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Did being Phillipsburg stymie Bartlesville's growth?
Some musings on the stagnating effect of being a company town, and whether Tulsa is on the same path.
Shawnee to Sapulpa by electric interurban
Another interesting map find. This Rand McNally Vest Pocket Map of Oklahoma from 1910 appears to be an earlier map, overprinted in red to show numbers indexed to railway names and parcel companies and to show electric railway lines. The U. S. Post Office did not deliver parcels until January...
Al Stricklin remembers Bob Wills at Glenoak
On Friday, September 6, 1935, Al Stricklin arrived in Tulsa with his wife to take a job as piano player for Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. After joining Bob and the band for the noon broadcast at the Barrel Food Palace and then rehearsing that afternoon at the home...
Historical surveys of Oklahoma cities and towns
The Oklahoma Historical Society has been scanning and posting documents from their archives, and there is a page full of links to architectural and historical surveys of Oklahoma cities and towns. The surveys were mainly conducted over the past 20 years, often by teams of students led by an architectural...
Dewey Bartlett Jr: "As Mayor, I rely on The Weather Channel..."
Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr. was quoted in a web advertisement for The Weather Channel, part of the cable network's pushback in its battle against DirecTV's decision to replace the channel with WeatherNation on its satellite lineup. KJRH meteorologist George Flickinger posted a screenshot the ad on his Facebook page....
Memorial Day: Pvt. Albert W. Bates, 45th Division
Albert W. Bates was my grandfather's youngest brother, five years younger. He was drafted into the Army at age 20, served in the 157th Infantry Regiment of the 45th Division, the Thunderbirds. He is buried in Welch Cemetery near his parents and some of his siblings. From the Oklahoma War...
Down memory lane in Catoosa and around Tulsa
I've recently come across several Facebook pages designed for reminiscing about location-specific childhood memories, and since I started this post several more have sprung up. I've signed up for "You grew up in Catoosa if you remember.....". I never lived in the City of Catoosa, but Catoosa was more than...
Election 2010: Some happy reflections
I've got some thoughts but am too tired to articulate them in any detail right now, so here are a few bullet points: There's lots of reasons to rejoice, particularly in Oklahoma. Every statewide office in Oklahoma is in Republican hands, and they're all good hands, to boot. Given that...
The old paths: Historic Oklahoma USGS maps
My apologies for the lapse since my last post. I've been writing, but it's all technical stuff for the gig that pays most of the bills. While I was at the Coffee House on Cherry Street cranking away on that technical documentation, a customer at the next table, a gentleman...
Bad ice, high winds, heavy snow on their way
It's gonna be bad. Ice -- enough, with the forecast wind speeds, to cause significant power outages of the sort we had in December 2007 -- followed by lots of snow and single-digit temperatures. At least, that's what our local weatherfolk are predicting. Click the link to view a 7-minute...
Apollo 11 -- forty years ago
I was five years old, but I got to stay up late to watch the moon walk. We were at my grandparents' house in Nowata. My grandpa sold and repaired TVs, radios, and appliances (Johnny's Electronics), so he had a color TV. (We wouldn't have one for a few years...
Oklahoma railroad system maps, past and present
Too tired tonight to do much more than link. I've been working on a post about the Oklahoma City Union Station rail yard / I-40 relocation controversy, but it's not ready. For now, here are links to some maps and other information about the history of the state's rail network,...
The Thingamajig
I recently came across a funny little novelty song recorded by Johnnie Lee Wills and His Boys called "The Thingamajig." It seemed just the song for a rainy day of fix-it projects. It's much in the spirit of "Rag Mop," an novelty number from 1949 that was a hit for...
Early Oklahoma in the archives
Here are some interesting publications relating to early-day Oklahoma on the websites of the National Archives and the Internet Archive. The National Archives has an online sample of documents from their Center for Legislative Archives about Oklahoma's path to statehood including: Survey Map of Oklahoma and Indian Territory showing distances,...
Christmas 2008
Christmas 2008 so far: On the way to work the morning of the 24th, I spotted water flowing out from our street onto the nearest arterial. I doubled back and saw that the source a couple of springs emerging from cracks in the concrete. I called my wife, who called...
Greenwood's streetcar: The Sand Springs Railroad
In this week's issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly I wrote about the proposed look for the new downtown ballpark, and I mentioned the location's connection with two railroads and the Greenwood district: From the 1910s until sometime in the 1990s, the site was bisected by the M. K. & T....
The dance hall at Glenoak, Oklahoma
Along US 60, halfway between Bartlesville and Nowata, there are a pair of curves that shifts the road south by a mile as you go east. On the northside* of the road, near the western curve, there was a gas station and a few houses. Once upon a time, way...
Lobbying for self-pity
A few days ago on the linkblog, I linked to Brandon Dutcher's story of a surprising word of reassurance in the midst of tremendous stress, out of the blue in the middle of a sermon: "Who has chest pains?" he asked. "Stand up." I was somewhat taken aback, yet I...
Lessons from Mom and Dad
An edited version of this column appeared in the May 28, 2008, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is no longer available online. Posted online November 18, 2014. Philip Larkin wrote, in a poem with an unforgettable and unprintable first line, that parents "fill you up with the...
Show and <em>kvell</em>: That makes him holler
A little break from politics: Our littlest one turned two years old on Friday. His use of words has exploded in the last few months, although he mostly says the beginning sound of each word, which is adorable, of course. (That's him in the photo, during a visit to...
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