Volume 6 , Issue 31

Is This Fall - 2004...

Is this an early Fall of 2004? As we travel through Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado -- settling down in SW Colorado for a few weeks to celebrate our 35th anniversary, we have been noticing the green grass pastures across these Heartlands. The July rains are unbelievable! This whole weather is unbelievable! Everything is so green and beautiful during what should be one of the hottest, dryest month of the summer.

It is seems to this NW Okie like an early fall has settled upon us during the Summer of 2004. I have never seen so much rain in July. Actually, I don't remember it ever raining in July. BUT... this weather has been great for the farmers/ranchers -- their livestock -- farm ponds. It will be tough when that mercury soars above 100 again.

I am going to try and keep this short and send you onto the Mailbag Corner, because lots of you sent in some interesting memories of NW Oklahoma ghost towns along hwy 64 west of Alva. For instance, did you know that the building that housed the Hilltop Gas & Grocery 11 miles west of Alva on the hilltop was a part of the Old Alva POW WWII Camp?

Leslie and Golda "Goldie" Lyons owned and ran the Hilltop gas and grocery and motor shop from '46 to '67 where later they did motor rewiring jobs that came into the shop. Today if you drive west out of Alva it would require your imagination to see what might have been. There is just a grass, fenced pasture with a gravel pull-off area with a view looking down the hill, east towards Alva. I found it very interesting to learn that in the old days... that the reasons stations along highway 64 were at the top of the hills were because the old cars were usually steaming by the time they got to the top and needed water.

If you travel another mile west from Hilltop on hwy 64, you might catch a glimpse of a deteriorated old building on the North side of the highway where Setmore was located 12 miles west at the highway 14 & 64 junction. I am told that in the 1930s it was a station/store ran by E.H. (Hack) and Mary Lyon. Later a blacksmith/repair shop run by Harry Lyon and later by Frank McMurphy.

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