Saturday morning the sun rose over Bristow’s largest back-to-school event, Touch-A-Truck Bristow. As the trucks rolled into the First Free Will Baptist Church parking lot, the Route 66 Midpoint Corridor hot air balloon went up. As exciting as the first day of school, hundreds of people came together to host this free event to tour vehicles for land, water, and sky. Touch-ATruck Bristow offered free “truck” participation, free guest parking, free school supplies, free hygiene products, free face painting, and free balloon animals as well as a visit from Oklahoma State University’s Pistol Pete and Bristow Public School’s Pirate Pete.
As the wind picked up and the hot air balloon came down, Survival Flight landed their helicopter.
Families and friends were able to touch and tour fiftyseven different vehicles and learn about them from their drivers and pilots. From lawn care to cement tankers, kids of all ages could learn about working trucks like dump trucks, trash trucks, skid steers, tractors and balers, road graders, stump grinders, paint stripers and so much more! The visit from the Ghostbusters car and A&W Paw Patrol wrecker were all a buzz like the Army Corp of Engineers Ranger’s AirBoat.
Though there was only one point of contact for this event, it was truly “the community who pulled this off ”. As an event volunteer went on to say, “This is not just one person. This is not just three people. This was dozens and dozens and dozens of people coming together to put this on, hundreds even. We are grateful to the community who pulled this off.”
With thousands of volunteer hours, a list of sponsors longer than a T-shirt, and generous donations from all over Creek County, Touch-ATruck Bristow was able to host 57 vehicles, six food trucks, 32 vendors, organizations and clubs as well as give away three straight hours of face painting, dummy roping practice, and bounce houses, over 500 balloon animals, 44 bags of personal hygiene products, and 258 backpacks filled with school supplies.
In 2022, when Rotary Club of Bristow began helping they gave 50 school supply filled backpacks away and this year they distributed 258. A Bristow Rotarian said that “Rotary Club of Bristow is pleased to support this local event that makes a measurable impact in our community.” They are not only pleased to participate with Bristow Social Services and Spirit Bank, but they are teaming with more groups to help fill the need in our hometown.
Next year, Community Bank and Spirit Bank will both be donation sites that will organize, fill, and distribute school supplies to the masses of children who come for help with the back-toschool budget.