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:
