Friday, October 26, 007

Bob's Blah Blog:

Dorothy: "Bobo, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
Wicked Witch: "That's right my little dearie."

Yes, we are not in Kansas. We have moved onto: "Oklahoma where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain." How could two states be so musically inclined? Beats me (eight to the measure, that is.)

Ok, lots has happened since we last visited, and "lots of nothing" has happened, too...as my friend Bill Y. says. So lets get started.

Bob-servations:

I think I wrote about this in Dover or York, PA, but here it is again in Kansas. First you have the People's State Bank, then comes the Community State Bank, and as the accounts get larger, along comes the City State Bank. What next? County State Bank, State State Bank and National State Bank or is it State National Bank. Where would it all end? Universe State Bank?

Restaurants I have known: "Just Us Restaurant" and, just down the road is "My Place Restuarant."

Funeral Home slogans: Potts Funeral Home...Not only do we "Plant" your loved ones, we can also "Potts" them. Or, "You shots 'em, we Potts them." I know, its lame.

Ok, enough of that jibberish.

I forgot to mention the hand dryer in the restrooms at Poopy's Tattoos, Pub and Grub (or whatever it was called.) First, I must compliment Poopy's on the cleanliness of their restrooms. After doing your business and washing your hands, what you want to do is dry them. At Poopy's they have the usual air-type dryers, but these are super-duper dryers that blow air about 100 miles and hour. You get your hands dry almost sooner than you got them wet. Now thats a dryer. Zoom-Zoom.

We saw a Mugs Up rootbeer joint somewhere in Kansas that I can't recall. For those who might recall, and for those who don't know what I am talking about, Mugs Up used to have a drive-in on Glendale Avenue, just east of the I-17 freeway. When I was young, much younger than today, I coached both a co-ed and an all-girls softball team for St. Francis Xavier youth group. I would take my teams to Mugs Up after a game and treat 'em to rootbeer. Ice cold, fresh and dee-lis-us. It closed down many years ago, but I think the original building was standing for a long time. Anyways, I wish I had stopped and got me a big frosty mug of rootbeer when I saw it, but didn't. Don't know why I didn't, but I didn't.

We camped near a town in Kansas named Cherryvale. The park was nearly empty and located on a big lake. Nice. Saw lots of deer. We stayed there so we could be in close proximity to Coffeyville and Independence, Kansas. Coffeyville is where my maternal grandma was born and the Dalton Gang tried to pull off a double bank robbery, which failed and cost them their lives. Driving into Coffeyville, we passed Amazon.com building. Must be their headquarters or something. Huge building.

One side of Coffeyville, across the railroad tracks was devastated by a flood earlier this year. When we drove through the area, we noticed all the vacant buildings, houses, business, disheveled grounds, etc. Most of the vacant buildings had search and rescue markers painted on them indicating they had been searched for live and dead persons. We didn't know what had happened until we asked at the library. I think they have photos on the internet, so if you are interested, google Coffeyville and it will probably pop up. In some places, the waterline on the buildings is about 5 feet. In other places (low lands) the line is a good 10 feet deep. Just to make things worse, the water had oil on it from the refinery north of town. Other than the damaged buildings, they have things pretty well cleaned up.

We ate lunch at El Charro, a so called mexican food restaurant. Food was ok. Corinne's fajitas were good. Rice was no-go. Beans ok. The best part was the ice cold frosty 22 ounce beers. Its great being retired and being able to have an ice cold one at lunch any day of the week. But I got a headache from the beer, so its not all that great. I thought the salsa was tasteless. I asked for some hot sauce and it was neither hot nor tasty. I mixed it with the other tasteless sauce, salt, and pepper, but it didn't help. I called it Salsa-lite. They had actual spanish speaking waiters. I spoke to them in spanish, saying things like "esta bueno," ""si," "y" (and in spanish), and "no gracias" when he asked if we wanted dessert. Corinne was certain I was over my head and would get caught not knowing what I was saying and told the waiter so. He said I was "very good spanish speaking man" and even thought I might have been a Spaniard. So there.

We found old phone directories at the Coffeyville library and were able to find where my grandma and great grandpa/ma lived in Coffeyville. I hope the house looked better in 1909 than it does today. The grocery store they worked at is no longer standing, but was there during the 60's or 70 according to the lady at the library. She warned us she wouldn't go near that neighborhood even in the daylight. It was a pretty skanky part of town. Not really much of a town. Poverty must be the biggest employer. We got some photos of the house and vacant lot where the grocery once stood.

We visited Independence to gather genealogy info on my grandma and family, but because the town was celebrating Neewolloh (holloween spelled backwards...and an accurate indicator of their small town mentality) the Historical Museum was closed. We ended up at the County Court House and could not find any records of births. They let me, unaccompanied, go through the files to do the searching myself. The clerks then directed us to the city library. Now this is where the backwards small town mentality comes into place. They would not allow me to go to the "Kansas Room" where the records were stored because they didn't have any "volunteers" working and we would have to have a volunteer with us to view the records.

Now, we were just at the County Court House where they allowed us to peruse important government documents unaccosted, but we can't review library docs without supervision?? I was not happy and believe it or not, I may have got a bit testy with those people, whom I believe may have been from Arkansas. (Sorry if any one reading this is from Arkansas, but that's the way it is.) I asked to appeal to a supervisor or manager, but she didn't have any backbone to change things. I came about two numbers from calling the town mayor and getting him/her involved, but I didn't. Its not worth the effort when dealing with mor-ackus and a mor-oon mentalities. So, I will just have to write to the Kansas Governor to get the info I want.

We thought we might take in a movie since the rest of the day was shot. We drove to Parsons, KS, since it was probably the biggest town close to camp. We found one theatre, it was 5 pm, and several movies were playing. When we walked into the building, there was only one person working, a teenage girl. I introduced ourselves as being from the "Movie Board and we were here to do an inspection." We probably would have gotten away with it, but someone (and I mean Corinne) started to laugh. With that blown, we had to look at the movie times and pick a movie. As luck would have it, all the movies had already started and we would have to wait until 7 pm for them to restart. Not wanting to wait, I asked the girl if she could stop a movie and restart it from the beginning for us. She said "no." I informed her, "if we had actually been from the Movie Board, we would have had to shut the place down for that." Again, someone (Corinne, again)laughed and ruined our chances. We went back to camp and cooked dinner and watched TV.

Friday morning, we dumped our holding tanks really good and flushed them again to get them sparkling clean...if anyone wants to look and see. We finally broke camp at about 11 am and headed to OK City, OK. We took it slow and easy and actually drove on part of old Route 66. Along the way, on I-44, the Turnpike, I saw no less than 7 Oklahoma State Troopers working traffic. All but one of them had someone stopped when we passed them. This was all within about a 30 mile or less stretch of highway. Someone (and I mean Corinne) can't verify this because she was sawing logs, if you know what I mean.

We reached camp at Arcadia Lake, between Arcadia and Edmonds, along Route 66, OK. Nice campground. We set up then, becasue it was early, decided to go to OK City, OK to see some sights. First we went to the Capitol. This is one big building, and lots and lots of parking around the building for the House and Senate, Supreme Court and and of course, the Governor and all the staff for these folks. The governor had about 20 parking spaces reserved just for the office. They have an oil well on the grounds of the capitol.

We then went to the Oklahoma National Memorial which is the Murrah Federal Building. This is one nice memorial. They saved the back wall of the Murrah building, added a reflection pool where McStupid parked his truck. There are metal and glass chairs arranged in 9 rows for the 9 stories of the building. One for each person who died in the blast. Surrounding buildings were fixed but only to the point of making them safe. They still have missing bricks, damaged fire escapes, etc. They blocked in and painted windows black so to look as if they were still broken out. Pretty sobering atmosphere. McStupid got off easy, if you ask me.

Bob-servation:
The post office across the street from the memorial was still open and doing business at 6:30 pm on a Friday night. Why cannot they all do that?

It's now 1045 pm, Corinne is long ago asleep, and I need to do the same.

As the Scarecrow sang:

I would not be just a nuffin'
My head all full of stuffin'
My heart all full of pain.
(dee doo dee doodle-lee doo)
I would dance and be merry
Life would be a ding-a-derry
If I only had a brain!

Yes, if I only had a brain...

Bobo