Early Days Of The Bigheart Newspaper

With the new town of Bigheart formed in 1905, people flocked to the area looking for wealth in the Osage oil fields. others came to Bigheart with dreams of operating a business. One of those businesses was having a local newspaper to relay news to the citizens of the fledgling town. In the beginning there were a few papers competing with one another for readers. The Bigheart Spasm was operated by Ernest Putter along with his father and sister,  the Bigheart Chronicle,  with E.E. Waltman as the editor and publisher and the Bigheart Star were there in the beginning but the main paper that held on through the years would be the Bigheart Times. Though it had a late start compared to the other papers, it came to existence on May 15, 1919 with A.R. Zenor and his son Paul operating the presses. In the beginning the Bigheart Times was located on the north side of Main Street between 7th and 8th Street.

Bigheart, OK. 1919. The Bigheart Times, located near the center of the photo was ran by A.R. Zenor

The Bigheart Times would change it's name on January 1st 1922 to the Barnsdall Times. The Zenor's would operate the newspaper and move it to a new location to the west side of 5th Street between Main and Maple when a new building had been completed on the site. In September, 1930, the newspaper was sold to Art and Christine Moore, The Moore's came from Kansas where Art learned the newspaper business from his father. In 1934, Marvin Bridgeford started working at the paper as a printer where he stayed until retirement. Others including in helping produce the paper during the Moore years were Max Purdom and Harry Moore.

Barnsdall Times building, 1950.

 Christine and Art Moore with Marvin Bridgeford, 1972.

On March 1, 1972, the Moore's sold the Barnsdall Times to Bob and Yvonne Evans from Perkins, OK. Upon the retirement of Marvin Bridgeford the Barnsdall Times would change it's way of printing. By the mid 1970's the printing of the paper would cease at it's location on 5th Street and the paper would be printed at other locations. The building which had printed papers since the 1930's would soon be shut down and moved to the east side of 5th Street, across from the building that would hold the printing relics of years past. 

The Barnsdall Times would change locations  two more times and have one name change becoming the Bigheart Times once again. On February 18, 2015 a fire broke out in the building next to the old Times building. Fire destroyed the upper part of the building and damage was done to the lower floor which housed all the antique printing machines. Another piece of Barnsdall's past is now in the process of fading away. How many stories could the building tell over the past 85 years is unknown but I feel certain that what is left of the printing machines are in their own way trying to tell those cleaning up about the days gone by.

Bigheart/Barnsdall School History Video

This past Bigheart Day in 2014, I attended the annual almuni meeting at the High School. This was my second year to present some history of Bigheart/Barnsdall. For this years meeting, I chose to do a video on the history of the Barnsdall school system. The project started last September 2013 by gathering information and material for the video. With thousands of photos in my hands I began organizing them into a video along with the information to go along with them. With everything organized, I began making the video on the first of January. Working the first weekend in January, I finally had the first 18 seconds of the introduction finished. In all, around 24 hours of work went into those few seconds. As January turned into February, I realized that the final cut on the video would be about 2 hours in length. At that point I began thinking about cutting much of it out but went ahead with the original plan. February rolled into late March and it became apparent that the video would not be finished in time to be presented at the alumni meeting. The video at that time only was finished up to 1940. It was at that point I decide to edit the video severely and add in more years to get in as much information and photos as I could. Working on the video whenever I could, I managed to get up to the year 1980 but with major editing. The final result was finished three days prior to it's showing at the alumni meeting.  The heavily edited version would be 18:45 in length. In January 2015, I decided to once again edit the video showing the first 55 years of the schools existence cutting it back to about 16 minutes.  The school began in 1905 with the construction of a small wood frame building on a lot provided by T.E. Gibson, Bigheart Bank cashier at the south west corner of Vine and Third Street. 1906 would be the completion of the first year of school in Bigheart. The building would be the main school for the town until a new stone building was constructed in 1910. In 1911, the wood frame school was demolished by a tornado that swept through Bigheart. The lot would remain empty until it was purchased by the Fire Baptized Holiness Association in 1916.

It's my intention to conclude the video with the following 55 years of school history ending in 2015. It will take time to gather and edit the information into a video. When finished, a copy of the whole video will be given to the Barnsdall School Library. When uploaded to You Tube the first half of the video will be able to be viewed and a link will be posted on the Barnsdall History Page and here 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzLC0ucnMb8&feature=youtu.be.

Students walk the hall in 1958

It Was New Back In The Day

Technology has come a long way since the days when Thomas Edison first introduced his phonograph in 1877. Many innovations have sprung up along the way making it easier to enjoy your favorite music.

Thomas Edison with his invention, the phonograph.

This brings me back to my younger years when technology was beginning to expand upon it's never ending quest to better itself when it comes to enjoying your favorite music. Most specifically, in the automobile. There's is no doubt that anyone over the age of 50 can remember what entertainment was like before the advent of the "car stereo" in your auto. If your parents or you were lucky enough to own a vehicle with an AM radio you were one of the popular people on a Saturday night drag on Main Street. Listening to the monophonic sound emanating from the weak single speaker  up in the dash that sounded as if it were blown out when the static charged reception reached only half a turn on the volume dial. Though we see them now as archaic, there were two types of AM car radios. The rotary and push button tuners.  Most every body had a rotary radio tuner where you had to manually search for your favorite station but if you had a fancy car with one of those push button tuners it was like a magical genie was inside your radio, eager to tune in to your favorite music at the touch of a button. 

Rotary Tuner

Push Button Tuner

What was really cool about the car audio inventors was that they would come up with new ways to enjoy personalized music.  In the 1950's, Chrysler thought about giving their high end cars an extra edge by introducing the Columbia Turntable in the dash to play those platters of 45's you kept in your room. There were a couple drawbacks with that. The record would skip as the car ran over bumps and the makers of the turntable (Columbia) had a deal with Chrysler to only play Columbia recording artists only. No fun in that if you're wanting to hear the latest song from the Diamonds or Chubby Checker.

Chryslers, Columbia Turntable

 The  car FM radio has been around since the early 1950's but it wasn't an option on the  car window sticker until the later 1960's when the popularity of static free music was played on home stereo or High Fidelity systems. Ford and Chevrolet wanted to cash in on a new product and soon integrated a new form of listening enjoyment to the auto masses. It was called the eight track player. Coupled along with the AM /FM radio, audio enthusiasts would soon have music played through the means of a plastic cartridge  having a magnetic tape wound around an internal spool that played music over eight different magnetic tracks on an ever changing four channel system. Not a bad idea unless you like your favorite song interrupted with a channel change.

Lear Jet's under dash eight track player with AM or FM radio. Circa 1967.

Technology was ever changing and in the early 1970's the cassette was becoming a popular media. It was a small embodiment of the eight track but played two sides "A" and "B" without the channel change that always screwed up your favorite song. Most every teen driver in the 1970's owned one of these at one time. The KRACO cassette stereo system. It was cheap and the sound you got from it was about the same. Most of the time the sound emitted from this monster of audio grandeur was a high treble sound. KRACO could never master the bass in any of it's stereos. But it didn't matter when your favorite group could be heard any time you wanted .

KRACO stereo with cassette player. 1970's vintage.

  But not to worry, companies were out there looking to step in to the car audio after market and cash in on some new stuff that would soon make millions for those willing to take a gamble. In the early 1980's, BOSE was making headphones when they decided to jump into the car audio business. They introduced the first car specific audio system to auto makers such as Oldsmobile and Cadillac. Not meant for the blue collar worker, the BOSE system would usher in the era of JVC, Pioneer and Blaupunkt for those on a meager wage. No longer were American made stereos being placed in cars. The Japanese would take this market over with Sony and Panasonic leading the way in after market sales. Sony would sell it's new invention to the American masses called the CD player. At first they were only installed in Mercedes Benz but after news of the clear crisp sound that came from the system it was an all out explosion to all auto manufacturers that music was a main staple in the daily driving experience.  And to get the best sound, auto makers would flaunt the opportunity to tell you all about it in there sales ads. 

Today with bluetooth, satellite radio, mp3 with digital sound, music has come along way from catching a static filled radio station on your AM car radio. It was a simpler time, with less buttons and choices, when most of the time all one worried about was where are we going to stop to get a cold drink and a burger.