The tape was in poor condition when digitized. As a result, this is the best capture available at the moment. Produced by KETA in Norman, Oklahoma, this episodes does not deal with one specific street or area in a particular city. Rather it brings to the television screen a composite Main Street, "any and all Main Streets of Oklahoma, the Sooner State." Told with pictures and maps through the voice of an old-time Oklahoma inhabitant and an off-camera narrator, this is the story of the growth of Oklahoma within the span of one man's life. It is the story of a landscape change from tepees to towers. As the narrator says and the pictures indicate, "for the Indian, Main Street was the trading posts that sprang up at the forks of the rivers, where well-used trails converged, where river boat landings brought the white man's goods to the wilderness." And after that Main Street was the cattle trails. Then the railroads pushed an iron Main Street through the Indian country, down to Texas and across the plains, bringing in more and more settlers. And, as the Old Timer points out, the ramshackle towns were the hub of activity for the Jesse James's, the Belle Stars and the marshals of the law. Suddenly, Main Street, Oklahoma, became the center of the new state and it grew in size and in excitement. Oil was discovered. Farmers, at first hit by dust bowl conditions and the Depression, recovered and brought under their control vast amounts of land. New methods of industrial production were develop. More people moved into the cities. Main Street, Oklahoma, had advanced into the midst of the Twentieth Century. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche) Five affiliates of National Educational Television present their Main Streets: five different pictures of America, five different moods and ways of life. The new series spans the continent from Boston to Corvallis and Sacramento, penetrates the center of the country in Oklahoma and listens to the beat of a great port in New Orleans. Each region is different, and each presents itself in a different way, concentrating on those things which make it unique and yet familiar to anyone who has thought about how our country looks and feels. All five half-hour episodes use narration and motion as well as still photography to describe and suggest the hearts of their cities. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche)
