Oklahoma City Thunder: Perry Jones and commitment to state

The Thunder likes to talk bill itself as a state-wide team. Heck, the Thunder is a state-wide team. No reason to debate it. And now the Thunder is even acknowledging the state-wide draw. It’s drafting players whose names salute Oklahoma towns.

The Thunder already had players who honor notable Oklahoma places — Durant, Perkins — but now the Thunder is collecting players with double Oklahoma names. Perry Jones.

Perry, the county seat of Noble County, home of the Maroons and legendary wrestling. Jones, the town in Oklahoma County about eight miles straight east of our office on Britton Road, home of the Longhorns and generally a frisky football team.

Perry Jones joins Russell Westbrook in the Oklahoma Heritage Club.

Russell is a switch and loading point on the Santa Fe Raildroad, six miles north of Guthrie in Logan County. There also was a Westbrook (one mile south of Hallett, in Pawnee County, townsite plat filed Oct. 10, 1902).

That’s just part of the Thunder’s remarkable tip to Oklahoma place names.

There was a Hardin (the original name of Hobart, one of my favorite Oklahoma Mayberrys, down in Kiowa County), and if you’re a stickler for spelling, there’s a Harden City (11 miles south of Ada in Pontotoc County, post office established May 7, 1937).

There’s a Fisher (three miles west of Sand Springs, in Tulsa County, established as a post office in 1904, though the post office has been gone 100 years). And there’s a Fisher’s Station, though some know it as Carriage Point (three miles west of Durant, in Bryan County, a stage stop on the Butterfield Overland Mail route to California, which crossed southeastern Oklahoma 1858-61).

There’s a Cole. I’ve been there. I’ve got a friend who lives there and a boss who lives there (seven miles southeast of Blanchard, in McClain County, established as a post office on April 2, 1912, though the post office closed in 1954).

There’s a Hayward (five miles southeast of Covington, in Garfield County; the post office closed in 1963).