WEBVTT

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Good morning, good morning, morning. Welcome, welcome, welcome. It's

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time now for a community connection and
doesn't get much more community than this.

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I always like having Ron and Joe
in here because we talked to the Dewey

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Hotel. We talk all kinds of
things. Yeah, but this is this

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is a big thing, you fella, this guy going on at the hotel.

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You got a tour going on the
next couple of days, right,

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we do. The holidays are upon
the hotel and the Dewey Hotel Museum.

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Well, it's undergone a lot of
hardship over the years, and like anything,

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it pops back from time to time. But the COVID really got us.

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Yeah, but we stayed open and
we came up with new ways to

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have to fundraise and have fun to
put the focus back on the big icon.

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Yeah. That all the history in
this area hard hard to imagine.

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You know that that Jake and Nanny
decided to be that hotel out in the

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middle of the prairie with no with
no homes, nothing nothing around her.

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It was just truly amazing. Well, it helps to have the Delaware Tribe

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of Indians land allotment. I tell
people that Delaware money helped build that hotel

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and the land and her money and
Jake Bartlew's money. And Jake bartles came

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here in eighteen seventy three, and
he would have been a Civil War a

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Union man. He was a New
Jersey guy and family big in agriculture,

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and someone said the prairie was very
fertile. So he comes down to Kansas

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and tries it out, and the
Civil War starts, and he joined the

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Union. And he came down into
this country for the first time because this

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was Confederate hell Lands, and the
first time he'd seen this area, and

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he said, you know, this
is really nice, rich river bottom country.

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But we went back to Kansas.
He met his wife, Nanny,

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who was the Delaware and she was
the daughter of the Delaware chief, journey

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Cake. And he was also a
preacher, you know, and she started

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the first Baptist church there in Dewey. I tell people she was a member

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of the BBB, and the guests
will say, well, what's that.

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I'll say, that's the better Baptist
Bureau. And I tell you, can

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you imagine what kind of stories between
the ladies happened in Nanny's parlor? Oh

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yeah, Nanny held it all in
the party there until the church was built.

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Ye. Well, she loved to
play music, you know, I

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had had a beautiful shine back then, Yeah, she did. And then

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she had a pie organ, yep. And it was just unbelievable. I

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meant, you know how she had
brought people in and carried on, you

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know, their little church ladies.
You know, well they said the parlor

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at the Dewey Hotel was one of
the most popular places in the area to

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meet anything socially happening took play.
Well, she was a refined lady to

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begin with. She was well educated
and had gone to a college finishing school

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and she and you know, back
in the eighteen hundreds, women were not

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allowed to own a business or property, and that's something but the Cherokee Nation,

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you know, this was all Cherokee
Country, and the Delaware were a

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part of that area. But the
Cherokees changed all that. They said,

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our women are going to have the
same rights as the states around us.

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And so when they in the eighteen
seventies, somewhere they rescinded that in Indian

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Territory, and she and Jake Bartles
got married, came down here and built

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that hotel to accommodate a week business. Yea, and boy they did well.

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They get free seed to the area
farmers and then they would bring him

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business in the spring. He practiced
the old barter system. He was a

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smart man. Yeah. The thing
that really amazed me though, on the

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top of everything else, he had
a business sense to bring his mercantile store.

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I'm talking about a two story building
from the Canty River down in Barsville

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and drug it all the way up
to Dewey on logs and oxen. Oh

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that's and put it right there where
now, well the Toomics Museum is.

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But it was just amazing one structure. They didn't take it apart or anything.

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Oh, they just run together.
Ye put it on a track.

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Yeah. Now we think of these
days, that's pretty quick drive up to

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Dewey up on one twenty three.
Yeah, that's that. And then you

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you take away the car, you
got the oxen and logs and roll in

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the house. Man that they had
to take about the better part of a

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week, if not a mo took
him eighty eight days to mediate open.

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The store stayed open as it moved, you know. And I what really

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surprised me was when when we found
out uh was that Bill Johnstone and Keeler

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actually worked for Jake and the Mercantile
store. Oh, and asked what prompted

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them to come to Barsville to build
the Johnstone Keeler store, And that's partially

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what made him mad. He said, you know, I'll just take my

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store to Dewey, and he did
with him, but you know, very

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popular. He had eight three eight
hour shifts of breadmaking at that store around

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the clock. And I guess if
you if you want to bread, you

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bought it from the Pioneer General and
as fresh as fresh could be. Oh

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yeah, and butter that the fairly
lived upstairs of the store. And when

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they got to Dewey, the hotel
had just been completed, and they lived

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at the Dewey Hotel on the second
floor. But that store was opened until

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the nineteen fifties. And all of
those railroad piles that he had helped build

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the track on to get the store
up there, he put them down behind

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the new store where the Tom Mixed
Museum is, and a lightning struck it

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in nineteen fifty set those railroad tiles
on fire with all that oil in it,

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and it burned the store down.
Nineteen fifty oh. But when it

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was opened it was a reasers of
its day for Indian It had everything if

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you wanted to shop in the area, the women found you. What was

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really funny too, was up in
a hotel there. Actually you think it's

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a toy, but they got a
little who's your cabinet that's not but maybe

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eighteen inches tall, and then they've
got a cast ironed little bit of cast

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iron stove. And I always thought
they were toys, but then I later

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had an elderly person come in and
said, no, those were display models

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for the traveling salesman, and that
they would go around to the merchants,

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you know that had these mercantiles and
would show them what they're what they looked

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like, and then they had a
catalog that they could order anything you wanted,

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you know, and then ship it
a railroad down to the store.

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That was pretty amazing. I mean, I think that they had that kind

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of enterprise, you know, going
you know, to bring in. The

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hotel was the place to eat on
Sunday afternoons that everybody went to the Dewey

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Hotel to eat. It was like
the del Monicos of Dodge City. And

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you know, we discovered that there
were three hundred in the records. That

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shows three hundred people on holidays would
eat there on a Sunday afternoon, and

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that meant there was a line outside, a lot of tobacco chewing and wait

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your turn for the turkey. Yeah. Story talent, Yeah, storyteller.

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Before we came up with the porchstalkers. Well, you guys been going strong

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for a while. Well we in
bellish here and there, but you know,

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but we have a big activity coming
up we wanted to talk about.

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It's we're getting ready to have the
Dewey Christmas Tree Lighting sixth annual. Well,

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it's we're celebrating the small town Christmas. Dewey is just you know,

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I was reading the other day where
Dewey was. I saw the headline that

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said Dewey voted the third safest city
in Oklahoma, and I guess it's back

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in the nineteen twenties, and what
made it safe was the very fact that

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it was so isolated and friendly.
It's what gave way to the cement factory

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coming there. They had an airplane
factory that lasted well, it was in

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nineteen fifteen, going strong all through
World War One and an FDR was Secretary

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of the Navy, and he's the
one that finally told the right brother the

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one that was left. The right
brothers kept suing anyone who made an aeroplane

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until they pay royalties. An FDR
said, they're making them in Europe.

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You're holding backgress progress. We need
this for the war effort. And Dewey

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was right in the middle of that, and so it lasted up until the

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early twenties and airplane factory in Dewey. So it's always been a little prosperous

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little town centered around that beautiful Victorian
hotel. Well you know what another thing

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made it he was that you had
Tom Mixes your night watchman there. Yeah,

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yeah, I wonder he. Uh. Hollywood decided that he would make

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a good actor, you know,
Western actor. Uh. And just it

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seems so funny though to look back
at at all they talked not I mean,

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it wasn't talking, but it was
a silent movie. Well, his

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first film was made outside of Dewey
at Blue Mountain. That was film.

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Yeah there. Yeah, see we've
been making movies for a long time around

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here. Yeah. Yeah, if
we have now it's we need the money

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more than ever now. Yeah,
well, we had a few. We

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had a few outlaws too. Oh
yeah. Bonnie and Clyde often wondered if

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they ever stayed there. Well,
you know, let me know, Jake

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probably told him. They said,
now you better not rob my bank.

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Well, we know outlaws played poker
there on the third floor of the hotel.

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EMMITTT. Dalton, Uh, he
from the Dame the Dalton. He's

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the only survivor of the Dalton game. When he got out of prison,

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he married a Martlesville woman, I
think her name was Johnson, and she

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was totally fascinated with outlaws and and
Emmett just fell head over heels for her.

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And Emmett has played poker up there. She's buried in Dewey. But

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you know interesting the outlaws, this
was outlaw country. Henry Wells the outlaw

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that was hired by Frank Phillips to
kind of keep outlaws happy around his rim.

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Oh yeah, well, I was
just waiting recently where Wells uh filed

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the plan that pretty boy Floyd was
planning to kidnap Frank Phillips did that wild

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eye. It's it's documented. And
Wells, whether he made it up or

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not, he alerted the Wooler rock
Rach hands that this is being planned.

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And of course I think he helped
instigate the Outlaws and Kaltheave's reunion, which

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is still going on. But you
know, it must have been awfully hard

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on the ridge back in the twenties
to be living out there in the old

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sage of that beautiful wretch wide open. But yeah, well served his purpose

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very well. But I had never
heard that about pretty boy Floyd before.

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We just recently had a big breakfast
to help out with the pain job on

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the Dewey Hotel. How did that
go? Well, we made a little

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that's good, real good. Well, I'll tell you that price catering now,

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oh man, they're good. I
mean he has got it down.

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It pattented well. And his fundraisers. He understands the community effort and what

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a fundraiser is all about. Yeah, it's not always making money as being

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a good community person. That's right. The money we made on that fundraiser,

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the important thing is it raised awareness
of the hotel, our need to

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keep that old building painting. There's
so many restrictions. It's a historic National

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Historic Register. You got to fit
to a narrow set of guidelines. You

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do and with the idea that it
saves the taxpayers money down the line by

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keeping it in good shape, you
don't have to do it as often.

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It all makes sense, but it's
still fifty five thousand dollars to pay the

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building. Yea, an old one
hundred and twenty three year old building.

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Yeah, but you know it'll be
around for another one hundred and twenty three

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years in on Conger Wood. Well, you know it was fascinating to me

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is that I had learned that originally
the foundation on that hotel was sandstone blocks,

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and they some years ago, it's
not been all that long, they

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did a whole complete new concrete stemwall
around the whole dog on perimeter of the

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hotel, and a lot of those
stones they used and put out near where

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this poor slab are. Yeah.
Yeah, and we made it. We

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come up with the idea that we
wanted to put in some new flag poles,

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so we used the stones to make
its outer yeah. Yeah, and

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it looks good too. Yeah.
It really turned out to be a nice

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project. And you know, an
outfront in that flag where those flags are,

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we have a red Oklahoma state flag. A lot of people don't realize

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Oklahoma's first flag was a beautiful red
with a white star in the number forty

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six in the middle for the forty
six state. Well, one of the

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board members of Dewey, Virginia Chew. Well, she's an old timer up

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there and she knows so much history. She says. Yes, Joe,

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she says, And they finally changed
it because they thought it was just a

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little too cog so they turns out
good. Yeah, we got about a

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minute left here, guys that said, we're gonna do something this summer with

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some picking and grinning and having some
fun. We're planning a guitar pick this

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summer featuring musicians from the area.
And that's where everybody sings, sings a

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song, about eight musicians. They
sing a couple of songs each and they

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has a moderator and it's just a
big event in Nashville, and there's so

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many musicians around here. We're planning
one and we're planning to ask you to

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be a part of it. Tom, I'm in yeah. But before we

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go, Tom, we need to
say Next Thursday, November the thirtieth,

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from six to eight is the Dewey
Christmas Lighting and Santa Claus starring rod Anams.

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Santa Claus is going to be featured. This is the Santa's inside.

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Families start lining up at six o'clock. Santa's only there from six to eight,

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but it's a beautiful place to come
and see Santa in the Old Hotel

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and we've got it all organized the
family, nice decorated, nicely decorated Victorian

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and it don't miss out on your
if you've got the little ones, come

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to Dewey and visit Santa in the
Old Hotel from six to eight November the

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thirtieth, next Thursday. Alrighty,
that sounds great. And gentlemen, good

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luck this weekend here because you guys
are on you guys are on stage or

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on the porch, you should say, don't you talking on all day to

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day? All right, take care
of ladies and gentlemen. We got news

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coming up in just a few