Sayre, Erick and Texola, Oklahoma

First timer?  In this formerly once-a-day blog (and now pretty much a once-a-week blog), I use an app that provides a random latitude and longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48).  I call this “landing.”

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near.  I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location. 

To find out more about A Landing A Day (like who “Dan” is) please see “About Landing” above.  To check out some relatively recent changes in how I do things, check out “About Landing (Revisited).”

Landing number 2441; A Landing A Day blog post number 877.

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (N35^o 2.625’, W99^o 39.927’) puts me in southwest Oklahoma:

Here’s my local landing map:

 

My streams-only map shows that I landed in the watershed of that ever-popular Principal Stream Perennial (PSP):

And the PSP flows to the Haystack Creek; on to the Elm Fork of the Red River (2^nd hit); to the North Fork of the Red River (5^th hit, making the North Fork the 172^nd river on my list of rivers with 5 or more hits),  As shown below, the North Fork discharges to the mighty Red itself (64^th hit):

Although not shown, the Red ends up, more-or-less, discharging to the Atchafalaya (71^st hit).

(I say “more-or-less” to the Atchafalaya because of the complex interaction between the Red, the Atchafalaya and the Mississippi – discussed more than once in this blog.)

Going over to Google Earth (GE), I discovered that I was in the middle of an immense Google-Street-View-Free zone:

 

But I could talk the Orange Dude into getting a look at the Haystack Creek about 12 miles from my landing:

And here’s what he sees:

So – I’ll start with Sayre.  There’s not much here, but good ol’ Route 66 used to pass through town back in the Depression / Dust Bowl days.  While few of us know any actual Okies (no offense intended!) who escaped the dust bowl to seek their fortune in California, most of us know the fictional Joads, thanks to Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. 

Wiki tells me that in 1940, Director John Ford used the Beckham County Courthouse in Sayre to shoot a scene of Grapes of Wrath movie. 

Here’s a shot from the movie showing the courthouse:

I assume that’s the Joad’s overloaded truck in the foreground.  Just to be sure, here’s a shot of the truck from the movie:

Yup.  Same truck.

And here’s the courthouse today (GE shot by Austin Fugate):

Speaking of Route 66.  Head a few miles west of Sayre, and you come to the town of Erick.  Wiki has this to say:

Erick prospered in the post-war heyday of Route 66, with various roadside businesses catering to motorists. Guidebooks promoted the tiny city as “the first town you encounter, going west, which has a true ‘western’ look with its wide, sun-baked streets, frequent horsemen, occasional sidewalk awnings and similar touches.”

Efforts to put “Historic Route 66” back onto maps as a tourist attraction date to the late 1980s, with the first Route 66 Association established three years after the last section of original highway (in Williams, Arizona) was bypassed by Interstate highway in 1984. Various local businesses and attractions cater to seasonal tourists attempting to find what remains of the old road.

The former City Meat Market building (now the Sandhills Curiosity Shop) was one of the many Route 66 fixtures that showed up on Pixar’s 2006 animated film Cars.

Of course, as all of you regulars recall, I featured the movie Cars when I landed near the Arizona town (Peach Springs) that was used as the model for the movie.

And, from RedDirtChronicles.com, I found this in a piece entitled “Red Dirt Rambler, Erick, Oklahoma” by Red Dirt Kelly (seems like there’s a common thread here):

Wow.  Roger Miller, one of my all-time favorite singer/songwriters, along with Sheb Wooley who wrote and performed “It was a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater,” which I well remember as a song on the radio from my youth. 

I’ve never heard of Sheb Wooley (although I must have heard his name when his song was being introduced). 

Well, here ‘tis:

 

Moving over to Roger Miller.  Here’s a duet with Glenn Campbell:

 

And a live medley of a bunch of Roger’s hits:

 

The last song of the medley was probably Roger’s biggest hit:  “King of the Road.”  It’s a hobo-railroad song with many great lines, one of which is:

I know every engineer on every train
All the children and all of their names
And every handout in every town
And every lock that ain’t locked when no-one’s around

Whenever I hear this verse, I’m reminded of a story my mother (who was born in 1920 in Belvidere, NJ) used to tell.  Railroad tracks run a few hundred yards behind the family homestead.  During the Depression, a particular hobo would stop by, and my grandfather would give him some chores to do so he could get some pocket change.  He’d be invited in for a meal.

During one of these visits, he must have noticed a series of “Great Literature” books on the bookshelf in the living room.  Evidently, he asked if he could borrow one, to be returned the next time he stopped by. 

This ended up being a regular occurrence.  The family was also visited by other hobos, and my mother learned that the hobos left a mark down by the tracks that evidently let everyone riding the rails know that a friendly home was nearby.

Moving on to Texola.  Here are some excerpts about the town from an article posted on TheRoute-66.com:

Texola (pop 36) is the westernmost town in Oklahoma along Route 66. Its tiny stone Jail and the Magnolia Service Station (a Historic Place) are its best-known landmarks. Now it is almost a ghost town.

Texola is a town barely one mile east of the Texas state line. Its nickname is “Beerola” and its unofficial motto is “There is No Place Like Texola”.

Old Bar & Diner in Texola, Oklahoma

Its location is very close to the 100th meridian, which marks the border between Texas and Oklahoma.  The state line was surveyed on eight different occasions and it regularly was moved back and forth, moving the town from Oklahoma to Texas.   Finally, the residents found themselves in Oklahoma.

Before Texola, the townsite had two previous names before deciding on “Texola”: Texoma and Texokla.

Route 66 was aligned through the town in 1926 (5th Street, a dirt road).  The road was later paved and drew a growing flow of travelers. The Great Depression in the 1930s plus the Dust Bowl led to an exodus of dispossessed farmers from the region (see Grapes of Wrath), this however helped the local economy unit the early 1970s, when Interstate I-40 bypassed the town.

The population has dropped from a peak of 581 in 1930 to less than 50 after 1990, and now stands at 36; the place is almost a Ghost Town.

Here’s a Wiki shot of the erstwhile Magnolia gas station, which is a not-so-well-preserved historic landmark:

I’ll close with the GE shot, taken (and enhanced by) G. Smallwood, just a few miles SW of my landing:

 

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

 

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