Tomorrow, Friday October 10th, the contents of the 1911 time capsule will be on display at 2:00pm. Also from 2 to 4pm is open house. Hope to see some of you there!
Below is a photo of the the old Chickasaw Telephone office in Lone Grove. I’ve been told this office was north of Felt’s Station and Grocery to Elm Street and a little back east on Elm.
This is a map with the location of the telephone office circled on Elm Street in Lone Grove. Elm Street was one-half mile north of Highway 70 and Newport Road.
Below is the old Lone Grove Post Office. It was between Felt’s Grocery Store and the Donut Shop on Highway 70. I used AI to colorize the old photo.
And below is the same post office building after it was modernized with brick.
Turner Falls 20 miles north of Ardmore is probably the most beautiful water falls in all of Oklahoma. This photo was taken Oct 7, 2025
Some mail from this week’s MAILBAG….
I was wondering if it would be possible for you to post this photo of my great great grandfather, Joshua Franklin Gabriel on your This and That newsletter. He owned the Oak Grove Dairy in Ardmore in the late 1800s and it was located about where the water tower painted to resemble a flag in north Ardmore. I have researched and found that he married Laura J. Wells Bodiford Hare Gabriel from Mannsville in 1909 at Lorena Park in Ardmore, OK, a few years after his first wife Lurinda passed away leaving him with 11 children. Laura had 2 children: a son named Tony Bodiford and a daughter Jessie Bodiford and Jessie married a man named Hughes. I believe some of the Hughes still live in Ardmore. I would like to share the picture to see if any of the Hughes family may have seen a photo of their grandmother or great grandmother and could verify that this is her. Laura passed away in 1930 so no one would be alive that was an eyewitness but maybe recognize her from old photos they may have seen or have. Any help is appreciated.
-Scheryl Williams scherylsharisse@gmail.com
Butch, “On The Halves”, Bridges: Speakin’ of car tags, I remember as
a young lad, that Oklahoma & Texas rotated the color of the tags every
other year. One year Oklahoma would be black, and Texas would be
white. Then the next year Oklahoma would be white, and Texas would be
black.
Speakin’ of Ardmore cars from the 50s: One that sticks out the most
was the sports car that Ardmore advertising mogul Richard Knapp owned.
It was the same type sports car that James Dean was killed in (Porsche
roadster). Same color (silver). Richard was a friend of my Dad’s,
and he would come by the house to pick up pappy so they could go
“twist off”. On one such day, pappy was working on his coin-operated
radios in the garage. He could not go with his friend, and told Dick
to go on without him. The last thing I remember was Dick rubbing the
dash of his ‘steed’ as he peeled out of the driveway, exclaiming:
“high-yo silver, away!” That was the last time Dad saw his friend. He
was killed when he flipped that sports car some time later not far
from the house. He was showing another friend how well the car held
the road even in a slide. He hit one of the ‘island dividers’ near the
‘Top Hat’ and ‘Andersons’ on Hwy 77.
-Steve Miller (like the band)
HAM Radio Talk By Butch Bridges KC5JVT
Allstar node # 58735 – Echolink # 101960 – HamsOverIP # 103010
The once a year Ham-A-Rama will be held in Ardmore October 10th and 11th (this Fri and Sat) at the Ardmore Convention Center. Visit their website for more info. https://hamarama.org/
And our none-formal local HAM group will meet Saturday morning, the 11th at 9:00am at Swadley’s BBQ, 1501 Woerz Way, behind Lowes. Hope to see more HAMs show up, Swadley’s does serve breakfast!
Below is from my newsletter archives
3/7/1998 I found a database on the internet call AnyWho. If you enter a phone number, most times it will return the person’s name who that phone number belongs to. Interesting. But if you’re concerned about privacy, you can remove your phone number/name online. Give it a try at: http://www.anywho.com/
3/7/1998 Monday, September 4, 1933 in Ardmore, Oklahoma, a car chase took place that would make headlines across the country. Harvey Bailey, outlaw, was being held in jail at Dallas for kidnapping Oklahoma City oil man and millionaire, Charles F. Urschel. The Dallas county jail, constructed in 1914 in the southwest corner of Main and Houston streets, was consider escape proof. But somehow, a gun was slipped to Harvey Bailey, he took a jailor captive, and the two fled in the jailor’s car. Bailey was associated with the mob. It was on his farm that police arrested one of the key murderers of the Valentine Massacre in Chicago. Machine Gun Kelley and Bailey were the suspected kidnappers of oilman Urschel. Washington DC anti-crime administrators had even sent 6 Army airplanes in search of Bailey.
After fleeing the Dallas jail, Bailey took back roads to Oklahoma. Love county Sheriff Sam Randoph received a tip that Bailey was in the Ardmore area. Soon afterward, Bailey stopped his car to get gasoline and was noticed immediately. Ardmore Police Chief Hale Dunn, and detectives Bennett Wallace and Raymond Shoemaker gave chase to Bailey, leading them on a wild chase through Ardmore. At the corner of North Washington and Second Street in front of the Mulkey Hotel, Bailey lost control of his car, hit the curb, and broke the spokes away from the tire. He was immediately surrounded by police and taken into custody. Jailor Nick Tresp, a hostage, was unharmed in the crash.
I remember my Dad, R.V. Bridges, telling me that he was in the Army Reserves at the time. When they moved Bailey from the city hall jail, my dad and another Army reserve was posted on top of the old Coca Cola building across the street (where the County Detention Center is now located) with a machine gun. He felt kind of silly being posted up there with two machine guns. There were spectators all over the area when they came out with Bailey, and he said there was no way they could shoot without hitting a lot of innocent bystanders.
3/7/1998 I received a call last week from a man in California who collects old newspapers. He has in his possession a September 4, 1933 San Bernardino newspaper with big, bold headlines telling of the Harvey Bailey capture in Ardmore, Oklahoma. He said the newspaper was in near perfect condition and was willing to sell it to me. I haven’t taken him up on the offer yet but it is tempting (price is right)…… since I love old stuff like that.
2/28/1998 Twenty five miles east of Ardmore is Madill, Oklahoma. Ten year old Thomas Billy Lee Tillery left his home on September 19, 1994 to go to the grocery store two blocks away. Billy has never been seen again. If you know any information about his missing child, please contact your nearest law enforcement agency.
https://www.kxii.com/2023/12/28/authorities-hoping-new-tips-29-years-after-madill-boy-disappears
Last week we talked about the 1932 phonebook that belonged to my mother and some of the strange phone numbers listed in it. One was W.C. Wright NW of City 9515-F-2. Several readers wrote in to give some insight on those strange numbers….. below are those messages:
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“Numbers like these were used for rural magneto lines (turn the crank to call the operator). Often, perhaps usually, the lines were owned and maintained (or not maintained) by the people in the rural areas who were on the line. There were often many parties on the line. The 9515 identified the line, the F indicated it was a rural magneto line, and the “2” meant the operator rang two short rings to signal W.C. Wright’s phone (but everyone on the line heard the ringing and could, and often did, pick it up).”
“There were various ways to indicate combinations of long and short rings; I don’t remember the exact format now. There could be as many as 20 or so parties on a rural magneto line. Often they were noisy lines, and if several people picked up it degraded the transmission further.”
“You needed to turn the crank on your phone to signal the operator when you wanted to make a call, and she would answer “Number, Please.” You were supposed to turn the crank again to end the call, since the operator did not get any other signal as to whether the line was in use.”
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“Reference the dial system, I recall our phone number was 4453-R, and the dial system went in when I was in the second or third grade, 1957-58 remember it was a CApitol 3 prefix I don’t remember when it changed to the numerals 22 instead of CA. There was a meeting held at the school auditorium when the folks from the telephone company explained about this new fancy dial system”
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“When I was a small lad back in Gene Autry, Oklahoma in 1955 we picked up the phone and it was answered by John Noble Hardy and his wife Lena Hoy Hardy. This husband and wife ran and owned the Hardy Telephone Company (which turned into The Chickasaw Telephone Co.). On Christmas Eve we could pick up the phone and call SANTA and tell him what we wanted for Christmas (isn’t it amazing what kids believe in) but you could not tell me that Santa did not exist. Because I could hear sleigh bells in the background. Now I wonder how those people ever went anywhere together and ran the phone switchboard. But they did. What a wonderful group of people to have been raised up with. I will never forget those times. By the way the Hardys were in their 70s back then.
Wallago: An Oklahoma specific term used to mean “earlier” or “before,” as in, “I did it Wallago”.
Butch and Jill Bridges
Ardmore Oklahoma
580-490-6823
https://oklahomahistory.net