Google downtown

Studying Google town pictures is an education.

Take for instance a picture of downtown Freedom, Okla., population around 300. You got the usual high school, a couple of churches, board-clad buildings the city council or business association decided would make the town more Western-like, when councils and associations a few decades past decided downtown looked too country and needed sprucing up a little.

Anyway, one street-level picture has a couple of ol’ boys sitting on a bench in front of a hardware store. A red Dodge pickup is parked in front of the store. The street and sidewalk are dusty, as, most likely, they always are in Freedom. It’s in that part of Oklahoma, almost in Kansas and not far from the Texas Panhandle. Both these ol’ boys are wearing faded jeans, probably Wranglers, since they look like working men. One wears a red and white checker shirt, a red gimme cap and slip-on canvas shoes. The other man wears a gray pullover shirt and brown boots. Both have tanned arms, and you know there’s only one way to get a tan in Freedom, and that is by staying out in the sun.

On the left side of the picture is Cimarron Saloon. Freedom is on the banks of the Cimarron River, so the saloon’s name certainly is not out of order.

Just looking at the picture, you don’t know if the men are talking things over before going into the hardware store, or if they’re waiting for the saloon to open.

You can see the Google photo car reflected in the hardware store windows. It looks like a Thunderbird.

I’ll give those two ol’ boys the benefit of the doubt and say they’re fixing to go into the hardware store.

Here is a link to Freedom:

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.7686905,-99.1140428,3a,75y,180h,89.04t,1.53r/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1scJfPm_1Y3rSP0_4cK_VdXQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656