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fired and telling us, `Let's wake up and smell the coffee.'"
In the past few years, parents worried about their children's health have flooded the school district with transfer applications. A nearly $20 million federal buyout program is speeding up the exodus. Since last fall, buyout applications for nearly 700 properties have been submitted.
Still, there are holdouts who say Picher can be something again.
"This is my hometown; this is where I grew up," said 18-year-old Mike Sweeten, a 2006 graduate of the high school who voted no on the school annexation. "I want to stay here until the town closes."
At G + J's Gorillas Cage, a Main Street diner named for the school's mascot, owner Joyce Cox plans to keep serving up the house specialties, Chubby Cheeseburgers, even if there is only a trickle of customers.
"I'm too dumb to quit, I guess," said Cox, who was born here and gave her age as "too old."
Gary Linderman, 52, runs the Ole Miners Pharmacy, the kind of place that makes deliveries and still takes IOUs. He has about 80 customers a day, many of whom moved to neighboring towns but continue to come here out of loyalty. Some folks have nicknamed him "Lights Out Gary" because they say his place will be the last to go.
Hoppy's pool hall gets a couple of dozen folks every Monday for music night, where anyone who wants to attempt a country tune can have a turn at the microphone. He doesn't keep regular hours and opens up the place only when someone wants to play.
So, what will it take to get him to leave Picher?
"Somebody meaner than me, I guess," he joked. "Ain't nobody going to stand up in my face and tell me where to go."
Sparkman said the buildings in town will probably be razed when everybody leaves, but the exact future of the town has yet to be determined. The mountains of mining waste are slowly being reduced, with some of the material destined for road construction, but it will be a decades-long project, the housing chief said.
The EPA has gone to court to try to recover some of the cleanup from some of the mining companies that worked in the area.
Sparkman said that by the summer, most of the remaining residents will be gone because of the federal buyouts. And Picher will become a place with tall weeds, no police or fire protection, and homes that are worth nothing.
The holdouts "don't realize what a bought-out town will look like," he said.
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