Gary's, George and Mickey

Saturday, 17 April 2021 for Thursday, 15 April 2021

As we were leaving Springfield, MO, we passed a modern Sinclair station. I commented to Randy that when we were kids, Sinclair gas stations were everywhere. I think my Dad worked at one when I was a little boy and we lived for a time near Deland, FL. As we traveled south and west, we ran into this gem. It is called Gary's Gay Parita Sinclair Station.  Other names for the area seem to be Paris Springs as well as Ash Grove. Gary and his wife, who started this venture, have passed away, but the station was taken over by George and his partner, Barbara. We think Barbara "inherited" the station and asked George to move to MO to help run it. There are many pictures of Gary on Google Images for this location, but none of the more recent proprietor, George. Neither Randy nor I thought to take a picture of George while we talked to him and purchased a few souvenirs. He was a talker, I gather much like Gary before him was. We wandered and took in the ambiance of this old-time gas station - garage. (By the way, Sinclair Oil was bought out by ARCO back in the 1970's, so there really isn't Sinclair anymore.) Below are some pictures.

 

 

I used the S & H Green Stamps sign because Randy said, "I wonder how many people remember those." People of an age!

Our friend Wes Turner said the picture with the truck and gas pump should be captioned "three antiques." Hah, nice.

George was joking with Randy, who said she remembered "Gas Wars" like on one of the signs in a picture above. George talked about "Spencer" down the road who kept undercutting him at 13.9 cents a gallon. When we got there, Spencer had dropped it even more!

Just before we reached Spencer's station, we found another of the old bridges. From a distance, they look pretty nice, but on closer inspection, you can see many of them are not kept freshly painted. We added someone to make it look better.

George had told us to look for a little "soda shoppe" as we traveled west. We saw a sign saying it was coming up, so we stopped. While the outside was nice, inside it looked like any standard convenience store, with a few souvenirs on the shelf. The story of how the store got its name, after the owner's grandmother, was the most interesting part of the stop. We didn't stay long.

We were headed to the town of Carthage, but as we left Lottie's, we saw more interesting buildings

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Carthage's main claim to fame is a Civil War battle, but we found the town to be picturesque.

      

In one of those serendipitous stops, we were looking for lunch, and originally were going to try a little shop which had a fairly extensive menu, but seemed a bit expensive for lunch. We came to the place above because of the name, and ended up having a very nice sandwich lunch with a craft soda. We passed on the coffee!

We headed out to Joplin, MO from Carthage. (Joplin is the next town mentioned after St. Louis in the song Route 66.) We stopped just out of Carthage for this picture.

Part of the adventure of a trip like this is finding how the weather and the past year plus with COVID have changed things. The Drive-In was supposed to be open for the season already, per websites and other information, but it was not. We would not have stayed anyway, just sayin'.

We passed through Carterville and saw this item. We thought it worth a picture!

Once in Joplin, our destination was:

             

I was not thrilled with this one, but Randy liked it a lot! Here are a couple of pictures from inside the museum.

The crystal cave referred to is essentially an entire huge room of geode. It is not currently open, due to safety concerns, but a hundred years ago it was a tourist attraction. While it is supposed to be beautiful, it hindered the mining of zinc and lead, which was the bread and butter of the area.

Leaving Joplin, we entered:

Kansas has the least miles of Route 66, about 13 miles and three small towns. I will include a number of pictures here from Galena -- for no particular reason except we thought it was fun!

    

    

As an aside -- the van named "Fillmore" in the "Cars" movies was inspired by an artist named Bob Waldmire, recently deceased. He is iconic on Route 66, traveling the road in a 1972 VW Camper Van, which can be seen in the Pontiac, IL Route 66 Hall of Fame Museum, where we started our adventure. (Picture from an Internet article. We did see the van in the museum.)

The next little town in Kansas is Riverton, home of another well-known bridge, the Rainbow Bridge. While we were viewing and picturing the bridge, another Prius came by, and we spoke to those folks. They were from north of Chicago and intended to do the entire route -- in two weeks! We think we are rushing it at a month. As I write this a couple days later, we have run into them once and waved at them another two times. I'm sure they are further along the road now.

As we were entering the Riverton area, we saw this unique sign, made out of automobile wheels:

The last town on the Route in Kansas is Baxter Springs, which has a restored 1930's era Phillips 66 service station. There is a visitor center there, but it was closed by the time we got there. We still took some pictures!

We have a lot of pictures, as you see, for three little towns in Kansas! We then entered into Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain.

The first town we came to was Commerce. Do you recognize that name? You would if you were a New York Yankees fan. It is the home of the Commerce Comet, Mickey Mantle. Mickey was my favorite player when I was a youngster playing sandlot ball. But as you will see from the picture, you must be careful in viewing your heroes. Here is Mickey's childhood home today.

    

Even the sign was raggedy, as was the house. I'm not sure who has any responsibility to maintain the building, but they are failing!

The next town is Miami. At Waylan's Ku Ku Burger, there is a giant cuckoo posed as if it just jumped out of the building. (Sorry for the picture, the sun was going down and we were driving past!)

Randy was fascinated with what was called the Sidewalk Highway or Ribbon Road. It was an original 9-foot-wide, one lane section of the original Route 66 (actually preceeded 66 in 1922), which was later added to on either side.

Just like you, who have stayed on so far, we were getting pretty worn out by this time. We needed food, so we stopped at Clanton's Cafe in Vanita, OK. They have a sign I would never have thought was common, but it has in big letters, E - A - T. You'll see it again now that we mentioned it.

We ended up at a Hampton Inn, and ended up going past our next activity, which we headed for the next day -- we were behind in our schedule! Please stay tuned.