Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. It is time now for part two of our community connection right here on K one, the one you trust.
Are you ready for the movies?
Jose, here's how you doing.
I'm doing fine. Good morning.
We've got the Dewey Hotel and Museum. We've got the hotel Family Film Festival get ready to kick off for its second year. That first year was pretty darn good.
It did, it did well. We had a good successful run of that. Uh we did hocus Pocus and oh Man, family friendly movies that we started with. You know, museums, there's they're so versatile. There's one in Tulsa that does a family film festival and we didn't know about it. We found out later that they do one also, but Austin, Texas, places other places.
Things happen in museums.
And so the board decided that, you know, we need to put the hotel back on the map again. Yes, And one way is reassuring the public that we're going to step into the role we used to have promoting promoting the community and the people, the culture that you live in. I mean, Dewey is a small town. I love the it is so small, and it's always been separated from Bartlesville. It's not like Broken Arrow or Sand Springs. I mean Dewey. Jake Bartles created Dewey. He moved his
store up there, five miles on rollers. I tell the story every time. I'd probably get boring with.
It, but the thing is, it's kind of funny. He didn't like the town that was named after him, so I moved up and made another way.
Well, Peter and Johnstone worked for him, Yeah, and they learned everything they know from him, and then they started their own business promoted Bartlesville. But mister Bartles didn't hold a grudge. He said, that's ye boys, I'm just gonna move of our number one store five miles north right to the railway.
Yes he did.
When he put his store down, he was just a half a block from a railroad stop, and he helped bring the railroad through. But the railroad was supposed to come through down here where our new bridge is somewhere along in there. The new bridge, I believe is at
the original ford in the Caney River. The one we tore down was a few feet up, but we're now in the original ford, and that's back into the eighteen nineties when Bartleswoll became a city, but mister Bartles moved his store up there and he started a whole new culture of working class people. And now we have all kinds of activities to promote that community. At Christmas of the hotel, we call it celebrating the small town Christmas.
We house Santa. The city council always sends us, you know, a Santa Claus and wet G's so comfortable and it's just a great you come up.
There, you do your radio.
So we came up with the idea to do a film festival outside the hotel. We have a beautiful area right out between the Hitching Post Bar, which also was famous in Dewey. It is between Dewey Bar, the hotel and the bar is a nice little area, a lot and it's got a real nice smooth slab. You know, Dewey used to be the mecca for slabs cement, but you know, they're perfect, there's not a crack in it.
So we kind of nicknamed it the slab Theater. You know, it's the old sixties, but we do so many presentations out there for the public that are free, and the film festival we have a big screen. It's not a little one, it's a big one, a great sound system, and we do these classic films to promote the family, but we try to put a creative touch to that. I've been pushing for a baby boomers night. Okay, baby boomers to a date night for baby boomers.
They bring their grandkids.
To see movie, a movie that was was an icon movie for the baby boomers when when we were kids. And so we have selected Swiss family Robinson, you know, and and they go, what what's that?
You gotta say it? It's a lot of fun. You know.
That's the one where the pirates come after the ship direcked people on an island and they find ways to creative ways to defend themselves.
It's just a wonderful film, Walt Disney.
And then we want to do a millennium night, films that are important to those generations. Just anything to get people to come out on us summer evening.
Uh and and even in a cool night.
We have big heaters like you see down at the downtown restaurant. Oh yes, yeah, they put out nice heat they do, and they make it up.
We provide the seats. It's all free.
We do take donations and we have pop We sell popcorn, okay, And I thought for the Irish movie. This new this film coming up Saturday is called The Luck of the Irish and it's also a Disney film that was filmed in two thousand and one, and there's a Leprechawn basketball there's a basketball team involved in this film, and one of the leads in the movie has access to a family of there's a Leprechaun in the works. So it's a lot of fun. But it's specifically made as a
Saint Patrick's Day film and that's really cool. We try to hit all the holidays with our family film festival, and we've got other plans. We have a young man who handles. He's only twenty one years old. He is an absolute movie buff. He knows everything about movies and he's just he's real smart, you know. He's one of the kids in Bartles actually from Posca. You're smart Pasca people,
but they live over here now. But he runs our film festival and he gets up and talks to everybody about the film like he's the you know, American movie classics. And then the film begins and people bring their we have charriots, but they bring their blankets and uh, we have restrooms. You know, the hotel stays open so you can come in and use the restroom and it's just nice. We've considered doing live plays out on the slab.
Uh.
It real conducive to doing the classic The Miracle Worker, the story of Helen Keller. There's a big tree, a beautiful elm tree that takes place in the play. There's a water water well. We have all of the setting for the Miracle Worker. Plus the building itself looks like the Keller home. It does and it's just perfect for the Miracle Worker. Now they come up with do you finding a Helen Keller and an Annie Sullivan to do the Big leads? Well, you can go to Dewey Middle School.
We always start with Dewey since it's that's our main contraction. But you go to the Dewey and hold auditions for you know, an eight year old girl, you're gonna find one. There's there's a little talented girls out there who have that bug. So I'm very confident we could find a good little Helen Keller. And boy, they tear the stage up. Patty Duke did the Broadway and and uh and Bankrupt did the Annie on broad both of them won Tonys. Then they go and did the film and both of
them won Oscars. So it's a very popular film about the popular play. And uh so we're considering that. And Shelby Brammer, the big theater director here.
In movies and everything.
Yes, she has she has every places in the heart, so she's wanting to direct it. We have other activities planned. We've got we're trying to do a Chake Bartles Day in June on Flag Day. They used to celebrate Jake Bartle's birthday in Dewey with a big parade and events, and so we're going to try to recreate that.
And we're talking about a talent show.
They're saying, well, we should we have auditions ahead of time and then narrow it down to the top twelve. And most of us are saying, it's more fun to watch the raw talent show up.
Oh, you never know what's going to happen.
Yeah, and that's part of the fun, so.
You know, but how wonderful she's up there at least in front of people. So I think that's going to be fun and we want to do that on the same day, so we've got lots of activities planned for that. We're also approaching the Dewey Elementary schools. They used to bring the kids down in the spring, walk them down the street to the hotel, and they would tour the hotel find out how Dewey got its name. So we're trying to restart that.
That's just a wonderful thing.
When I first started working for the hotel, the kids were coming down there and restoring that tradition of bringing the elementary kids down to enjoy their hotel.
And learn their history.
The hotel is the first structure in Indian Territory to have electricity, you know, it's so special. Then the Rodeo, of course started in nineteen oh three. It ended in forty nine and all the famous people.
In Tom Mix right next door.
Yeah, and for the birthday party, were trying to do a skit, a thirty minute little play, a pageant, a small town pageant of the history of Dewey. And that's shaping up nicely. But our film festival, we're kicking it off starting this Saturday at seven point thirty and it's going to be dark enough for our big screen.
We were going to.
Try to do green popcorn, but it turns out only the Colonel's turned green, so we're not going to do that. But it's going to be a great night to come out and just we have the chairs or bring your own chairs, and just at dusk at seven point thirty enjoy the Luck of the Irish, another Disney classic.
And once again admission is absolutely free, but you're more than welcome to purchase popcorn and make a donation.
Yes, I think, considering the politics of the day, donations for nonprofits is just going to be the rule of thumb for a while. We have to just get out there and dig for the money, and donations is a great way to do that when you enjoy something a dollar bill. I mean, last fall we did a haunted house for kids.
Well it went very well.
It was just for little kids and it wasn't a spook house. It was a walk through watch scenes in the front parlor. We had an older lady and Dewey playing the piano and at inner ghost recital and we had lady ghosts in the room and victorian dress and the kids would step in and watch the scene until the ghosts realized that they were being watched and then the ghost would show them out, so it was just a little glimpse and you moved to.
The next room.
Tom Mix was in there, and it really worked out. And we charged one dollar to go through, one dollar, and that makes it affordable when dad takes the kids down for trunk retreat, Dad, Dad, we want to go in now haunted house and huh, it's not an eight dollar ticket or ten dollars, it's one dollar. So families could afford it. And it took a lot of money
to put it together, but it was sure worth it. Again, put in the emphasis back on the Dewey Hotel and the history of Dewey and the people who still live there and have that source of independence. It's from Bartlesville. I believe Bartle's will and do it. Used to play football, I was told, and that Dewey was a little tough on Bartlesville, the old kids versus the every days and Dewy and so they had to stop that. It just got two out of hand. That's all right, you know,
No Water still plays them. No Water's a tough town too, old boy, are they?
Yeah, But you know, I got to tell you this is great and we are going to do a little bit of a news story on this, So folks, if they missed a little bit of it, we've got it here.
We're going to do a podcast.
It's already recording, so probably within the hour of the podcast to be ready. And of course they can watch the Facebook live on this so that they don't miss a minute. That way they can go back and catch everything that we've been talking about today.
Yeah, that'd be great.
All right, Hey, thanks for being in.
Thank you Tom, all right, thank you for your contribution to this community.
Oh well, I'll tell you what plan on dying here. You can't. That's a big compliment around these parts. You can't.
There are a lot of folks who I'm going to be moving on someplace. I'm going to retire and go someplace else.
Not me.
Well, when I was a kid, Bartleville was a targeted retirement community.
Well it's a it's a great place to live, and it's a great place to afterwards.
I guess, well it is. You know, a memorial park is beautiful. My family's out there in White Rose. And then we've got Hillside down by Sky too. Lots of Barshons are buried down there.
Maybe we can do a historic thing of the cemeteries one of these days too.
But right now, let's go to the hotel.
Let's stick with the hote, with the living folks.
Thank you, do you