Looking For Fred (Part 3)
Before Bessie (the dog) and I continued our adventure, I had to pick the sand burrs off my pants and shoe strings. I also had to remove a bunch from Bessie’s behind, she had decide she needed to roll in the dry grass, and had gather quite a few stickers. When that was done I took one last picture of the Fred monument and Bessie.
We both got back into the car and enjoyed a drink of water; I turned the car around and headed back down to the "T" intersection of Quail road and took another picture of the Chisholm Trail marker.
The sunlight was a little better so I took another picture of the old building. Once again I turned the car around one more time and head back to OK 19. This time I was looking for the Washita River to look for the original Fred and the rock bottom crossing, well I didn't have enough time that, so after driving out several road and finding no river. Bessie and I call it a day and head back to Marlow.
Guess what? After down loading all the new pictures some of the pictures that I took weren't good enough to read so that meant another trip to Fred to get some of the story correct. So once more about two weeks later, I was on one of my road trips to Elk City I decided to stop and copy off all those articles on the Pavilion bulletin board. I spent nearly two hours hand writing those papers, while I was there a van drove by twice finally they came back by to see what I was doing. It was a brother and sister who were going to California and they had decided they would look for some of their ancestors who had live in the Fred area. The name they gave me was the Albright family.
They read all the articles posted on the bulletin board and I showed them all the research papers I had copied and we exchanged e-mail addresses and I told them about BlogOklahoma.us and what I was doing. Before they left I gave them all my copies of my research and they said they would read them on the airplane the next day on their way to California. By the time they left my hand was tired of writing I decide to try one more time to find the Washita River and Old Fred. Nope, finally gave up for that day. Made my self a promise one of these days I will find that river!
But this is not the end of my story, two more weeks later on another trip to Elk City, I had a few minutes to spend in Chickasha and it was early I decided to go to the Grady County museum and look for some pictures or maybe some artifacts of Fred. I told a very nice lady about what I was doing and she found a book that had the Fred story, I decided I would make a copy so I could read it when I had a few minutes, but the museum doesn't have a copier, so she call the library and they did have the same book. After thanking the lady and taking a few pictures of the museum displays.
I finished making the copies, paid the fee and feeling very proud of myself that now I have hard copies of information about Fred. I have listed the names and authors of these books:
Book tells the History of Fred:
- Chickasha: A Journey Back in Time by Irvin Munn
- Chickasha: Another Journey Back in Time by Irvin Munn
- History of Chickasha by Tommy Wayne Stringer 1971
- Trails, Rails, and School Tales: A History of 125 Schools and Communities of Grady County by Gwen Jackson
Before leaving I took some pictures of the Chickasha Public Library grounds.
I would like to thank the people at the Grady County Museum and the Chickasha Public Library in Chickasha, Ok for their help in located those books.
I now have done about all the research, written my article and have corrected my spelling, I feel it time for me to finally finish my story and think fondly of my adventure of "Looking for Fred".
