine,
And the crops is high, and down at the end my mama said,
“You know, old Rivers died”.
I’m just sitting here on this new plowed earth,
trying to find me a little shade,
And with the sun beating down,
‘cross the field I see that mule, old Rivers, and me.
Wlater Brennan Find-A-Grave
See everyone next Thursday!
Butch and Jill Bridges
Ardmore, Oklahoma
580-490-6823
