Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. It's time now for our community connection right here on K one, the one you trust.
I've got Joe Sears in here, and we must be talking about things happening around doing in the hotel in the museum.
Yes, on the fourth of July weekend.
Yeah, my goodness, sakes, we got a lot going on.
First of all, congratulations for the Bartle's celebration that we.
Had Cake Bartle's Day birthday. Yeah, that was great.
Yeah, that performance. You had pretty good little lackers out there.
Yes, there was from the acting community here in Bartlesville. They came out and volunteered put on a good show. We had about one hundred and forty people. It was a really good showing. The hotel was very pleased, and we're thinking of doing it every year on Jake Bartle's Day. You should, well, I think, so change up the script a little and have a talent show. We're going to extend it next year to Washington County's got talent so
that the more of the area people can participate. But our initial year, we thought we'd better start off with Dewey and thank you for being a judge.
Oh, I had a lot of fun.
Yeah, it was great, and you got an opportunity to sing, you know, as a time filler. You did very well.
Always should throw up the ham, you know.
Yeah. And then there was that lady who said I got some jokes. Boy, she did, and she did. I said you could do five jokes. They were fun jokes.
They were fun, all clean. Yeah again funny. Yeah.
When you give someone permission to do something like that, you keep your fingers crossed. I can imagine how you guys on the radio feel about those things.
Oh my gosh, we just see Joe's coming. No, I'm only kidding now, Joe, you brought friends today.
Yes, we have a guest. This is Diane Fallis and she's our storyteller at the hotel. She several times a year during the holiday she comes in with special stories Valentine's, Christmas, Thanksgiving with stories of Indian Territory and Oklahoma. And she's going to I'll let her tell you about it. But she's our Fourth of July. On Friday the fourth, at eleven am, Diane does a short program of stories with the Fourth of July. And so, Diane, thank you for coming today.
Oh, thank you I'm originally from Boston and I was a teacher librarian there and I met my husband online and moved out here twenty three years ago.
Wow.
And I've been telling stories here since two thousand and three. But I decided to research the fourth of July in Oklahoma, and it's amazing. We had one hundred and four turtle races. We had we had one snake race, and then we had a couple of.
Armadillo races.
A snake race, yes, they only did it once because they didn't all the directions on.
Top of that paint a number on.
Well, the turtles, they just put a fish in the middle and then they put the numbers on their back and whoever gets there first gets the first hundred dollars.
Wow.
Yeah, Well that's I'm just snapping turtle and box turtles, every kind of turtle.
Any kind of turtle, right, gosh and else.
Then we have the cow chip Capital of Oklahoma in Beaver, Oklahoma. When you come to Beaver, you see Bucky Beaver. He's eighteen feet tall and he's always there. And they've been running this up cow Chip since the fifties and it's still going on even today. Anybody can join in.
And at one time, wasn't that the cow chip wasn't just a woman's activity, or is it now open every it's it's open to everybody, everybody else. I thought originally that had been a woman's competition because they used the buffalo chips to cook with as pioneer women. Yeah, on the Oregon Trail.
And well they got fancier when they the first turtle race was at the one on One Ranch and we had all kinds of people come out of one of Tom.
Mix Will Rogers, Annie Oakley.
But that was Annie Oakley from Oklahoma.
No, okay, no, she was She was deserted her family because they were beating her, and so she, at the age of fourteen, she started her first competition and she was up against this other fellow and she kept beating them.
So the husband he became the husband.
So what about the Armadello races?
Oh, the Armadello races were popular because they would tell everybody, don't run over them, just try to catch them. And they'd put two fish in the circle, and of course the first bunch had to be trained to go this way, and towards the end of the they did that for about four years and then what for whatever reason, they got up, they started dying off so they couldn't.
Do the race anymore.
They started raising their own but even then they just didn't didn't work out.
But it was a heck of a heck of a deal. Yes it was.
And I'm from Massachusetts and I had never heard of maternal race, and you know.
It just doesn't make sense in Massachusetts. Well, it probably Boston.
And of course, of course there was a Dewey Hotel, the Dewey round Up and Will Rogers used to play there and it was always the third, fourth, and fifth.
Of the month.
And we still can't figure out how they got twenty thousand people and eventually fifty thousand people and dew we.
And they camped. I understand there was a lot of camping had to be yeah, yeah, And I understand that that that popularity carries on to the Pahusca Cavalcade, that they liked to camp over there.
Yeah, so.
What a tradition in my goodness. Anyway, her show is Saturday, Friday morning, fourth of July at eleven am at the Hotel Lobby. It's it's donations only. Yeah, but she has a following. But we thought we would bring her on and get new audiences. You know, people have guests from out of town on the fourth. This is the perfect thing.
So bring your family that's not been around for a little bit, or maybe their first time to open.
Actually, we had a family show up at one of her storytellings. I remember that the family came in with like, you know, about two five kids. Yeah, they all just loved it. And that's what's fun about the Dewey Hotel as we're trying to have events that attract people to the history of the icon of the it's being painted right now. It's all sanded down and one hundred and twenty five years the building was celebrated one hundred and twenty five years. But Diane does several events during the
year and Veterans Day included. We just looked for any excuse to do storytelling.
Oh yeah, we got to bring you in.
We did.
Well.
I don't know any of the state that had turtle races and.
Well maybe the couch hip was in other places, but Oklahoma was the only place I found that had all of this sneat stuff.
My god, you pretty unique.
Yeah.
He was always on the fourth of July. Yes, that's so cool.
In fact, it started back in eighteen eighty nine in Oklahoma City after the first land Run, and they wanted to get people to come, so they talked to the railroad, and the railroad made it cheap for them to home, and they had a grand stand and ten thousand people. But the day before it started, the grand stand fellow.
Oh gosh, Well that's what happened eventually to the Dewey round up. The grand steadon collapsed after a big rainstorm and a couple of clowns shot off guns and there were horses.
These were real clowns, folks, not.
Real clowns, but the horses bolted and started to shimmying effect and cause that stadium to collapse. Well, then on Saturday of the fourth of July weekend, we're doing the Family Film Festival. We're showing The Music Man.
I was the music band in nineteen seventy seven.
Who did you play, Harold Hill? Oh my gosh, yeah, right here here city. Well, we googled Fourth of July movies and The Music Man was like number one in the nation for top fourth of July movies, and so nothing perfect for an outdoor showing, you know, and.
Nice Iowa picnic.
It's see ioa way. Yeah, it's a great music. Well, I remember when that came out as a kid, I was early Broadway. I just anything Broadway. I like music. But the movie I went and sell the movie over and over again, and it's just a great it's a baby boomer classic. And so anyway, that's going to happen at eight thirty on July fifth, Saturday night of the fourth of July weekend, and it's free, and there's a concession and we have chairs all set up and hopefully
a beautiful summer evening there you go. So far it's staying pretty cool out there and no rain. My god, we've got plenty of rain.
Now, these movies that we have outdoors, they've really been working well for the hotel, haven't they.
They have.
We've had to cancel a couple because of the weather. But you know, if that's what happens when you do outdoor events. So we're hoping that, you know, with now in the summertime, if it gets too hot, even the evening is too hot, but right now June is in July fourth it's too irresistible. And then then in the fall we have an event planning where we're doing. We're
going to revive He'll Billy Heaven. You know, a few years ago we did that at the Heritage Theater in Dewey and it was a big hit and all the country western stars come out and sing their favorite songs, and it's it's a musical review. And we've got the original cast trying to commit, but we've got some new We finally found us a George Jones.
That's a hard fit, yeah it is.
He sings she stopped he Stopped Loving Her Today, which you know we were discussed. Now that's a hard one to sing because he has that's considered to be the number one country Western song ever written. But you know, we've got a guy who can do him. And we have a Tammy Wynette. In our last production she sang stand by Your Man. But in the Willie Neilson production, the first one. We've done this show several times, Willie's it was the first Tammy Wynette sang I don't want
to play House and that was a big hit. So we've got a Kitty Wells, an older lady who sings Kitty Wells, and we've lost our Loretta Lynn. She had to go to work. We don't have a Mama cass Elliott anymore, so you know, we just we're looking for a Brenda Lee and we're gonna hold auditions throughout Don Tyler Park. David Valdez who runs a karaoke here in Bartlesville. He's going to have a series of karaoke sessions at the Pavilion and Don Tyler Park, and there's three of
them schedule for the summer. And that gives people an opportunity to pick out the singers. We've asked you to show up and do Alroy Clark for us. Anyway, That's where we get our cast members is through the karaokes. It gives them a chance. That's where you find singers who can imitate the real artists. Some of them are professional band members and singers, but most of them are karaoke people and they sing really well. They won't have any theatrical experience. It's hard at first, it was hard
to get to come to rehearsals. They're going, what's that.
It's where we put the whole show together, sometimes in pieces, but it all comes together.
They don't like to show up, have a cold beer, and when their turn comes they get up and sing, but they have a good time.
Where do they think they are in Nashville?
Karaoke is a great way. It's good for the mental health. It is it is to get out there and get up in front of people, no matter what the circumstances. It's always healthy to do that and keep the mind going. But you never know the talent. We did a revival of it. We tried to start one up in Independence. Didn't have any luck up in Independence putting a show together. But down here in the Bartletsfield area, well, we have lots of singers.
We do.
So we've got that coming up through the summer and that's going to be the Western Heritage Day's weekend in the fall. Our Western Heritage Day is October the eleventh, and we're doing H'll be Heaven on the tenth in the twelfth and we're doing it outside between the hitching Post and the hotel. We have a nice slab out there. It's going to have lights in the stage and so
we're looking forward to that. We're moving forward with the Dirty Dewey Hotel on doing more entertainment events and we're going to sell tickets to We're going to sell it for ten dollars a chair at stand around if you want, but if you want to sit and listen to the show. And so it's going to turn into a fundraiser. So we got a lot of events coming up.
Well, this is going to be great, and of course don't miss it.
We've got the storytelling coming up on the fourth and that's at eleven a m.
The lobby at the hotel.
Come in and enjoy the history of the lobby and then enjoy the history of the stories.
It is. Yeah, I tell you why.
Every time I come into that lobby I see something new, Yes, something old, but new new to me.
Is it around a while?
We had some people. We had a donation of Berlin Victorian furniture that we put in the parlor is just really really beautiful. It's a chaperone set, the chaperone set in the middle and the couple on the ends, and but sure looks nice and Nanny Bartell's parlor very good. Yeah.
I want to thank you both for coming in and we'll see on the.
Fourth, right, fourth of July.
All right, thank you, Tom, You've been watching listening to our community connection