Kansas

Back in the ‘20s when they were figuring out the route for the new US highway, an enterprising Kansan succeeded in getting his state included.  The result is a dozen-mile loop in the southeastern corner of the state, connecting US66 between Missouri and Oklahoma.


Immediately after crossing the Kansas line, I pulled up at a curious structure.  It was where previously some kind of open-air eatery had been, adjacent to Luigi’s Casa Della Tires (Pixar actually put Luigi’s in the “Cars” movie).  The building had some Route 66 graffiti (I like the Dorothy poster “Yes Toto, There Is Route 66”), and someone had gathered a set of ancient Burma-Shave rhyming signs and stacked them for a signpost.
Also in front of Luigi’s someone (Kansas US66 Assn?) had mounted a ’53 Buick on a post.  It saluted the “Cars” movie, with a Radiator Springs Sheriff decal and signature by Michael Wallis (whom Pixar recruited to use his deep bass voice as the Sheriff in the movie).

              

           
 

I got into an interesting conversation with a couple who stopped in there who were British, also driving the length of Route 66 as a vacation outing.

Around the curve, heading south toward Oklahoma, I went through the lovely town of Galena (which had a lively outlaw, mining and labor battling history back in the early 1900s).  I liked the old architecture and the gaslight-style street lamps – and of course a museum-piece 66 gas station.

          

From Galena I continued south to Baxter Springs.  City limits welcomes you to “Baxter Springs – First Cowtown in Kansas”.  This harkens back to the huge history of the town on the route Texans drove their herds to the Kansas City slaughterhouses.  In the day, it was pretty Wild West, with a rowdy lifestyle as the cattle were penned and fattened for the final drive to KC.

This town was also memorialized in James McMurtry’s masterpiece song “Chocktaw Bingo”, the hometown of two sisters in “sawed-off jeans and skinny little halters” and a large structure, on top of a midtown building, of Rolling Stones red lips, lit up “all night long, all night long”.  I drove up and down looking, but sadly I saw neither.  Poetic license?  Anyhow, for me James immortalized Baxter Springs.  Check out Chocktaw Bingo.  After lunch in Weston’s Route 66 Cafe, I ran a few miles south into Oklahoma, the real start of the West for me.