Oklahoma Strong

I might have mentioned I come from a Small Town World. 😉

One of my favorite things about our STW (besides the people) is the brick streets. RED brick streets. And they’re be-yoo-tiful!

 I found this picture online, I didn’t take it. 🙂 It’s shot from the middle of the street, right in front of my office, looking north. Notice, the street in this picture is dirt.

Also notice the street light on the righthand side. I wish we had street lights like that today! They’re gorgeous, too!

At some point, someone started a brickyard near C-Town on Jobo road. (Not to be confused with Jodebo Road.) This is NOT a picture of that brickyard. This one is near Round Pond. (I have no idea where Round Pond is. But they had COOL wheelbarrows!)

Apparently, having your own brickyard makes bricks fairly inexpensive. So the town fathers decided to pave our streets with . . . you guessed it. Bricks.

 I didn’t take this picture, either, but it’s taken from about the same place as the one with the dirt road–the middle of the street in front of my office, looking north.

Several of our neighborhood streets are still brick. I love those streets. They aren’t perfect, they’re no fun to roller skate on, and riding a bike on them will loosen your teeth,  but brick streets have a charm you don’t get with tarmac.

Of course, some of the bricks in the streets are cracked, some are broken and some are missing. Some bricks have faded with time and others have been stained by a lot of things I don’t want to know about. But they’re durible, made to last, and strong.

And they’re beautiful!

Sadly Broadway, now a state highway, no longer has a brick surface. And under Broadway, we still have the waterline that was laid many, many years ago. That line sometimes has a leak that has to be fixed.

And guess what waits under that street . . .

You guessed it. That beautiful, durible, hard working brick.

Oklahoma Strong.

You Might be from a Small Town World . . .

 –if you’re related to more than half the town.

 –if your car breaks down outside of town and news of it gets back to town before you do.

–if the local gas station sells live bait.

–if you know cow pies aren’t made of beef.

–if football coaches suggest that you haul hay for the summer to get stronger.

I have a real love for Small Town jokes. Kind of like a blonde who grooves on blonde jokes, I guess. Since they don’t have brunette jokes, I’ve adopted these. 

I posted this one on Facebook yesterday–You might be from a Small Town World if you ever used to “drag main.”— and it brought back so many memories and lots of smiles!

I hardly ever dragged main. Whenever I went anywhere in high school, one or the other of my parents (or both) always said, “Go straight there and come straight home.”

In other words, “No dragging main.”
And no side trips.
And no hanging out.
And no parking on South Hill to make out.

*sigh* My parents didn’t want me to have any fun. 

Funny thing is, I nearly always obeyed. Not just because I lived in a small town and knew my parents would find out anything I did before I got home. (Probably before I was finished doing it.) And not because I was afraid of being punished.

It was because I didn’t want to have my parents disappointed in me. (Yes, I was that big a dork.)

Mom opened a dress shop while I was at Ozark, and I loved it. A few years later I started running it for her.

The schools in C-Town had an open campus at that time, and most kids either had a car or a friend with a car, so at noon the marjority of the kids dragged main.

Every school day there was an almost constant symphony of horn-honks (had to say hi!) for the entire time school was out for lunch, and turning onto Broadway, where our dress shop was located, which was also the most highly dragged street, was nearly impossible.

The kids burned hundreds of gallons of gas as they went back and forth on the drag. It was so much fun! LOL.

You might be from a Small Town World if the whole school went to the same party after graduation.

Okay, I didn’t go to a party after graduation (yup, a dork) but if I had, there probably only would have been one.

How about sharing your favorite joke? And no naughty ones, please. I’m still a dork. 😉

Our Small Town

This is the picture I posted last time. It’s a section of a postcard, postmarked 1907.

You can still see the postmark–1907. The year Oklahoma became a state. If you’re wondering, that’s a one cent stamp up there in the corner. A 1902 series.

Here’s the entire postcard–

The rock building on the left is still there today. The sign on it says Gent’s Furnishings–men’s clothes. I believe a family named Martin owned it. Looking closely, I can see R-T-I-N painted on the rock at the extreme left edge of the picture.  

From the angle of the picture, it looks as if it was shot from the corner where my office stands today. That’s another very old building there in C-Town.

I’ve been told that our building was originally a funeral parlor. Kind of an eerie thought (for me, at least.) I’ve been in and out of the place most of my life (it was a furniture store when I was growing up) and I’ve never seen any sign of it’s original purpose.

Of course, I lived in Pryor Creek when they did the renovation to make it our office. My bil, Noel, worked on it, though. I should probably ask him if they found any strange drains, vaults or odd body parts. 😉

It’s hard to tell what everything is in the picture, so I got out a handy dandy magnifier.

I don’t know what it is, but it’s very nice to have sometimes. It’s very strong.

I looked through it at the postcard so I could see small details. There are three oil derricks in the picture. (Derricks in those days were left as a permanent part of the well, I think, so they could pull the well–take the pump and rods/tubing out–when there were problems. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.)

The streets of C-Town were all dirt at that time. Imagine what it was like during rainy days. No fun at all! We think we have trouble keeping mud and oil off the carpet  today, but imagine it then. LOL.

Someone had a brick plant outside of C-Town, so at some point, Broadway and many of the side streets were paved with brick. I’ve seen a picture (somewhere–probably in the tag office) of the men laying that brick. Broadway’s brick has since been paved over, but the beautiful side streets are still brownish red bricks. One of my many favorite things about our Small Town World.