MORE THAN OK
Authenticity and timelessness in a world of flashing lights, change and loose change.
Winstar is the world’s largest casino. At the behest of my wife, daughter and son-in-law, I found myself there a few weekends ago.
The casino is in Thackerville, Oklahoma, about 5 hours and 20 minutes from Houston, just over the Texas border. There are 1,400 rooms on the property. There are two golf courses, more than 20 restaurants and a total of 370,000 square feet of gaming experiences - the equivalent of 6.4 football fields or 4.5 soccer fields! Have you ever been on or played on either field? One field is huge! Winstar’s gaming space is 6.4 football fields loaded with lights, electronics, gaming tables, personnel, cashier offices, bells, whistles, music and shouts among the crowd.
We are not casino people per se — too much smoke and sorrow for an extended experience. But we do allow ourselves an infrequent and sporadic entertainment experience once or twice a year. On this trip, I carried two film cameras and one digital camera. I even carried several into the casino; I do not have a single photo from inside the casino, despite thousands of colorful lights, statues and people, oft with a drink and cigarette in hand. I just wasn’t moved. The only image I did take is a 3-D marvel from the hallway of our hotel floor.
The Winstar was a good experience… good food, a very nice staff and a slightly profitable experience at the slots. But it’s not me.
I long for the authentic - such as when a Winstar staffer stopped me to talk through professional photography (I truly hated him because he owns a Mamiya RB67, which I lust for). Or when a lovely restaurant-goer asked me about my cameras and then shared a capsulized life story - she immigrated from El Salvador during a civil war, moved to Texas, went to nursing school, became an American citizen and just recently retired.
The authentic is solid food, solid brick, solid wood, solid nature, solid people. It is not fake. So I was pleased to very briefly drive through Ardmore, Oklahoma on the way to Oklahoma City, and through Gainesville, Texas, on the way back to Houston.
Less Is More
The Ardmore images here were all taken within a square mile. If I were alone, I’d have easily spent several hours documenting this section of the town. Ardmore is neatly placed 90 miles from both OKC and Dallas. With a micropolitan population of 48,000, Ardmore was strong in cotton and then became strong in oil. Among the famous who were born here are Rue McClanahan (the lovable Blanche Devereaux in the famous TV series, The Golden Girls) and the infamous John Hinkley, Jr., the man who shot Ronald Reagan.
Consider the image above. A pedestrian crossing. An empty bench. Not a soul to be seen. A smashed barrier and uprooted block of concrete. What’s the story?
![downtown Ardmore, Oklahoma](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F23f7e6d1-8628-48e7-9bed-102bc2c005c4_5000x3750.jpeg)
![downtown Ardmore, Oklahoma](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F21aea165-70d5-4cbd-a6de-856d537d152a_3750x5000.jpeg)
These images are not fair to Ardmore. It’s just that everything closes on Saturday afternoon… and the city has experienced a growth rate of close to zero in the past decade. We ate at Casa Roma, a Mexican restaurant that was absolutely terrific and an amazing value.
The next two images are works of art in my view. My wife just loved the door - and I thought the Johnson Outboard Motors sign was a hoot (beautiful Lake Murray is a stone’s throw away). What dreams walked through those boarded-up doors!
And here’s homage to the “real thing.” In the high-resolution files, you can see paint cracking and chipping off the likely hundred-year-old brick.
30 Minutes In Gainesville
Gainesville, Texas is 40 miles from Ardmore and about five miles from the casino. I’m not even sure we were there for 30 minutes… Still, I was able to grab a handful of strong, timeless images on a very quiet Sunday afternoon.
![Vintage buildings and vintage homes.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F70053047-980e-4840-94e4-d6c31ae6b858_4800x3600.jpeg)
![Vintage buildings and vintage homes.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F935997ff-1791-4256-bdb8-cb04e1934519_3750x5000.jpeg)
![Vintage buildings and vintage homes.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F133999be-b434-4d91-a447-0ae2caf0dc4a_5000x3750.jpeg)
![Vintage buildings and vintage homes.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd49bd608-d160-4359-bee7-e06af8440fc1_5000x3750.jpeg)
I hope I can pass back through Gainesville and Ardmore and take some more images. I just scratched the surface.
One square mile. Easily understood. You walk a mile, turn left, walk a mile and turn left, walk a mile and turn left, and then walk another mile right back to where you began.
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