I flew Hobart, Oklahoma during their Sound of Liberty event, and the whole town center was alive. Booths and vendors packed the square, every kind you can think of. A long row of old historic cars sat lined down the street, chrome throwing light all over the place, people walking the rows the way folks do when there’s nowhere they need to be.
All of it sitting on top of a strange piece of history. This town didn’t exist one morning in August 1901. By nightfall it had a few thousand people living in tents on bare prairie and they called it Ragtown. Now it’s a courthouse square in Kiowa County with the oldest working courthouse in the state dead center and one of the biggest tile mosaics in the country set into the ground.
Catch it from the air at the right hour and the whole place glows the same red as the dirt it grew out of.
A small town that still knows how to fill its own square.
