Day 21 - Monday, April 18, 2005 - Oklahoma City to Ft. Smith, Arkansas

 

Early morning on the outskirts of Oklahoma City...

 

I purchased an electronic gadget at Radio Shack that turned out to be a fuse-blowing defect. Two Radio Shack fellows, Chadrick and Isaac, were most helpful and ended up spending an hour on my problem, for which I was extremely grateful!

 

On in to Oklahoma City, by way of Stockyards City...

 

       

 

       

 

Downtown Oklahoma City...

 

       

 

       

 

Back on the morning of April 19, 1995, a bomb ripped through the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. As chance would have it, I was passing through Oklahoma City one day before the 10th anniversary of the terrible event. Local and national media were about, preparing for the next day's memorial broadcasts...

 

       

 

   

 

I talked with a cameraman for a local TV station who was in his studio, just a couple of blocks from the Murrah building, when the blast occurred. He described the windows of his office shattering...

 

 

 

Out of Oklahoma City... past Tinker AFB...

 

         

 

Proceeding eastward through Oklahoma...

 

At a Rest Area near Prague, Oklahoma

   

Signs of catfish confirmed passage into the Southland...

 

       

 

 

 

Near the shank of the afternoon, with Merle Haggard in the CD player, I took a short jaunt to the north, to Muskogee, Oklahoma...

   

 

"I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee"...

 

"We don't burn our draft cards down on Main St"...

 

Under darkness I made the Arkansas border...