The Past is still present

I have been traveling to western Oklahoma quite a bit lately.  One of my clients is in Hooker, Oklahoma in Texas County of the Oklahoma Panhandle. I ask for a good place to eat between meetings and the Rexall Drug was recommended.  I thought that I would be going to an old drug store that maybe still had a soda fountain  and  I was correct!  Grey's Rexall is actually a restaurant that once was a drug store. I has everything from burgers to steaks and even milk shakes. I was truly returned to the 1950's.  The food is great and I would highly recommend it next time you're in Hooker.

On the way back home I took a detour to Ames, Oklahoma to the Hajek Motorsports Museum.  Like Hooker, You have to intend to go there.  It is ten miles off Highway 412 just west of Enid.  But if you were a teenager who loved cars and racing in the 60's or 70's or even today (like me) it was a slice of heaven.  On the western plains of Oklahoma is a collection of race cars that blows my mind.  The owner collects race cars (mostly Fords) and as cars that I watched race at Tulsa International Drags, NASCAR, Bonneville, etc.  He has cars a famous drag racers like Gas Ronda, Connie Kallita, Gene Snow, Don Nicholson, and Bob Gliden. He has stock cars that were raced by Dale Earnhart, Fire Ball Roberts, Parnelli Jones, Richard Petty and a favorite of mine from the sixties: Fred Lorenson.  Mr. Hajek also has Mustangs and a Ford F250 that all set Bonneville Salt Flats records, something he still does.

When Ford made 50 special edition Mustang Cobra Jets in 2008, he bought the first 11.  Some are for sale, still wrapped.

If all these names mean little to you, you won't care.  For me, it was like being surrounded by memories  of a teen age boy with big dreams.

And it is all hidden on the western Oklahoma plains.