Category Archives: Oklahoma

Memories of little pharma

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Topeka Daily Capital
Dec. 2, 1959

It has been announced that the country’s biggest drug store will be built here soon, and every time it’s mentioned, I can’t help thinking back to Snider’s Drug Store in Britton, Okla.

It was a store that would be totally out of place in today’s scheme of drug stores. That is, it was just a drug store. No appliances, no jewelry, no automobile parts, no clothing – nothing except drug store items. We had a soda fountain, tobacco counter, prescriptions (filled promptly and accurately) and the usual assortment of patent medicines and other drug items.

My dad put in coffee once, by popular demand, But the owner of the cafe across the street stormed over and said they’re damn well better be no more of that, so there wasn’t. Back in Britton, you just didn’t try to sell anything that wasn’t strictly in your line. Continue reading →

Seems Christmas journey from the west (Texas) was unwise

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Topeka Metro-News
December 20, 2002

It’s only about 275 miles from Borger, Texas, to Oklahoma City, and the logical way to make the trip is to drive. It’s true today, just as it was in 1948, when I was a hot-shot sportswriter-police reporter-obituary writer for the Borger News-Herald, thinking about going home to Oklahoma for Christmas.

Driving was a scary option. For one thing, my car was a pre-war Pontiac, one of the last to roll off the assembly line before the factory was converted to tank or truck production, or whatever. You could say it wasn’t ready for the open road, since it had a radiator leak, an oil leak, a cranky transmission and slick tires. Continue reading →

Uncle Bill, Mr. Braniff and the aviation bug

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Topeka Capital Journal
July 10, 1987

Judge Roy Bulkley showed up at the Loafers lunch the other day wearing a new pair of suspenders. He said he’d gone to the Alco store in North Topeka to buy them, and they were such a bargain he bought two pairs.

The pair he had on were wide, and gaudy. But they were doing an admirable job of doing what they were designed to do, which is hold up his pants. He had such confidence in them, he wasn’t wearing a belt.

Still, some smart aleck at the table looked at them and asked, “if you bought two pairs, why are you wearing those?” He was implying, of course, that the other pair had to be better looking.

All this brought on a general discussion of suspenders, and some of the elderly in attendance recalled they once were called galluses. The dictionary says the word comes from gallows, and I suppose the idea there is that pants hang from the end of your suspenders.

Only a couple of us real experts, however, Remember that they also were known as braces. I qualify as an expert because my uncle, Bill Garthoeffner spent much of his life selling them. Continue reading →

Fast food isn’t the part that changed

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Topeka Capital Journal.
July 9, 1986

There is a popular notion that the great wide world of grease and salt, known as fast foods is something relatively new, But that is not so. Fast foods have been around a long, long time.

There are more of them now, and they are served in a variety of more attractive places, particularly if you like glitz, But most of them offer basically the same old fare. Fast foods have been around as long as I can remember. Continue reading →

The big truth: we just needed 20k votes

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Topeka Capital Journal
Aug. 4, 1986

Election Day is at hand again, and what better time to recall, painfully, my only venture into the world of politics: the 1964 campaign by Bud Wilkinson to become a US senator from Oklahoma. It was the first time for both of us and, thank God, the last. Continue reading →

How about, “Proving journalism is the last refuge of the vaguely talented?”

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(Editor’s note: During the 1990s, Snider was identified at the end of his twice-weekly column in a blurb that called him simply “a local retired newsman.”)

Topeka Capital Journal
April 30, 1990

It has been ordained that I be identified at the end of these columns, that there be some line there explaining who I am, in case somebody might be wondering. It is a good idea. You have every right to know who is responsible for what goes on here. Continue reading →

You call THIS a snow storm?

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Topeka Daily Capital
Feb. 24, 1960

I guess this is as good a time as any to tell my blizzard stories. I’ll warn you in advance. My conclusion will be that, shucks, this little dab of snow we’re having now is nothing. Let me tell you about Wyoming and Texas… Continue reading →

Holiday visit to Britton, over all too soon

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Topeka Capital Journal
November 29, 1996

SOUTHLAKE, Tex. – We are spending the holiday with daughter Amy and her husband, Duff Nelson, and three granddaughters who were glad to see their grandma. They spoke to me too, to say 1) I parked in the wrong place, 2) I can’t smoke cigars in the house, and 3) would I pump up their bicycle tires? Continue reading →

Doc Snider gets the post office back…in great detail

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Oct. 13, 1992
Topeka Capital Journal

In my prime growing up years in Britton, Okla., one of the state’s U.S. senators was a lawyer named Thomas Pryor Gore, known as T. P. Gore, or as “TeePee” when he would use the outline of an Indian tent on his campaign literature.

This symbol and his dark complexion, which seemed even darker because of his white hair, caused most people to assume Gore was part Indian. But he wasn’t. He came from Mississippi, and he was a near-perfect picture of a politician – tall, handsome and solidly built. And, when he spoke, people listened.

He was recognized as one of the great orators of his time. Even as a teenager he was in demand as a speaker, and it was because his fame spread far beyond Mississippi that he wound up in Oklahoma and in the U.S. Senate.

There was one other thing about T.P. Gore. He was blind. Not blind in the political sense, not partially sighted in medical terms, but absolutely, totally blind. The tragic thing about it was that he wasn’t born blind, but lost his sight through two freak accidents before he was 20 years old. Continue reading →

Writing the story of Britton would be no “Picnic”

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Topeka Capital Journal
July 30, 2001

Recently I enjoyed visiting the past through the musicals “Music Man” and “Oklahoma,” and the drama, “Picnic.” I’ve seen all three so many times, on the Great White Way, the semi-Great White Way, in local theaters and in high school auditoriums, on the big screen and the small screen, that I long ago lost count.

“Music Man,” my favorite, is about a con man who comes to River City, Iowa, and sells the town on starting a boys band, even though he doesn’t know a musical note from a radiator whistle. The mayor smells a rat and says he “better hear some by-God tootin’ out of them horns, “ and he finally does. The hero wins the heart of Marion, the librarian.

“Picnic” is the story of a young man who returns to his hometown in Kansas broke and looking for work, but really hoping to get by on his looks and charm. It also is the story of an aging school teacher looking for a man.

After 27 unexpected turns of events that teacher lucks into a nice, cigar chewing guy, and the young man leaves by hopping a freight – but with the town beauty queen on a bus right behind him. They’re headed for Tulsa, where he can get work as a bellhop at the Mayo Hotel. Continue reading →