Red Dirt Chronicles

Showcasing Red Dirt culture ~ authored and managed by contributors with connections to the great state of Oklahoma.

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    • Cities visited A – E
      • Adair, OK
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      • Fay, OK
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      • Little Axe, OK
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    • Cities visited P – T
      • Payne, OK
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      • Picher, OK (A)
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      • Putnam, OK
      • Quapaw, OK
      • Schoolton, OK
      • Spavinaw, OK
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      • Strang, OK
      • Stillwater, OK
      • Tecumseh, OK
      • Tulsa, OK
    • Cities visited U – Z
      • Vici, OK
      • Wewoka, OK
      • Wyandotte, OK
      • Yukon, OK
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Author: Red Dirt Kelly

The Smallest of things: Telomeres

Posted on February 7, 2021March 20, 2023 by Red Dirt Kelly

Those things are found in the tiniest of choices of every moment of every day with the person you love within a community that’s supportive. True story: virtual war on the battlefield can affect you in many of the same ways relational war in your home can.

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TNMC “Fly on the wall” stuff — EPOTM extra

Posted on August 4, 2019August 4, 2019 by Red Dirt Kelly

I moved to Ada, Oklahoma almost three years ago. Since that time my life has been in a constant state of unpacking and attempting to shape something that looks like a new life here. The energy it takes to uproot to a new location far surpassed any prediction I could have made. But something pushed…

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Praying Without words: Sacred music, circa 2002

Posted on August 3, 2019February 7, 2021 by Red Dirt Kelly

Today as we mourn the deaths from a mass shooting in El Paso, some might need to pray without words. I know I do. And, I’m praying for solutions as well.

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Medicine Park Magic: EPTOM Tries to Catch UP

Posted on March 15, 2018May 26, 2021 by Red Dirt Kelly

My cold cheeks smiled as I listened to Cydi’s stories while simultaneously managing flash back memories from the late 70s and early 80s.  I had been a drum major; she, an energetic twirler. And, thirty years later, we stood together wrapped in the narrative she so generously shared, the blankets and jackets we were wearing, and a sense of familiarity — both of place, and of person.

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Traveler Shares His Name

Posted on September 29, 2017September 29, 2017 by Red Dirt Kelly

Sam Chesnut’s tender demeanor around his horse Traveler never hints at his former life as a police force sniper. Though bald and supported by a cane from various rounds of cancer treatments, Sam’s gentle voice shares story after story about his favorite horse…each one ending with a kiss on Traveler’s large, dark cheek. It’s as…

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The Red Dirt Chronicles is Seven Years Old. Hot Ziggety!

Posted on July 31, 2017August 1, 2017 by Red Dirt Kelly

 I feel like this blog project is a big magnet, and everyone who gets close gets collected…and sticks.  I don’t feel dragged down by the sticking–it’s as if every time we pick someone up (a reader, a contributor, a story, a supporter), the journey is just that much sweeter.

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Our Friends Have Skills: Dru Martin Redux

Posted on June 18, 2017February 1, 2023 by Red Dirt Kelly

When reporting on themes like corporal punishment, or leaving phrases like “colored people” in an audio file, I wrestle with my own positionality…and the intersectionality of me (the listener), and they (the historians).

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A Reason for Seven

Posted on October 11, 2016January 10, 2023 by Red Dirt Kelly

He shoves his hand in his pockets and toes a patch of creeping thistle with his shoe. The Lakota family remains hopeful for the arrival of their first-born son. The mother rests her hand on her stomach. She has recently battled an illness and says she doubts her boy will wait much longer to arrive.

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Capturing Oklahoma’s Big Sky: How Audrey Dodgen Sees HOME

Posted on September 19, 2016August 4, 2019 by Red Dirt Kelly

“Clean lines, compelling color palettes, refined sense of balance, and the greatest subject matter on earth.”  Thoughts like these run through my mind as I work my way through Audrey Dodgen’s portfolio. An editorial and commercial photographer who calls Oklahoma her home, Dodgen describes a gravitational pull that seems to draw her back to our…

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People are just SO. SWEET. ~ EPTOM: Camargo, OK

Posted on August 5, 2016September 20, 2022 by Red Dirt Kelly

If you’re ever traveling through Camargo and need a soft peppermint, you know where to go. And, if you lost a batch a greeting cards, Mary may still be holding them for you.

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Traditional Freedoms: EPTOM ~ Seiling, OK

Posted on July 22, 2016March 15, 2018 by Red Dirt Kelly

Stories of people who disappeared and were never found. Two cowboys who fought so much that when they finally killed each other in a gun fight, the locals buried them together as punishment for the havoc they wreaked upon their community.

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Lee of All Trades ~ EPOTM: Leedey, OK

Posted on July 16, 2016May 27, 2022 by Red Dirt Kelly

He said that the Oklahomans who left that area for California during the Great Depression “left in the middle of the night because they were ashamed to show their faces.”

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Teen Spirit: Summer in Vici, OK ~ EPOTM

Posted on June 14, 2016June 15, 2016 by Red Dirt Kelly

In the light of our recent event in Orlando, and the subsequent politically charged discourse, I thank God for places like Vici, Oklahoma. A place where high school students can have a high school life. Where they can find their way. Where they can realize they live in a fairly quiet town. And where they can openly appreciate all those things.

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Land Tales: Taloga, OK ~ EPOTM Dewey County Run

Posted on June 8, 2016June 8, 2016 by Red Dirt Kelly

Perhaps it’s because she can comically joke about an area brothel going out of business and in the same breath pledge her allegiance to the place where she was born, raised, and will most likely die.

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How Tuffy Got His Name: Putnam, OK ~ Dewey County EPTOM Run

Posted on June 5, 2016August 10, 2022 by Red Dirt Kelly

Our family had lost my grandmother only three weeks prior to this run. That moment in our life, intersecting with wheat harvest and an elder in overalls brought back memories of not only my grandmother cooking meals during harvest, but of my grandpa who died six years prior. And, my other grandparents who had passed during my late adolescent and emerging adulthood years.

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All Good Things: 116 Farmstead Market & Table Softly Opens

Posted on May 15, 2016July 22, 2016 by Red Dirt Kelly

One glimpse of her yellow, brown and button-accented apron encasing the junior waitstaffer and I was smitten – dually smitten with the wearer, as well as the space within which she was ringing up a coffee for me and a “Dublin Dr. Pepper” for my husband. We were standing at the counter of 116 Farmstead Market &…

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Western Oklahoma Girl: The Early Life of Drucilla Martin – EPOTM, Grove, OK

Posted on April 14, 2016July 22, 2016 by Red Dirt Kelly

Introduction 89 year-old Drucilla “Dru” Martin is almost completely blind. But the life she witnessed prior to her dimming view was, in many ways, quite extraordinary. We met Dru during our last stop in far NE Oklahoma.  With more energy than most of our discussants, she told stories for well over 1.5 hours, stopping only…

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My Little Victory Garden: Lessons We Teach Our Plants

Posted on April 8, 2016April 10, 2016 by Red Dirt Kelly

Over half my vine’s branches were hewn and burned this past February. “Give up the weight, dear vine, so you can focus your energies upon doing a smaller job very well.”  My enlivened whispers continued as I ripped a full nine feet of harsh, brown-dry entanglements from the left side. Then again on the right….

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Poverty, Testing, and the Multiple Roles of Male Middle School Teachers: EPTOM, Quapaw, OK

Posted on April 3, 2016June 14, 2016 by Red Dirt Kelly

Thomasson could have been from anywhere because his story is the same: over testing does as much harm as good; absent parents are absent for a reason, but their absence makes it that much more difficult for a child to succeed; and, male teachers balance the precarious position of being sometimes the only male role model in a young studnet’s life.

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The Solitary Dog Whisperer: EPTOM ~ Picher, Cardin and Commerce, OK

Posted on March 19, 2016January 2, 2023 by Red Dirt Kelly

Sherry looked minutia-like against the vast gray sky, the empty acreage, vacant cattle trailers and the capable farm equipment scattered close by. As we drove up, rolled down the window, and explained our project she didn’t blink.

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