For years Dino the Dinosaur lived at the Sinclair Service Station 2428 West Broadway when the service station was located there (now Jimmy’s Western Wear). But the Department of Transporation and the City of Ardmore told him in 1993 he had to move back into his own yard away from the curb.
Not being the average dinosaur (millions of years of knowledge packed in that pea brain of his), he decided to go to court and fight back and not move. District Judge Thomas Walker ruled Dino did not have to move back from the curb, so he stayed a little while longer on that SE corner until the station closed. After years of roaming round, he is now back living in Ardmore a little further west at 3224 West Broadway across from McCoy’s Lumber Yard (west side of I-35).
The memorial below is located at West Main and E Street Southwest across from Central Park. This is just a shame. Whoever orginally “painted” the names probably used just plain white spray paint like is sold at Lowes. Not the kind of paint monument companies use to spray the lettering on granite which will last years. Every name has parts of the letters missing as the paint deteriated, including my uncle Paul Bridges (1945) and my great uncle, Samuel Murphree (1956). I can barely read my friend Donald Brightman’s (1969) name who lost is life in Vietnam. He was the nicest guy you’d ever want to be around in High School. This monument cost thousands and they most likely used an inferior quality spray paint not meant for granite. I know my friend Bill Main with Memorial Art Company at 802 12th NW in Ardmore did some repair to the names a few years ago. But as the years go by the repairs are harder to do, and its meticulous work. Bill said he’s going to work at it again soon to get the names more readable. Thank you Bill.
The Noble Research building at Ardmore’s Noble Foundation was razed this week.
My Brave internet browser just went over 1.5 Million this week of protecting. Works great at keeping crap off my Windows 10 computer. https://brave.com/
Mail from the Mailbag
Butch > Speakin’ of burgers, the photo of your hamburger from your
burger joint near Wilson gave me a jolt. Speakin’ for hamburger
purests, I hope that burger didn’t arrive at the table with that big
glop of ketchup on top of the patty. I know there is the age old
debate that ketchup on a burger.is a sin. I for one agree > let the
customer decide if ketchup is needed. Mayo is also much debated,
which leaves mustard as the only possible spread for purest
everywhere. My preference is just the plain ole griddle fried onion
burger without lettuce or tomato & a dab of mustard. No ketchup on my
corn dog either, just mustard. To each his own. Mustard a must on
that Super Dog. I was told what gave the Super Dog its distinctive
flavor was the pancake batter type mix used in the outer covering.
Not the usual corn dog. I know you’d know the secret.
Ardmore trees are much beloved and revered. I forget the importance of
the fight to save the old tree over by CVS on Commerce. Perhaps you
can jog our memory. I am glad that it was saved. I was once told
that the oldest tree in Ardmore is located on the O street side yard
of the house on the Southwest corner of the Stanley & O street
intersection. I believe this was the Thompson homestead back in the
day. We used to climb in this tree as young squirts during the 50s &
early 60s. It was also a favorite tree during Halloween, for obvious
reasons. How bout some more Ardmore tree history, possibly from your
readership…. -Steve Miller (like the band)
Will Colbert (?) shot and killed Joe James in Oct. 1889 at the Dickson ballfield; one or both of them were on horseback. Both were Chickasaw Indians. I have not been able to find any information on the event or if there was any punitive action taken. My aunt, Annie Lena James/Alverson was born to my grandmother, Nelie Octava James Alverson in 1890. who later married James Scott Worthy. Thanks.
-Jim Kennedy
HAM Talk by Butch Bridges KC5JVT – Allstar node # 58735
The Arbuckle 97 Net conducts a check-in every Sunday night at 8:00pm. Any licensed HAM is welcome to check-in.
To all Amateur Radio operators: The next Arbuckle 97 Net breakfast will be April 26th @ 9am at Swadey’s BBQ in Ardmore, Oklahoma. This is not affiliated with any HAM club. Any licensed HAM is welcome to come and enjoy fellowship with other HAMs. Yes, Swadley’s does serve breakfast with 10 breakfast items on the menu!
https://swadleys.com/swadleys-bbq-menu/?rid=86
I don’t know what happened to our local HAMs check-in last Sunday at 8pm, but as you can see only 3 people checked-in. I would have but the guy returned my riding lawn mower that evening at 8pm, the exact time the local Net started. Hopefully future Nets on Sunday evenings will have better parciptation.
Below is from my newsletter archives dated
May 8, 2008 – Issue 589
“I was about 6 years old when Roy & Dale were married. My grandparents lived in Davis & often took me to Turner Falls. One day we went to the overlook at the top of the mountain to look through the telescopes. On this day, a man was using the telescope. I waited & waited &, being the spoiled child, I finally asked him to hurry up so I could look. When he turned around, it was Roy. My grandparents were mortified & apologized profusely. Roy was very nice & visited with us for a while, telling us about the movie he & Dale were making in the area. (I used to know the name of the movie, but have forgotten it now.) Some of this information was filled in by my mother since I was only 6. My mother is now 95 & remembers many stories about the Davis area. My grandparents owned Francis Brothers Dry Goods. My great grandfather was David Frazier Ellis, Sr.” -Susan Francis Whitten, Baton Rouge
“On the morning of April 19, with some time to kill before the Dundee alumni banquet that evening, I went out to Lone Grove to try to locate the graves of five of my Ward relatives, which I had failed to find two years ago after walking the Lone Grove cemetery back and forth for over an hour. Knowing I needed to find some “old-timer” of the area (you don’t find any of those along the highway, and the Senior Center was closed on Saturday), I decided to just drive back to the cemetery to look some more, and perhaps stop to ask anyone who looked like an old-timer. block or two north of the highway, I saw an old (I thought, “probably out-of- date by now”) sign reading “Wilson Monuments,” with a phone number. I thought, “Oh, well, since it is/was a monument company, and the sign seems somehow associated with this house, it’s worth a call.” (As it turned out, the company is her son’s and is still in existence at SH70 and Brock Road.) So I got on my cell and called the number, and was disappointed to get only voice mail; but right at the end was a statement that they “might be out back,” so I decided to go around to see if anyone was behind the house where I (and the sign) was.
Not wanting to encounter dogs, police, or something else I WASN’T looking for, I first went to the front door and knocked and, to my surprise this little elderly lady came to the door, so I started to state what I was looking for. The first thing I found out was that she was extremely hearing impaired, so I managed to get the gist of my message to her by shouting. When she realized I was asking a historical/genealogical question in which she obviously had an interest, her face lit up and she invited me in. Being of the old careful school of not going into a lady’s house alone, I tried to decline, but she was so insistent, and all my senses telling me there was no danger of scandal in this situation, I relented and went in.
I noted immediately as I walked thru that the walls were lined with stacks of books of all kinds, many of them rather new hard-backs. After she put in her hearing aid, I could communicate with her in a mild shout, and she told me proudly she was eighty-something years old. By then, after noting a computer and a copying machine, I began to get the feeling I was not in the home of an ordinary eighty-ish deaf lady. She scrambled thru the many cemetery record books she had, found the one for Lone Grove cemetery, and made me copies of the page with the Ward names and their location, plus a page with a map of the cemetery.
During our discussion, which became more and more interesting, I mentioned to her that the late Dr. Hathaway, long since retired in his nineties there in Lone Grove, had delivered me in Milo in 1936, and later my sister in —-well, I better not tell you that year! Anyway, upon the mention of Dr. Hathaway’s name, she brightened up and told me that her house was where he lived for all or many of his years in Lone Grove—small world, huh?
By then I would like to have stayed and talked to her all day—or at least until I got hoarse from shouting; but realized by the time I got by the cemetery and back to Ardmore my wife and stuff would be kicked out of the motel; so I forced a little payment on her for the copies, despite her objection, and took my leave, realizing that I had stumbled onto a jewel of some kind in a most unlikely spot.As we cam thru Wilson, still with some time to kill, I decided to stop briefly at the museum for my first visit. And within five minutes, I found a rack containing eight or ten loose-leaf-published local historical works (some over an inch thick), compiled by—guess who!—one MARY WILSON. Then I realized the identity and nature of the gem I had accidentally met in Lone Grove!
Sorry this turned out so long, but hopefully it will interest some of your readers enough to bog thru it. Mary gave me her email address, and I wrote it on a scrap of paper I had in my wallet, but can’t lay my hands on it right now—I just bet you have it and can forward this to her with my additional thanks. I did find the graves I was looking for and got pictures of the stones.” -R. Keith Ward, Oklahoma City
“Butch: An article I sent in a week or two ago about life and times of Calvin Foster, he told of some really hard times! I rember those days well. There were weeks we did not get to go to town, money was very tight! if there was any. We did however gather at someone’s house and have a country dance which was the highlight of the week or month. All we needed was a guitar and a fiddle, and put the word out and they would come. You had to have all your work caught up or you did not get to go! We also got to listen to Bob Wells during lunch when we came in from the fields, that was a real treat! Here is a Youtube clip that depicts that era very well.” -Hoot Gilbert
“My home town of Moore, Oklahoma was originally named Verbeck.”
Verbeck, Oklahoma. Original railroad name for Moore, Oklahoma, Cleveland county. The name was coined from the telegraphic call “VK”. -Oklahoma Place Names
I received in the mail this week a flyer from the genealogy society at Madill on their upcoming Grand Opening of Museum of Southern Oklahoma. The event takes place on Saturday May 10, 2008 from 10am to 4pm. The guest speaker will be Towana Spivey. Mr. Spivey will speak at 2pm that Saturday.
The Daily Ardmoreite, January 16, 1919- Four shade trees will be planted on the high school grounds in memory of the four high school boys who made the supreme sacrifice in the world war, Lieut. George Anderson, Lieut. Walter Drew, Sergts. Earl Hignight and Earl Speake, by the High School Mother’s Club. This action was decided upon at a meeting held yesterday afternoon in the high school building. A committee comprising Bert Herman, Mrs Perry Maxwell and Mrs C. H. Everett was appointed for the purpose of carrying out the plans.
Russell Martin was traveling this week about 4 miles east of Stroud, Oklahoma on Highway 66 (old Route 66) and there on the south side is a Shoe Tree growing. Can you imagine that! What will they think of next!
https://oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos8a/ShoeTreeStroud8a.jpg
https://oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos8a/ShoeTreeStroud8b.jpg
Russell Martin also sent in photos he took of the damage done by the straighline winds Wednesday afternoon late on the east side of Ardmore. He was heading home and snapped photos of the damage to the Parkview Storage and Rental on the NE edge of Ardmore. The newspaper reported the winds that came through the Ardmore area were clocked at 69 MPH. That’s scary. Thankfully we did not have that high of winds south of Lone Grove, mainly rain. But we did lose our electricity for about 4 hours Tuesday evening.
https://oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos8a/StormParkway050708a.jpg
https://oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos8a/StormParkway050708b.jpg
https://oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos8a/StormParkway050708c.jpg
About a month ago we had a picture of an old parking meeting that is on display at J.A.C.S Trailers at Lake Murray Drive and Springdale Road. Reader Rick Feiler wrote in to say that particular meter was not one used by the City of Ardmore. Below is a meter actual used as a parking meter in Ardmore years ago.
https://oklahomahistory.net/ttphotos8a/CityOfArdmoreParkingMeter.jpg
Karen Volino, Carter County Court Clerk, has seen a lot of technological advances in her office since 1996. When Karen took office that year those big red ledger books were still being used to record court records, just as it had been done since statehood in 1907. Then in January 1997 Karen’s office took a giant step forward and became one of the first court clerk offices in the state to begin computerization of the court records using a program by the name of Kellpro headquartered in Duncan, Oklahoma. Its been 11 years since that first record was entered in the computers, and today those court records from 1997 to date are online and available to the public. And just this month Karen Volino announced the online database is now updated on a daily basis.
Mannsville just takes up a little spot on Highway 199 just east of Ardmore over into Johnston county. But there is a new eating place there and their hamburger has got to be one of the best for miles around. Jill and I stopped in there last week and were we in for a surprise. Ain’t much to look at from the outside, and when you first walk into the building where the Friday evening’s auctions take place and smell the food cooking, you know you’re almost there. And in one more minute, you walk through that door to Sweet Mama’s….. and smell that grill cooking up all kids of good things to eat, it’s then you know your in the right place! Jill and I both agree, Sweet Mama AKA Leatrice Perry cooks up one of the best burgers we’ve ate in these parts. Jill is pretty discriminating when it comes to a burger and she rated Sweet Mama’s a 5 Star!
Outside Sign Outside View Inside View 1 Inside View 2
Sweet Mama at the grill Sweet Mama’s Delux Burger!
The Wilson News 1-20-1916
A NEW METHOD
Well! Well! So we are to say good-bye to the telephone bill collector. The Pioneer Telephone Company announces that in the future collection will be made by mail. Well, with all due respect to the pleasant collectors who have graced our office each month bearing to us a calm request for the “necessary wherewithal,” we are glad to see the new system installed. The old system of collecting by sending people around to offices and homes had its disagreeable side, the disappearance of which will be marked with pleasure by the subscribers. For there wasn’t any fun in having some one drop into your office to present a bill to you when you were busy at something else. And maybe you couldn’t bother with paying the bill at just that minute. this is true of housekeepers, who forgetful of the coming bill would often be without the money to pay. Then they would ask the collector to call again. Under the new system you get the bill through the mail, you know when to expect it, and then you are given ten days in which to send a check through the mail or to call at the telephone office and pay there. At any time during that period set by the Company, a long enough period too, we may pay that bill. We shall miss the regular visit of the collector, but we are glad that the Pioneer Telephone Company has started this new system.
We now have some Cornish, OK newspapers from the early 1900s on display. The public is welcome to come look through them at the Wilson Historical Museum. Hours – Thurs., Fri., Sat: 10:00 – 4:00 p.m.
https://www.wilsonhistoricalmuseum.org/
Butch and Jill Bridges
Ardmore Oklahoma
580-490-6823
https://oklahomahistory.net