I have always had a good memory as it relates to numbers. Oh that it also applied to names! So, I decided to document every place that I have ever lived since birth to the present. Not that anyone is interested but 10,000 years from now, maybe someone will run across this post and say, Wow, there really was a place called Snomac, OK. Hang on, here we go.
I was born in the last century (sounds strange and old both) on September 24, 1942 in the hospital at Seminole, OK. I was the only one of my siblings (two brothers and two sisters) that was born in a hospital. I checked my birth certificate for the address and it showed Box 128, Snomac, OK. I was told that we lived in a shack at Snomac south of Seminole. I remember visiting Snomac in my youth but nothing remained except a building that housed a grocery store and probably the post office which had closed. This picture was taken during those early years before we moved into Seminole.
I was probably two or three when we moved to 357 W Strother St in Seminole where we lived until the summer of 1948 when I was almost six. This was taken in front of that house which has since been remodeled and looks totally different.
My dad retired in 1948 and we moved to an acreage eight miles north of Seminole at Little, OK. The original purchase included twenty acres of land but sixteen were sold off to a long-time friend of my dad's named McElroy. The pond was part of the sale but we were still allowed access to it for swimming and fishing. The address was Rt 3, Box 300, Seminole, OK and our phone number (8-party line) was 2011-J1 and our ring code was one long ring. You knew when the call was for you based on the ring but that didn't stop you from picking up the receiver and listening in when the call was for one of your neighbors. I'm sure that I never did that! I started the first grade at Prairie Valley and graduated from there in May, 1959 and we still lived there. These photos will give a little insight into what the place looked like.
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| Front view |
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| Side view |
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| The pond |
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| My dog, Blackie, on the front porch |
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| Boy Scout with bike out back |
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| Happy Birthday to me (10 or 11) |
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| Ditto! |
I spent time at both Oklahoma University and Seminole Jr College until I joined the Army in May, 1961. My father passed away in December, 1960 and my mother and I moved back to town a few months later. Our address was 26 N Highland then. I had various addresses during my stint of 39+ months in the Army which included basic and advanced training at Ft Leonard Wood, MO, advanced training at Ft Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, IN, duty stations at Ft Sill, OK (USAAMC), and finally, with Headquarters Company of the Third Armored Division at Drake Kaserne in Frankfurt, Germany whose mailing address was APO 39, NY, NY.
My mother still lived in Seminole when I got out of the Army in August, 1964. I knew that my future probably did not include Seminole so I moved into an apartment with my friend, Larry Busby, at 1108 NW 13 in OKC. Rent was $55 per month and our landlord was an attorney named John Kennedy. After several months, we added two more roommates, Don McClain and Richard Harrell and moved to 1001a NW 17 which was a two-bedroom two-story house in back of the main house owned by Anne Henry. Our rent was $60 per month so my share was $15. Since I ended up buying most of the food and the other three guys eating most of it, I subsequently moved out to my own apartment at 2419 N Robinson in OKC with a monthly rent of $60. This would later become the honeymoon cottage for Joyce and me and the rent went up to $65 with the additional tenant.
After several months or so Joyce and I tired of living across the street from the Blue Note Bar so we moved to 2909 NW 18 in OKC which was a duplex which rented for $75 per month and it was there that we began our dachshund adventure which has lasted over 45 years with very few breaks. I was transferred by the company I worked for to Pasadena, TX where we lived in an apartment at 3535 Redbluff Rd with a rent of $100 per month. My office address was at 908 W Southmore in Pasadena. We only stayed in Texas five months which seemed like a lifetime to this Sooner. Our address upon returning to OKC was a three-bedroom rent house at 2800 NW 64 with a landlord from Tulsa named John Junk who charged us $115 per month. We lived there from September, 1967 until December, 1971 when we purchased our first house at 5509 NW 64th with a phone number of 721-7065. Our house payment was $170 and we were worried about being able to pay that much for a house after paying only $115 in rent for over four years.
We stayed in this house until July, 1971 when we traded it for the down payment and equity on a new house residing on 2.3 acres on the 7-mile line off of Highway 37 west of Newcastle and east of Tuttle. Our address changed a few times but it always included Blanchard, OK as the post office. Now you know why it was called the Tri-city area. This covers the first thirty years of my life and the next almost 40 years will be covered in the second verse.
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