Oklahoma City Memories

[Prunepicker]

Memories are records for the future... How about Glen's Hik'ry Inn. I can
remember selling pop bottles (2 cents each) to make SURE I had enough money
to take my girl friend (now wife) to eat there. Only to find out all she really
wanted was Salad and Baked Potato... Boy, was I relieved...I (trying to be so
cool) thought hey, that's a good meal I'll have the same... Later in life she
informed me she was starved but knew I was scrambling for money... What a
Gal... Glen's sign is still hanging there on 10th and May...

I'll bet that meal still set you back $5. That's 250 pop bottles.

We found a great spot behind the 7/11. There'd be hundreds of 'em.

[Generals64]

I'll bet that meal still set you back $5. That's 250 pop bottles.

We found a great spot behind the 7/11. There'd be hundreds of 'em.

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Same store we used to use?.....Remember, the crates brought 25 cents.....I was making 1.05 per hour with TG&Y then.....Man, I miss those days...Still lived at home and the mom and bank was usually open for Gas money. How about yours?

[USG '60]

Glen's was mine and wifey's first real date, too. I was a single father and our daughters were in the same school. She was really active in the PTA stuff and once at a meeting she asked me to be on a comittee and I accepted. I filled out a little form. The night after our first meeting she called me and asked me out. I had to tell her that I was obligated to be at an art opening that night and declined apologetically. She then informed me that that was one of the places she had intended to take me, and that she also had barter points (remember those?) enough to take us to Glen's. I accepted gladly. We married one year later and have lived in bliss ever since.... well, accept for those few rough spots......... Oh, I picked up the tip that night and thank goodness art openings are free.

[Generals64]

Glen's was mine and wifey's first real date, too. I was a single father and our daughters were in the same school. She was really active in the PTA stuff and once at a meeting she asked me to be on a comittee and I accepted. I filled out a little form. The night after our first meeting she called me and asked me out. I had to tell her that I was obligated to be at an art opening that night and declined apologetically. She then informed me that that was one of the places she had intended to take me, and that she also had barter points (remember those?) enough to take us to Glen's. I accepted gladly. We married one year later and have lived in bliss ever since.... well, accept for those few rough spots......... Oh, I picked up the tip that night and thank goodness art openings are free.

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I'd love to have one of their Steak Burgers right now....

[MikeOKC]

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Thanks Everyone...the name of the boat shop was Fay Horaney's on North May. I remember doing the OKC boat show (Jack Wright owner) for TG&Y and Fay made my in-laws an enormous deal on a boat. Seems someone's wife was trying to extract it from him...oh yeah, there was divorce in there also....

Actually General, it was at 39th and Portland on the SW corner. It was there where the old shortcut turn drive to go southbound on Portland was.

[Prunepicker]

Actually General, it was at 39th and Portland on the SW corner. It was there
where the old shortcut turn drive to go southbound on Portland was.

That's where Gordon's Inland Marine was located.

[MikeOKC]

That's where Gordon's Inland Marine was located.

I'm wrong then. It wasn't the same place separated by a few years?

[FRISKY]

I remember a boat shop east of May across from the SE entrance to the Fairgrounds. It was directly east of the starting line of the dragstrip and just north of the railroad tracks. I don't remember the name, but it seems like it was Spiegel Marine. Someone used to sell live Christmas trees in the parking lot at Christmas.

[FRISKY]

I have several bricks from OKC buildings, but I'm not sure I can remember which one came from which building.

[gen70]

The elephant sign was cool, They just don't make signs like that anymore.

[danielf1935]

Doe's anyone remember the Abextra at Linwood and Western, they carried posters, black lights, t-shirts, etc;

[gen70]

Yeah I remember the place it was owned by a friend of mine's mother.

[USG '60]

Doe's anyone remember the Abextra at Linwood and Western, they carried posters, black lights, t-shirts, etc;

The place was close to my heart......sniff sniff.

[Prunepicker]

Doe's anyone remember the Abextra at Linwood and Western, they carried
posters, black lights, t-shirts, etc;

That was 6th and Classen. Linwood & Western is Schwab's and Nuway cleaners.
I remember it well. I think there's a law office in that place, now.

[danielf1935]

That was the place, even if you only thought you were cool

[Generals64]

That was the place, even if you only thought you were cool

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Two blocks west and one block wouth in an old warehouse wis where the AMC (American Candy Co.) company first began then they built the old AMC (American Mutual Co.) and let the people pay for the building by charging everyone to be a member. I remember when I turned 13 I got my own card......

[rondvu]

AMC was a cool store, I loved going there. As a matter of fact I still use a coffee grinder that I purchased back in 1985. They had red concrete floors and an intresting ceiling as well. for ever.

[Prunepicker]

Two blocks west and one block wouth in an old warehouse wis where the AMC
(American Candy Co.) company first began then they built the old AMC (American
Mutual Co.) and let the people pay for the building by charging everyone to be a
member. I remember when I turned 13 I got my own card...

Didn't they move to the east side of Pennsylvania and south of 10th before they
built that huge building on the west side?

It seems to me it was in a Quonset hut shaped building.

[Pete]

Here's an ad for Abextra from 8-24-80:

[Prunepicker]

Here's an ad for Abextra from 8-24-80:

Oh my! That means it was there in 1964! I bought many posters from there,
among other things.

Does anybody know how the name was derived?

How many remember Mother's on NW 23rd?

[gen70]

I think I remember Mother's. Where was it on N.W. 23rd?

[Prunepicker]

I think I remember Mother's. Where was it on N.W. 23rd?

I think it was next door to the Tower theater.

[USG '60]

Mother's started on Paseo as Mother's Rock Shop, OKC's first Head Shop, even before Abextra. When the Cochrans took over and moved it to 23rd it became Mother's Art Decor', emphasizing the artsier parts of being counter culture. They were sweet people.

[Scott Foster]

I think I remember Mother's. Where was it on N.W. 23rd?

I co-owned and operated Mother’s Art d’cor on NW 23rd and Dewey; the two story building with the huge “rainbow? mural on the wall (now gone). The original Mother's Rock Shop was indeed in the Paseo District.

As this link <http://www.thepaseo.com/about1/>will tell you, Oklahoma City’s historic Paseo Arts District “… was developed by Oklahoman G.A. Nichols in 1929 as the first shopping district north of downtown. … In the 1950s, Paseo was home to small businesses, student partying and jazz clubs. The 1960s brought the counter culture with its creativity, free spirit and problems. …”.

Those of us who were not bored to death by the blandness and superficiality of the gray 50s will confirm that the exciting, socially tumultuous era of the 1960s extended well into the 1970s and beyond. I was in my mid-20s when the massive social upheavals that define my era all coalesced at the same time. The Black, Woman’s' and Gay human rights movements coalesced, the Vietnam War protests began and the Ozzie & Harriet world we had grown up in was swept away by forces none of us could have ever imagined. I for one was ready for dramatic change.

For whatever reasons of fate and circumstance, I became one of the ringleaders of Oklahoma City’s “counter culture with its creativity, free spirit and problems.” Not noted in the gentrified language on the current Paseo District Web site is the sad fact that in the early 1970s, shortly after the Paseo began to have a get-out-of-the-way-dancing’-in-the-streets hippie night life, the entire district was literally shut down by the Oklahoma State Mounted Police. The local “powers that be” had no intention of letting a Haight Ashbury scene become established in uber-conservative Oklahoma City.

Everyone strolling the Paseo District – day or night -- knew that the crowds were teeming with undercover “pigs” which was a joke in itself. Suffice to say, the fat red-necked Oklahoma “narks” stood out in the otherwise flamboyantly dressed hippie crowd. Marijuana and acid were all over the place of course but everyone knew to keep it kool. No, what brought in the mounted troopers was the word “mayonnaise.” One night, somebody painted the word in 6-foot all-cap letters on the street. The already nervous local politicians interpreted it as a code word (think “Helter Skelter”) and a signal for a riot – or at least that’s what they said. Anyway, the chief of police went on the TV news to tell the worried populace that such drug-related gatherings would “not be tolerated in our fair city!” He concluded with, “We have it from reliable sources that even Screaming Yellow Zonkers are being sold right out on the street!” Few outside of the younger set understood that Screaming Yellow Zonkers was a commercial candy; popcorn with a yellow sugar coating. Absurd of course, but it was enough for the governor to send in the troops and shut down the whole scene. All of the fledgling businesses quickly failed simply because everyone stayed away to avoid the cops and the constant media attention. The last thing anyone wanted was to wind up on the television news – simply because so many of us were closeted hippies. Most of us worked so-called straight jobs and turned into hippies after work.

One of the Paseo businesses that failed was the original Mother’s Rock Shop. Oklahoma city’s first real head shop was owned and operated by Wes Melton and his divorced mother Louise. There was another head shop on busy Classen Boulevard called the Abextra but it was a dark, tawdry place owned and operated by a very straight man in it strictly for the money. He was a very nice man but he was all business and the fact that a real revolution was taking place seemed of little interest to him other than the fact that Bill (forgotten his last name) was making a LOT of money from retailing and wholesaling pipes and posters.

The genius behind Mother’s Rock Shop was Les Melton, a tall, dark and very handsome young Lebanese man with a great personality and a keen business sense. Dressed in his tight leather pants and fringed jacket, Wes turned heads on both sides of the gender. Wes recognized the commercial potential of the then run-down Paseo district and it was his opening Mother’s Rock Shop that had set the whole thing in motion. Every one called Louise “mother” which she loved. Mother actually ran the store and carefully guarded the cash. I knew them because they were customers of mine. In those daze, I was in the record business; recorded music. on the road working for a company called Big State Distributing out of Dallas. I represented most of the independent record labels such as Motown, A &M, London; some 85 labels in all. He may have not known it, but Wes had stumbled onto a gold mine. There were no big box music stores, only small old fashioned “mom and pop” record stores with older owners who could not grasp the magnitude of the revolution taking place around them. The music industry changed overnight from Lesley Gore singing It's My Party to Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.

Meanwhile, a few blocks away at NW 23rd and Dewey another and less conspicuous scene was developing; one that would last nearly a decade. In early 1971, a very thin and somewhat straight looking young man and his wife had opened a small retail store called Arts D’cor. Backed by his grandmother, Gene Tyldsley and his wife Toni had rented most of the space in a large two-story brick building with a full basement.

As young as he was, Gene was a brilliant retailer with a keen understanding of marketing and display. And he had the rare gift of knowing exactly what his market would buy. When I first walked into Art D’Cor, I was still traveling on the road selling phonograph records for a Houston-based wholesaler, Big State Distributing Company. All of that is at https://aboutscottfoster.wordpress.c...ment-industry/.

Anyway, I was looking for a place to open a record store after Mother’s Rock Shop was closed. Gene and Toni and I became immediate friends and business partners and we bought the entire inventory from the bank that had foreclosed on Mother’s Rock Shop.

We also hired Louise Melton who continued for the next few years to preside over the OKC counterculture scene as “Mother” of course!

I would be very remiss to not mention our later third partners, Linda and Richard Cochran who I had met while in the U.S. Air Force. Richard and I were stationed at Tinker in the 937th AF Reserve Unit and lived a double life for the years we remained in the “Ready Reserve.” That’s a story in itself. Regards – Scott Foster, Honolulu

I’ll try and write more about this period at some point for it was the defining decade of my life and I’ll never forget the times we had.

[danielf1935]

The rocket was an awesome place to "hang out", Highly Park was across the street from the rocket, ater skating, we would hang out in the park waiting for our ride home. I remember that if you took your report card to the rocket, you got free passes for good grades!!!!!!!!