A childhood memory
When I was young, one of my absolute favorite things was visiting my grandparents.
My paternal grandmother, Stella Young, and my maternal grandparents, Dewey and Audrie Bennett, both lived on SE 21 Street. Lightning Creek separated them.
It was so much fun for a little girl to walk down to the foot bridge that spanned the creek. Not only could I visit my grandparents but I could cross the creek and look down and see all of what now would be just cast-off trash, but then was treasure, just out of reach.
Imagine my surprise when, looking for something else in The Oklahoman’s archive, I stumbled across a photograph of the very foot bridge I remembered from my childhood.
Something new in the way of bridges was swung into place across Lightning creek in Capitol Hill Tuesday when the city's home-made bridge was set up on Twenty-first street. - Copy of photograph published in The Oklahoman.
The story published March 8, 1944, tells the story of “my bridge.”
The original bridge across Lightning Creek had been destroyed earlier in the year by a tornado. With the war still ongoing, steel was unavailable, so the mother of invention took over.
“With steel for a modern bridge unavailable at this time, W. J. Booth, superintendent of the municipal garage, gathered up some salvage pipe from the Bluff creek project, welded them together, applied a new coat of paint and brought out a bridge.”
“Two men, working 10 days in the city garage, whipped out the structure at a total cost of $125 for a welding rod and material.”
The story goes on to say, “A total of 1,500 feet of pipe was used in constructing the 75-foot bridge. It is five feet, nine inches wide. A wooden flooring will be added.”
I remember the big wooden planks that made the floor of the bridge and provided my aunts, uncles and mother a shortcut to school.
The bridge is no longer there, probably a victim of the flood control measures to keep Lightning Creek in its banks.
The street is not the street I remember of houses and people. Most of the houses are gone now, but I can close my eyes and see that little girl holding her daddy’s hand walking across the old bridge.
Mary Phillips
mphillips@opubco.com
“Oklahoma City’s peripatetic meetin’ house”
I will admit that when I came across the headline above, that appeared in The Oklahoman for August 22, 1909, I wasn’t completely sure what peripatetic meant. But after reading the story I understood the defintion from Merriam-Webster Online: “movement or journeys hither and thither.”
“When a man named Jackson built a little frame chapel at the corner of Broadway and Noble avenue (now SW 3rd street) in 1899, he little dreamed what its influence was to be on the religious history and development of Oklahoma City.
“The little chapel was built originally for the use of the Salvation Army, but was later acquired by the Baptists of the city and in 1902 was removed to Washington avenue (now SW 2nd street) and Walker avenue. Here it was used by the Washington avenue Baptist Church for about six months, that now flourishing congregation being organized there. In 1903 it was removed to Capitol Hll. In it the Capitol Hill Baptist Church was organized and it was the only home of that organization for the next two years. Then, in 1905, the First Baptist Church bought the building and placed it on the corner of East Fifth and Phillips streets. It was used for a mission Sunday school in the Maywood district, under the supervision of Dr. H. Coulter Todd for the next year. In 1906 it was again removed to East Ninth and Phillips streets, where it was again used for a mission Sunday school under the supervision of G.N. Longfellow.
“On October 24, 1907, the little chapel was acquired by the Immanuel Baptist church, which was the third and last Baptist congregation to be organized within its walls. The Immanuel Baptist church then had but twenty members, but they were “game” and bought the building and lots for $1,367. That night the Rev. Forrest Maddox was called from the Portland Avenue Baptist church at Louisville, Ky., to the pastorate for the little new church in Oklahoma City. The Rev. Maddox proved to be a hustler. He got the Baptist state board interested and it helped out financially. The little chapel was torn down and a new temple built last year with a seating capacity of 700. The church has grown from twenty persons to a congregation of 169. The Immanuel Baptist church also owns a mission at the corner of Kelham avenue and East Fourteenth street, and its total property is worth over $7,500.
“The little church was moved about so often during the days of its existence that among the church people of the city it came to be known as “the peripatetic meeting house.”
Of the churches mentioned, the Salvation Army is still a force in Oklahoma City as is the First Baptist and Capitol Hill Baptist churches. Immanuel Baptist and the Washington Avenue Baptist Church which became the Second Baptist Church are no longer in existence.
Meet Mr. Robinson
If you go downtown, at some point you will probably find yourself on Robinson Avenue. It certainly is one of Oklahoma City’s oldest streets.
A story published in The Oklahoman July 16, 1972, reported, “The morning of April 23, 1889, surveyors set up tripods and squinted through the transits. The links of surveyor chain clanked as Robinson Avenue was surveyed from Reno Road through South Oklahoma toward the North Canadian River. Marching north from Reno at Second Street, the Oklahoma Station surveyors hiked up the old Boomer ‘blue hill’ painted and perfumed by a carpet of wild violets in bloom, and Robinson Avenue stopped at a homesteader’s claim at Seventh Street. ”
“Robinson Avenue began as a dusty or muddy road, depending on the weather, a mile and a quarter long through the townsite of Oklahoma , and South Oklahoma.”
But who was it named for? A Vermonter and a man who never was a resident of Oklahoma or Oklahoma City, Albert Alonzo Robinson. Born in 1844 and raised on the edge of the Wisconsin frontier, he graduated from the University of Michigan in 1869 and began his career as a surveyor’s axeman (the man who cleared the way for the surveyor). By 1886, he was the newly promoted chief engineer for the Santa Fe railroad, and Santa Fe had obtained a federal charter to build the railroad across the Cherokee outlet and Oklahoma lands, working south from Arkansas City to what would become Purcell in the Chickasaw Nation. They started in September 1886, and by February 1887 they were at Deer Creek, OK. Many of the railroad employees were Boomers, those who settled Oklahoma Territory legally. They recognized that the railroad building was a “double blessing,” it provided a good living and kept them near the land they hoped to homestead.
The charter had a deadline of April 20, and it looked like the tracklayers had no chance to meet it.
The government sent a marshal to serve a writ on the railroad, but they didn’t reckon with Mr. Robinson. He sent his chief clerk to take over, and while he laid track and avoided the marshal, Robinson ignored all the messages to cease construction. On April 26, the tired marshal rode in to the railroad camp and told Curtis he was there to serve the writ because the work was not finished.
Curtis said, “The track is all finished, look for yourself.” The marshal agreed.
“That was the last Robinson and the Santa Fe heard of the federal writ. Old Boomers slapped each other on the back about how Robinson had saved the railroad for Oklahoma country.” The famous photograph of the Run of ‘89 shows some of the settlers arriving by train on the track that Albert Robinson made sure was laid.
During his 22-year career with Santa Fe, Albert Robinson was responsible for building more than 5,000 miles of track, the bridge over the Royal Gorge and rising to vice president of Santa Fe. When he retired as president of Mexican Central, he returned to Topeka, KS, and died in 1918.
It’s been 120 years since Robinson Avenue was surveyed and named for the Boomers’ friend, Albert Alonzo Robinson, but it is fitting that Oklahoma City’s “main street” is named for the man who made sure the railroad made it to Oklahoma.
Note: Some of Robinson’s biographical information was obtained from Internet biographies.
Two Halloween stories
Halloween is almost here!
Here are two stories from The Oklahoman just 10 years apart that show how the celebration of Halloween has changed. You’ll notice neither one mentions candy.
From Nov. 12, 1912:
97 POLICE CALLS FOR HALLOWE’EN
Old Pa Oklahoma City, robbed of half his fences and gate posts, disgruntled after a sleepless night and by no means pleased with the prospect of undergoing a thorough cleaning, is feeling the morning after effects of Hallowe’en today. The youngsters demonstrated to the satisfaction of everyone, including the police, that though Hallowe’en may gradually be losing it significance, the years detract nothing from its violence.
Of the ninety-seven calls answered by the police between 6 o’clock and midnight, more than half were for vandals attempting to destroy property. A few rowdy gangs were broken up by the police. Masqueraders and boys enjoying innocent fun were not molested.
This one is from Nov 1, 1922. Notice the difference in the pranks and the nostalgic comment at the end.
RAIN FAILS TO HALT HALLOWE’EN PRANKS
Auto Placed on Front Porch; Tracks Greased
Not even the steady downpour of rain could keep Oklahoma City boys at home in bed Tuesday night. Some of them wandered up and down Broadway marking up windows with shaving soap. On one prominent drug store they placed the label “soup house.” On the window of an art shop they wrote “see the wild women.” The picture in question was an interpretation of spring by two women dancers.
Out in Capitol Hill they greased the streetcar tracks, to the consternation of motormen. On East Eleventh street they placed sewer pipe crossways of the street, nearly causing serveral automobile accidents.
Chicken houses were turned over and some were placed in the middle of Classen boulevard, near Seventeenth street. An electric automobile was placed on the porch of a house in the 1770 block on West Eleventh. Its owner has not yet been found.
Several boys were brought to the police station but were turned loose and warned to have a good time but not to destroy any property.
“Gosh! I’ll be glad when this night is over , ” said one of the policemen.
The full shift of police was on duty, and extras had been engaged for the night, police officials said.
No wanton destruction of property was reported. although pranks were many and varied. Citizens who had not made fast porch chairs, swings, rockers, cans, flower pots, or anything else movable, will wake up Wednesday morning to find things topsy turvy.
“Nothing like old times,” was the comment of the older generation Tuesday night.
Watch out for the ghosties and goblins, and have a safe and Happy Halloween.
mphillips@opubco.com
Amelia and her autogiro
It’s hard to miss the advertisements touting the new movie “Amelia” about pioneer woman pilot, Amelia Earhart but in the summer of 1931 Oklahomans saw the real thing.
On June 14, 1931, the Oklahoma Publishing Company arranged to have Amelia Earhart, piloting her autogiro, appear in an aerial circus at the fairgrounds to benefit the Milk and Ice Fund for undernourished and poor children.
12,000 people, my daddy included, saw Amelia flythat day. It was one of the largest crowds to see her autogiro tour of the U.S.
The newspaper described the show:
Amelia Earhart seated in the cockpit of autogiro. - From The Oklahoman Archives
Miss Earhart’s appearance, an accidental piece of showmanship, came just as the moment the crowd was letting down from the opening round of thrills. Circling the field several times, one of America’s premiere aviatrices brought the strange craft down for a beautiful landing, stopping within a few yards of the point where the wheels struck the ground.
The entire program was broadcast over WKY, Oklahoman, Times and Farmer Stockman radio station and preceding the appearance of the “backyard flying machine,” a description of the ship was broadcast. Miss Earhart, after her landing spoke briefly to the enthusiastically cheering crowd.
After her take-off, she brought the machine almost to a standstill over the field and circled a dozen times before dropping down and taking off again. Her piloting was perfect and the landings and take-offs a splendid example of the possibilities of the autogiro with its revolving wing surface.
In an editorial published June 5, 1931, The Oklahoman described the autogiro:
The autogiro is fundamentally a heavier-than-air craft, deriving its lift from the rotary movement through the air of its supporting surfaces. It differs primarily from airplanes in that its supporting surface or blades are free to move at a speed independent of the machine as a whole, thereby introducing flying characteristics hitherto impossible of accomplishment. It can take off at a low speed after a very short run and immediately assume a sharp angle of climb, can fly at either high or low speeds, and can momentarily be brought to a standstill in the air. It is capable of vertical descent at a velocity slower than one descends in a parachute. The descent is perfectly stable because of its pendular stability without oscillation, and it is so balanced that it can also be made to glide “nose down” like an airplane by a forward motion of the control. As a result of these characteristics little skill is required to finally land with virtually no forward speed and with a shock so slight as to be easily absorbed by the landing gear.
“Flying windmill” seemed to describe it fairly well, as it looked like an airplane with a helicopter’s rotor on the top.
On December 19, 1930, Amelia Earhart become the first woman autogiro pilot and she set an altitude record of over 18,000 feet.
The Milk and Ice Fund profited $3,640.29 and that June Sunday Miss Amelia Earhart had left her mark on Oklahoma City.
Dark tribute paid
On Monday Oct. 19, 1931, newspapers were announcing the death of inventor Thomas Alva Edison.
For several days the events of his life and accomplishments were reported.
Thomas Alva Edison. - Photograph provided to The Oklahoman.
On October 21, the 52nd anniversary of his perfection of the incandescent lightbulb, Edison was buried and at the request of President Herbert Hoover, a national tribute was paid by businesses and individuals dimming their lights from 9:00 p.m to 9:01 p.m.
Oklahoma City took part as was reported on Oct. 22, 1931 in The Oklahoman.
LIGHTS BLINK FAREWELL TO AGED INVENTOR
Darkness Shrouds Streets As City Pays Edison Last Tribute.
Darkness shrouded the downtown Oklahoma City from 9 to 9:01 o’clock Wednesday night as thousands paused in respect to Thomas Alva Edison.
From end to end of Main street on Broadway, First street and Robinson avenue, lights were extinguished in places of businesss, signs and street lamps.
Theater Lights Out
Theaters doused their glaring arcades and the great beacon and silhouette lights atop the First National Bank building were turned out.
Traffic at downtown corners was halted for the minute, when red-and-green signal lights were turned out. Impatient and forgetful mortorists sounded long blasts on horns, before being released by the lights.
During the day flags at schools were at half mast and in some classrooms short memorial services were held. Flags on utility company offices and plant buildings also were lowered at the hour of the funeral.
Firm closes offices
Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. offices were closed at 4 0′clock to permit employes to attend a memorial service in the Shrine auditorium.
J.S. Ross, attorney, lauded Edison and his work in a brief address. Invocation was by Rev. F.E.C. Haas, pastor of the German Lutheran church and president of the Ministerial alliance.
Music was by the company quartest and Byrne Gerhart, baritone.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 will mark the 130 anniversary of Thomas Alva Edison’s electric light.
Pause and remember the great man who gave us light and the electrical generating plants that provide power for our lives today.
An alternate view
Here’s a story published in The Oklahoman April 22, 1909 about the creation of Oklahoma City in 1899. I had never heard this version.
O(scar) A. Mitscher was an eighty-niner, the second mayor of Oklahoma City, a mercantile business owner and early day civic citizen. Here is his version of the settling of Oklahoma City.
Few, or comparatively few, of the present day Oklahoma citizens know that Oklahoma City the magnificint new state metropolis, rests upon the the ruins of a despoiled town, upon the wrecked hopes and homes of artisans and artificers whose long unquestioned right to the ground, succumbed to the white man’s might, whose hearth fires were ruthlessly trampled and scattered to the four winds, whose title to the land in which their townwas built, crumbled and toppled like the title of the wild horse, the buffalo and the cow boy; yea verily, a town existed here ahead of theis present magnificent city; the inhabitants of which were well organized in civic and civil community, peacefull and law abiding. Their police officers stood sentinel vigilantly heeding the coming and going of coyotes, cow boys, crows, owls and bats, their friends and foes, quick to welcome the former and evade the latter. The town true, was not as large as present Oklahoma City, neither had it the sky-scrapers, but the mounds , spires, avenue, and streets were readily discernible , and easily found near the present site of the Oklahoma Mill and Elavator Co.
The quiet and peace of this town sustained a shock on April 22, 1889, from which it never recovered. the advent of thousands and thousands of home seekers sent these poor rodents scurrying, not unlike the antics of the present day occupants when God in his majesty sent a black cloud through the heavens. This devastation of homes, firesides, and demolition of families, rendered all homeless, and made many orphans.
One day one of these poor homeless creatures harassed and harried lost from his fellows, blindly timorous and paralyzed with fright came running into my store, 307 Grand Avenue, surrendering his freedom, no doubt , with similar feeling experienced by man when in the act of committing self-destruction. The mental agony may have not have been quite so poignant, but the heartbeats were fully as wild and tumultuous.
A prairie dog. - The Oklahoman Archives
The little fellows’ appearance indicated unusual intelligence and respectability. It is therefore my belief that he must have held a prominent place in the social and political life of Prairie Dog Town.
He might have been a teacher in morality and dogmas, his whining and short sharp sentences while no doubt couched in choice Prairie Dog rhetoric were entirely uninteligable to me, but assuming that he was but human or at least not more than human, I knew the text of his discourse was either one of three subjects: first an appeal for something to eat; or second an appeal for rest, or third: an appeal for freedom, and restoration to his kind. Food he refused, rest he did not seem to want, hence freedom, for which more blood has been spilled than all else combined, being the topic of his pathetic appeal, naturally found response in the heart of a free American citizen.
Carefully providing for his comfort and safety , and providing myself with a conveyance, I made a trip to the flat just beyond Dead Man’s Crossing (NW 10th, south of Lake Overholser), about 12 miles west of the city, where all old timers will remember was a mammoth Prairie Dog Town, and there restored my little fugitive to his kinfolks.
This story having already exceeded my alloted space I must decline to tell what the Praire Dog said as I released him.
It was just a shivaree.
This reminiscence of Mrs. M.C. Milner, an early day settler of Oklahoma City was published in The Oklahoman Feb.7, 1937.
On a night early in the 1890’s, Oklahoma City had a very harrowing experience indeed.
People from the north part of town started dashing Paul Revere-like through the streets, gathering the women and children up before them.
“The Cheyennes and Arapahos are off the reservation!” the cry went up. “To the hills men–the dam has broken” would not have been a more fearsome warning. Sure enough, bearing down from the northwest could be heard an unholy din and shrieking and commotion.
“But sure enough it wasn’t the Indians after all–it was just a ’shivaree’ party, coming in from somewhere out in the country,” explained Mrs. Milner.
“Charivaris–or just plain shivarees– of a somewhat violent nature, were just part of the general atmosphere of anything-can-happen in which early-timers here moved,” Mrs. Milner said.
Another version was reported in the newspaper on April 18, 1937.
It said that the Charles Pigler family, homesteaders living about 10 miles west of the city near Bethany “saw glaring lights to the northwest and heard what they believed to be the war cries of Indians. Riding by different routes to warn the city residents, these boomer Paul Reveres came in on Twenty-third street, road the Tenth street road and Reno avenue, crying: “To arms!”
The hardware store was opened and all the guns sold. Women and children took refuge in the brick house at 205 Northwest Fifth street (where the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial now stands) and the men stood ready to fend off the attack.
“But the glaring lights turned out to be a prairie fire and the cries the Piglers heard had been a charivari. Everybody felt pretty sheepish when they found it out”
Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary’s definition for shivaree is “a mock serenade with kettles, pans, horns and other noisemakers given for a newly married couple; charivari.”
A shivaree was part of the play “Oklahoma!” celebrating the marriage of Laurie and Curly.
Mary Phillips
Wrong way Zeppelin
On a summer’s night in August 1929, the eyes of Oklahoma were directed skyward in hopes of glimpsing the Graf Zeppelin, Germany’s great airship, as it was completing a round-the-world flight.
Oklahoma’s U.S. Senator Elmer Thomas, along with Stanley Draper, manager of the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, and former congressman E. B. Howard, had extended a formal invitation for the Zeppelin to visit Oklahoma City enroute to Lakehurst, N.J. The State Chamber of Commerce sent an invitation on behalf of 237 local chambers saying ”that a decision to pass over Oklahoma would add impetus to aviation in the state that has progressed more rapidly than any other of the United States.”
The Zeppelin, while it could be steered, was still subject to the whims of the wind, and when it arrived at Oklahoma’s borders on Aug. 28, 1929, the wind and its crew sent it to the northeast, bypassing Oklahoma City.
The Oklahoman reported on Aug. 29, 1929, ”at least a dozen towns in Oklahoma got a glimpse of the Zeppelin. Entering the state in southwestern Beckham county, the big ship flew over Carter, Elk City, Clinton, Arapaho, Thomas, Watonga, Kingfisher, Hennessey, Perry, Mulhall, Ponca City and Fairfax” before it left Oklahoma headed for Kansas City.
When it was realized that the Zeppelin would miss Oklahoma City, an Oklahoman reporter and staff photographer took
This photograph, copied from The Oklahoman, shows the Graf Zeppelin as it flew over the Osage Hills in Oklahoma. It was taken from an airplane by Roy Sisk, Oklahoman staff photographer.
an airplane and caught up with the Graf Zeppelin near Fairfax. WKY radio fielded calls from all over the area and distributed the “best information available” to its listeners.
In a story published Sept. 6, 1929, W.B. Estes, general manager of the State Chamber of Commerce, received a letter from Dr. Hugo Eckener, commander of the Graf Zeppelin, in which he admitted, “I was lost, but then I was lost since we left Los Angeles two hours behind.” He said he had tried to maintain a course that would lead him over Oklahoma City, and he thought he was circling El Reno on the morning of the 28th, with a wide enough circle that those watching in the city would catch a glimpse, when actually he was over Perry, Marshall and Mulhall.
In his letter, he expressed his delight over a telegram Estes had sent him in German, telling him that “2,000,000 persons in Oklahoma hoped to see him.”
Local aviators were inspired by the flight as indicated by this statement from the Nov. 15, 1987, newspaper report: “Post (our Wiley Post, of course) like other Oklahomans watched from the ground in 1929 when Germany’s Graf Zeppelin flew over the Sooner state in 1929 on its way to a record voyage around the world in 21 days. With navigator Harold Gatty, Post flew the Winnie Mae from New York’s Roosevelt Field June 23, 1931, landing eight days, 15 hours, 51 minutes later with a new round-the-world record.”
The Graf Zeppelin was grounded in 1937 after the explosion of the Zeppelin Hindenburg and in 1939 an explosion attibuted to the Nazis destroyed the Zeppelin and the hangar where it was stored.
Mary Phillips
mphillips@opubco.com
Just for fun
From 1906 to 1913, The Oklahoman published a column called “New State Notes.” It consisted of several short items from state newspapers. The reporter who wrote these probably gleaned them from other newspapers, but he had a knack for the humorous. These items were published in the September 22, 1909 newspaper. Read and enjoy!
Mayor Steel of Cordell asserts that during July and August he was the happiest man in his town, for the reason he says, that his pastor, Sunday school superintendent, the city marshal, his wife and his mother-in-law were out of town at the same time.
A Woods county farmer shipped a carload of chickens to New York and by the time they arrived enough eggs had been laid to pay the freight. This recalls the old story of the hen that laid an egg for Beecher after he had saved her life when she was a mere chicken, wet bedraggled and half frozen by the roadside. The story ends thus: “And in this way did the Henry Ward Beecher.”
An Alfalfa county merchant closed out his stock of goods and failed to give his family any of the money, whereupon his wife had him arrested on the charge of embezzlement.
Bootleggers in Custer county have removed Judge Lattimer from the bench ten times but he retains his regard for the bench and proclaims his willingness to sit on the carcass of any bootlegger in the county. The indications are that Judge Lattimer has not treated the bootlegger fair, according to their ideas of fairness.
About the next thing you hear from Oktaha will be an announcement from the editor of the Leader and the next issue of his paper will be edited as Christ would edit it. The Rev. Mr. Frazier is one of the typo(grapher)s on that journal and the Rev. A.M. Beman was the first paid subscriber.
Governor Donaghey of Arkansas once lived in a tent in Sayre. He was townsite promoter for the Choctaw railroad at that time. Senator Jeff Davis of Arkansas used to have a duck hunt in Beckham county and occasionally he came into Sayre. Once while there he was told that Donaghey lived down the street in a tent. “Keep him here, ” said the budding senator, “Arkansas can do without him.
It looked for a time like the Beggs fair was going to be a dry affair, owing to the scarcity of water, but the asssociation drilled a well 260 feet deeep and found 140 feet of water. Thus was removed any excuse for other wet goods.
Mary Phillips
