"Lost in Bartlesville" - This was home for 19 years

 

The video is courtesy of YouTube.

L sent me the link to this last night, brought back quite a few memories. That's where we lived for 19 years when I first moved to the U.S. (it was back to the U.S. for L).
A small town, a good place to raise children. Rush hour didn't last long, it was more like "rush minutes," traffic wasn't bad, ever. The only time there was a problem with traffic was when we had flooding and the Caney cut the town in half. Most people lived on one side of the river, downtown and all the offices (and a lot of people in town worked for a major oil company there.) are on the other side of town. I remember one weekend when our side of town was totally cut off, all the roads leading out of town - in all directions - were flooded. No TV reception, either, I don't remember if the radio worked.
There was nowhere near as much crime as there is here and people were friendly. You couldn't buy alcohol in the grocery store or the drugstore, only in designated liquor stores and not on election day. Yeah, that amuses these days. And I've gotten used to there being a large section for alcohol in the supermarkets. What strikes me as funny now is when the books on nutrition recommend shopping around the edges of the supermarket, that's where, in their opinion, the healthy foods are. Have they ever been in a supermarket in CA? Because that's where the booze is here - on one edge.
Bartlesville is home to the only skyscraper Frank Lloyd Wright ever built, it's the Price Tower, built as a combination office building and bachelor housing. K and I toured it once, very interesting, with furniture designed by FLW, too. Interesting, but not exactly warm and homey.
It was also home to Shin'enkan, a totally unique building designed by Bruce Goff as a bachelor house for Joe D. Price which, unfortunately was burned down in 1996. Can't find a decent link to it.
And there's a big Mozart Festival  every year, with concerts held both inside the Civic Center and outdoors.
Outside of town is Woolaroc, originally a ranch retreat for Frank Phillips, now a combination of wildlife preserve (with buffalo roaming freely) and museum etc. Took my kids there many, many times.
Bartlesville also is where Ree Drummond (of Pioneer Woman fame) grew up and went to the same high schools K attended. Why high schools? Because along the way, the school board decided to split up the two 4-year high schools into a junior high school (grades 9 & 10) and a senior high school (grades 11 & 12) for football reasons.
I recognized just about everything shown in the video, the building where my favorite quilt store was originally, our first bank, the two office towers where L used to work, the train depot, the karate studio where H went, the approach from the West, from Pawhuska. The painted buffalo are a new addition.
When we moved, the town threw us a big farewell party downtown, with entertainment by Tanya Tucker and Glenn Campbell and a big BBQ. No, not really, it was a party to celebrate a big anniversary for Phillips that just happened to coincide with our leaving.

I've just realized that the video does not play on all devices (my iPad doesn't show it), so here is a direct link to it: Lost in Bartlesville.