The Dairy Queen / Tastee-Freez locations used
The High School / Jr. High
The park and playground [which I gather from Guestbook 128 that they actually used 2 different locations for those scenes]
The church - was this an actual standing building or something constructed for the film?
The gas station used as the "DX" station

Jenn posed these questions to me, so with her permission, I posted them here to see if anyone has answers for us.

Guestbook 121 contained these answers from Brian:

"The Tastee-Freez that played a part in the movie The Outsiders was located on the northeast corner of Main and 86th Street North. Sadly it was torn down years ago...The bleachers that appear in the film is Ator Field (in Owasso) which is still in use for football (not high school football though)...I have a yearbook that has a couple of pictures of some actors and the Tastee-Freez owner. I was able to stand across the street while they were filming that scene. Other scenes were also filmed in Owasso."

Thomas noted in that same Guestbook that it was the Jr. High, not the High School.

Trey Callaway mentioned in Guestbook 37 that he played a small part in the movie.

Take a link over to http://www.retromedia.tv/advertising.html.

Watch the Gremlin Commercial. Is that Gary Busey playing the farmer in the Wichita Wiggle part?

I thought you were absolutely right at first, but a stop-action profile shot shows the guy's nose to have a distinct convexity which I do not believe Gary Busey's nose has or had...see Gary's profile in 1970 at this link. The farmer's brows also appear lighter. Sure is close, though.

On the same site, you can see Mazeppa's 7Up Gizzer Blinkie in action. The retromedia.tv link is also at the top of Mazeppa page 2.

Later, after hearing sirens and a helicopter, I took a peek. The Mid-Continent Tower was in the way, but I could see the huge plume of black smoke.

I moved to another office, and could see the flames and smoke engulfing what appeared to be the whole city block of that area. My first thought was possibly a plane crash, since I knew that area was in the flight path of TIA. The explosions continued, and as we've seen on television, huge chunks of flaming debris were going great distances. I saw one particularly large piece of debris clear the highway (which traffic was still moving on at 5pm).

Thankfully, no injuries. It's just unfortunate that houses were lost. The whole incident reminded me some of the Aerlex fireworks plant explosion in Hallett some 20 years ago.

Thankfully, nobody got hurt or killed.

31 N. Peoria, not 31st & N. Peoria as I previously stated.

Take care, ya'll.

The Tulsa explosions - which Airgas plant was it at - 31st & N. Peoria or 1011 N. Lewis???

(See Wilhelm's note above)

There is a "just the facts, ma'am" summary of the incident in a sidebar on the new Beef Baloney page.

I would trade all of the Queer Eye shows for one Red Green - but I am, after all, more into duct tape than I am into shopping for the latest fashions.

Webmaster, edit my comments, please! I get so carried away!

Is anyone here fans of the show? I guess I felt a little lost because I wasn't quite sure what the background was on the characters.

http://www.tulsapac.com
http://tulsaoverground.com

Wilhelm Murg said of QUEER EYE FOR THE STRAIGHT GUY: "...subject matter (which seemed to be more about fashion than sexuality)."

That's the whole point, Wilhelm! ;-) It's about gay guys with taste helping others, not a sex romp! I love the show for its fun, positive tone (unlike the usual mean-spirited reality shows) and for portraying gays as caring individuals who give so much to the world. I say bravo to BRAVO for airing it. As for ratings, the show is already a hit. And the Fab Five on Leno last night was a blast.

I finally saw QUEER EYE FOR THE STRAIGHT GUY. I can't say that I'll be watching it in the future; I thought it was dreadful. However, I applaud KJRH for finally showing it. If it fails, let it fail due to ratings, not because of it's subject matter (which seemed to be more about fashion than sexuality). The most absurd tip was to frame wrapping paper as art. Of course I never watch any of the top rated shows, so don't go by my judgement; it might be a hit.

I talked with Matt over at Starship and asked him about his computer. He was amazed that I found out about his computer problems on the site.

Today's Starship Buys:

Captain Beyond: Sufficiently Breathless

Firesign Theatre: How Can You be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All (I originally bought this on vinyl in the Cut-Out Bin of Honest John's for $1.95 - the CD was more or less in the same place 25 years later).

People made the best of a bad situation and many of us even managed to have some fun. For the first time in fifteen years I was able to see the stars over the Manhattan skyline. Quite a sight.

I always enjoy visiting this site for my T-town fix. Thanks Webmaster!

You're welcome.

An hour after the power crisis hit this afternoon - my management here ordered me to "monitor network lines and power up all my robotic studios". Us techs had been monitoring trouble in NYC from the first moment MSNBC went on "genny". Management assumed that we were just "watching TV" not preparing for a major news event. As it turned out - we had a minor German net fed for about 8 hours from a remote location and only 1 live studio to Mexico....I am reminded of a GM in Amarillo calling in to tell us to power up for news bulletins during a storm - we were off the air at the xmitr and our ABC lines were dead from Sherman/Denison West... I would have put up a trouble slide....

I am interested in photos of KELI DJ's. If anyone has some would you contact me via this site.

It would be great to have a Brady club card here. All the KELi DJ photos I have are on the site.

Photo of the 1966 KWGS (University of Tulsa) staff, courtesy of David

I have the full list of names, but I'll just name a few. That's me (top row, 3rd from left), Ed Dumit (2nd row, right end) and Mary Kay Place (1st row, 3rd from right).

My Dad was an old bus rat from when we lived in Pittsburgh and that naturally carried over into the beginnings of our lives in Tulsa. He was am member in good stead of the "Mingo Valley Sweathogs" so named because for the majority of that summer the bus he rode on had no air conditioning. The regulars on that route petitioned to get either the AC fixed on the bus that ran the route or get a new bus. Don't remember how that came out.

Anyway, my father was on his way home on that December afternoon and the bus exited highway 169 at 21st, which for the longest time was as far south as it went. The storm had just passed over that area and the bus driver brought the bus to a screeching halt in the parking lot of the Tiffany Bowl (now a Mercado of Hispanic goods) and said "We ain't going no futher...".

Dad got home at like 6 or 7 that night, impeded by all the traffic and emergency vehicles, in time for a school sponsored fun night that our family and maybe 5 other families attended at Briarglen Elementary that night.

As for my sister and I, our memory of that afternoon was watching Zeb, then part of Gilligan's Island before being thrown bodily into our closet by my mother after she watched the tornado come out of the clouds from our back door window.

Sorry for going so long but this weather talk is so cool.

I had just gone to work for KRMG and it was in the same time frame, probably 1959, could have been the same storm. I was in the station’s mobile unit, a blue Volkswagen bus, out in Red Fork, where the story that night in that place was not twisters but flooding. This was long before the Keystone Dam was built, so the Arkansas River often widened out downstream in the springtime.

I was driving around Red Fork in a blinding thunderstorm looking for anyone to talk to. Understandably, most people worth interviewing were not out on the streets but hunkered down somewhere. With absolutely nothing to say, except it was raining like Hell and I was driving through a foot or two of water, I was switched on the air for a live report.

I couldn’t begin to recreate the first part of the report over 40 years later, but I will never forget the last part. I spotted a figure 50 feet or so ahead, and as I drew nearer I recognized the man as a Tulsa policeman whom I knew. All this time I was carrying on live, very seriously about the conditions in Red Fork. But I was rapidly running out of stuff to say: there is lightning and thunder, it’s raining hard, the wind is blowing and the water is rising. I didn’t have anything about, or a word from, a human being. The cop was going to be my salvation.

I drove up to him, rolled down the window and shouted through the thunderous din and into the microphone, “What’s going on out here!”

He had his hand up to his ear, and when he lowered it I could see a tiny transistor radio. Looking a little puzzled he said, “Hell, Jim, how would I know, I’m listening to you.”

I've told this story before, but we moved here in October 1973 and 8 months later we got initiated into old man tornado with the June 8 1974 storm. It made an impression, believe you me...as I recall, a storm went right over the house here in the air, and we transplanted northern folks were ducking and covering, while our neighbors were on their porches drinking lemonade.

As I said, I look back on those days with guarded fondness...I like the way they do the severe weather updates now, but there was a lot more, um...urgency to the way it was presented direct from Ben Barker at the Tulsa NWS office. No offense to the way the local meteorologists interpreted it then or now, of course.

"The storm area is on a line forty miles north of Gotebo to Sallisaw, and from six miles east of Haileyvile to a point somewhere around Anadarko." You never knew whether the damned thing was near you, over you, or heading to Arkansas.

In about '93 or '94, an especially nasty round of storms was heading into Tulsa. Being the weather nut I was/is, I had my NOAA weather radio at the ready. It was very late (around midnight or so) when the winds started to blow. Sure enough, the alarm sounded.

I should mention here that I had a Midland alert radio, which featured a very nasty alert setting that, when activated, sounded like very loud guitar feedback. To get that awfulness to stop, you just press the 'WARNING' button. Then you would have to listen to the NOAA alert tone preceeding the warning.

In any event, the alarm went off, and the reader went into full warning mode, announcing a tornado warning for Tulsa and Creek counties. I especially remember the terms "large tornado" and "dangerous situation" being mentioned. As the warning ended, one could hear several clicks (I can only assume this was an attempt to cut the live feed by the reader). The dead air lasted for a couple of minutes before the following statement went out to scared Tulsans: "Hey Dave, I hope the tornado takes out this f***ing piece of s**t!"

I do remember one time when the guys at the weather service left the line open and were talking amongst themselves. Since it couldn't be muted, the announcer was unable to do any live announcements in the break.

The Stephen Hawking voice just makes the experience of a warning being issues more upsetting and less personal. Personally, I much perfer the voice of ol' Joe down at the airport telling me that the plague of frogs is about to get underway, and we might want to repent.

Which leads to a New Orleans, not a Tulsa, TV Memory--TV weatherman Nash Roberts, whose AMS card is like #6, was still getting on camera in his mid-80s when hurricanes threatened. The local saw was that if the old guy was on screen, there was a threat of a hurricane; if he started drawing on a map with a magic marker, it was time to evacuate the town.

I believe warnings are still voiced by an actual person (with the aforementioned drawer-soiling tone calling attention to the warning), but I know that in some cities, even the warnings are computer-voiced.

Speaking of tones that make you want to cry for mommy, I still can't get over tornado sirens. I've lived in Oklahoma my entire life, and I've heard them sound countless times, but still I get that heart-stopping fear when they go off.

NOAA broadcasts sound like physicist Stephen Hawking's voice synthesizer.

One weekend afternoon, I was playing records when I received a telephone call from Jay Jones providing me with an important weather bulletin. Jay shouted: “There’s a tornado on the ground near Turley, put on an LP and head for the cellar!" As I rounded the corner heading for the basement stairs, I looked out the backdoor and saw the towers which seemed to wave back and forth in the roar of the wind.

The twister barely missed the station (and transmitter,) but Turley residents got no advance warning from me. I’m not sure where Jay got his. I was so grateful I forgot to ask.

After the discordant alert tone, the telephone-quality warnings were delivered by a serious, but non-professional voice, intoning the names of affected counties: Creek, Osage, Payne, Kay, Noble, Nowata, Craig, Ottawa, Mayes, Rogers, Wagoner, Muskogee, Okfuskee, McIntosh...in fact, I think they still are.

I can't imagine having to be the person to do that task. I can only think that some poor soul in the control room was standing next to a teletype (as was used then), waiting for the next warning to come along.

I know KTUL and KOKI used to broadcast NWS warnings live from NOAA weather radio at least into the early '90s. I don't recall this ever being done in OKC.

I saw an interesting program on OETA yesterday morning. It was called "The Oklahoma I Remember", and it had a segment on drive-ins in the state, as well as a trip down Route 66, narrated by Michael Wallis. I would love to see more of that.

Mike, East Central is planning a 35th year reunion and Linda Johnson said she would post a message on Tulsa TV Memories. I think they are going to include any East Central alumni this year, regardless of when they graduated...or that was the plan the last time I talked to her. So, you must attend!!! There is information on the reunion being posted on the classmates.com website as well. That's all I know...just that it's in the planning stages.

If anyone knows Steve Wiley from the class of 1969, tell him that one former Tulsan has more than TV memories of him and that he better not hide out and miss this reunion! Were you in the hallway the day they put a dead skunk in a locker next to mine and when the girl opened it...Ewwwww...I had to sit in the back of every class away from the other kids for the rest of the day. I would love to know who pulled that stunt.

Good old T-town...miss it like mad. PEACE

Sadly for me, I missed out on the skunk incident. I plan to be there...good to hear from you again, Joy.

Does anyone remember that Betty Boyd also taught a charm school course at Sears back in the late 60's - early 70's? She taught it with her daughter, and it was a lot of fun.

Near the top of Guestbook 1, Dee Lundy also recalled the "Betty Boyd Charm School" at Sears.

It must have been very similar to the 1977 "Storm Watch" graphic at left.

The Pop Shoppe and Favor Flavors were outfits that sold only pop (or soda, depending on your origin) here in Tulsa in the 70s; they were a topic. "Beef Baloney" debuted. It's a new Saturday midnight local comedy show on FOX23 (and Cox 71).

About 10 days ago, there was a local controversy about the preempting of a network show, "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy". It now appears that the show will be seen in Tulsa after all. The history of preemptions on Tulsa TV was thoroughly covered by Wilhelm Murg, Jim Reid, Dave Rigsby, and the webmaster.

The characteristically limp handshake of politicians was mentioned by Frank Morrow. I wonder if before long, new California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger will wish he had that "Terminator" arm.

Paul Shushkewitch, the "Soap Swami" on "Six in the Morning", passed away. His picture was added to Erick's note about him.

Here is just-archived Guestbook 143 in its entirety.