Thursday, March 2, 2017

Erick is in Oklahoma

In Beckham County, the far west part of the state, a few miles east of Texola, which is a jackrabbit run from the Texas border.

Erick is on Business 40 and U.S. 66, not far south from I-40. The 2010 population was 1,052. Racial demographics show the 2000 population around 93% white, 0.1% African-American and 0.88 Native American. About 22% of families and 25.7% of the total population lived below the poverty line.

The largest population was in 1930, when 2,231 people lived in the town. By 1940, the population had dropped by more than 600. Depression, Dust Bowl and all that.

John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath was not popular with Erick residents.

"I can remember plainly when the book came out my parents and other people who stayed here were just real upset,” City Clerk Nyla Tennery said. “That book gave all Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma people a shiftless, bad name, like that was the only kind of people who were here.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erick,_Oklahoma

The Roger Miller Museum is at the corner of U.S. 66 (Roger Miller Boulevard in town) and Oklahoma (Sheb Wooly Avenue). Wooly was born in Erick; Miller grew up there from age 3. Whatever else somebody might think or say about Erick, it’s kind of evident there is something about a town that produced Flying Purple Eater and You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd.


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