by Ron Frantz
Collinsville, Oklahoma
We climbed the steps to history. Owner Snook Bayouth took us up the side stairs of the 1911 T.A. Lee Hardware Co. Building. Most people remember it as the flagship of the Bayouth’s Department Stores in northeastern Oklahoma. Collinsville Downtown Program Manager Maureen Wright, board president Brad Francis, and I followed the dancing beam of the flashlight up some 25 steep steps. Alice Johnson of the Oklahoma Main Street Center staff opted to stay behind. Not a bad idea. Come find us in 45 minutes!
Into the darkened hallway with some pools of light shining through some of the interior windows we went. Typical. Dusty, dirty, a little smelly. What a wonderful aroma. History waiting for us to find it. Old magazines, a great old Chambers stove. A hand-operated freight elevator. Clothing. Furniture. Memories.
As our eyes adjusted to a muted history of darkness, more objects took shape. So did the stories provided by Snook Bayouth. With a sense of pride, he showed us the rooms that served as a police station for a movie shot there some 20 or 25 years ago. He walked us through 19 vacant post-World War II apartments and talked us through 100 years of family history. The chapters covered the arrival of his great grandfather from Lebanon to Wichita, Kansas, and then to Collinsville. Other chapters covered the history of his grandfather Sol Bayouth’s expanding the department chain throughout a number of small Oklahoma towns—the epitome of an American success story. Through different rooms, he noted his grandfather’s chair. We looked for the matching desk. We saw his little cabinet, still full of keys and combinations, and gadgets for getting through the day—many decades ago.
As we wandered through the space, Maureen and I joked about the paranormal, having just had a very spirited (in more ways that one) paranormal presentation at a program manager training in another town the previous week. We told ourselves that we felt surrounded by those who previously were there. Little did we know the joke was to be on us!
The highlight of the afternoon was finding a leather wallet. As all of us waited for major amounts of money to fall from this, something else more valuable slid out of this leather chapter of history. A newspaper clipping from the Tulsa paper (most likely dating from 1954) floated down to the dusty floor. “Sol Bayouth Leaves $130,000 Estate” was the caption. Snook’s grandfather died from complications from a car wreck in 1954—if I remember correctly. At this point, I had chills and goosebumps. The paranormal snickers were not present as we all looked at this little yellowed message sent to us. Also in the wallet were handwritten ledgers for each child, for each department store, for each little frontier town. To the penny, without aid of a computer or program or e-mail, Mr. Bayouth was able to track the business of a small chain of department stores.
Here, in this musty, dusty space we thumbed through history of a businessman who did well.
Though it was hot and sticky up there, this made us all want to know more about who lived in these apartments, what they did, where they went. Easily I could have been lost in a simple summer afternoon—much like those of many years ago.
Listening to others tell their stories is what I find to be such a fun part of this Main Street job.
