Oh, the Memories

After we visited the Route 66 Museum in Elk City, we walked next door to the Elk City Museum. The community has constructed a small village with a school, early home, opera house and livery stable so visitors can see what life was like in the last century. Some of the exhibits dealt with the early part of the 1900s, before John and I were born. There was a shoe shop in one corner of the stable. I wondered if the Singer sewing machine had been used to repair harnesses and bridles or if  that was just an available space to display these items.

The interior of the reconstructed Rock Bluff School was interesting.

Both of us remember school desks that looked like this.

In the old house we saw toys like this 1940s era bomb pedal car and these Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls. My grandmother made me smaller versions of these dolls.

Boy did these two items bring back memories.  I had a hairdryer in the early 1960s just like this.  It was THE way to dry my hair, once I put in the curlers.  Once when the heat went off in the dorm my first year of college, I got under the bed covers and blew warm air with the hairdryer hose to warm me up.

The restored house had been used as a funeral parlor at one time. This boxed suit (it opens down the back) and embalming machine brought back memories for John

A local family, the Beutler Brothers, was famous on the rodeo circuit both for the rodeo stock they raised and because one of the brothers was a really top rodeo cowboy.

There was also a display of finely tooled leather items, including suitcases, made by George Pulley, a bull rider in the 1930s and 40s.





While at the museum, we also saw this early mail truck.

There were two sets of Burma Shave signs posted in the yard. I couldn't get a whole set in one photo, but one said "Trains Don't Wander All Over the Map Because No One Sits in the Engineer's Lap." The other read, "Guys Whose Eyes Are in Their Backs Get Halos Crossing Railroad Tracks."

Wouldn't those signs be more fun along are interstate highways than motel and restaurant ads?