Great State’s Top 4 in 2023
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – What better way to begin than with things ‘started,’ like a brand new ’32 Model B Roadster assembled with new frame and body.
John Hargrove cleared the decks to finish sometime in 2023.
“I got all my other projects out of the way,” he said.
We saw a new Wiley Post memorial in the plans for the town of Arcadia along Route 66, and more new projects than we could count at a robotics and virtual reality lab called Human Mode.
From new products to new crops, we searched far and wide for tall okra in Claremore, sweet peaches near Harrah, giant tomatoes in Woodward, and puffy pies in Medford thanks to Smrka’s Cafe.
We celebrated lots of talent in ’23.
Super Bowl champ Creed Humphrey had a grand homecoming in Shawnee.
We admired the socially conscious artwork of Ebony Iman Dallas, the socket wrench art of T.J. Josefy, and the industrious folk art of Sam Hagen.
Sam’s Town made our Top 4 list this year for his use of castoff materials to make his own bicycle and Route 66 rest stop in Erick.
He told us, “When I get a vision in my mind I got to make it come real, come alive.”
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Hellos and goodbyes mark every year.
We’ll miss our old friend Irv Wagner and his unique musical skills.
We’ll also miss the old Camargo elevator blown down in a spring storm, and the departing Boeing E-3 as the Air Force AWACS platform aircraft.
We all welcomed all kinds of new stuff, like a new crop of frisky mules, a new Carpenter Square Theatre and a new addition to Butcher Barbecue in Wellston, a bar called Uncle Mark’s.
Old and new, we’re glad to still have this old cabin standing in Cheyenne, a leg lamp still standing in Chickasha, 16-cent ice cream cones at Kaiser’s in OKC, the amazing St. Patrick’s Church, and even a giant lump of coal in McAlester.
“A lot of people don’t even know about it anymore,” a museum docent explained.
More old stuff we found includes a piece of the old state fair monorail, and another addition to our Top 4, the venerable Red Dirt Rangers band, another longtime friend of Great State.
“This is where our songs are,” said vocalist John Cooper. “This is where our music is. This is where our family and friends are.”
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Anniversaries celebrated: the hiring of Leslie Filson in 1944 as Oklahoma City’s first Black detective, the 100th year for Enid’s Writers Club, Star Skate’s 40th in Ada, 70 Thanksgivings for Bill and Johnnie Hardage, Superman’s 85th birthday in Pauls Valley, and one more year ‘gone to the dogs’ in Apache where teacher Pamela Mindemann is still earning high marks at the elementary school as she gives out doggy treats every morning in the drop-off line.
“I volunteered,” she laughed one morning.
That canine caper made our Top 4 as well.
Every year marks a journey, maybe another shiny shoe for Cleo Fields, who’s been polishing them for more than 30 years.
We marked colorful evenings, pretty fall colors, another Halloween, and Christmas.
The last of our Top 4 stories involved a journey as well, that of French artist, Lydie Jean Dit Pannel.
For the second year in a row she walked across the U.S. to get to Nowhere, Oklahoma, which, she knows now, is somewhere after all.
“It was crazy,” she told us. “I’m not the same now.”
We covered people, places, pets, and the proud state that holds them all.
The road stretches on and so do we, in search of another Top 4 and more in 2024.
Great State is sponsored by Oklahoma Proton Center
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