Thursday, March 29, 2007

inside of Marilyn's dealy... this weekend...

Mk is having open house, here is brochure regarding it...


our old friends come back to visit.... I used to chase these in my younger days....

A driver slows as a tornado crosses the highway east of the Northern Natural Gas Plant in Beaver County on Wednesday night. Photo by Chad Love for The Oklahoman BEAVER — A tornado tracked through southern Beaver County on Wednesday night, destroying a house and killing a couple who were taking shelter inside, authorities said.

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Ann, I and Bill Waller were the first folks in Drumright after it's big tornado years ago.. We chased it from Perkins and drove in to town with the tornado in front of us.... we were about 6 blocks from it as it passed thru... and could not believe our eyes... nothing but cement slabs left in many places, people walking around in a daze... straw pushed thru a front window with out cracking it!! grass sticking through hi line poles... etc...

Thursday, March 22, 2007

How do you go from where you are to where you want to be?

How do you go from where you are to where you want to be? I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal, and you have to be willing to work for it. --Jim Valvano

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Andrew posed for some posters...



here is one scanned in .. they don't scan so well on my cheap equipment.. haha.. maybe we can get Heather to have their art dept send us the photo files of them.. to post on this site??? and hers of course.. haha...
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Happened to look out and seen sun through the fog...



Looking west across our wheat field ... ok maybe a bit to the southwest... Jake is working on rigs off in the distance...

have a great day... S
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Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Tomorrow is a sad day.... In memory of Amanda Cathrene Moffat

Amanda Cathrene Moffat was born on March 12, 1985, she would have been 22 years old. It is a particularly sad day in Ann and I's life, but this year for the first time ever, I am beginning to realize how much joy came with her too... to see the happiness she brought into our lives, even though we only got to hold her so briefly... and then say a fast good bye... she indeed brought us joy too. I have been afraid to admit this, as the pain was always so great this time of year, but now... the joy she brought is beginning to take over the darkness. She would have been a wonderful sister all could have been proud of... and a daughter to behold... I wonder if she would have been as strong as Heather, or as artistic as Phillip, or as good a thinker as Jonathan, or would she have been as good a worker as Jake... nope, probably not, she would have just been awesome in her own right... to my Amanda Cathrene, I love you... your Mom and I love you and miss you so... I know one thing for sure... that in Heaven, you are having a ball with Grandma and Grandpa Shaklee... bet he is really 'helping you' as he helped your Mom... and I bet ole Grandpa Moffat is just speechless... watching you with that special twinkle in his eye, and sharing with you all the things you missed out on... what a joyous time it must be to see all of you there!!!
But in these sad times, I come to realize how lucky I am to have such a truly wonderful family who love and share life with each other and rejoice in everyones success and accomplishments, and feel empathy for the times we don't quite make the goals... To see the family grow, and love and nurish each other is a truly wonderful thing... I am richly blessed, very richly blessed!
My love to all... forever and a day!!

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Chester Gould, OSU’s most famous student

Chester Gould, OSU’s most famous student
Bob Darcy
Contributing Columnist

No wonder they put you on indefinite suspension.”

This quote is from the Aug. 4, 2002 Sunday Oklahoman. The speaker, Tess Tracy, refers to her husband, a police officer. Those were the last words from the “Dick Tracy” comic strip in the Oklahoman. The next day, “Dick Tracy” was replaced with “Hi & Lois.”

Dick Tracy began Oct. 4, 1931, in the Detroit Mirror and first appeared in the Sunday Oklahoman on Feb. 25, 1934. Between 1931 and 2002, “Dick Tracy” achieved enormous popularity.

The first “Dick Tracy” film came out in 1938. Eight others followed. The latest, from 1990, featured Warren Beatty, Madonna, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Dick Van Dyke.“Dick Tracy” had various radio shows between 1935 and 1948, and of them, the musical “Dick Tracy in B-Flat,” featured Bing Crosby as Tracy and Bob Hope as the villain, Flathead. In 1995 there was a “Dick Tracy” 32-cent stamp.

“Dick Tracy” had little or no humor. The cops, by and large, were trustworthy and intrepid; the crooks, by and large, were murderous and

flawed. Bullets killed. Crooks died beneath the ice, machines crushed them, they were shot simultaneously through the head and heart or scalded to death. Sometimes the odd good citizen got killed as well.

The strip featured innovations over the years, such as the wrist radio and an atomic laser beam weapon, and eventually got involved with an advanced humanoid moon civilization.

The man responsible for all this was Chester Gould, born in 1900 in Pawnee.

Look through the 1918 and 1919 Redskins (the name of OSU’s defunct yearbook) and you will find Chester Gould’s high-school drawings.

In 1920 the Goulds moved to Stillwater. Gould’s father became editor of the local newspaper, and Chester was an Oklahoma A&M freshman. He’s on page 70 of the 1920 Redskin.

The family home was at 409 S. Lewis St. It’s in a quiet neighborhood a few blocks east of the campus and a few blocks north of downtown — an easy walk either way. I stood on the corner, near the two-story Gould home and tried to experience how it was 87 years ago. Today nothing can be heard. There are no smells. No people move about. Everyone is sealed within homes and cars.

Victor Hugo once wrote that at twilight one is able to experience a city street of an earlier time. In the darkness old sounds returned.

In 1920, windows were open. People were out talking, watching, drinking, eating. Children were running, calling. Cars were noisier then, as were dogs. Families kept chickens. Men and boys worked on car engines. There were smells: human sweat, animals, all sorts of savory cooking, baking, oil, gasoline and the smell of rain.

Wearing glasses and a suit, freshman Chester Gould took it all in, and eventually transformed it into a world of hardworking people, grotesque criminals, phonies, and cops.

Gould joined the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and maintained ties until his death. I visited the Lambda Chi house on University Avenue. They have a Dick Tracy drawing Gould gave them on a 1970s visit, 50 years after he left. Some Lambda Chis showed me personalized drawings. In a Student Union room there is another Dick Tracy sketch.

But drawing sports cartoons for the Oklahoman was not enough. Gould transferred to Northwestern, near Chicago, and graduated in 1923.

Brooklyn born and bred Al Capone, a year older than Gould, moved to Chicago in 1918, a city with which he is forever identified.

A few years later Gould became part of the same Chicago, where he fictionalized and immortalized its battles between the cops and the Capones.

I stare at that 1920 Redskin photograph. Within the freshman Chester Gould I can see the elderly cartoonist. Same suit, same glasses, same haircut. Each of those Oklahoma A&M faces quietly looked out down their own roads.