6-8 October 2012
Claremore, OK
This KOA says it's in NE Tulsa, but it's actually in Claremore... about 30 miles NE of Tulsa. |
| The track was a stone's throw from our site. |
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| Setting up the starting gate for the next race. |
The Admiral was delighted about the casino. She loves to play the nickel slot machines and wasted no time getting over there on Sunday afternoon. Lost her bank roll in a couple hours and came home broke and smelling like an ash tray. So much for paying for the trip with her winnings. It's been 4 years since the last time she satisfied her urge to gamble, so we should be good for at least another 4 years... she really hates to lose. Almost as much as she'll hate reading about it in these pages!
Will Rogers slept here
But none of this is why a traveler should stop in Claremore, OK. What you should come here for is the Will Rogers Memorial Museum which is also the burial site for the the Rogers family (except Will Jr. who is buried with his wife in Arizona). This was sort of home base for him and his family. They had a ranch about 13 miles away in Oologah, OK. The ranch tour is free but the Memorial Museum costs $5 or $4 for seniors. We settled on the museum and lunch out.I don't think of myself as having heroes. People I admire, yes; people that are heroes, no. I suppose I did as a kid till I got over the Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers. If I had to pick a hero today, I suspect Will Rogers would be on my short list (guess I still look to cowboys for inspiration). After listening to recordings Rogers made during the depression trying to gain support for Hoover's plan for feeding & employing the down-and-out, and then later supporting FDR's plans to put America to work, I realized that not much has changed since then and that Rogers had some good thoughts on what needed fixing. I heard many of these recordings when I was young, so much of it was familiar.
If you've never seen his private production film Ropin' Fool as well as the Ropin' Fool Outtakes, you owe it to yourself to find and watch it. He was truly amazing. It ought to be available thru NetFlix... ??? It was one of the very first uses of slow motion photography in a production film.
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| A genuine Remington just sitting in the rotunda. Yikes! |
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| A bronze by Charley Russell picturing Rogers in a typical setting... typing his daily column. |
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| A model of the Lockheed Orion in which Will Rogers and pilot Wiley Post crashed. I was surprised to read there was a witness. They had landed, asked directions, stretched their legs, took off. About 100' off the ground the plane pitched forward and 'somersaulted' to the ground landing on the canopy. Seems a very odd behavior. Now I'll have to research what the suspected cause was. |
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| An 8' or 9' bronze of Will Rogers dominates the rotunda. I'm guessing this too is a Charley Russell. |
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| He did fund raisers all over the world to help people in need, this one while he was still with the Ziegfeld Follies. |
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| A patio just outside the theater where his movies play continuously. He made 50 silent films plus another 21 'talkies'. Rogers was a slacker compared to Tom Mix who turned out over 300! |
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| I guess you know you've had an impact when the Navy names a Poseiden submarine after you! |
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| The veranda where the sarcophagus is located with yet another bronze of Will Rogers. This overlooks the area where Claremore is located and is across the street from Will Rogers State University. |
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| A portrait done by Charley Russell. Rogers & Russell were both Oklahoma cowboys and close friend. |
Oh, and Will Rogers' full name is William Penn Adair Rogers. I also have a Penn heritage (my paternal grandmother was a Penn) and they lived awhile in Missouri & Oklahoma before moving on to Arizona and later to California. I need to poke at that a bit to see if there's a common ancestor. Now wouldn't that be cool!!
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