I have been lurking around OKC Talk and the Midwest City / Del City forum for some time and finally decided to post something.
With the rapid and radical changes that have been happening in Midwest City over the past few years, I was wondering if there might be a repository of historic photographs. I stopped by the Midwest City branch of the Oklahoma County Metropolitan Library System, but there wasn’t a whole lot there in the way of pictures.
I was eating in a barbecue place in Dallas and the fixtures hanging from the ceiling were reminiscent of the radial wave shade streetlights that Midwest City had before Mercury Vapor street lamps became prevalent. I have seen a couple of houses in MWC that have what appear to be old streetlights in the yard, but these no longer have their original hanging arms. I wonder where I might find a street scene with an original street light. I need to return to the library and look again.
I would also like to find a picture of the fire station that originally sat where station 2 is today.
In a Heritage Park Mall thread, someone mentioned that there used to be a dirt bike track or something in the space now occupied by the mall. I don’t remember the track for some reason, but it got me trying to recall Midwest City in the 1960s and 1970s.
I have lived in Midwest City all of my life and most of my early recollections are restricted to the original mile and adjacent square mile areas close to where I lived. I grew up during the period when it was commonplace to go "downtown" to bank at the First National Bank of Midwest City (“at least we beat a piggy bank”); shop at Oklahoma Tire and Supply, Florsheim Shoes, Langston’s, and Streets; eat at the Plaza Restaurant; and have prescriptions filled at the Conrad-Marr Drug Store. The southeast corner of Southeast Fifteenth Street and Air Depot Blvd., where the self-storage place is, there was a large grassy lot with some type of antenna array, possibly connected with Tinker Air Force Base. Supermarkets were everywhere including, at Southeast Fifteenth Street and Air Depot Blvd., Humpty Dumpty where the ihop stands now and across the street to the east, Brannon’s where the Dollar Tree is located. Stockton’s Supermarket and Delicatessen is now vacant at the west end of the Uptown Shopping Center.
We spent most of our shopping time Uptown at Sears (before it burned to the ground, where Michaels is now), or T.G.&Y (where Langston’s is currently situated, or the Uptown OTASCO (Evelyn’s Flowers). We also ate at Adair's Cafeteria (Henry Hudson’s Pub).
At the Lockheed Shopping Center we had Conrad-Marr #2 and Smith Hardware. If they would hurry up and take down that confounded "Open during construction" sign, I'd like to take a night photo of the original neon in the window of the cleaners.
Where the Jimmy's Egg now stands was Burn’s Tastee Freeze. Where the Chase bank is now, along Southeast Fifteenth Street, is where Dunn's Dairy Queen (drive in) used to be. Next to the Dairy Queen (where the Enterprise car rental, ex sit down Dairy Queen is now) was a small building housing a barber shop and Herman’s Sporting Goods.
When I was attending Traub Elementary School, I remember being fascinated by the construction cranes used as I watched Oscar Rose Junior College being built.
My purpose in the preceding prattle is to, perhaps, stimulate recollections of Midwest City’s earlier days by others before evidence of that era is erased from the earth. Also, since recollections are notoriously subject to being incomplete factually, any corrections or amplifications to my own are encouraged. Recently, I ran into someone with whom I attended school, and in reference to finding that my high school yearbook picture had been posted on one of the classmates type websites, I suggested that if I had known back then that one day there was going to be something called the internet some day, I would have been a bit more particular about what pictures of myself are floating around. Perhaps Midwest City residents, present and former, can turn the prevalence and permanence of the internet to good use by writing Midwest City recollections into the record right here.
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