Oklahoma, Part 7

We trekked out to the Southern Plains Ranger Research Station, in Woodward, Oklahoma.

This is a botanical research facility, where staff members cross-breed various grasses and other plants, searching for new species that will feed more livestock using less water, or species that are resistance to diseases, or that meet other criteria.

We received a tour of the greenhouses and a description of the some of the research being conducted.

Above right is a test patch of one of the cross-bred plants. At left is a closer view of one of the parent plants in the greenhouse.


The next day, we left Weatherford and drove to Andarko, where the Native Americans outnumber everyone else. We visited two sites: the Southern Plains Indian Museum, and the National Hall of Fame of Famous American Indians.

The museum had one room of Plains Indian artifacts, crafts, clothing, and other items of daily use; the second room holds contemporary Native American paintings. Photography isn't permitted.

The artifacts are grouped by type: clothing, game equipment, tools, pouches/bags, etc. Items are labeled, and each display case gives general information about Plains Indian life in the 1800s.

The Hall of Fame is a set of sidewalk displays of sculpted busts. The subjects are Native Americans from all over the United States, who held various roles in their societies. Most of the honorees lived during the 1700s, 1800s, and 1900s; both men and women are included (more men than women).

The entire display is outdoors, and is free of charge. At left is the bust of Hiawatha.





At right is Hosteen Klah, Dineh (Navajo) medicine man.







At left is Alice Brown Davis, Seminole Chieftain.






After we finished in Andarko, we moved on to Lawton, Oklahoma, and experienced a first on this (or any other) trip. When we arrived at our hotel, we were told they didn't have a room for us. Apparently some of the military families had asked to extend their stay, with the result that the hotel had overbooked their available rooms. (It was also graduation time for local schools.) So the hotel called the local Quality Inn to book us rooms.

Whether this was fair or not can be argued, but the problem was that when we got to the Quality Inn, the only two rooms they had left were smoking rooms. I don't smoke; my parents don't smoke. The cigarette smoke smell was noticeable when we walked in.

The staff was certainly friendly and helpful -- one of the maintenance men carried my parents' suitcases and so on. However, it still was a difficult night to get through.

Oklahoma, Part 6

Visits to two museums that feature blasts from the past: one dedicated to singer/songwriter Roger Miller, and another celebrating the famous Route 66.

The Roger Miller Museum, located in Erick, Oklahoma, hosts a set of family photos, memorabilia, album covers, and items Miller owned before his death in 1992. (Biography here.) Several of his suits are on display. Miller is noted for tunes like "King of the Road," "My Boyfriend's Back," "Dang Me," "Do Wacka Do," and music from the Broadway show Big River, an adaptation of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

The woman running the museum was knowledgeable and friendly, and followed us around the room, relating stories about Miller's life and career. As with many museums, photos weren't permitted, so you'll have to follow the link provided to get an idea of the visuals.

From Erick, we moved on to the National Route 66 Museum. In addition to two buildings that deal with the people and vehicles that used the road (or were available to travelers/drivers at the time), there is an "Old Village" of buildings like the General Store, the doctor's clinic, a blacksmith's shop, etc. Also on the grounds are the Farm and Ranch Museum and the Pioneer Museum, which features displays on the history of Elk City through items owned by the locals.



At right and left are a set of cars, an airplane, and a fire truck featured in the Transportation Building. Visits can actually sit in many of the vehicles in this display.





Dad spent a lot of time in the Farm and Ranch Museum, and I took several pictures of the displays of tractors, hand tools, and old-time equipment like wind pumps and watering troughs.







Outside the blacksmith's shop, Mom noticed this metal tree made of horseshoes.




The Pioneer Museum featured many items from the 1800s, most of which were owned or produced in Elk City. The upstairs of the museum including displays of local cowboys and bull riders.



Other buildings in the Old Town section including the general store, banks, schoolhouse, and post office.





We finished off the day with dinner at The Pig Trough, a local bar-b-cue restaurant. The name may sound a bit funny, but the food was quite good and reasonably priced.

Yes, Toto, we are definitely not in... (Oklahoma Part 5)

We left Kansas behind (although we may well come back some day, as I don't think we've done the whole state yet), and returned to Oklahoma to visit the Oklahoma City Memorial. On April 19, 1995, a very angry and disturbed man name Timothy McVeigh parked a van in front of the Alfred E. Murrah Federal Building and exploded a bomb. The blast was felt up to 50 miles away. An enormous crater was blown in the front of the building, and the nine stories fell in on top of each other, killing 138 people, including 19 children in a daycare center. It was one of those things that changed the perceptions of the entire country.

Now, 15 years later, the event has been commemorated by a monument that is a full city block in size. It stands where the Murrah Building used to be. I'm going to post pictures and explain how each of them fits into the memorial has a whole.

The memorial is flanked by two large walls, as though the whole space were still inside a building. On the left wall, shown here, are the number 9:01. That was the time of the initial blast. We were fortunate enough to have a park ranger making a presentation on the memorial while we were there, and he explained that 9:01 was considered the moment when everyone's world was changed forever, even those people who weren't present or related in any way to anyone involved in the bombing.

The reflecting pool symbolizes the things around the site that were changed by the bombing. Visitors can walk down to the water, which is very shallow, and look into it, as all of us were changed in some way or another, even if this event is just history to us. People can also dip their hands into the water and mark their handprints on the walls, to symbolize their connectedness to the people who experienced the blast.

The center part of the memorial are rows of bronze chairs with glass sections around the legs. The lower portions of the chairs light up at night. The chairs are arranged in nine rows, to symbolize the nine floors of the Murrah Building. People's names appear on the chairs; the names are grouped by the floors on which the people would have been at the time of the blast. The largest concentration of chairs is in the middle, where the crater was blown in the building; the designer of the monument wanted to "fill in" the hole.

The wall on the right end of the monument has the numbers 9:03 carved into it. The ranger told us that this symbolized the moment when the healing began after the explosion, when rescue workers and concerned citizens rushed to scene to help find people and piece together what had happened.

People from all over the world submitted possible designs for the memorial. A committee narrowed the submissions down to five. The current memorial, sent by a firm in Germany, was unanimously chosen by the survivors and the families of those killed.

At right is a large elm tree that is not only part of the memorial, it was also part of the events of the bombing. It's called The Survivor Tree, and is around 100 years old. It was in a parking lot across the street from the blast. Pieces of debris are embedded in its trunk. At first, city officials were convinced that it would die from the inflicted damage, and the FBI wanted to cut it down and use the embedded debris as evidence. However, the tree miraculously grew leaves and proved to be very much alive. The people of Oklahoma City insisted that the tree be left standing, and be incorporated into the memorial. Immediately after the blast, it was surrounded by burning cars and other objects. It now has the best care of any tree in the United States.

Personnel, materials, and expressions of sympathy poured in from all over the country, and eventually from all over the world. Some of these expressions are still on display. The wall at right is covered in tiles sent by children and other people; many tiles have handprints or other things painted on them. A section of the chain link fence put up to section off the blast area has been saved and put up along the sidewalk outside the memorial; people still leave tokens of sympathy and commemoration on the fence.

The park is run by the National Park Service, although it is not a National Park. Nevertheless, I stepped into the gift shop and added a date stamp to my National Park Passport for this site.

Oklahoma, Part 4 (except we're really in Kansas....)

Before I get back to the Indian portion of this trip, I have to tell you about this odd little thing we're doing in restaurants. Well, actually, two odd little things we're doing. Some background: Every morning for the past several months, my parents have been going to the same restaurant for breakfast, and they have a favorite waitress. Before we left on this trip, she jotted the words "That's all she wrote" on a piece of place mat, and asked my parents to get as many waitstaff as possible to sign it. We've asked probably a dozen up to this point, on both the train and in restaurants, and none have said "No" yet.

In addition, I have discovered the "art" of dollar bill origami. (Well, money origami, really, as I have folded a few fives as well.) I've been handing these out as tips. Mom commented that since we're "out West" I should do boots, so I've altered a pattern in my instruction book to make things that look like cowboy boots (kind of). People seem really pleased by this, although they may just saying that to be polite. Anyway, it's been amusing, and I've gotten good enough to fold a boot out of a dollar bill without referring to my instructions.

There's a link here for a similar model if anyone wants to give it a shot. This is a YouTube video, and the steps are different from the ones I use. I'll be happy to teach people the method I learned if they ask.

This really has nothing to do with the fact that we're in Kansas for the next part of the trip, it's just trivia. We stopped in Arkansas City to visit the Cherokee Strip Land Rush Museum. Again, flash photography was not allowed inside the museum, so my pictures are pretty dim and few in number.

The Cherokee Indians had been given land in Oklahoma, as well as a path to their hunting grounds (the Cherokee Strip or the Cherokee Outlet). However, as is typical for U.S. government agreements with the Native Americans, when a lot of settlers wanted Indian land, the government found a way to give it to them.

In April of 1893, thousands of people had gathered in Arkansas City to wait for signal to move into Cherokee territory and claim a parcel. (An eyewitness account is posted here. More information on the land rush can be found here.) An estimated 100,000 people walked, rode horses, or drove horse-drawn vehicles into the area to stake a claim. (One of the wall displays note that before the news of the land rush was published, there were 5,ooo people living in Arkansas City. Just before the land rush began, Arkansas City's population rose to 150,000. Once the guns had sounded to begin the rush, the population plunged back to 5,000.)

In addition to artifacts from the time of the land rush (including an actual claim flag that settlers would plant on their property -- one of only two original flags in existence, a staff member told me), the museum hosts a display of various type of shoes used in Oklahoma history, and a section housing local non-land rush artifacts and historic items. Local theater companies also put on dramas in the museum at various times -- there is a stage and activity area set aside for this.

I don't have any photos to post this time around. As with many museums displaying actual historical objects, flash photography is discouraged (the light will eventually damage the items). The lighting was dim enough that most of my pictures came out rather dark.

I've mentioned the fact that we've been seeing a lot of school children on our travels. We had a busload here, too, and I wish I had gotten the name of the school to list here, because these were some of the best behaved kids I've ever seen. I said so to one of the teachers, who passed it on to her students.

Oklahoma, Part 3

And now, on to the cowboys.

After staying the night in the Will Rogers Inn (and having breakfast at Eggberts, which seems to be a regional or local chain), we headed up to the Will Rogers Memorial Museum. The museum is actually located in two buildings: the Museum itself, and the Will Rogers home in Oologah, Oklahoma, where Will was born.

At bit of background: Will Rogers was one of the people who defined "cowboy" and "The West" through movies, rodeo shows, and other media. He was born in 1879, never managed to finish a formal education, and made a name for himself with his riding and rope tricks as a young man. He started performing in vaudeville theaters, then signed on for the Broadway show Ziegfeld Follies in 1915. He went on to become a successful newspaper writer, a radio star, and an actor. In 1935 he and another man attempted to fly from Alaska to Russia, but crashed into a lake 15 miles from their intended pit stop.

When we pulled into the museum parking lot, the first thing we noticed were the three school buses parked at the far end. Sure enough, there seemed to be about five hundred kids from local elementary schools wandering around the museum displays (and, of course, the gift shop). They were reasonably well behaved, but of course, they're kids....

We did catch part of a live talk from one of the museum staff, who portrayed Will Rogers for the kids and did do several rope tricks as he talked. He also showed a black-and-white film Rogers had done, demonstrating a whole bunch of rope tricks using riders, horses, and other moving targets.

The museum rooms held a variety of items, including many saddles, part of Rogers' collection. (At left is Will Rogers' son's boyhood saddle.) He apparently picked these up all over the world; some seem to have been gifts.

One room had six display cases and a large mural. The cases represented one aspect of Rogers' career: his Broadway show, his newspaper work, his films, and his roping, among others. One whole room was a reproduction of his ranch in California. Rogers ended up owning the ranch on which he was born, but he also spent a fair amount of time in New York City and California. Below is a brief video of the ranch room. You can hear the schoolkids in the background.


After the museum, we drove out to the family farm, which consists of a house, a barn, an outhouse, and a lot of fencing. The caretakers have an assortment of animals on the farm, including a couple of donkeys and some goats.



The house, pictured at right. Rooms include bedrooms, a parlor, kitchen, and attic.






At left is the brand Rogers chose for his ranch and cattle. It's actually modeled after an object called a dog iron, which holds logs in the fireplace. Hence the name "Dog Iron Ranch". This picture was taken of the brand on the front steps of the house.




The barn was built using period techniques and materials. (The original was destroyed by wildfires, as were a couple of replacements.) Around 10,000 head of cattle live on the ranch at various times during the year, but only a few animals use the barn.





Continuing with our theme of "cowboys", we drove on to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and then over the Dewey, the home of the Tom Mix museum. (Official website can be found here.) Another rider and actor who helped define "The West", Mix starred in more than 300 films. He was born in northwestern Pennsylvania in 1880(the two people staffing the museum said at least two towns have been listed as his birthplace in various records) and moved to Oklahoma in 1909. Most of the display items belong to Mix at one time or another, and were saved by a friend after Mix's death in 1940 in an automobile accident (what is it with these cowboy icons dying in accidents?).

A few of Mix's movies are shown while the museum is open. We caught a 10-minute segment at a special showing, since the movies are shut off at 3:30 or so, and we were there a little after 4 p.m. Flash photography is discouraged in a lot of places like this, so I only have one shot of the building itself.

Outside Bartlesville is the Woolaroc Museum, which houses an enormous collection of Western art and Native American items. As usual, there were buses of schoolkids everywhere. The area was nice, and the collection was impressive, but we were kind of expecting a wildlife sanctuary, and got a game preserve instead. Apparently the owner, Oklahoma oilman Frank Phillips, imported a lot of exotic animals and they of course needed to be kept in fenced enclosures. The Phillips family lived here beginning in 1927.

The name "Woolaroc" comes from the woods, lakes and rocks that make up the ranch acreage. The lodge is pictured at right. Above are some of the local wildlife we happened to see.

I have mostly pictures of the grounds, as photos are discouraged inside the museum and lodge. So I'll leave you with a few photos, as I close out the cowboy section of the trip. For now....










(Currently reading: The Wild Road, by Gabriel King. It's not about the West, it's a fantasy novel about cats.)

Oklahoma, Part 2

People frequently ask where my family is going on our trips. This time, when they heard we were going to Oklahoma, I was asked, "What are you going to see there?"

"Mostly cowboys and Indians," I replied. People found that amusing, but it was true. Today, we started with the Indians.

Having avoided all tornado weather, at least temporarily, we headed off for our first round of sight-seeing -- the Cherokee Indian Heritage Center in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. This area features both a pre-Columbian reproduction of Cherokee life, and a village as it would have looked in the 1890s.

The Heritage Center, at right, is built on the site of one of the first "seminaries" for women west of the Mississippi. The three pillars at the right of the picture are all that's left of the original building, which burned down in 1887.

A very brief history: the Cherokee people originally had settled an area in Virginia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Kentucky before the 13 Colonies were founded. As the new United States expanded westward, the Cherokee and other tribes were forced to give up more and more of their land, until a final treaty required them to move west of the Mississippi River. There are currently several groups of Cherokee, including the group here in Oklahoma, another in North Carolina, and a third in Tennessee. The full-length history would take far too much space to relate here, but you can find some here.

Once transplanted, the Cherokee re-established their tribal identity and made a home for themselves in Oklahoma. This heritage center offers guided tours of the old village, some interpretive information on the newer village, and a display of tribal history and culture.

No pictures were allowed inside the museum, but we did get a tour of the old village. Apparently archaeology of the area is on-going, because our guide pointed out two new structures being built in a style that had just recently been unearthed through digging. The architecture differs from other buildings in the village, as you'll see. Right now the two new buildings are just in the foundation stage, but will be finished in the same manner as the rest of the village.

Once the walls are built, clay/mud is added, and fires are set both inside and outside the building to harden the walls. This prevents the walls from washing away in the rain.

At left are samples of spear and arrow points made of flint. We actually had a couple of people doing what's known as "flint-knapping", chipping and pressing flakes of stone away to produce the final products. Different sizes and styles of points were used for different tasks, including hunting, warfare, scraping hides, and so on.

At left are a set of turtle shell rattles that women would have worn during ceremonial dancing. This, believe it or not, is a small set for a girl; a larger, heavier set would have been appropriate for a grown woman.


At left (in front) is a small canoe. The real thing would have been about 20+ feet long and able to hold two dozen men. It would be made from a whole tree, which would be felled and hollowed out by burning the center and cutting it out with axes and other tools. The canoe was pointed on both ends for easier river navigation; with something that long, the rowers didn't turn it around at the end of the journey, they just reversed their own positions and paddled it "backwards".

Pottery, as seen at right, came in various sizes, and was produced in two ways -- as pinch pots or as coiled pieces. Pinch pots started with a ball of clay. A portion of the center was hollowed out with a thumb or finger, and then the clay was manipulated by pinching it between the fingers until a bowl or cup shape was formed. Pottery done this way had a limited size.

Coiled pots had a flat bottom. More clay was then rolled into a rope or "snake" shape, and this was then coiled around on top of the flat piece. The potter stopped after two or three coils to let the clay dry; otherwise the weight would cause the clay to collapse into the pot.

After the pots were finished, they were fired slowly in a process that moved them from the edge of a fire into its center. They had to be heated and cooled slowly to prevent cracking.

From the old village, we moved into the newer one, called Adams Corner. At left are a weaver's house (right side of picture) and a church or chapel. The Cherokee are one of the few Native Americans who have their own written language, developed by Sequoyah in 1821. (If you want to see and hear the letters, click here.) A number of books, especially the Bible and various hymns, were translated into the Cherokee language. There's even a version of the Lord's Prayer.

In the schoolhouse, I found a set of blackboards. One had the Cherokee alphabet painted at the top (just like those alphabets we had at the top of the blackboard when I was in school, except, of course, ours were in English), and a section written in both English and Cherokee (at right).

At left is a cabin and a smokehouse (right side of picture). Apparently the staff of the village has smoked meat successfully in this building. Smoking and salting meat were two preservation methods that kept meat available all year round.




Blacksmith's shop at right.


After finishing at the Heritage Center, we returned to the hotel to retrieve Dad's cane (left behind accidentally) and then proceeded to Claremore to visit Totem Pole Park.

Having seen a couple of totem pole parks in Alaska, to my mind, this is not a totem pole. It's made of concrete, not wood, the symbols don't resemble Northwest Coast art to any great extent, and the colors are all over the place. The Northwest Coast people carved totem poles for a variety of reasons, and this one doesn't seem to fit any of them. This park is, however, a historic site, as it was one of many scenic attractions along Route 66.

The totem pole and other sculptures were created by Ed Galloway, beginning in 1937 and continuing on for the next 11 years. The park also includes an arrowhead, a tree, several tables and seats, and a gift shop building. There's no entrance fee, although donations are accepted.

We were there around 4 p.m., so there were no crowds. It's a small park, but the area is pleasant. We had a tough time getting any kind of listing for Totem Pole Park on our GPS, but one resident of Claremore pointed us in the right direction, and there were signs along Route 66 to point the way.

I'll leave this entry with a few other pictures of the park. Remember my opening comment about cowboys and Indians? Tomorrow we get to the cowboys.





(Currently reading: Little Women and Werewolves, by Louisa May Alcott and Porter Grand. Yes, really.)

Oklahoma, Part I

My feet are soaked to the knees, there are reports of thunderstorms to our south, and a tornado (or five) appear to have touched down to our north. Greetings on our first night of vacation in Oklahoma!

We're currently in Muskogee (yes, the one in the Merle Haggard song, that Muskogee), at the Fairfield Inn, and the weather reports have Dad rather nervous. He's been concerned about the possibility of tornadoes since we decided to travel here, and a couple of places to the north of us (Henryetta, among others) appear to have seen the right conditions for a twister. Nothing like that here, thankfully -- just a lot of rain, heavy for a while, and flat dark clouds.

Prior to this, however, we left Syracuse Saturday evening a couple hours later than scheduled (not unusual for that segment of Amtrak, unfortunately). However, whether because of work on the tracks, or new cars for the train, or some other reason, this was the smoothest ride I've ever had on the train. I actually slept most of the night, which was a wonder in itself. Also, the late arrival in Chicago meant we only had a two-hour wait for our connection to Longview, Texas.

The ride to Texas wasn't nearly as smooth, but we arrived safely and on time, got our rental car, and made our way north. For this trip, we are testing out a new GPS unit (which I have nicknamed "Ethyl", for no particular reason), and which has worked pretty well the first day. This should make it easier to navigate, since it gives both verbal instructions and an on-going "movie" of our drive from Point A to Point B. (It does tend to gripe when we pull off exits to find restrooms, though....)

Aside from a lot of scenery, we haven't seen much worth mentioning, although we did pass the Muskogee Public Library (complete with statue of a large guitar in the front yard -- yeah, that song is a real big deal here). We are off tomorrow to visit a local Native American village and cultural center. Hopefully photos will appear then.