For more than a decade, starting about 1920, my father, Dale L. Nichols , worked as book keeper in the Buick Building on Broadway in Oklahoma City , near NW 4 and next to the Oklahoma Publishing Co. Constructed in 1911, the two-story Buick Building was part of what became known as Automobile Alley.

Dad once told me that the building housed a showroom on the first floor and a parts department on the second floor, wh...