Statue of Liberty, Lindsay Style! :-)

We are back in the metropolis of Lindsay, Oklahoma! 


Tuesday, July 3rd I headed back to the Griffith Sports Complex for what would be the Owls last game of the season.  :-(  They played GREAT though!!  Awesome way to end the season!


On this particular day I had Richard Eugene along as an adventure partner so on the way we stopped for pictures at the little Statue of Liberty.  I had tried to get a picture when I was on the way out of Lindsay the night before and managed to get a odd, crooked picture from the car window as I zoomed by.


Growing up we went through Lindsay quite often for several years.  Before Grandma moved to Chickasha she had lived on Jefferson Street in Pauls Valley for a time - the logic being that it was a good mid-way point between her grandchildren.  (That didn't last, though, and a couple of years later she moved to Southgate in Chickasha.)  She made a friend while in Pauls Valley and after the lady was moved to a nursing home she would take us along with her on some weekends to visit.  I always loved those trips and all the little towns you go through on the way.  Lindsay was my favorite one to drive through!!  I always looked for and was excited about the little Statue of Liberty!!  I just thought that was the COOLEST thing!  And it is, isn't it?

I never really knew what it was and I don't know if it has changed hands over the years or not, but at the moment it is partly part of the Chamber of Commerce which is located behind the statue and partly a veterans memorial.

I guess it is one of those things that the people who live there don't appreciate - like people in Europe and castles.  After doing not exactly an intense web search but a decent one, I was unable to turn up a single mention or picture of the statue!!  About all you find regarding Lindsay is the Murray Mansion.  Which, yes, I do desperately need to visit!!!

I did find something interesting in my search, though.  It seems a General John C. Fremont made an interesting statement in a report in the mid-1800s about the Washita Valley:

...if there is a Garden of Eden in the Western Hemisphere, it is in the Washita Valley.  

Granted, the only places I have been able to locate such a statement on are various websites touting the awesomeness of Lindsay (in the heart of the Washita Valley).  Did he really say it?  Who cares!  Remember what I said in the post about Fred regarding Grady Countians and the Washita being like Egyptians and the Nile?  Yep, you guessed it.  I am going to take it and run with it!!!  :-)  And now is a good time to mention that I have the most amazing journey planned with me, some serious GPS locator and the Little Washita.  It will be epic.  It will be even better if Jadzia can come along (my as yet non-existent new Jeep!)  But the adventure can definitely wait until it is cooler!!  :-)

I leave you today with a shot of me and my new friend, Miss Little Lindsay Liberty!  :-)

Griffith Sports Complex - Lindsay

This is probably the least exciting post yet.  Not much to tell.

The date?  Monday, July 2, 2012.  

The mission?  To watch Treyton Seth and the rest of the Owls whoop up on some baseball team or other.  (Mission failed - on their part, not mine  :-))

After work I drove out to Lindsay and followed the only instructions I was given:  turn left at Wal-Mart.  I was concerned about being able to find the ballpark, but that turned out to not be an issue at all.  You turn left at Wal-Mart, go a bit and over the hill you can see the lights to the right.  

It is a little bit disappointing after watching so many ball games at the Chickasha Sports Complex, but it is a nice little place.  Possibly the best part is the very reasonable prices at the concession stand!  :-)

I had Shawna Dawn go with me during a lull in the game to get a shot of the little memorial marker thing over near the concession stand.  I have no clue who J.K. Griffith and his wife are.  No clue.  I suppose Lindsay peeps know.  All I could find online was a document that showed there was a J.K. Griffith who was the president of the American Exchange Bank in Lindsay.  Same person?  Son of the father of the ballpark?  Maybe.  I don't know.  I did enjoy their little sports complex though; it was a nice place for the regional tournament.

Oklahoma Heritage Plaza

Friday, May 25, 2012.
I get off work decently early.  Becky and I hatched a plan the night before to meet up in Norman and high-tail it to Oklahoma City to the State Fair Park for the EGI Gem, Jewelry & Bead Show.
  
The show ends at 6:00 p.m. per the e-mail Rabicca had received.  We swing into the fairgrounds going on 5:15 p.m. and it looks pretty desolate.  No signs bespeaking a bead show.  I'm creeping along the grounds in the car.  I can't help it.  I am not used to going to the fairgrounds except during the Great State Fair of Oklahoma (Yes, I called it by its full name.  Doesn't it sound grand that way?  :-) ) and during the fair you are ushered unceremoniously to a 'parking spot' some ways off that you pay a fortune for.  Never have I personally driven inside the fairgrounds.  Eventually we come across a building with a couple of cars outside.  Skeptical that we have reached our destination but wanting to get information from someone in the know prior to giving up after working so hard to get there, we disembark the vehicle and peek inside.  There are just a few people setting up booths on the far side of the building.  Deciding to go ahead and go in there like a couple of lost tourists, we spot a woman walking around the corner.  She informs us that they are setting up for the gun show and nothing else is currently shaking at the fairgrounds.


Discouraged but not quite ready to give up we get back in the car and continue driving around some - still feeling like someone is going to jump out at us any minute telling us we aren't allowed to drive there!  Then around a corner there are cars!  We get closer and there is a sign!  The only sign - right outside the building it is in.  Somebody did a poor job of promoting the show.  Nevertheless, we are here!  In we run and frantically spend too much money on beads until it is time to leave so they can close up.


The point of this post, however, is not the bead show.  It is what we saw when we left.  We were walking to the car and plotting just where we were going to go to use some facilities when to the left I spotted large granite monuments.  It was the 'Oklahoma Heritage Plaza.'  The monuments list everyone inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame and even include etched portraits of a select few.  Becky was not terribly amused with the detour given that she also had a need for certain facilities, but I assured her I wasn't going to take a picture of each monument - there are too many.  We quickly walked the path trying to find the most interesting ones.

This is the main stone telling about the plaza.  Not surprisingly, the two inductees on it are Will Rogers and Jim Thorpe.  It is interesting that both of them died 3 years after being inducted.  Hhmmm... could this be Oklahoma's version of the Madden Curse?  Well, probably not.  There are plenty of peeps that are still alive and well that have been inducted.  :-)


The actual Oklahoma Hall of Fame Gallery is housed at the Gaylord-Pickens Museum along with MANY other things.  Definitely looks like a worthwhile destination.  In the meantime, one can find out some interesting things about the Oklahoma Hall of Fame on their website.  


First off, there are 6 inductees that are listed from Chickasha.  I got pictures of monuments that include 2 from Chickasha including Anna Lewis who was inducted in 1940.

The most rockin'ly awesome thing about that?!  That I didn't even realize until I started on this post today?!  I published the post about Fred earlier and there was a link to an article a professor at OCW had written in 1934.  Yep, you guessed it.  SAME WOMAN!!  How cool is that?!  :-)  I am going to have to find out more about her.  She might warrant a whole post for herself!

Here is a monument that includes Te Ata, after whom the Te Ata Memorial Auditorium at USAO where she attended school (when it was OCW) is named.  The same auditorium my graduation was in!  :-)
Another interesting fact I encountered while looking at the Hall of Fame info online:  The Oklahoma Heritage Association's bylaws were not changed until 2000 to allow people to be inducted posthumously!!  Isn't that weird?  And since the change, only 4 have been inducted posthumously!  One of the four was Wiley Post.  Now THERE was an interesting character AND he had ties to Chickasha.  It is hard to believe he was not previously inducted.


I leave you today with this slightly amusing picture.  Doesn't it look from that angle like the tram is quite precariously perched?  :-)

Cox Convention Center

Originally I was not going to do a post regarding the Cox Convention Center but in the end I figured I might as well! 

To continue the adventures of February 17:  after our phones had died and we had properly traversed the downtown area we went back to our parking spot for a few minutes.  We attempted to charge our phones via a single outlet in her vehicle with little success.  Thankfully I had my camera with me and though I had not thought to charge it and it did not last through the night I was still able to get some pictures of the game. 


Ah, but what game you ask?  I am jumping ahead of myself!  Cher-ron Lee, despite having been in a long-term relationship with a newspaper sports editor, had never been to a hockey game!  To continue our fun and work on her 'bucket list' we traipsed on over to the Cox Convention Center to buy some tickets.  There are some very cheap tickets available and a decent section of $28 seats.  However for $10 more we could get in the best section and this being Cher-ron's first hockey game (and my first Barons game - I haven't been to a hockey game since Oklahoma City's beloved Blazers disbanded) we decided to go for it!  The helpful woman at the ticket counter even hooked us up with FRONT ROW seats!!  Woo-hoo!!

Now we had some time to kill.  We had looked for places to eat along the way there but nothing called out to us, so we decided to eat overpriced concession fare.  Cher-ron went for a loaded hot dog (foot long?) with Coke and I settled on a salty soft pretzel with Dr. Pepper.  The older lady at the concession stand was a riot!  After having a good ol' time cuttin' it up with her (she probably thought we were drunk!) we went in search of our seats.  This was when we discovered just how cool our ticket seller was.  We didn't just get front row seats.  No.  We got FRONT ROW, CENTER ICE, RIGHT NEXT TO THE BARON'S BENCH!!! 

The experience was not novel for me as far as it being a hockey game, but it was a bit different than the Blazers games I previously attended.  It has been several years since I was at a game and back then the Blazers played at the erstwhile Ford Center. 

The Chesapeake Energy Arena was originally The Ford Center. I was at the Ford Center on a number of occasions including multiple Blazers hockey games and Trans-Siberian Orchestra concerts.  I was quite shocked to discover a couple of days ago via the omniscient Wikipedia that The Ford Center was opened in 2002!   I was under the impression all this time that it had been there already and was just remodeled prior to becoming The Ford Center. 

My first Blazers game was a blast!  I went with a group from work and we watched from one of the boxes.  That is watching the game in style:  food, drinks, comfy chairs, TVs, easy bathroom access and more.  It was a fun experience and I am glad I had it.  However, I quickly discovered at the next game I attended that being in the stands is MUCH more fun and provides a MUCH better view of the goings on! 

I have been to the Cox Convention Center on a number of occasions as well, most recently several years ago when we attended a few YardDawgz games (now also sadly disbanded).  There were a few times when I was younger that I was there when it was still The Myriad.  It is smaller and not as fancy as the Chesapeake Arena, but it has much comfier seats that are slightly further apart so you don't feel like you are sitting on the lap of the person next to you like you do at the Chesapeake Arena.

The best part about hockey games is that the crowd gets so involved.  I love the various chants and organized group ruckus. Sadly such crowd participation was nearly absent during our visit in February.  The Barons got soundly whooped which precludes us from much of the taunting of the opposing team. 

Overall we had a wonderful experience and enjoyed the game.  Before it got started I went to the gift shop and picked up a Barons hockey puck (to go with my Blazers one!) as well as sets of chuck-a-pucks for me and Cher-ron.  There was one big kink in the night, though:  our horrible rowmates.  There was a couple to the right of me (and right next to them the Barons team!) that were mostly aloof, so no issues there.  The two chicas next to Cher-ron were a different story.  It seems they attend most if not all of the Barons games and operate under the mistaken impression that the Cox Convention Center is their own personal property that others are infringing upon.  They were loud and rude and obnoxious.  At one point one of the ladies even called Cher-ron a highly inappropriate name because she had stood up to get a better view of a fight in the works further down the ice.  I offered to move with Cher-ron over to the other side of the rink - after the first period was over and there were so many empty seats I figured we could go to another one without causing a stir.  She refused to let them run her off, though.  What really saved the night from being ruined by the harpies was that as they drank more beer rather than becoming more belligerent as one may expect, they mellowed out. 


When the game was over I headed for the bathroom.  Upon exiting I found Cher-ron standing in a relatively short line to nowhere.  While she had been waiting on me she discovered that several Barons players were going to sign autographs!  So we stood in line debating with a teenage girl and her mother what on earth we should have them sign and having some fun at the expense of #9's unfortunate name (Pitlick).  We ended up having them sign some flyer things that were near the table where they were doing the autographs and I had them sign my new Barons hockey puck as well.  There were only 4 of them and after they worked their way through the short line they skedaddled.

Our adventures thus ended, we walked in the rain back to the car (all the while trying desperately not to get our fresh autographs wet) and headed back home.  

Devon / Colcord

This was to be the final installment of the tales of February 17, 2012, with my fearless adventure partner Cher-ron Lee but plans have changed.  This will be the next to the last post regarding that adventure-filled Friday in February.

Following our time spent Underground, we walked the sidewalks of the city for some time.  The eventual goal was to get as close as possible to the new Devon Tower and, you know, just to see what there was to see!  The Devon Tower wasn't completely finished at the time; there was still one crane up and various other cosmetic projects in the works.  We wandered around downtown getting a good look at some beautiful buildings, walked around construction areas (all the while expecting to be banished at any moment), saw a little brick storefront Subway restaurant (I love those!  The one in Blanchard is my fav!) and even taking a shortcut through a building.  Then suddenly there on the other side was the towering awesomeness that Devon built.  And we came out on the best side possible - the only one I really care about - where the Devon Tower is being connected to the Colcord!!

I have been fascinated by the Colcord for some time.  As those who know me best know, I am something of a hotel aficionado.  I ran across a mention of the Colcord online many years ago and really only remember one fact, but it is the most significant one:  The Colcord was the first skyscraper in Oklahoma City (and probably Oklahoma, though I haven't found anything to confirm that yet).  When Rick and I were making regular trips downtown for Blazers hockey, YardDawgz football, concerts and such I snapped more than a couple of pics of the Colcord as we would whiz by!  According to some web browsing I did yesterday, the Colcord is on the National Register of Historic Places and also has a tenuous connection to one of my two favorite events in history:  the Chicago World's Fair of 1893!  (The other favorite history event being The Great War, natch.)  It seems the architect of the building was a protégé of Louis Sullivan who was one of the architects of the glorious White City.

Free commercial here for those of you who have NOT read The Devil in the White City:  Stop.  Seriously.  Right now.  Go buy it.  Do not waste your time and money on the paperback.  Get the hardback version with the picture pages.  Prepare to be blown away.  Oh, and while you are at it, get two copies so I can have my own and stop borrowing Becky's!  :-)

Back to the Devon Tower / Colcord Hotel:  A few months ago I was talking about the Devon Tower with my brother-in-law who worked on the Devon Tower in the latter half of building. Naturally I freaked out on him when he told me that they were getting ready to connect the Devon Tower with the Colcord.  !!!!!!  CONNECT THE NEW TALLEST BUILDING IN OKLAHOMA WITH THE FIRST SKYSCRAPER IN OKLAHOMA?!  Oh, I am down.  Down like a clown Charlie Brown. 

I shot some decent pictures looking up at the Devon Tower; unfortunately from our restricted area I didn't get a good shot of the connection in the works or of the Colcord itself.  Nevertheless I was uber-excited to be there!  Maybe someday I can get pics from inside the Devon Tower or even (be still my heart) from inside the Colcord!  :-)

The place we were standing was very close to being under the crane on the Devon Tower; from the distance the illusion was that we were directly under it.  We had been hearing loud noises that reverberated over all of downtown and once we were there it didn't take long to realize that the noise was the crane slowly making its way down.  I never thought about humongousoid cranes on skyscrapers before and certainly never realized that it takes days to get one down!

Extra Fun fact about the crane that Cher-ron and I were standing under:  We were there on Friday.  On Monday, central Oklahoma experienced some serious winds.  That crane?  Yeah - it slammed into the building and showered down glass.  Yikes! 

Once we were finished there - and by finished I mean our phones were dead and further pictures were out of the question - we hoofed it back to our parking spot where we chilled for a bit before beginning the next adventure:  Cox Convention Center.  Barons.  Hockey.  Sustenance.  Oh yeah.

Going Underground

I was quite young when Daddy had jury duty at the federal courthouse in Oklahoma City.  I don't even remember it; only the stories about it later.  Or more accurately The Story.  Everything else is just a haze except for the parts about The Conncourse - which until I was educated yesterday in my head was always The 'Concourse.'  I will get to that.

Daddy told me stories of this fabled network of underground tunnels whereby you can traverse the hustling and bustling downtown Oklahoma City in comfort and ease.  There are even shops!  In my young imagination this 'Concourse' was the stuff of fairy tales:  wide archways covered in colorful mosaic tiles (think 80s & 90s movie scenes of the NYC subway), bright yet soft lighting, tempting storefronts, lots of people calmly and politely milling about but not getting in anyone's way (think markets on alien worlds in Star Trek TNG), and floors one could practically glide across. 

I have now been in The Conncourse - now known as The Underground.  And while it may not have necessarily lived up to the expectations of my ten-year old self, it was a walk to remember! 

This was the next adventure Cher-ron Lee and I embarked upon following our trek through the OKC National Memorial & Museum.  We decided to walk around downtown and see what there was to see.  Shortly I began to tell Cher-ron about The Conncourse and we agreed we should look for it - but how?  It seemed that suddenly they were there:  two security guards in a little booth thing outside the federal courthouse.

Now would be a good time to come clean.  You see, despite my desire as a child to experience these mysterious tunnels that ran under my beloved 'tall buildings,' a part of me never believed Daddy that they existed.  Seriously.  When have YOU ever heard of such a thing?  No movies, no stories, no news reports reporting live from the secret tunnels 'neath the heart of the city!  What if it was all a ploy like Rose Bush or the Poag Grain Elevator?  Granted, those were tricks played on me by Mummy rather than Daddy but who's to say he wasn't the greatest jokester of them all?  In short, not only did I not want to ask and look like a moron, I didn't want to ask only to find out that such a thing never existed! (And yes, I understand that makes no sense, after all at any point I could have researched the tunnels!  It was not, however, something I often thought about.  I only did that day because we were downtown!)

Cher-ron had no such qualms.  She went up to the booth, asked the older guard for directions and lo and behold!  We were right across the street from an entrance in the OG&E building!  Across the street and through the door and down the stairs we went!

It was disappointingly stark initially, but as we went on it became more exciting.  Each hallway has different colored lighting to let you know where you are at with areas every so often containing maps to help guide your way.  According to what I have now read online, there are parts with artwork and city pictures and all kinds of fun.  It seems we saw some of that, but not much.  We did come across a deli or two that were closed by the time we were underground.  We just wandered aimlessly for some time.  When we decided to see where we were at, we headed upstairs and ended up in the Ground Floor Cafe.  We bought drinks and had a seat for a few minutes before deciding it was too close to the Underground closing time to go back down.  Out the door we went to continue our adventures on the sidewalks.

Yesterday I did some Googling and discovered some interesting things about the erstwhile Conncourse.  Wikipedia especially had an article tailored to interest Betsy!  It is surprisingly short but nearly every word is exciting!  References to names like Skirvin and I.M. Pei?  I'm excited just thinking about it!  :-)