Category Archives: Our World Tuesday

Our World Tuesday – Darryl Starbird’s National Rod and Custom Car Show – 2017

The Darryl Starbird Car Show is a must see for me. I like car shows of all kinds but the Starbird Show is special because it is for custom built and modified cars and people can get best car dealerships from Scrap Car Pickup for Cash Ottawa. In this day and age where the cheapest and most expensive cars all pretty much look like Toyotas it is nice to see custom built cars. Apparently there used to be twenty-one Starbird shows a year but they have dwindled down to just this one in Tulsa. People don’t work on cars like they used to do. When I was a kid there were lots of car guys out there, modifying engines, transmissions, and suspensions and the bodies. Cars are too computerized these days and emissions regulations strict (which is a good thing). People can also check The Car Finder Used Vehicle Dealership, if they need the best car dealership.

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1970 Plymouth

These cars are like works of art to me. The ideas are born in somebody’s mind and carried out, sometimes they take years of  trial and error to reach final form. Sometimes they don’t ever get to final form.

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1964 Thunderbird

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1981 Cadillac- I am thinking this may be a low rider or a derivative. It has machinery to jack the car way up and down.  They were big in New Mexico when I lived there. Years ago, our family went back and in old town Albuquerque a bunch of cars showed up and drove around slowly honking their horns and rocking the cars up and down and making them tilt side to side. It was quite a show.

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Ultra sleek and streamlined. I love the wheels and the clean lines. I also loved how they went with a different finish with the engine than the expected chrome.

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1932 Ford Coupe – I love the modified old cars also.

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1932 Ford Coupe – I love the paint job on this creation.

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1960 Corvette – You just can’t beat a corvette, they have stayed ahead of the curve for years.

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Alright car guys what is this. Is this eight carburetors, or a supercharged engine. I’m so ignorant. It is a very manly looking engine is what I think.

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1970 Chevy – How about this? I love the low ride, and the boat.

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How about this hippie lovemobile??

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Here is a VW Camper. My wife’s family had one when she was a child.

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Cool interior.

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How about another hippiemobile.

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Another VW hippie surfmobile.

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1949 Ford – Another manly engine.

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1925 Model T

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And I’ll finish up with this rat rod. I love the saw being used as a headliner over the front window, the backwards doors, and the most obviously phallic hood ornament. Not that it has a hood.

So another year down for the Starbird Car Show.

I’m linking with Our World Tuesday

Our World Tuesday – The Pioneer Woman’s Mercantile Store in Pawhuska, Oklahoma

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In line at the cafe, Logan is checking out how many people are ahead of us in the line to get seated.

Heather and I are big fans of the Pioneer Woman, Ree Drumond, of the Drummond Ranch of northeast Oklahoma in beautiful Osage County. She has a television show, a blog, and is author of several books and is married to the Marlboro Man. She opened “The Mercantile” a store, restaurant, deli, and cafe about three months ago and it has been popular since the start. So we have been wanting to go and finally made it on Friday. Logan went with us and was not near as excited as we were. He was kind of hungry for one thing and as anybody with a teenager knows, if they are hunger it is hard for them to get excited about anything.

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The restaurant has an open airy feel to it.

We got in line to east first since we had a hungry teenager. The restaurant is wonderful and features many of PW’s recipes. Logan had the Marlboro Man sandwich, Heather had the Chicken Parmesan, and I had the Chipotle Salad with Steak. It was all great and the portions are huge!

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Outside the restaurant, it was a little cold to be eating outside but this will be perfect in a month or so.

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We migrated to the store. The store is perfect. They sell lots of home goods and you can tell that the goods were selected with care and are high quality and at a variety of price points. We didn’t buy anything but we sure enjoyed the merchandising and the displays.

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My favorite was the Charley section. Charley was PW’s beloved basset hound. He took ill and had to be put down recently. It was a really sad day.

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PW sometimes has a rather campy since of humor.

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More merchandise.

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And yet more, it was all so beautiful.

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More little touches.

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This cake saver is exquisite.

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The store from the landing on the way to the second floor. The displays cases are beautiful and the whole thing is done perfectly. It is like what you would see in a Neiman Maricus or other nice store.

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The upstairs is a surprise. They have a bakery but most of the space is airy and open with a multitude of seating options.

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I could hang out in these chairs by the big open windows a long time. The room was beautiful and inviting and just so perfect.

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We didn’t buy any merchandise but we got some bakery goods. I bought one of these fruit danishes. I’m not sure I can eat it, it is so beautiful. I’ll probably manage to choke it down.

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We all had a good time at the Mercantile. We’ll be back. My dream would be to come up on my birthday and have dinner at the restaurant and then drive up to the nearby Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and take some sunset photos. I could handle that. One step at a time though.

I’m linking with Our World Tuesday

Our World Tuesday – Fort Reno, Oklahoma

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Recently I stopped in Fort Reno just west of Oklahoma City. Fort Reno has a long history. It was initially built in 1875 for the US Cavalry to monitor the Southern Cheyenne and Southern Arapahoe Indians in the area. As time went on and the Indian Wars subsided the post was converted to an Army Remount Facility operated by the Army Quartermaster Corps with the purpose of breeding, raising, and training horses and mules for the military. It held that function until 1947 along with a brief interlude as a prisoner of war facility during World War II. The property is now administered by the US Department of Agriculture as an Agricultural Research Station.

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I love the many old buildings. Many of which are restored. Above is an old Officer’s Quarters.  It looks in good shape on the outside. I wonder what life was like back in day living out in the middle of nowhere.

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One of the original mule barns that it is being restored.

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I love the cemetery located a quarter mile or so from the rest of the post. Lots of old graves here, many marked, “unknown” , a few soldiers who died during the Indian wars and lots of employees and family from the Remount Station days.

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In a walled off section of the cemetery are graves of German and Italian soldiers who were prisoners of war during World War II. They didn’t all die here. Oklahoma had several POW camps and after the war the men who died were all disinterred and brought to Fort Reno.

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The Italian soldiers were all buried together and somebody keeps their graves decorated. A few of the men have been disinterred by the families and the remains returned to Italy.

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This is the most famous POW buried at Fort Reno. Johannes Kunze was a member of Rommel’s Afrika Corps and was taken prisoner in north Africa and sent to Oklahoma. He turned into an informant for the Americans and was found out and brutally murdered by his fellow prisoners. The Americans picked out five prisoners and charged them  with murder.  They stood trial, defended by an Army picked civilian attorney who had never practiced criminal law. The Army prosecutor was Leon Jaworski who later found fame as the Special Prosecutor during the Watergate scandals. Of course the five Germans were found guilty and were hung by the Army at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas right after the war ended. I posted about this last year.  I just love stuff like this.

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Speaking of Prisoners of War. The Germans built this chapel at the Fort during WWII. You can rent it for a wedding or other occasion. I think that would be cool.Check on how to do it here.

Our World Tuesday

Our World – New Route 66 Monument in Tulsa

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a bonus shadow selfie

Tulsa’s Howard Park right on Route 66 in the city’s gritty industrial west side has a brand spanking new monument consisting of three big sculpted pillars of Indiana Limestone by Utah artist Patrick Sullivan.

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The pillars depict Tulsa sights like Cain’s Ballroom, art deco architecture, the energy, aviation, and railroad industries and Native American heritage.

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I love stuff like this. This monument is here to stay. An F5 tornado may topple them but they are not going anywhere.

An article from Route 66 News with video and a lot of the backstory on the monument and the artist who created it.

Howard Park’s Facebook site

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Our World Tuesday – The Boxyard

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They already have a bank with an ATM!!

I checked out a new shopping center in downtown Tulsa last week. It takes up a fraction of a city block and is constructed of thirty nine shipping containers. The containers were actual containers used in international commerce for the last ten years. Or at least that is what their website claims. It is called the Boxyard and I love it.

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I was kind of semi aware of it and knew that it was built kind of quickly so I was expecting something kind of rough but to my surprise it looks very cool and the design is very attractive. It just opened a couple months ago but they already have several businesses open.

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It is laid out on two levels centered on a plaza on the first level. They packed a lot of potential businesses in a relatively small space. They have spaces for both retail and food and beverage businesses. I’m intrigued by the whole thing because of its use of recycled shipping containers and the idea of a “micro” shopping area. Tulsa’s downtown is pretty frothy right now with new businesses popping up and people investing in renovating old buildings.

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It has been a remarkable transition. When I first showed up in Tulsa twenty five years ago there was very little going on downtown. No restaurants, no bars, no retail, no nothing. Now there are lots of such businesses and there are lots of people living downtown and I think an active downtown is good for the whole city.

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There is this gigantic “OPEN” sign you can see through the glass of this space for a bar on the second level. I’m looking foward to it actually being open during warm weather. Maybe Heather and I can have a beer up here on this patio of this remarkable space.

I’m linking with Our World Tuesday.

Our World Tuesday- New Year’s Edition

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Found me a nice suspension bridge at the nearby Ray Harrel Nature Park. All great nature parks have nice bridges, right?

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I love railroad tie retaining walls. The look all old school and woodsy. They end up kind of blending in and becoming part of the landscape.

I’m linking with Our World Tuesday.

 

Our World Tuesday – Clear Sailing

Orange Beach Sailboat

Sailboat chilling on Wolf Bay, Alabama

Well we did Christmas. I love Christmas and we had a nice quiet one at the house with our small family including my Mother-in-Law. We exchanged gifts and cards and had a nice meal and texted/facebook messaged our other family in Idaho, Colorado, and western Oklahoma.

Now I am ready to be done with it. Sure, leave the lights and tree up for a few days but it is time to go outside for a little while and get the head screwed on straight. I’m taking a week off and although we have errands and stuff to do I plan to get a few runs and hikes in and take a bunch of photos.

How about you? You done with Christmas also? (I know, I know, it is technically still Christmas while I post this but I am about to come out of my skin.)

I’m linking with Our World Tuesday

Our World – Philbrook Gardens in the Winter

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Saturday I dropped the kid off for his Comedy Improv Class and headed up to the Philbrook Museum to walk around a little while. It was their free second saturday promotion going on inside so I went outside to the gardens  to get a little air and breathing room. I went to the bottom of the hill and shot back up to Villa Philbrook. I never get tired of the view and in the winter it seems a little crisper even on a cold overcast day.

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This is the reverse view. I never get tired of the tempietto and its reflection but I pulled back the shot a bunch to take in the patchwork of colors, textures, and patterns.

I just love that place.

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Our World – A Run on Turkey Mountain

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Saturday morning started out cool with a chance of rain. I thought about putting up the outside Christmas lights on house but I don’t like doing that in the rain. I don’t mind running in a light rain though. I have the gear for it. So after dropping the kid off at his Improv Comedy class I headed to Turkey Mountain. There was hardly anyone there.

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It was kind of a dreary gray day, just the way I like them, and so off I went with a vague desire to do about five miles plus or minus and take some new trails. The big well used trails are fine but I love the fainter seldom used ones also. As you can see there were lots of dry leaves on the ground. The squirrels were having a field day running around in them making a racket.

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I take it as a point of honor to never (well almost never) turning back on a trail because it disappears or requires climbing up or down a cliff. This trail ended up requiring it. It is at the far north end of Turkey Mountain and I had to climb down a steep hill and then climb back up out on the other side of the draw. Oh well. Slows me down but I’m not in it for the speed.

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I saw only one bicyclist and very few other people the whole time I was out there.

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I guess that somebody lost their camo hat and some other person picked it up and stuck it on a tree. I always wonder who besides a hunter needs camo gear. When I’m out in the woods, I want to be seen.

Being out in the woods in nature is a great escape. Maybe I’ll do the lights on Sunday. The Cowboys aren’t playing you know.

I’m linking with Our World Tuesday.