New Mural in Frederick by Dr. Bob Palmer
In the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City there is a room filled with ten large murals done by Thomas Hart Benton in the late 1920’s that are collectively titled “America Today.” Texas is the subject of one of them, and it features smoke, oil derricks, cowboys, and several Native Americans. In the recently published “Figures In a Landscape” novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux writes of his visit to see those murals and concludes that photographs and images on social media can not really do justice to them, and that to really appreciate them they must be seen there. The muralist travelled throughout the nation prior to painting them, we are told. The author writes of the detail found in the mural that features cotton growing and also being picked by African Americans in the South.
And Theroux further concludes that “ Benton’s work arises from a tradition of storytelling and reporting from the road. Those murals are news and they are also a mirror of life witnessed firsthand. Benton showed us who we are as Americans.”
It is possible that in the future similar conclusions will be made regarding the murals made by Dr. Bob Palmer of Bethany regarding the state of Oklahoma. The peripatetic Palmer has travelled throughout the state in recent years, and his murals that tell some of the story of the communities where his murals are on permanent display in public places. One of his murals in Bethany details the role that the 39th Street there played as part of the iconic Route 66 that travelled from Chicago to Los Angeles and served as a thoroughfare of hope for thousands of people left homeless by the Depression and the Dust Bowl who made their way West seeking a better future. When one of his murals in place on Western Avenue in Oklahoma City was painted over by out of state property owners there was a widespread protest of that action.
The muralist most recent work was placed on a building in Frederick, which is the county seat of Tillman County in southwest Oklahoma . Palmer, who is a native of the somewhat similar community of Walters, reported that he was struck by the number of people who drove by to view him and his assistants as they painted and that he would welcome an opportunity to do additional work in downtown Frederick. His mural includes an image of the Ramona Theater, a stately structure which is on the list of historic buildings maintained by the U.S. Department of the Interior, dairy and beef cattle, a water tower, and the Abernathy Boys, who were two brothers in Frederick who embarked on a journey to New York City in the early decades of the last century that attracted nationwide attention. And like most people who have travelled in Frederick area, Palmer said that he greeted warmly by everyone he encountered there.
Against the Grain 