When the news came last week that the Rock Cafe in Stroud, Oklahoma had burned it felt as someone had punched me in the stomach. Shock and sadness. I have no financial interest in the Rock. Haven’t lived near it for years and probably won’t get back to see it if it’s rebuilt.
But these realities seemed insignificant as I thought about the Rock as an icon on historic Route 66 and a part of my personal history. I grew up only a block from route 66 in Stroud and a cousin lived in the green house on the corner which shares the Rock’s parking area. When I spent the night there I recall the neon glow of the Rock’s sign illuminating the room and the sound of idling truck motors whose drivers stopped for a break. In that small town, the Rock was the only late night place and truck traffic was heavy on route 66, the primary roadway between Oklahoma City and Tulsa before the Turner Turnpike opened.
As a youth, I delivered the Tulsa World in the morning darkness, throwing papers from a bicycle. Sometimes after completing my route the Rock was often my last stop before going home and dressing for school.
My wife also spent many pre-dawn mornings in the cafe where her grandmother was a cook and her mother waited tables (and booths). She went to work with them at 4:00 am and waited for school to open much later in the day.
The Rock had a coin-operated jukebox on the west wall in those days and it cranked out country music non-stop. Those songs were the background of our lives. And when the jukebox wasn’t pumping out Ernest Tubb or Lefty Frizzell, a radio behind the counter was tuned to KVOO or KRMG in Tulsa, both of which served up country music at the start of the day.
The Rock was part of the environment. It became a touchstone locked in memory.
This past winter I worked on a replica of the cafe for a model train layout. I searched the Internet for photos, looked for appropriate building materials and even found a dealer who sells electroluminescent scale lighting components for signs. The original Rock was ringed by a single tube of green neon at the roofline and it featured a 50’s style neon sign crafted by Tuny Monday who ran a thriving sign business in Stroud in that era. Monday’s signs were erected throughout Oklahoma and are among the cultural artifacts that symbolize the fifties.
So the loss of the Rock felt personal, as if a part of my history had gone away and the pangs of loss were real.
A great post on the history of the Rock is here. A YouTube video of the fire in progress is posted here.
The good news is that Dawn Welch, the current owner, says she will rebuild. Welch has been a creative, persistent manager of the Rock, making it a must-see stop for those traveling the historic Mother Road. She secured recognition in the National Register of Historic Places, for example. The day after the fire Welch told the Daily Oklahoman, “This can’t be the end to the story (of the Rock).”
Having secured the Rock as an important icon on the road between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, her determination and track record should give hope to those who care about the cultural legacy of this great icon in our motoring history.
Posted on May 31st, 2008 by larryhol
Filed under: Uncategorized
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