Millennium Edition
Here it is a week into the New 21st Century! Thanks for all the memories you have sent in the past Volumes of "Oakie's HTH." I am working on some Slapout, Oklahoma 2001 photos I took this week and hope to have them ready for you next week. Send me some history and memories of Slapout... If you get a chance.
We ate our good luck black-eyed peas in Buck's Hoppin John Recipe on New Years Eve for good luck to follow us into the New Millennium. I have stuck the recipe link below just in case someone wants to check it out.BucksHoppinJohn.doc
New Years Day found this Oakie on the road again back to Oklahoma, January 1, 2001. As to New Years traditions & black-eyed
peas... Scott says, "My family always ate black-eyed peas on New Year's
Day. Why? I haven't a clue."
< br /> My family also ate black-eyed peas on New Years for
good luck. I don't know why or when the black-eyed peas tradition started.
Does anyone out there have any clues to this mystery?
Some of you NW Oklahomans and Paris family relations
out there might remember my Uncle Alvin. On our way back through
Colorado to Oklahoma, we stopped and visited with my mother's older
brother, Alvin Paris. Alvin worked with the McClure Loans & Insurance
Company, in Alva back in the 1930s. Alvin & Naomi married in 1935 and
lived in the Monfort Apartments before moving to 718 4th Street. I'm
not quite sure where the Monfort apartments were located, but Alvin
and Naomi moved from those apartments to the 718 4th Street home sometime
shortly after the Castle on the Hill burned down. Does anyone have any
clues to where the Monfort Apartments were located? Alvin and Naomi
also lived in the two-story, framed, white house on the southeast corner
of Choctaw & Third Street, across the street south from the Old Armory.
Alvin Paris was born 1 Nov. 1912; married Naomi Warren (b. 1910),
3 February 1935. They will be celebrating their 66th anniversary, Feb.
3, 2001. Alvin is the next to the oldest of nine siblings of Ernest
Claude Paris and Mary Barbara Hurt. Of the nine siblings (Leslie,
Alvin, Vernon, Vada, Zella, Kenneth, Sam, Geneva
and EJ)... the three remaining are Alvin (88, in Colorado Springs,
CO), Sam (76, in Sand Pointe, ID) and Geneva (72, in Chester,
OK).
Alvin & Naaomi Paris
Everyone knows about Pikes Peak and Colorado Springs,
but what about the Cave
of the Winds. These caverns are located near the small community
of Manitou west of Colorado Springs, Colorado. You use a steep, winding,
corkscrew mountain road to reach the entrance of the Cave of the Winds.
The caverns have been around for over one hundred years.
They were temporarily lighted with electric lights 11
October 1904. On 4 July 1907 a new electric light system with arc lights
were installed in the larger rooms of the cave for the first time. The
entrance building was built in the spring of 1906 with a veranda for
views of Williams Canyon and Manitou.
caveofthewinds.com/cave2000/timeset.htm
We stopped to take the tour so I could walk in the footsteps
of my grandmother Constance Warwick who took the same tour in the early
1900s (1907-1909) before she married my grandfather, Bill McGill.
I found this great old photo of the "Cave of the Winds" taken
sometime during the early 1900s. There were NO names or dates written
on the photo. The only clues to the dated items in photo are the long
skirt and white blouse worn by the lady; the two horse drawn carriages
in the sloping foreground; and the sign on the front of the building
over the steps that reads, "Brilliantly Electrically Lighted."
Cave of Winds
< br />You can view a January, 2001 view of the "Cave of
the Winds" for comparison. Cave of the Winds Cave of the Winds../../image/cavewinds-jan01c.jpg
cavewinds-jan01d.jpg
Nearby is a free public park called "Garden
of the Gods." It has towering sandstone rock formations against
a backdrop of snow-capped Pikes Peak and blue skies. In 1909, Charles
Elliott Perkins' children conveyed his 480 acres to the City of Colorado
Springs. It was/is known as the 'Garden of the Gods' and free
to the public and maintained as a public park.
gardenofgods.com/history.htm
< br /> I did get a few shots of the 'Garden of the Gods'
when we traveled through there January, 2001. If you look really hard,
you might spot this Oakie leaning on a rock wall with the sandstone
formations in the background at one of the overlooks.
OkieLegacy/image/gardengods1.jpg
OkieLegacy/image/gardengods2.jpg
For the week of January 1 thru January 5... from SW
Colorado to Oklahoma, the gas pump prices ranged from $1.55 (Durango,
CO) all the way down to $1.19 at a Texaco, in central Oklahoma.
The first of the week in Colorado Springs gas prices were $1.39. Boise
City, out on the very tip of the Oklahoma panhandle, saw a $1.39 gas
as did Guymon, OK. The gas prices in Alva during the mid-week came in
at $1.35. Ames, OK which is southeast of Ringwood and norhtwest of Hennessey,
Kingfisher and Okarche all sported a $1.34 price tag. A Texaco gas station
in NW Oklahoma City showed a price of gas on Friday, January 5, 2001,
at $1.19. What are the gas pump prices doing in your neck of the woods?
< br />Next week I will try to get the pictures of Slapout,
Oklahoma ready for you to see what it looks like today. If anyone out
there has any old photos, history or memories of Slapout to share, just
attach them to an email and send along to Linda at mcwagner.lk@gmail.com.
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