Oklahoma City National Memorial

Panhandle Buildings

We have been watching Ken Burn's The Dust Bowl series on PBS this month.  It is really an outstanding historical story, and made driving from Santa Fe to Kansas much more interesting this past week.  These pictures are from the panhandle of Oklahoma ("no man's land" in Burn's film) and eastern New Mexico between Clayton and Springer.

Seeing these homes reminded me of a quote Dad read to me a few years ago from the book Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon.  In the book he is in New York state, but he could easily be walking around any of the blue highways in the Oklahoma panhandle, with houses with withered grasses, dry garden plots, and wind-bent trees.

In the moonlight, we walked over an abandoned vineyard. The posts had fallen down, the vines inched about for something to crawl up on; one had twisted around a rusting baler and another climbed a broken plow. We passed a foundation of a barn that had collapsed, a toppled chimney, and a weedy depression where an icehouse had stood. "These are all dreams we're walking over," I said.

Last Night at the Oklahoma City National Memorial

We stopped by to visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial on our way through Oklahoma last night. There were a lot of people and families visiting the memorial. As I thought about it, I found it really comforting that the memorial is always open - that there are always people visiting and there is an infinity to the memorial.

Oklahoma City Public Library

Kathy Living it up Downtown

Oklahoma City Architecture

Sleeping Ducks

Oklahoma City Memorial

We visited the memorial two times - once at night and once during the day. The day we didn't go (April 19) was the 15th anniversary of the bombing. Kathy and I stayed in our hotel room all morning watching the memorial ceremonies on tv.

9:01 marks the last minute time was normal, on the other side of the memorial there is a 9:03 for the time things were changed. Everything else falls in between these two walls. Going at night the sounds and smells were really strong. We could hear people walking on the stones and smell the water in the middle of the memorial.


These are the chairs - one for every person killed - 9 rows for each floor of the building. The chair in the foreground is a chair memorializing Miss Baylee Almon - the baby that was in the arms of the firefighter that was shown so often during the days following the bombing.


These are the chairs across from across the water.


Memorials are still tied to fences that are outside the memorial. The fences were places people left memorials right after the bombing and they continue to hold tributes today.



The day before the memorial, this was one of the few chairs with a wreath. When we went back after the memorial there were wreathes and flowers on nearly every chair.