www.cvilleok.com
Oklahoma Centennial Sponsors:
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Individual
cvilleok.com Oklahoma Centennial pages from a Collinsville perspective
will appear periodically this year.
Contact Ted Wright (918) 371-1901 or email: wrightted@aol.com. |
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Collinsville,
Oklahoma
Nov. 11, 2007 Oklahoma Centennial |
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This
web site is brought to you by the Newspaper
Museum In Collinsville and the other advertisers appearing on these
pages. If you would like to provide content or advertisements ...
call Ted Wright (918) 371-1901 or send email to wrightted@aol.com. |
Sampling
of Life
In
Collinsville, Oklahoma
1950 - 1959
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Home
(email questions/comments to wrightted@aol.com). Ted Wright -- last update 11/11/2007 (OKCentennial11.html) www.cvilleok.com Copyright 2007 -- Collinsville, Oklahoma |
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Collinsville
celebrated the 50th anniversary of Oklahoma Statehood in 1957.
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| My first grade photo -- Ted | 1950's style elementary school writing paper (a Big Chief tablet). |
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| Now that we've reached the 1950's in this Oklahoma Centennial series, I will be sharing a few first hand experiences. I don't have the exact year for the photo (above) of school kids in front of the Crown Theatre on Main Street but recognize the paper sacks (full of hard Christmas candy and an apple or orange) provided free after a pre-Christmas field trip from the schools to an annual free movie.-- Ted Wright |
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| The "Blob" (1958) is the movie I remember best from the downtown Crown and was not old enough to attend the Cardinal Drive-In (off Memorial north of 146th Street) before it closed later in the 1950s. -- Ted |
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| It took several years of mostly volunteer labor by Collinsville citizens to build the swimming pool in the City Park that was used by residents each summer from August 1958 through 2005. |
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| Collinsville businessmen pose beside the bus before a Kiwanis trip in May 1952. Buses (and trains) were a more common mode of transportation in the 1950s (than today). The bus stop was in the middle of Main Street in front of the Rexall Drug store. The Collinsville Kiwanis Club was traveling To Baxter Springs, Kansas to meet with the Club there. |
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| 19 year old Cecil Dotson was apparently Collinsville's first casualty of the long Korean War (in 1952). I remember later in the 50s and 60s when it was big deal to see the new model cars each year. Clyde Jordan's Chevrolet dealership was located across from City Hall where the Collinsville Family Pharmacy is located tody. -- Ted |
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| Back when there were just 2 or 3 TV stations and you could barely see the game through the static even with good rabbit ear antenna, it was a big deal to see more than one college football game a week nation-wide. Today we have hundreds of TV channels, cable TV and internet to follow any and all college games. This "national" story in the Collinsville News was a bit unusual. Typically there was only a college game mentioned if my Dad or Grandfather attended an OU or TU football game. -- Ted |
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| Bill Thomas (a CHS 1950 graduate) was one of the "cowboys" celebrating Oklahoma's 1st 50 years of Statehood in 1957. |
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| There were are least these 6 grocery stores in 1957 Collinsville that closed for Armistice Day (that we now call Veterans Day) on Nov. 11th. |
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| I suspect most kids today have never spoken to a telephone operator. Collinsville has had telephone service since 1902 and prior to the 1959 story above, all of those calls were made by telling a human operator (typically female) the number of the person you wished to speak to. The operator made the connection manually on a switchboard. The "new" dial phones had rotary dials, not the keypads that came years later. The phone number for The Collinsville News was 73 until the 1959 switch above. The number at my family's house was 169. -- Ted Wright |
