Speaker 1: Good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome, welcome, welcome. It
Speaker 1: is time now for our community connection. And we've got
Speaker 1: one of the best storytellers I know, Joe Sears, is
Speaker 1: here from the Dewey Hotel.
Speaker 2: How you doing, Joe, Hey, good morning. I'm enjoying this nice,
Speaker 2: cool morning.
Speaker 1: Well, we got a few days of that before, you know,
Speaker 1: we go back to about the two degrees short of
Speaker 1: cremation again.
Speaker 3: We've had a good summer.
Speaker 1: We have for the most part.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we didn't have that sizzling horrible heat that
Speaker 2: we had last year.
Speaker 1: More water than we normally get, good.
Speaker 2: A lot more water, and I haven't turned on my
Speaker 2: sprinkler system at my house.
Speaker 3: It's been very nice. Everything nice and green.
Speaker 2: When I returned to this country ten years ago because
Speaker 2: I got I left when I was nineteen, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: went out and saw the world work and came back
Speaker 2: home because of my health. Not ten years ago, it
Speaker 2: was being all that really heavy drought. Everything was brown.
Speaker 2: I wasn't used to see in my beautiful Oklahoma brown
Speaker 2: in the summertime. And the old sage especially with all
Speaker 2: their wonderful grass and the blue stem, and to see
Speaker 2: it's so green, the way it's supposed to be green,
Speaker 2: green country.
Speaker 3: I enjoy that.
Speaker 2: The Old Sage is really I think the prettiest part
Speaker 2: of Oklahoma ever. It's just this, and so I like
Speaker 2: living here among it, and I'm real happy to have
Speaker 2: all that green.
Speaker 3: Green is a healing color.
Speaker 2: I'm an artist, a painter, and we learn certain things
Speaker 2: about color in school and sure, and then there was
Speaker 2: a book back in the seventies about color and all
Speaker 2: it means. Green is actually a very You can wear
Speaker 2: the color of green and it makes you feel better.
Speaker 1: You don't get pitched on Saint Patty's Day.
Speaker 3: No, you know.
Speaker 2: I used to say, well, I'm a rage you go ah,
Speaker 2: ain't good enough? You better have some green on. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it's it's nice to have green around. It's just
Speaker 2: a healthy feeling. And speaking of health, I'm here to
Speaker 2: talk about the Sandlot, our movie coming up Saturday.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, indeed, we've got the Family Movie returning our.
Speaker 2: Family Film Festival. And we started that a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago.
Speaker 3: Tom.
Speaker 2: It's funny, we thought we were very clever. Well, come
Speaker 2: to find out, museums all across the nation are doing films,
Speaker 2: so it's not unique just at the Dewey Hotel. We
Speaker 2: were just behind and didn't know about it, but it
Speaker 2: sure fits like a glove.
Speaker 1: It does.
Speaker 3: And we have a nice big screen that's inflatable. We
Speaker 3: just bought one.
Speaker 2: It blows up like one of those bouncy things you
Speaker 2: can get for birthday parties. It's a big screen and
Speaker 2: it's like going to the Bowman twin drive in.
Speaker 1: So wait, this is an inflatable screen.
Speaker 3: It is an inflatable screen.
Speaker 1: So instead of seeing it in Imax, we're watching it
Speaker 1: the air Max.
Speaker 2: Airmax and it's really really nice and it's nice and clear.
Speaker 2: So we had this big, beautiful screen that we put
Speaker 2: out on the north side of the house and of
Speaker 2: the hotel, and we provide the seed. We have a
Speaker 2: concession stand of you know, all we don't have is lollipops.
Speaker 2: And I sticked.
Speaker 1: To the bottom of the shoe after a while. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: how that goes to Family Films and.
Speaker 3: The old Aral Theater downtown. I grew up with that.
Speaker 3: That was built originally in Martlesville as a vaudeville house.
Speaker 1: Imagine who was Yea?
Speaker 2: And Ruby Darby performed there and she was quite controversial.
Speaker 3: And she the legend is that Ruby Darby. Uh every
Speaker 3: she was.
Speaker 2: Very popular vaudeville performer. She was Queen of the oil fields,
Speaker 2: a colt her and all of the men and women,
Speaker 2: I mean, it was a to do things to go
Speaker 2: watch her perform the burlesque. But church growers, churchgoers did
Speaker 2: not like Ruby Darby and her bodiness. But anyway, it
Speaker 2: was still acceptable until there was a Fourth of July
Speaker 2: parade and she rode down the street as an event
Speaker 2: as Lady Godiva. Oh and all she had on was
Speaker 2: a big wig from Europe, and that was the final straw,
Speaker 2: and the church ladies at Bartlesville said you gotta go.
Speaker 2: And overnight at the Aero Theater, the men stopped going
Speaker 2: and business really dropped after that, and so she had
Speaker 2: to leave town.
Speaker 3: But what a legend you know of the Errol Theater.
Speaker 2: Now, all that was gone by the time I was born,
Speaker 2: but I remember the Beatles appeared there, and that's the
Speaker 2: first time I saw people lined up for a movie.
Speaker 1: Oh the Hard Days Nights, Hard Days Night. The Beatles
Speaker 1: played bartles But.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh yeah, so the Aero Theater locally, But anyway,
Speaker 2: back to the our theater, we have a nice Don
Speaker 2: Tyler slab between our hotel and the hitching post, and
Speaker 2: we call that the slab Theater and we put on
Speaker 2: all kinds of activities, but that's where we show our movies.
Speaker 2: And in the fall and winter time, we have big
Speaker 2: heaters that we can bring out and it's like outdoors
Speaker 2: seating at a cafe. We can actually heat the audience
Speaker 2: and watch a film. So it's our film series has
Speaker 2: come in and we make sure it's always a family
Speaker 2: film and we've been very successful with it. We've had
Speaker 2: to cancel a few times because of the weather. But
Speaker 2: The Sandlot is a classic made nineteen ninety three in
Speaker 2: an era in America when, gosh, you know, it was
Speaker 2: just a much better time for all of us. You know,
Speaker 2: we didn't have the anger politics going on, and the
Speaker 2: neighborhoods were full of just growing up. It's it's a
Speaker 2: coming of age, a baseball neighborhood movie. You know, a young,
Speaker 2: little nerd guy moves into a neighborhood and the neighborhood
Speaker 2: kids tak him in. They need a baseball player and
Speaker 2: he doesn't know anything about it, so what he experiences,
Speaker 2: but it's a it's a movie about good mental health
Speaker 2: in young people, and you just you can't talk enough
Speaker 2: about good mental health and the importance of good mental
Speaker 2: health and young people, adolescents and and and after adolescence.
Speaker 2: Those are the things you take into adulthood. And here's
Speaker 2: a movie about everybody feeling welcome that the majority, the
Speaker 2: majority coming together for a combined effort, you know, to
Speaker 2: make something happen. Applause rewards. All of that is is
Speaker 2: a uh, it's just very good for the mental health
Speaker 2: and young people. So this film really captures all that.
Speaker 2: And James Earl Jones is in that. I saw him
Speaker 2: on Broadway and I have never seen a performance of
Speaker 2: anyone on stage live better than a James Earl Jones.
Speaker 2: He can project, yes, his whole body is an actor,
Speaker 2: you know. And he was honored by the Cherokee Nation
Speaker 2: here in Oklahoma several years ago as their Cherokee of
Speaker 2: the Year. He was part Cherokee, and I didn't realize
Speaker 2: and Tommy Lee Jones has been honored by the Cherokee
Speaker 2: and you just never.
Speaker 3: Know who they're going to put an honor on.
Speaker 2: But I was really thrilled to find out that James
Speaker 2: Earl Jones is part Cherokee, because I'm a Cherokee descendant myself.
Speaker 2: I mean in Oklahoma, you're a descendant probably of one
Speaker 2: triver or another.
Speaker 3: At the Dewey Hotel.
Speaker 2: When we give tours, a lot of people are very
Speaker 2: surprised that we had slavery in Indian Territory, and they're
Speaker 2: even more surprised that the tribe, the Cherokee tribe, brought
Speaker 2: most of the slavery to Indian Territory.
Speaker 3: There were rich, very wealthy.
Speaker 2: Cherokee that came before and during and after the Trailer
Speaker 2: of Tears, and they brought their property the slaves with them,
Speaker 2: and that slavery. They were not allowed to intermarry with
Speaker 2: the Cherokee. The Cherokee did not teach them how to
Speaker 2: read and write. They did everything they could to go
Speaker 2: along with the whites to be left alone, and they
Speaker 2: still put them on the Trail of Tears. But the Cherokee,
Speaker 2: being a very advanced tribe of people, saw nothing wrong
Speaker 2: with the slavery issue. So when you got out here
Speaker 2: in in Indian Territory, we had lots of runaways. There
Speaker 2: was a runaway slave. You could run away from a
Speaker 2: rich Indian family and there was no one to turn
Speaker 2: you in like in the Old South or a neighbor
Speaker 2: accarenting the next state, Indian Territory. Oklahoma had a lot
Speaker 2: of runaways and most of them were trying to work
Speaker 2: their way to Kansas and freedom, and a lot of
Speaker 2: them were trained to be Buffalo soldiers and they were
Speaker 2: That's another thing when you go on a tour to
Speaker 2: a museum, you find out so many things, but oh,
Speaker 2: you do the Blacks were big cowboys in this Texas
Speaker 2: and those were states that had slaves who learned how
Speaker 2: to be really good cowboys. So there's a great history
Speaker 2: of cowboys that from a black culture, and so there
Speaker 2: was a lot of that. In the Indian Territory. You
Speaker 2: had slaves. You knew how to ride horses and could
Speaker 2: outride some of the Confederacy. But they were all working
Speaker 2: their way to Kansas, which is our country up in here.
Speaker 2: We were white encroachment country up here, and all of
Speaker 2: our this was all Cherokee Land, northern Cherokee Land, and
Speaker 2: the Confederacy occupied it because they did not want an
Speaker 2: invasion of Texas and Arkansas coming from Kansas. And that's
Speaker 2: what break brought Jake Bartles down here for the first time.
Speaker 2: So all of that's part of the history that you
Speaker 2: can learn by just a field trip to the Dewey Hotel.
Speaker 1: My gosh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And we don't preach history, but when those questions
Speaker 2: come up, people are very surprised to find out about
Speaker 2: wealthy Indians that Oklahoma even had slavery. We had one
Speaker 2: hundred and seven engagements between the Union and Confederate forces
Speaker 2: in Indian Territory. That's a lot of battles when you
Speaker 2: look at it for a territory, and we was young.
Speaker 2: We became an Indian territory in eighteen thirty four and
Speaker 2: it was created to for the placing of tribes out here.
Speaker 2: So the hotel is built from Delaware money. Now the
Speaker 2: Delaware where originally from the East coast up near New
Speaker 2: York City. Yeah, they had become a small tribe. Bartlowsville
Speaker 2: is their capital, per se, and it was their money
Speaker 2: that helped build the Dewey Hotel. In nineteen hundred, Jake
Speaker 2: Bartles had married the daughter of Chief journey Cake, who
Speaker 2: was also he was a preacher, a Baptist preacher, and
Speaker 2: we'd like to say in tudw Texas. He was a
Speaker 2: member of the BBB, the Better Baptist Bureau but Nanny
Speaker 2: maintained the avenue of going down a Baptist so she
Speaker 2: had the parlor at the hotel was served as an
Speaker 2: early day church in Dewey, and she eventually built the
Speaker 2: first Baptist church there and it was called the journey
Speaker 2: Cake Baptist Church. And recently the church has donated to
Speaker 2: the hotel some of the artifacts from phil Nannie. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we've been trying for a long time to get our
Speaker 2: mittens on some of the those things. But they gave
Speaker 2: us a set of four dishes that are commemoritative of
Speaker 2: the journey Cake Baptist Church and we have those on
Speaker 2: display in our dining room. And so it's besides our
Speaker 2: film festival, it's an opportunity to come and learn about
Speaker 2: the hotel and business has picked up. We have a
Speaker 2: lot more visitors than we used to. But we're trying
Speaker 2: to get the Dewey Hotel to be a destination point
Speaker 2: like the Tommis Museums for travelers, and the Pioneer Woman
Speaker 2: over in Pahosca has certainly made that more popular. A
Speaker 2: lot of people were on the route of their pilgrimage
Speaker 2: and to go over and have her wonderful food and
Speaker 2: it is good, so they look up and google things
Speaker 2: to do in the area of Pahusca, and Bartlesville pops up,
Speaker 2: and then the cultured people like to visit museums and
Speaker 2: they oh, the Dewey Hotel, and so we're off the
Speaker 2: beaten path, but they certainly find they do, and so
Speaker 2: we get a lot of customers from out of town.
Speaker 2: But locally, you know, we're just the icon of history,
Speaker 2: that's all. And we're trying to play that up. And
Speaker 2: the film Festival is one way of brightening that star,
Speaker 2: of creating a focal point for Dewey because that hotel
Speaker 2: used to be the focal point for everything.
Speaker 1: Well, entertainment, everything.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And so anyway, the movie The Sandlot is
Speaker 2: going to be shown this Saturday, and we started at
Speaker 2: nine o'clock when it's nice.
Speaker 3: And dark and coming early.
Speaker 2: It gets you a hot dog, yes, but it's a
Speaker 2: nice way to enjoy a summer night, it is, and
Speaker 2: to particularly for kids. We keep all of our movies
Speaker 2: are fairly friendly, but I particularly enjoy The Sandlot. And
Speaker 2: it's not just my selections for the film. We have
Speaker 2: actually had a little committee that that says, oh what
Speaker 2: about this, uh, and and but I'm a big pusher
Speaker 2: of preventive mental health in young people, and this is
Speaker 2: one of those movies that really shows the good mental
Speaker 2: health and kids and the importance of participation. And then
Speaker 2: in August, August sixteenth, we're doing back to school movie
Speaker 2: a School of Rock.
Speaker 3: Oh Jact black Jack, Black You amazing. The board members go, oh,
Speaker 3: I really like that movie. It is.
Speaker 2: And so that's a good selection that's going to take
Speaker 2: place on the sixteenth of August. And then in we've
Speaker 2: got some things planned for Labor Day. And then in
Speaker 2: Western Heritage. We haven't selected a movie for Labor Day
Speaker 2: yet time, but Western Heritage we're going to do Andy
Speaker 2: Get Your Gun Good. You know, it just fits like
Speaker 2: a glove there. And then we've got you know, a
Speaker 2: Memorial Day. I'm not my World Day, Armistice Day. See,
Speaker 2: they don't call it Armistice Day. It's in America. It's
Speaker 2: a Veteran's Day. Yeah, And so those are we'd like
Speaker 2: to do Holidays, Thanksgiving. It's been a very successful series.
Speaker 2: But they do they do this in other museums. Tulsa
Speaker 2: does it at their museums, but Dewey is unique. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just it's a small audience. We provide the chairs
Speaker 2: and some movies we'll have maybe twenty five people. Some
Speaker 2: won't have fifty people. But it's it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: So if you're looking for something to do on a
Speaker 2: nice summer night out the sad.
Speaker 1: Lot, let's do it. Hey, Earl, Thanks, I mean, let's uh,
Speaker 1: let's get this going here.
Speaker 3: Joe, Joe, joey. I have that problem with Earl a lot.
Speaker 1: I bet you do. I call him Joe.
Speaker 2: Well, just we were at the Kopan restaurant last night.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed chicken fried steak. Oh gosh, and that very
Speaker 2: thing came up and they did double takes and said, well,
Speaker 2: we never see you two boys together.
Speaker 1: I saw you together once once. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: fleeting moment.
Speaker 3: That leading moment.
Speaker 2: Well, actually, ear Earl Sears and I are very close brothers.
Speaker 2: Then we differ in politics, but we don't let that
Speaker 2: separate us. We're very dedicated to brothers.
Speaker 1: Joe, thanks for being with this, yere Dewey Hotel. What
Speaker 1: times are we going to start the old flickorama?
Speaker 3: It starts at nine pm? All right, nice and dark?
Speaker 1: All right, very good? Be there, folks or b square