Frankie and Slim
Happy New Year
Thursday, June 06, 2013
I KID YOU NOT
You saw the magical mansion my family lived in for three years of my young life in my previous post. Now see the castle that I walked past many days. Tahlequah, Oklahoma was a fairy tale town and I can't help but wonder if it still is. I know they demolished my dream house, the historic Stapler Mansion but I also know the Franklin Castle still stands and I believe someone might live in it. When I walked past in 1957, '58, '59 and '60 it it was totally covered in vines and my imagination was left to run wild.
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It is amazing how they were able to make that beauty out of stone!
ReplyDeleteWow, your childhood home and the castle are truly awesome. My childhood home and present abode are simple ranch-style buildings, nothing special.
ReplyDeleteNeat! It would be fun to live it a place like that with all the turrets.
ReplyDeleteChatty Crone -- I'm not sure what year it was built but it is pretty old. It was built as a residence. I'm pretty sure the house was older though.
ReplyDeletegigihawaii -- We lived in a one room school house in Kansas that Ron had turned into a two bedroom, one bathroom house and he had acquired some old columns that he was going to put in the front to remind me of my childhood home. LOL
Lynn -- Can't you just imagine running though that place looking out all the peek holes? They say is now stands as a guard house for the NSU campus. It is on a high place above the campus and we had to climb high steps to walk past it when I was a kid. At least they seemed high.
WOW!!! It IS a castle and how amazing it is!!!! (Rob)
ReplyDeleteRob and Monica -- See Rob, I told you:)
ReplyDeleteThose homes are beautiful! I would be over the moon to have lived in a house like that when I was a little girl. However, I would not want to be responsible for the vacuuming.
ReplyDeleteSparkling Red -- My poor mother had to work so hard when we lived there. She was happy when they built a reasonable home for the next minister and his family. We were very poor and had no business trying to keep up such opulence. Most of the time the front rooms of our mansion home were closed off and we only used the den, kitchen, breakfast nook, and back stair case. We did get to have birthdays in the formal dining room under the crystal chandelier. Actually that castle was smaller than our house.
ReplyDeleteOh what a gorgeous house. The stonework is so beautiful. Your hometown was a place of daydreams. Lucky you.
ReplyDeleteA castle in Oklahoma!! So cool. I wonder where those rocks came from. The fields all around, maybe? Rock-picking was a least-favorite chore in my Wisconsin farm childhood, but if knew they would form a castle it might've been more fun.
ReplyDeleteYou turned out pretty well for a PK. :)
ReplyDeleteThat is so neat!
ReplyDeleteGood grief! I didn't know Oklahoma had so many fairy tale places. I hope they are safe from tornadoes.
ReplyDeleteWow, such cool buildings to influence your creativity! I think I would've been playing Queen's Court n Princess diaries in there...
ReplyDeletePat MacKenzie -- It was a place of trees and lakes and streams. It was and is the Capital of the Cherokee Nation and busting with history at every corner.
ReplyDeleteKerry -- Oh yes we have rocks in Oklahoma. Ron and I have enough on our ten acres alone to build a couple of our own castles. Rock picking is also our grand-children's least favorite chore.
Cliff -- Why thank you:) Not before I turned my parent's hair gray.
Riot Kitty -- Yep, pretty neat.
Kay -- Not a place in Oklahoma safe from tornadoes. Well not for Kansas either since you know The Wizard Of Oz was written about Kansas. Not all of Oklahoma has fairy tale places. I also lived in Altus, Oklahoma that was flat and windy and smelled of stock yards.
Snaggle Tooth -- I'm pretty sure I played a lot of Queen's Court but no one would play the game with me. I was a mighty wicked queen. lol
Looks like something out of a Disney movie! Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteSo cool! I would have been inspired by such a whimsical place, Annie! :)
ReplyDeleteCastle houses always lend themselves to rumor and mystery I think. And it was probably more fun when you were a child! I have never been to Oklahoma and must try that sometime.
ReplyDeleteWhile you were growing up in Tahlequah I was growing up about 20 miles away in Stilwell.
ReplyDeleteWhat an amazing house! It is like it came out of a fairy tale. I looked back and saw the house you lived in, it is so lovely.
ReplyDeleteLL Cool Joe -- It would make a good Disney movie wouldn't it. Perhaps beginning by kids thinking it was a haunted castle only to learn it had a happy heart.
ReplyDeleteTalon -- No matter how many times I walked past this castle it never failed to capture my imagination.
Tabor -- Oh yes, Oklahoma is fascinating...just wait to visit until tornado season is over:) We are, after all, the home of Will Rogers. I knew well his first cousin who taught him to do rope tricks. I also knew the poet, David Milsten, who wrote the poem THE CHEROKEE KID about Will Rogers that is in our State Capitol.
tulsamom -- I'm betting we have crossed paths. I grew up in many Oklahoma towns. Nowata, Heavner,Shawnee, Tahlequah, El Reno, Altus, Ada, Tulsa, etc., etc. Isn't Stillwell the Strawberry Capital?
Belle -- Castles and historic mansions to a one room school house in Kansas and an Oklahoma chicken farm. Who knew? Smiling all the way:)
Yes, Stilwell is the Strawberry Capital. They have the festival on Mother's Day weekend each year. I only lived in Stilwell and then Tulsa.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like flint - like the churches you get in Norfolk UK.
ReplyDeleteBTW I love the heading with the girls.
tulsamom -- That must be why our community has a strawberry festival every year in our city part around Mother's Day.
ReplyDeletePat -- This part of the country seems to have every kind of rock imaginable. Yes aren't my girls cute? I got five new big girls today and in appreciation of their new home they gave me two eggs:)
Anything with towers seems magical. I love those houses.
ReplyDeleteAmazing!!
ReplyDeleteThat really is beautiful! I'd have to find out!
ReplyDelete