South by Southeast
Cheryl Unruh
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
On a recent Saturday, Dave and I took off for the lower right-hand corner of the state.
We headed to Galena so we could drive the Kansas portion of Route 66.
Between Missouri and Oklahoma, the Sunflower State has 13.2 miles of the historic roadway — from east of Galena through Baxter Springs.
Traveling Route 66 is all about the journey. Enthusiasts of “The Mother Road” hope to capture the feeling of those bygone motoring days which, at the time, included cottage motels, flashing neon signs and the odor of leaded gasoline.
In keeping with the Route 66 theme of journeying, Dave and I wandered our way to the southeast corner. On the trip, we passed through nine counties and visited 20 towns, including six county seats.
In some towns we just drove around. In others, we got out of the car and walked with our cameras because we don’t have anything better to do than document Kansas.
I’ve been through Iola many times; it’s a pleasant community with about 6,000 people. Dave and I took photos of the modern Allen County Courthouse and of the interesting architecture on the square.
From Iola we continued south on US-169, bypassing Chanute for now.
Arriving in Thayer (pop. 500), we found that we had just missed a parade. A dozen ATVs zipped around town and the parade route was easy to spot from the trail of horse manure.
Even thought it’s a small town, Thayer has several restaurants, which, sadly, we had to ignore because we had eaten in Iola. But, we did peek inside the Sunflour Bread Company, and their baked items looked good.
Still in Neosho County, we took a spin through Galesburg, a town of 150 people.
U.S. Highway 59 led us into Parsons. And, while you might think a town of this size (pop. 11,212) would be the Labette county seat, it is not.
The courthouse is down yonder in Oswego (pop. 1,996).
Dave and I walked around downtown Parsons, which has impressive buildings: the solid First Baptist Church, a huge municipal building, a stone Carnegie Library, a castle-like Presbyterian Church and the Parsonian Hotel, straight from the ’50s.
I have to say that Parsons has the cleanest downtown I’ve ever been in. It was freakishly clean. I glanced down an alleyway and — no dirt, no trash, no weeds emerging through pavement cracks; it looked as if it had been vacuumed.
Cherokee (pop. 718) has a brick — yes, brick! — water tower still in use.
An engraved stone on the water tower says “Cherokee Water Works 1896.”
A couple years ago Dave began a collection of water tower photos, focusing on the rocket-shaped or otherwise unusual towers in small towns.
Along with the tower, he captures some of the foreground, a bit of the town’s essence in each picture.
Dave aims his camera at water towers and I’m always in search of the old gas stations. And nearly every town has at least one of those old-time “fill-’er-up” places, either the cottage-style, Phillips 66-type station or the type with pillars in front and a roof over the driveway.
The Crawford County town of Cherokee is not the only brick-water-tower town. The nearby community of Weir has one also, although Weir’s brick tower is no longer being used.
Weir (pop. 752), along K-103, seems like a busy little town with customers flowing in and out of Simone’s grocery store.
Weir is not on Route 66, the road where people are actively scouting out old gas stations and businesses, but this town has a nicely restored Texaco station — a tiny building complete with antique gas pumps.
Dave and I photographed these structures in Weir. And now, we were getting closer to the famed Route 66.
To be continued…
(Meanwhile, the question to ponder: Would Route 66 seem as magical if it had been called Route 68?)
“Flyover People” is online at www.flyoverpeople.net.
F Cheryl Unruh can be reached at cheryl@flyoverpeople.net.