What the Abandoned Grain Elevator Could Tell Us

If that old grain elevator just north of Main could talk, I reckon it’d have a lot to say—and most of it wouldn’t be polite. Built back when wheat was gold and trains still chugged through town with purpose, the Fisher Grain Elevator stood tall as a concrete cathedral to prairie progress. It watched families grow, fields rise, and fortunes crumble—quietly, from its dusty perch, beneath a star that once lit the Oklahoma night like a barn dance moon.

 

Now? The elevator sits hollow and gray, stripped of purpose, waiting for someone to remember it used to matter. The “Star of David” that once shone from its roof like a small-town North Star went dark in 1986, and some say that’s when Woodward’s heart started beating a little quieter. Kids used to stare up at that glowing star on chilly nights, asking if it meant something sacred. Turns out it didn’t—just the symbol of a grain company. But we all believed it did. And maybe that was enough.

 

I like to imagine the elevator talking to us. Maybe a little bitter, a little wise. “I held a thousand harvests in my belly,” it might say. “Watched farmers cry and cuss and pray. And now y’all just drive by, wondering if I’ll collapse or catch fire.” It wouldn’t say it with malice—more like a grandpa who tells you the same story every Thanksgiving, not because he forgot he told it, but because he wants you to finally understand.

 

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So next time you drive down Main and catch that elevator in your rearview, give it a nod. It might be abandoned, but it’s still listening. And if it could talk, it’d probably say something like: “Remember what mattered. Then tell somebody else.”

 

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