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Discover Mid-America — August 2007
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Hard luck and history
by Bruce Rodgers, Editor/Publisher
A few days before the deluge hit northern Oklahoma and southeast Kansas, I drove down to the Tulsa and Claremore area. The newscast I later saw of the intersection of Highways 169 and 166 in Coffeyville, KS — a few miles from the Oklahoma border — being under five feet or more of water stayed with me. I drove through that very intersection only a few days earlier, hitting hard rain most of the way up 169 back to Kansas City.
The folks in Coffeyville are still reeling from the flooding, as are many smaller towns spread across the two states. Why is it that hard luck comes often to hard-working towns?
The rain in Oklahoma didn’t dampen my enjoyment in visiting the Tulsa area. I admit I like Oklahoma and its people. Nothing against Kansas, Missouri and other midwestern folks we do business with — all of which we thank — but Oklahoma feels different. It feels western.
Not that I’m the cowboy type, though I do like my boots in wintertime. But Oklahoma doesn’t feel like the farm country of the Midwest. Maybe it’s the strong Native American presence, maybe the state’s history of a land rush and oil discovery…maybe it’s just that I wanted out of the office.
I went down to visit with our Oklahoma ad rep Vera McGehee and meet some advertisers. My first stop was in Mounds, a small town about 30 minutes south of Tulsa. Dale Newman, who owns Mounds Antique Mall with his wife Jo, had invited me down.
Dale had gently questioned his advertising expense with us and, I think, just wanted to meet the guy he had talked with over the phone a number of times. I felt I needed to oblige and meet other advertisers in the Tulsa area as well.
Dale and Jo, and their friend L.O. McNabb, president of the Mounds Historical Society, clearly love their small town. (See page 11) They have passion surrounding its history. They related some of it to me. How the town was moved to accommodate the railroad, that the area once had nearly a dozen dairies, now all gone, and the effort to get the Mounds Museum to open in the town’s first rock building built in 1901.
Townspeople with deep roots in the area know change is coming to Mounds. Already land is being subdivided and Tulsa transplants are building homes as if the houses are rest stops between the regular commute to jobs in the city. The distance between the established townspeople and the newer folks sometimes can’t be avoided.
Such things can be worrisome to people with a history to a particular place. Holding on to a town’s character by claiming a place for its history comes natural to antiquers like Jo and Dale Newman, and the town’s historian L.O. McNabb.
Even a city boy like myself can understand such a connection. All it takes is for one to pause and think, remembering the experiences of hard luck and comfort of knowing the history around the place you call home.
Bruce Rodgers can be contacted at publisher@discoverypub.com.
> Refurnished Thoughts Archive — past columns
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