Cowboys and Sodas . . .
About 9:30am, Jan and I left our rig parked on City Lake and headed over to our co-in-law’s, Sonja and Lendel’s house. They were taking us into OKC to do some tourist stuff.
Our first stop was for lunch at the world-famous Cattleman’s Steakhouse in Oklahoma City’s historic Stockyard City.
In business for over 100 years, it has hosted presidents, movie stars, sport figures, and singers. And in 1945 its ownership change hands based on a bet whether a guy could roll a ‘hard’ six (two 3’s). He did, and was suddenly in the restaurant business.
And like you can’t judge a book by its cover, you can’t judge this place by its entrance. Inside it’s much bigger than it looks, and is well-appointed with rich woods and leathers, and really good steaks. Well, at least for some of us.
Lendel and I both had the 10oz Luncheon Ribeye above, while Sonja had the Luncheon Strip Steak. Jan of course, being at a world-famous steakhouse, had the Turkey & Dressing. That’s my Sweetie!
Even my cellphone camera was stunned by this. I tried 3 times to take a picture of her meal, and every time I pressed the shutter button, the camera app crashed and dropped back to the home screen.
Then after a really great lunch, Sonja next drove us into downtown OKC to visit the location of the Oklahoma City Bombing at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
It’s hard to describe the feelings that run through you as you visit this memorial. It’s stark and bleak, yet comforting in its serenity. 168 people, including 19 children, died here over 20 years ago, but it doesn’t seem that long ago. And visiting here really brought back memories of watching the rescue efforts on TV, always hoping for more survivors to be found.
The building right next door houses a museum with the story of each person killed in the blast, telling their life history.
The chairs, one for each of the 168 victims, are arranged in rows, with each row representing the floor of the building that the person was on.
The shorter chairs represent the 19 children killed.
This is the memorial from the other end.
This is one of two memorial walls, covering in momentos and other keepsakes.
One final fact is that although the official death count from the bombing was 168 people, it was probably 169. The reason being, that after identifying all the victims, they had a leftover leg, which could not be matched to anyone else. Strange.
Our next stop was the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
Housed in beautiful building complex on the outskirts of OKC, the first thing that greets your eye as you enter the foyer is James Earle Fraser’s world-famous sculpture, “The End of the Trail.”
It’s hard to believe that this piece of art was almost lost to the world when It was abandoned in the mud because World War I’s need for metals prevented it from being cast in bronze at the time of Its creation.
The second thing that greeted us was our docent, Carol Lee. A friend of Sonja’s, Carol took us under her wing and showed us around the museum.
But besides being our docent, I found out that Carol is also a blog reader, a real surprise.
The museum has room after room of beautiful western art, which we really enjoyed, but can’t show you. Because of copyright reasons, no photography is allowed. So you’ll just have to go see it for yourself.
Two of the most interesting exhibits were about Western ‘hardware’, i.e., guns and barbed wire. They had examples of the earliest Colt revolvers, both barrel-loaded and breech-loaded, covering everything from cap and ball to percussion cap and cartridge loads. They even had examples of revolving cylinder shotguns, something I’d never seen before.
But the exhibit that even caught Jan’s eye, was the one on the evolution of barbed wire and how it changed the west. It’s hard to believer how many different ways you can manufacture wire with sharp things sticking out of it. But there was row after row of them.
The longest single run of barbed wire was over 200 miles, and the famous XIT ranch in the Texas panhandle had over 6000 miles of barbed wire fencing encircling its 3 million acres.
Wrapping up at the museum, we followed Carol over to another place we wanted to visit, the famous Pops, on old Route 66.
You know you’re getting close when you come over a hill and see the 66 foot tall soda bottle.
And it’s even more impressive at night with its kaleidoscope of colors rippling up and down the bottle.
Pops has over 600 varieties of soda, including 80 types of root beer and 50 types of cream soda. And yes, you can even get a Coke.
Pops also has excellent food, really tasty sandwiches, and other stuff. But everyone agreed that the highlight of the meal was the Root Beer Bread Pudding that we all shared.
So good in fact, that Jan asked for the recipe and was told it was a secret and they did not give it out.
But Google knows all, and here’s the recipe from an OKC newspaper. Of course you might want to cut it down a bit.
POPS Root Beer Bread Pudding
Yields 1 full pan at 24 orders (6×4)
5 loaves Texas toast (cubed)
10 eggs
5 T vanilla extract
1 2/3 cup root beer syrup
13 cups heavy cream
2 ½ cups granulated sugar
3 ¼ cups raisins
3 cups brown sugar (for crust)
Spray the inside of deep hotel pan (12×20 inches) with pan spray. Mix the eggs, vanilla, root beer syrup, cream, sugar, and raisins in a large bowl. Add the cubed Texas toast and mix just until incorporated. Transfer to the hotel pan. Top with the brown sugar and bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes
Glaze for Bread Pudding: yields 3 ¼ quarts
6 ounces butter
1 ½ cups brown sugar
9 cups heavy cream
1 cup root beer syrup
Melt butter and brown sugar together in a saucepan. Whisk until smooth and
simmering. Add the cream and root beer syrup and allow to reduce by a third (15 minutes).
Tomorrow, more fun stuff to do.
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Thought for the Day:
Ever feel like you’re diagonally parked in a parallel universe?
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