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Submit ReviewIt was an assignment, to write a biography of my Grandfather, to help me maintain my hours at school, but it ended up giving me a great education about his life, what made him and his character and what it meant for me. I heard stories no one had ever thought asking about, stories that would have been lost forever if not for the off handed assignment.
Are you ready for your assignment?
Previous episode: Keeper of the Stories
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WTR intro: Sweat Shirt (S. Garrett)
WTR outro: Baby Boy (S. Garrett)
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You might be surprised to hear some of the details about the advent of the shopping cart, but even as casual as our relationship with the basket on wheels is, it has had a profound affect on retail shopping. As omni-present these devices are, they may have never got off the ground if not for some quick thinking by a supermarket owner in Oklahoma City!
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WTR intro: Sweat Shirt (S. Garrett)
WTR outro: Baby Boy (S. Garrett)
Incidental music: The Ghost of Shepard's Pie by Geoffrey Burch
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When I was a kid, my mother, on Nashville trip, picked out a guitar for me to replace a cheap, old model I had trashed. She was helped by a gentleman that, she learned later, turned out to be a guitar legend.withinpodcast.com
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Yield: The Little Sign That Could The familiar downward pointing triangle that allows traffic to keep flowing rather than stopping sprang from the mind of a Tulsa cop. No one gave his sign much respect, but he set out to prove them all wrong. withinpodcast.com
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Check out Martin Mountain Coffee's signature Within The Realm Blend "Story Teller's Roast!"
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Yield: The Little Sign That Could
Welcome to Within The Realm, I’m your host Steve Garrett.
Thanks for joining me here on the show where the Indian Territory, the Ozark Mountains and the Great Plains collide. Because of the great amount of diversity, culturally, geographically and in experience that’s found here, anything is Within The Realm of possibility.
Some times the things in the world around us have become so common place, so much a part of how we do things, we’re not sure where they came from or even anything about their beginnings. Today’s episode is about such a thing, something that makes it a little safer for you to get from place to place. After these words about our sponsors, we’ll get into Oklahoma’s contribution to traffic control signs.
(music/Commercials)
It’s good to have you back for another installment of Within The Realm. It’s my goal to take the next few minutes to entertain you and maybe lay a little knowledge on you that you didn’t already know.
Today’s subject is traffic signs, one in particular actually. It’s the Red and White triangle with the word Yield written across it. It the thing that makes a traffic circle work, not bringing us to a stop, necessarily, but providing drivers with the instruction to watch it in association with other cars on the road.
It might be hard for a motorist in the third decade of the twenty-first century to think of a time with out the uniform traffic signs we have now, but everything has a beginning.
It was 1939 and Oklahoma Highway Patrolman Clinton Riggs was participating in a fellowship at Northwestern Traffic Institute in Chicago. One topic of discussion was the problem of motorists rolling through uncontrolled intersections, causing accidents and injuries. The discussion became a class assignment on how best to address the problem.
In the next several days, Patrolman Riggs presented his idea for a sign, there was already the stop sign that stopped traffic all together. No, Riggs’s idea was for signage that would allow traffic to continue to flow until one motorist needed to give the right-of-way to another vehicle.
The sign he suggested was a keystone shaped sign with a solitary word on it – Yield.
It was generally panned by the class as hard to understand and somewhat unnecessary as laws, laws misunderstood and ignored by motorists, were already on the books to determine fault in accidents where drivers did not yeild.
The fellowship ended and Riggs rejoined the Tulsa Police Department, served in the Second World War and returned home in one piece. A lot had happened since his suggestion of the Yeild sign, but he not forgotten it. He was still very much convinced of it’s usefulness. . His Chicago detractors had convinced his to change the sign’s wording to “SLOW Yield Right Of Way.” It wasn’t only his class mates that thought little of his traffic control sign. The Tulsa City attorney dismissed it and the National Safety Council, to whom Riggs had sent a drawing of his sign, ignored it.
By 1950, Riggs had worked his way up to an assistant chief position with the Tulsa Police Department. He noted that the intersection of First Street and Columbia Avenue , an unmarked intersection, was the most dangerous crossraods in Tulsa. Without any official permission, he and city engineer Paul Rice erected the first Yeild Right of Way Sign.
The sign had retained it’s keystone shape and had black letters on a yellow background so the sign could be better seen in the dark.
Despite what the naysayers believed, that very first installation of yeild signs decreased traffic accidents to basically zero. Similar results were experienced at the other nine intersections Riggs and Rice had also placed signs.
Other cities copied the idea with their own variations of shapes and colors until the yeild sign was adopted a four short years later by the MUTCD – the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices. The formally adopted sign was tweaked to the familiar downward pointing triangle with Yeild written upon it’s yellow background.
In 1971, the sign was changed to its current red and white triangle with red lettering.
Riggs passed away in 1997 In Tulsa after having introduced other innovations to the Police Department and earning a law degree, The original Keystone shaped sign hangs in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC.
So what does this sign that not a stop sign and quite a yellow light do for us. It is quite genius, allowiing traffic to flow until it doesn’t need to. Even though it met with a lot of opposition from experts in the field, Rigg’s impetuous installations and their positive results couldn’t be ignored. It took only four years for the signs to go from geurilla traffic control to industry standard.
Is the main take away from this story believe in your ideas even when no one else will or go ahead, show them all your idea will work. I’ll let you decide and I’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter.
Until then, whenever you slowdown at a yield sign remember at one time it was a good idea no one else could see the benefit of.
Thanks for joining us on this episode of Within The Realm. If you want to weigh in on the “What’s the big takeway” sweepstakes from this episode, you can contact us on our socials or through email. Links in the show notes.
Remember our home on the web where you can find news, links to our sponsors and a complete archive of past installments of our show. If you’ve found some value from our show, find our support button and chip in to keep Within The Realm coming your way.
Keep sharing us with your friends and rate and review our show when you can.
Within The Realm is written and produced by me, Steve Garrett. Our theme and ending credit music is provided by 556 and a half.
Join us for another trek Within The Realm in a scant two weeks, and as always, thanks for listening.
They say the universe is ever expanding, but the cultural center of the universe is conveniently located closer than you might think. withinpodcast.com
Support our show at Support Within The Realm
Our sponsors:
Music: The Right Direction by Shane Ivers
mountain-coffee.myshopify.com/?fbclid=IwAR3QRZ7VAHiqCOo0jnPwUMfAgbRaX2rvCuNW5aKQIJeFH9SiLx3TTy_TMO0"> Martin Mountain Coffee: Small Batch Roaster for an Artisan Cup of Coffee!
Check out Martin Mountain Coffee's signature Within The Realm Blend "Story Teller's Roast!"
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Want to advertise, sponsor or otherwise support Within The Realm? Visit with us at contact@withinpodcast.com or Support Within The Realm
The Center of the Universe
Welcome to the 101st episode of Within The Realm, I’m your host Steve Garrett.
It’s a big proposition to get started on the next 100 stories from Within The Realm. Some may wonder, how does a fella have so many tales tucked away in his mind. Folks that know me well, know that I have a million of ‘em and they wish I would hush, at least for a little bit. Well, the good news is that today is not a day I feel inclined to hush, so we’ll move forward with our story for today after we hear from the good folks that help me bring you our show. After that I have a story about the center of the universe, it’s closer than you might think.
(music/Commercials/stinger)
Thanks for inviting me back to your podcast listening device. Be sure to check out the show notes in the info on this episode for news about the show & how to contact us. We would love to hear from you.
This episode might reveal my roundabout way of dealing with a story. I can’t seem to follow a straight line from one end of a story to the next, but hopefully that makes them interesting. I tell stories that come from the place where the Great Plains, the Ozark Mountains and the Indian Territory collide. A lot of people refer to it as “Fly Over Country” and for a lot of folks they do exactly that, Fly over it on their way to more supposedly interesting places.
One thing those people don’t know is the Center of the Universe lies beneath them as they jet from coast to coast. The Center of the Universe is in Tulsa, just off 1st and Boston. At this location there is a small circle of concrete in a wide spot on a walking path where a person can stand & hear their conversational tone echoed back to them, but then step off of that circle no echo is produced. Folks come from near & far to hear for themselves & leave satisfied they have experienced something weird.
There are those that try to explain away the phenomenon, saying it has something to do with the curved concrete seating on either side of the spot constructed several years ago that produces the echo. They can try to explain it with Science, but those that reside Within The Realm know it’s a mystery of the ever expanding variety.
But the first to point out Oklahoma’s centralness to the Cosmos was the great Oklahoma folksinger, songwriter, actor & quantum philosopher Hoyt Axton. You may remember him as the Dad in Gremlins or from his song Della & the Dealer from the 70s. You DO remember him as the songwriter that gave us Never Been To Spain, The Pusher & the one about the Bullfrog named Jeremiah, Joy To The World.
Hoyt was often quoted as saying Oklahoma was the cultural center of the universe. Now that always got a laugh from the folks on either coast, thinking about this place as devoid of anything good. After all the bright lights are in New York and LA.
On this one, I’m a disciple of the Bard from Duncan, if we push the boundaries out to incorporate all of that place I call Within The Realm, I think I can make a pretty strong argument that Fly Over Country is, in fact, the cultural center of the universe.
This part of the world has been settled for some time, but really didn’t fill up til late in the game. It was very much a part of that frontier that Fredrick Jackson Turner based his thesis on, the one Professor Greg Jackson reminded us in the last episode went something like “the frontier made America or the Frontier was the most American thing that America ever America’d.” I put it another way, many of those folks were kicked out of every other decent place in the world and came here.
This place was diverse, culturally speaking. Just taking that Center of the Universe location in Tulsa as an example, within just a few blocks of that site, you have the Muskogee Tribes Council Oak, the place where the members of that band of Native Americans met and conferred long before Oklahoma was a State. Within Walking distance from there is the Greenwood District, the Black Wall Street, where a vibrant African American community thrived. And of course downtown Tulsa, owing its very existence to those that came here to make a living from what came out of the ground. Many communities in this vast part of the country had similar communities.
Not everything was perfect, but strong communities existed in this place. Out of those strong but separate cultures came the Negro Baseball Leagues, Wild West Shows, Kansas City Jazz & Western Swing. Those same communities produced Will Rogers, Walt Disney, Woody Guthrie & Langston Hughes.
And as all that was brewing, Railroads funneled people through Kansas City and Route 66, the Mother Road was built right through the Ozarks, Indian Territory and the Great Plains in the 1920s. This was the road that the “Okies” used in their escape to California in the Great Depression. The term Okie, at least to the Californians who saw them as undesireables in their fair State, applied to all those that came through Oklahoma on their exodus to the west, be they from Texas, Arkansas or Missouri. But once it was all said and done 15% of the population of Oklahoma had headed for the jobs in the fields and the cities they hoped awaited them in the Golden State.
This was the first great export of the Within The Realm culture. The Okies took with them their culture just as Will Rogers was the number one box-office draw and Walt Disney and the slew of Kansas City animators like Fritz Freeling and Ub Iwerks, were revolutionizing animation. Count Basie was spreading the popularity of the Kansas City style jazz & radio Station KVOO, the Voice of Oklahoma, was broadcasting the music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys across the west.
But even after the Depression & World War II, folks from this part of the world made an impact everywhere. The folk music trend of the 50s & 60s was greatly influenced by Woody Guthrie, Oklahoman Jimmy Webb penned some of the greatest love songs of the 60s, including Wichita Lineman & By The Time I Get to Phoenix about a lovelorn Okie headed back to Oklahoma.
Newscaster Walter Cronkite, science fiction author Robert Heinlein & radio commentator Paul Harvey spread their Fly Over Country sentimentality to their audiences. S. E. Hinton, a young writer from the middle of nowhere wrote “The Outsiders” that influenced generations of young people.
Long before Garth Brooks was the biggest thing ever in Country music, Ozarkian Porter Waggoner delivered Dolly Parton to the World and Eric Clapton regularly scoured the Tulsa scene for backing musicians. Leon Russell, the Master of Time and Space, influenced passels of musicians including a young Reginald Kenneth Dwight, who later became known as Elton John.
And we’re only scratching the surface of what this place has offered to the rest of the world. I haven’t even mentioned Cherry Mash, the ICEE or Kool-Aid.
So, for those of you who live Within The Realm, you know who you are, there’s lots of history and background in this area. It’s more than just trivia. It’s a part of the fabric of our country, a country that has an outsized impact of the world. The influence of the people of the place even stretches into the depths of space. Remember it was a Kansas farm boy that discovered Pluto & four men from our little region have walked on or orbited the moon, Alan Bean, Edgar Mitchell, Tom Stafford & Ronald Evans.
And then for you folks that have never known the pleasures of living in this stretch of country, those of you who wonder what in the world those folks you are flying over might be doing down there. You might be surprised to know how much the music you listen to, the literature you read and content you consume was created right here...or even how the ability to fly over said region was developed here. There’s always more to the story here Within The Realm, the Cultural Center of the Universe. Plenty more stories for another 100 or so episodes. (music)
Thanks for joining me today on this episode of Within The Realm. If you enjoyed this episode but haven’t joined our Facebook group, you can find a link to it in our show notes. Come join the group and share our episode notifications with your friends. It’s a great way to help us grow our audience.
You can also keep up with the show on our home on the web, withinpodcast.com. You can find a complete archive of shows plus news & other show related items. If you have found value from our show & want to help keep this thing going, check out our support page at withinpodcast.com/support. Thanks in advance!
Within The Realm is written & produced by me, Steve Garrett. Our theme music is provided by 5561/2,
Join us in another two weeks for a trek Within The Realm. And as always, thanks for listening.
It's our 100th episode and that's a big deal. A lot can happen over the course of 100 episodes. Join me for a retrospective of what I have learned through the the process of researching, producing and promoting that collection. Thanks to all of you who have been a part of it all. withinpodcast.com
Support our show at Support Within The Realm
Good folks mentioned in our show:
Shaping Opinion with Tim O'Brien
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Music: The Right Direction by Shane Ivers
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Check out Martin Mountain Coffee's signature Within The Realm Blend "Story Teller's Roast!"
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Before he was on the Five Dollar Bill, before his words were memorized by schoolchildren through the decades and before he was hailed as the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln was a candidate for President...and it wasn't looking so good. He undertook a trip to Kansas to see for himself the violence and legacy of popular sovereignty, and maybe score a few extra delegates to the upcoming Republican convention. A rare look at candidate Lincoln and his trip to the west. withinpodcast.com
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mountain-coffee.myshopify.com/?fbclid=IwAR3QRZ7VAHiqCOo0jnPwUMfAgbRaX2rvCuNW5aKQIJeFH9SiLx3TTy_TMO0"> Martin Mountain Coffee: Small Batch Roaster for an Artisan Cup of Coffee!
Check out Martin Mountain Coffee's signature Within The Realm Blend "Story Teller's Roast!"
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Magic as a tornado precaution? Tiny Wakita, Ok was blown away in the 1996 Blockbuster Twister but a spell by an Old Cherokee has kept the place tornado free since 1893. withinpodcast.com
A special thanks to storm chaser and Oklahoma's best DJ, Cliff Casteel!
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This week I let a friend tell the story of his parent's whirlwind wedding that involved a ring locked away in a bank vault, a Billy Graham Crusade and a potential court-martial. It might sound crazy but it's kind of the norm for the family of Neal Hallford. withinpodcast.com
More on Neal: nealhallford.com
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We've all sung it, the second most played Christmas song of all time, but few know the story behind Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer. From a random assignment for the Montgomery-Ward Department Store Company, a Christmas institution was born, but not without a few obstacles in the way! withinpodcast.com
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