On east side of U. S. 69/75 north of Durant near Caddo, ID’d by Greg Morris who won’t go to lunch with me so happy to treat my nephew Vince who contributes this photo from the interior: 
Sorry this post is going to sound like sour grapes and probably is, but when the title popped into my head I couldn’t resist. “Wayne” is Wayne Greene, editorial page editor of the Tulsa World, the most recent in a line of Tulsa editorial writers who have had a truly positive impact on our community, in sharp contrast to their counterparts over the years at the Daily Oklahoman (the Daily Disappointment per Frosty Troy whose word on this I have always accepted as true without inflicting myself by actually reading their work). My first encounters with local editorial writers occurred when I ran for the Tulsa School Board in 1976 and continued over the next quarter of a century with my political campaigns and efforts to pass initiatives like our city sales tax and charter change. Some of the writers I remember include Jenk Jones and John Drummond at the Tulsa Tribune, Jim Goodwin at the Oklahoma Eagle and Alex Adwon, Ken Neal and Mike Jones at the World. John was a personal friend through our church and his editorial endorsing me over the incumbent Mary Warner, titled “A Fresh Breeze”, likely made the difference in my 1980 election ( Voter Fraud Déjà Vu ) and successfully launched for me a fascinating twenty years of service as a local elected official.
One memory from those interactions was John, I think, telling me that they believed their “influence” was about 7%, meaning a Tribune/World editorial could sway about that percentage of voters. I have no idea how accurate that was, or even if I remember correctly, but I do know that we mostly unknown local officials wanted to have those endorsements when running for election, and, I suspect, that influence today, given all the competing sources of information, is much, much less. Another memory is from a visit a delegation of us from the City Commission made to the World probably in support of a third penny sales tax election, maybe in support of the charter change. At the conclusion of our discussion I believe it was Alex who commented something to the effect “We are flattered that you Commissioners care enough about what we think to come calling on us.” I was surprised at his modesty because we certainly thought their opinion mattered greatly in our efforts. Now many years later I realize that political leadership and opinion writers have a kind of symbiotic relationship and that it could be as risky for an editorial writer to be out of sync with his audience’s political views as it could be for a political leader to be out of favor with local editorial writers.
So in Wayne’s World when a local political opinion leader, like former governor Frank Keating, offers a guest column Wayne will think twice before declining because he needs the major Franks of his World to view his editorial work as relevant and important for our state (which it is). What to do then when a very minor Frank like me challenges the accuracy of a major Frank’s column, namely that nowhere, no how, is his statement correct that “In fact, through fiscal year 2016, Oklahoma public schools received more than $9.2 billion in revenue, a near record high.” (That is unless “through fiscal year 2016” means something other than “during” or “for” fiscal year 2016.) What I suspect Wayne did, following his journalist training, was to call Frank, or, more likely, one of the fellows at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs who ghost wrote the column, and ask about the difference between their number and the one I cited of $6.012 billion. Here is what Wayne wrote appended to my letter to the editor concerning Frank’s alleged perfidy:
Editor’s Note
The $9.2 billion number cited by the column authors came from Oklahoma Department of Education’s cost accounting system reports and includes all sources of revenue available to schools — district, state and federal sources of revenue as well as any funds provided by debt facilities.
Prior to my letter and Wayne’s note being published I posted Takes One To Know One and Make Oklahoma Adequate Again where I display the actual Oklahoma Department of Education’s cost accounting system report for FY 2016 and demonstrate that nowhere, no how, does the alleged $9.2 billion appear. In other words, and hope I’m shown wrong, Wayne just took their word for it. And that’s part of his World—the fellows at the OCPA have street cred as a think tank in this state because they have Frank and other leaders on their Board and a nice budget, so Wayne should be able to trust what they say. But you can’t and he shouldn’t. As I’ve shown time and again they are sloppy at best, often engage in clear distortions and, sometimes, just make stuff up. Which it is in this case we may never know till the real $9.2 billion makes itself known.
P.S. Thanks, Wayne, for putting my letter first on the Sunday, February 25, letters page.
As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo location—unfortunately the Thinker sat on goatheads and left before the photo was taken.