Abandoned Gas - Kansas and Stuff, June 2000
This post is in honor of Garth -who accompanied me on this road trip- and his recent move back to Denver.
If any of you happen to have a copy of Wasted Quarter 46 laying around (it was printed in August 2000, so you probably don't), you may remember a story that detailed my roadtrip from Denver to Fargo, North Dakota, back to Denver, then to St. Louis, Missouri, and back to Denver in a matter of four days. The reason for that insanity was as follows: I'd made a prior commitment to attend a family reunion in Fargo, ND. Attending said reunion would cause me to miss a Denver concert appearance by The Cure on Monday night, as I would be driving back from Fargo at the time.
That piece was never finished before I printed WQ46. In it, I alluded to several stories that I never got around to writing. Those other events of the trip I planned to elaborate on someday....
A month or so earlier, I had drunkenly purchased tickets online to the following Wednesday night's Cure concert in St. Louis, MO, with a friend of mine after a night of heavy drinking. I made it home from Fargo, early Tuesday morning (June 6), and was going to take a few hour nap, then drive with my friends to St. Louis. Hitting the road at some point early Tuesday afternoon, if all went according to plan...
At the last minute, I still made the drive to St. Louis. But my co-pilots were no longer Erin and Tommie. They were replaced by Garth and Ryan. We left Denver a little after 2am the morning of the concert (June 7). Which was later that night and only about 800 miles away…
The majority of the road trip falling apart story was printed in WQ46, along with the Fargo portion of the drive. An intended subplot for the roadtrip piece was to photograph Kansas landmarks that I deemed worthy, to sprinkle into Wasted Quarter story.
But I was running out of room, and the pictures wouldn't have translated nearly as well...
While we didn’t get to see any tornadoes (damat…), my list of several desired photograph subjects included any abandoned buildings we happened to encounter, plus Bob Dole’s house in Russell, Kansas!
Very few stops were made on the way to St. Louis, we just made notes of things we’d need to hit as we traveled east, on the way back.
Shortly after crossing the Colorado/Kansas border on I-70, we found a Stuckey’s gas station/restaurant for some supplies. Which included overly large sunglasses, some odd Kansas related postcards and Dairy Queen frozen hot chocolate. The paradox of which became an in-joke for the next couple of hundred miles...
Not only is that rabbit huge, but in comparison to the rabbit-rider, those cows are awfully tiny… I guess those cows are used to make White Castle Sliders?
Not even 300 miles into the drive, we were already sleep deprived and going a bit loopy. To celebrate making it to Kansas, I had Garth and Ryan skip away off into a field. I figured it would make a good picture for the planned Wasted Quarter story about the ill-advised road trip…
A few hours later, we made a food and gas stop just outside of Idontknow, Kansas. Across the street from the Denny’s we ate at, was a recently closed Dairy Queen. Through the door, in the reflection of my L.A. Kings hockey jersey and trademark floppy hat, you can see kind of a tidy mess inside. A few pieces of fallen ceiling tile, salt and pepper shakers on tables, the still stocked front counter and a reflection of the weedy sidewalk leading up to the recently closed DQ.
Let me point out that this was June 7, 2000. (Years before I had a digital camera.) All of these pictures were taken on a poor quality (and slightly broken) 35mm. There was no screen on the camera to tell if the shot I took was the one I wanted, so I would have to wait until the film was developed a few weeks later to know what I really got. Further complicating things was the fact that I was using film, severely limiting the amount of pictures I could take (blindly, at that).
Fair to say, this road trip was nowhere near as photographed as I would have liked. If this happened today, I’d have a much better photo essay to share…
As ill-timed as the whole roadtrip was, we were actually making good time. Without much difficultly, we would hit St. Louis with plenty of time to spare. That was including many miles of up hill road construction and slow-motion driving, leading into Kansas City.
When the idea of this whole trip was coming together, I wanted to make a stop at Kemper Arena in Kansas City for a picture of the building...
A little over a year earlier (May 23, 1999), pro-wrestler Owen Hart fell to his death from the roof of that arena. It was a planned stunt, on live pay-per-view television, where Owen was accidentally released from this safety harness too early, falling 75 feet. It wasn’t shown on the actual broadcast, as the cameras had cut away to a close-up of the ring announcer. While introducing a pre-taped segment, the announcer calmly stated: “Folks, we’ve got a big problem out here…”
Finding out what happened over the next few minutes is something I will never forget.
To make a baseball tie-in on the road trip, I’d planned on driving up to Kaufman stadium, getting a picture of where the Royals played. It was early afternoon when we made it to the Truman Sports Complex. There were few people around as both the Royals and Kansas City Chiefs were elsewhere that day.
Looking into Kauffman Stadium from left-center field. I’m not sure how it’s set up now, but in June 2000, you could drive around the perimeter of both the baseball and football stadiums. So that is what I did!
And now here's Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Kansas City Chiefs. Judging only from outside appearances, I like Kauffman much more than Arrowhead.
In a lucky coincidence, across the street from the Truman Sports Complex was a branch of my old bank. This would solve the problem of the bulky glass jug of change I had been buying gas and food out of, during the whole drive into Kansas. After talking to the teller, I was allowed to trade what amounted to nearly $450 in loose coins into tangible dollar bills that were far easier to carry.
Before getting back on I-70 (which would be a block or so to the right of this picture), we stopped for supplies at a gas station across the street from Kauffman Stadium. I snapped this shot of the upper deck peeking out from above the street. Kauffman had been built sunk into the ground, but I didn't realize it was to this degree...
The trek across Missouri from Kansas City to St. Louis was downright awful. The freeway was packed, and while it remained at a consistently high speed, drivers had little regard for other vehicles on the road, let alone human life...
Coming into St. Louis, we stopped and filled the car with gas at Wood Oil. We chose Wood Oil for fuel because the name made us laugh. I can only guess what they were going for with that logo...
Looking at a map, we had already figured our route to the Riverport Amphitheater from the freeway, and were looking for a place to stay the night. I was aiming for cheap, which was a big mistake...
To keep a long story short, we paid for a room at a shitty motel. The room was disgusting to say the least. As we were going inside, there was the unfortunate breaking of the now-empty Jug-O-Change, just outside our motel room.
We went to the concert, came back to the motel, and Garth decided to complain about the conditions of the room to the office. While he did that, I took a shower. Over the next few minutes, we were kicked out of the motel, and had to pack up our belongings and leave, before I'd even finished my shower.
It was now 1am and we had no place to sleep. Plus we were out however much I paid for the room. Reading reviews of some of the slummy motels around Denver, it is a very common practice for the management to throw you out, the second you gripe about sub-standard accommodations.
We hit a really cool Denny's, had a late dinner and decided to forego sleep and drive back to Denver...
Garth drove my car while I got some quality Z's, from St. Louis to Kansas City. During that span, the sun came up. I took over driving once we left Missouri...
Across the road from the open gas station where we switched from co-pilot to pilot, was this awesome ancient abandoned gas station. You couldn't see much from the road, as it was nearly reclaimed by nature. I'm certain it would no longer be there today, and really wished I could have explored it further...
One of the planned missions stated before we left Denver, was to see Bob Dole's house in Russell, Kansas. This was another of the postcards I'd picked up a day earlier, at the Stuckey's with the Frozen Hot Chocolate...
The building in front is the Deines Cultural Center, a non-profit art gallery featuring works collected by the Deines family. The structure itself dates back to 1878, from it's original use as a furniture store, which ran in various incarnations until 1984.
After grabbing a quick lunch at the A&W Root Beer stand in Russell, we got directions to Bob Dole's house. Which he still maintained as his residence throughout his political career. I snapped this photo, then held my pen in my left hand for a second or two, did some bad Norm MacDonald impressions, then it was right back on the freeway.
In our brief drive around Russell, it seemed to be a traditional quiet farming town. Only around 4,500 people lived there. Even fewer would know about Russell, if it wasn't for Bob Dole...
This last part of my story actually took place before visiting Bob Dole's Russell, Kansas, in chronological order of the roadtrip return. Once I wrote this story, however, this became the main event...
When we made the drive east to St. Louis, we saw a billboard advertising an adult bookstore directly off I-70, at exit 238. Exit 238 is in the middle of absolute nowhere. About 5 miles north is the town of Tescott, and 5 miles south is the town of Brookville. Neither of which are more than 2,000 people.
I looked forward to stopping at the I-70 Adult Bookstore (known as I-70 Novelty), and we made sure to not miss it by following the descending exit numbers in the middle of Kansas. Exiting the freeway, something caught my eye to the north. Why, it's another and even more abandondey gas station!
It was too early in the morning for the place to be open, but we still looked around the property for a few minutes. Obviously an old Sinclair station in it's previous life, I wish I would have taken more pictures of the building.
I LOVE this picture! This disabled outdated gas pump was scheduled to be the back cover of Wasted Quarter 73, which was intended to be a collection of abandoned gas station stories.
I don't know when the porn shop overtook the Sinclair, but four semi-intact pumps lived under the canopy, back in June 2000.
As of May 2013, the former Sinclair did have the pumps removed, and the old Sinclair stripes were covered by an ugly yellow one, but I-70 Novelty was still open for business...
I missed this place when we first drove by, but after looking at the Pornclair building, exploring these remnants of a gas station became my favorite memory of the entire drive home. Given the limitations of the 35mm film, I didn't take nearly as many pictures of the place as I should have. The place was old, gutted, falling over, compelling and entirely awesome...
Around the south side of the building were the restrooms. One door was locked up tight, the other was stuck open and completely destroyed inside. Other than the tile on the wall, nothing recognizable remained...
No larger than a single-wide trailer home, and likely not in business for at least 10-15 years. Who knows what name was once applied to that weathered plywood marquee... I would have liked to have gotten a wider shot of the property than I did. Weeds have sprung up all over the property, and little of the original pavement was left intact. I didn't get a good record of that...
Finding out this place was still standing and even more reclaimed by nature, was the biggest surprise in my research for writing this story. Even though it was out in the middle of nowhere, you'd think someone would have demolished the shell of a gas station at some point in the last 17 years...
One final Google shot dated June 2014, from the southwest. I find it fascinating the brush that is knee-high to Garth, grew into trees taller than what is left of the building.
We made it back to Denver around 7:30pm on Thursday, June 8, 2000. I called in sick to work that night, as I was supposed to be in at 11pm. After maybe six hours of sleep total, well over 2,500 miles driven in the past four days, a graveyard shift just wasn't in the cards.
After finally getting these stories completed here, some 17 years after Wasted Quarter issue 46 was printed, I'm now satisfied the biggest roadtrip story of my life has been adequately covered. While I'm disappointed in the quality of 35mm pictures my camera gave me at the time, despite their low quality, the story I took from them, more than makes up for it.
If any of you happen to have a copy of Wasted Quarter 46 laying around (it was printed in August 2000, so you probably don't), you may remember a story that detailed my roadtrip from Denver to Fargo, North Dakota, back to Denver, then to St. Louis, Missouri, and back to Denver in a matter of four days. The reason for that insanity was as follows: I'd made a prior commitment to attend a family reunion in Fargo, ND. Attending said reunion would cause me to miss a Denver concert appearance by The Cure on Monday night, as I would be driving back from Fargo at the time.
That piece was never finished before I printed WQ46. In it, I alluded to several stories that I never got around to writing. Those other events of the trip I planned to elaborate on someday....
So I guess that day is today...
A month or so earlier, I had drunkenly purchased tickets online to the following Wednesday night's Cure concert in St. Louis, MO, with a friend of mine after a night of heavy drinking. I made it home from Fargo, early Tuesday morning (June 6), and was going to take a few hour nap, then drive with my friends to St. Louis. Hitting the road at some point early Tuesday afternoon, if all went according to plan...
But nothing went according to plan…
At the last minute, I still made the drive to St. Louis. But my co-pilots were no longer Erin and Tommie. They were replaced by Garth and Ryan. We left Denver a little after 2am the morning of the concert (June 7). Which was later that night and only about 800 miles away…
The majority of the road trip falling apart story was printed in WQ46, along with the Fargo portion of the drive. An intended subplot for the roadtrip piece was to photograph Kansas landmarks that I deemed worthy, to sprinkle into Wasted Quarter story.
But I was running out of room, and the pictures wouldn't have translated nearly as well...
While we didn’t get to see any tornadoes (damat…), my list of several desired photograph subjects included any abandoned buildings we happened to encounter, plus Bob Dole’s house in Russell, Kansas!
Very few stops were made on the way to St. Louis, we just made notes of things we’d need to hit as we traveled east, on the way back.
Shortly after crossing the Colorado/Kansas border on I-70, we found a Stuckey’s gas station/restaurant for some supplies. Which included overly large sunglasses, some odd Kansas related postcards and Dairy Queen frozen hot chocolate. The paradox of which became an in-joke for the next couple of hundred miles...
Not only is that rabbit huge, but in comparison to the rabbit-rider, those cows are awfully tiny… I guess those cows are used to make White Castle Sliders?
Come trip in Kansas…
Another tornado… At least the state knows that absolutely nothing is going on here…
Not even 300 miles into the drive, we were already sleep deprived and going a bit loopy. To celebrate making it to Kansas, I had Garth and Ryan skip away off into a field. I figured it would make a good picture for the planned Wasted Quarter story about the ill-advised road trip…
Okay guys, now come back! We've got a long way to go…
A few hours later, we made a food and gas stop just outside of Idontknow, Kansas. Across the street from the Denny’s we ate at, was a recently closed Dairy Queen. Through the door, in the reflection of my L.A. Kings hockey jersey and trademark floppy hat, you can see kind of a tidy mess inside. A few pieces of fallen ceiling tile, salt and pepper shakers on tables, the still stocked front counter and a reflection of the weedy sidewalk leading up to the recently closed DQ.
A better picture would tell a better story...
Fair to say, this road trip was nowhere near as photographed as I would have liked. If this happened today, I’d have a much better photo essay to share…
As ill-timed as the whole roadtrip was, we were actually making good time. Without much difficultly, we would hit St. Louis with plenty of time to spare. That was including many miles of up hill road construction and slow-motion driving, leading into Kansas City.
When the idea of this whole trip was coming together, I wanted to make a stop at Kemper Arena in Kansas City for a picture of the building...
A little over a year earlier (May 23, 1999), pro-wrestler Owen Hart fell to his death from the roof of that arena. It was a planned stunt, on live pay-per-view television, where Owen was accidentally released from this safety harness too early, falling 75 feet. It wasn’t shown on the actual broadcast, as the cameras had cut away to a close-up of the ring announcer. While introducing a pre-taped segment, the announcer calmly stated: “Folks, we’ve got a big problem out here…”
Finding out what happened over the next few minutes is something I will never forget.
To make a baseball tie-in on the road trip, I’d planned on driving up to Kaufman stadium, getting a picture of where the Royals played. It was early afternoon when we made it to the Truman Sports Complex. There were few people around as both the Royals and Kansas City Chiefs were elsewhere that day.
Looking into Kauffman Stadium from left-center field. I’m not sure how it’s set up now, but in June 2000, you could drive around the perimeter of both the baseball and football stadiums. So that is what I did!
Left field entrance of Kauffman Stadium.
Home plate entrance at Kauffman Stadium.
Why is this Gate B? You’d think that this would be the main entrance, which should be A…
I don’t know... That always bothered me…
And now here's Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Kansas City Chiefs. Judging only from outside appearances, I like Kauffman much more than Arrowhead.
And I don't think that font could look more dated...
There's too much red in Arrowhead…
I like the Royal blue far better…
Before getting back on I-70 (which would be a block or so to the right of this picture), we stopped for supplies at a gas station across the street from Kauffman Stadium. I snapped this shot of the upper deck peeking out from above the street. Kauffman had been built sunk into the ground, but I didn't realize it was to this degree...
And I bet this area looks drastically different 17 years later...
The trek across Missouri from Kansas City to St. Louis was downright awful. The freeway was packed, and while it remained at a consistently high speed, drivers had little regard for other vehicles on the road, let alone human life...
Coming into St. Louis, we stopped and filled the car with gas at Wood Oil. We chose Wood Oil for fuel because the name made us laugh. I can only guess what they were going for with that logo...
Looking at a map, we had already figured our route to the Riverport Amphitheater from the freeway, and were looking for a place to stay the night. I was aiming for cheap, which was a big mistake...
To keep a long story short, we paid for a room at a shitty motel. The room was disgusting to say the least. As we were going inside, there was the unfortunate breaking of the now-empty Jug-O-Change, just outside our motel room.
Ryan posing outside the Riverport Amphitheatre.
During the concert, I kept track of the setlist via Crazy Carl's old Grow Biz notepad...
It was now 1am and we had no place to sleep. Plus we were out however much I paid for the room. Reading reviews of some of the slummy motels around Denver, it is a very common practice for the management to throw you out, the second you gripe about sub-standard accommodations.
Hardly new, St. Louis was doing it way back in 2000...
We hit a really cool Denny's, had a late dinner and decided to forego sleep and drive back to Denver...
Why not?
Across the road from the open gas station where we switched from co-pilot to pilot, was this awesome ancient abandoned gas station. You couldn't see much from the road, as it was nearly reclaimed by nature. I'm certain it would no longer be there today, and really wished I could have explored it further...
One of the planned missions stated before we left Denver, was to see Bob Dole's house in Russell, Kansas. This was another of the postcards I'd picked up a day earlier, at the Stuckey's with the Frozen Hot Chocolate...
The building in front is the Deines Cultural Center, a non-profit art gallery featuring works collected by the Deines family. The structure itself dates back to 1878, from it's original use as a furniture store, which ran in various incarnations until 1984.
After grabbing a quick lunch at the A&W Root Beer stand in Russell, we got directions to Bob Dole's house. Which he still maintained as his residence throughout his political career. I snapped this photo, then held my pen in my left hand for a second or two, did some bad Norm MacDonald impressions, then it was right back on the freeway.
We should have knocked on the door to see if he was home...
******
This last part of my story actually took place before visiting Bob Dole's Russell, Kansas, in chronological order of the roadtrip return. Once I wrote this story, however, this became the main event...
On account of not just one, but TWO awesome abandoned gas stations!!!
When we made the drive east to St. Louis, we saw a billboard advertising an adult bookstore directly off I-70, at exit 238. Exit 238 is in the middle of absolute nowhere. About 5 miles north is the town of Tescott, and 5 miles south is the town of Brookville. Neither of which are more than 2,000 people.
Garth made note of it for the drive back, as there wasn't time to stop on the way.
We'll get to that after looking at some porn!
Well, no we wont...
Or at least gotten the Adult Bookstore sign that was facing the interstate...
I LOVE this picture! This disabled outdated gas pump was scheduled to be the back cover of Wasted Quarter 73, which was intended to be a collection of abandoned gas station stories.
I don't know when the porn shop overtook the Sinclair, but four semi-intact pumps lived under the canopy, back in June 2000.
On a whim, I entered "exit 238" into Google, and was brought to this image:
As of May 2013, the former Sinclair did have the pumps removed, and the old Sinclair stripes were covered by an ugly yellow one, but I-70 Novelty was still open for business...
I missed this place when we first drove by, but after looking at the Pornclair building, exploring these remnants of a gas station became my favorite memory of the entire drive home. Given the limitations of the 35mm film, I didn't take nearly as many pictures of the place as I should have. The place was old, gutted, falling over, compelling and entirely awesome...
There's Garth again!
(It's the same picture!)
Around the south side of the building were the restrooms. One door was locked up tight, the other was stuck open and completely destroyed inside. Other than the tile on the wall, nothing recognizable remained...
Northwest corner of the old station.
No larger than a single-wide trailer home, and likely not in business for at least 10-15 years. Who knows what name was once applied to that weathered plywood marquee... I would have liked to have gotten a wider shot of the property than I did. Weeds have sprung up all over the property, and little of the original pavement was left intact. I didn't get a good record of that...
Why thanks Google!
But I'm sure glad they didn't...
One final Google shot dated June 2014, from the southwest. I find it fascinating the brush that is knee-high to Garth, grew into trees taller than what is left of the building.
If I ever go to Kansas again, I'm looking both of these places up.
******
We made it back to Denver around 7:30pm on Thursday, June 8, 2000. I called in sick to work that night, as I was supposed to be in at 11pm. After maybe six hours of sleep total, well over 2,500 miles driven in the past four days, a graveyard shift just wasn't in the cards.
Yeah... This week was insane...
So there you have it... My only visit to Kansas and/or Missouri...
And here's my souvenir Bloodflowers necklace from the concert...
The last time I saw The Cure live...
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