Morbid Romantic

Book Review & Personal Blog

State: Kansas
City: Russell

Well, the day didn’t begin too well. The car was packed up, the cats were in place and my mother left the car and me in it to return the room keys. As this was occurring in my world, by a turn of bad luck, we suddenly found ourselves in a ‘keys locked in the car’ incident. All we could do was stare helplessly at the keys, so close but so far away. At first, the maintenance man at the Super 8 tried to jimmy the car door open and unlock it himself with an old fly swatter, but all he did was scratch the paint. He also told us all awful stories about his house, his goat and the tree that made a hole in his roof. I don’t know what was more torture: watching him scratch up the car or listening to his slow drawl as he went through his entire repetitive story about his landlord who won’t come and fix the roof.

I suppose it’s hard to feel true sympathy for someone when you’re currently engaged in your own bad luck moment. Surely we all would have cared more if it were any other day and we weren’t getting a good hour behind schedule.

Fortunately, we all came to the conclusion that the locksmith would have to be called. We felt collectively lucky that there was one considering the small town we were in, which seemed nothing more than a few travel stores, novelty places and truck stops. The locksmith was called, an old man named John or Jim, who informed us that he was going to finish breakfast and then head right down. Maybe it’s the city in me, but really? Finish your breakfast on business hours before you go and help a paying customer? What sort of podunk business practice is that? What sucks about small towns is that you are at the mercy of businesses that can do things their way, no matter how slow or unhelpful, because they are all you have. There’s no competition therefore no need to do things the best way possible.

We are at the mercy of John (or Jim) and his eating schedule.

After 45 minutes of waiting for John (or Jim) to finish his breakfast, he finally arrives. He is easily 75 years old and brings out old medical supplies to pick the lock. What he wedges between the door and frame is one of those blood pressure cuffs that inflates as the rubber ball is pumped. He gets in between there and starts to pump the little bulb so that the cuff expands and slowly starts to separate the door from the frame enough to slip in the unlocker (I don’t know what it’s called) and pop the lock. All the while, he too is telling us a story that I can’t remember for the life of me. I think he was telling us about his breakfast and how he wasn’t even dressed yet when we called.

But, the door was open.

What a relief. And only an hour set back.

It was still an hour never to get back that we had to make up for. The later the start we get, the later we have to drive into the night.

Before hitting the interstate again, we stopped by the post office in Kingdom City to mail off a growing pile of post cards. We all had a stack and threw them in the box, which was located right across the street from a place called Nostalgia Ville. After a little deliberation, we decided not to go in since we were behind schedule though secretly I REALLY wanted to go in and look at some old stuff. From what I could tell, Nostalgia Ville is a store/museum of old pop culture artifacts from the early 20th century. You have Lucy, Betty Boop, Elvis, the Andy Griffith Show, WWI and WWII posters, etc, etc, etc. It would have been a lot of fun to walk around in, but we didn’t have the time and the kitties were in the car ready to go.

We set out and soon said goodbye to Missouri, bidding farewell to the state and to Kansas City before entering the state of Kansas.

Now, I was excited about this because Brown vs. Board of Education is really Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. When referring to the case and its significance, people just shorten it and the location of the landmark case gets lost. I was totally thrilled to get to pass through a city where such history was made, where not only was segregation by color forbidden (there is actually a Brown vs. Board II, but I’ll spare the history lesson here) but students with disabilities were now, with that decision, on their way to mainstreaming and inclusion.

But first, we had to get there. Gas came first. It was in this gas station that I first became aware of how serious Kansas takes the Wizard of Oz. Just this one little travel plaza had all manner of Wizard of Oz merchandise from t-shirts to bookmarks. Of course, when in Kansas, right? So, I bought a bookmark and something for my sister.

It was a pretty straight shot until we hit the area of Wamego. To be honest, Kansas is long and it just spreads and spreads in a straight line as far as you can see. All you see to your left and right is field, front and back is only road. After a while, the ride was mind numbing. It was so, so boring. One would think that endless rolling fields would be peaceful and serene, but after a few hours of nothing but them, you crave big buildings or a minor change in scenery. It was a few miles to Wamego when I saw the sign for The Wizard of Oz Museum. We all needed some reprieve from the road, so we agreed to take a quick look. It would be a fast stop, no more than 15 minutes. But, it would be 15 minutes on our feet bringing life back into our legs.

The Wizard of Oz Museum was surrounded by a variety of Wizard of Oz related shops like Emerald City Gifts and Toto’s Tacoz, a Mexican restaurant. The street was cool as hell. Our destination was the museum itself, which we went into and paid the small entrance fee to tour the place. The lobby itself sold all manner of Wizard of Oz merchandise like lunch boxes and posters and dolls and everything/anything you can think of. It was all there. I bought a lunch box since I collect them before going into the museum itself.

The museum was pretty much made up of old Wizard of Oz memorabilia and merchandise, most of it locked behind glass doors. There were mannequins here and there dressed up as characters from the series. In one or two rooms, you could sit down and watch the movie. All along the walls were signed pictures and facts about the books, the making of the movie and other elements of the series. All in all, it was worth the price of admission and a nice break from the road. I really enjoyed myself and I took tons of pictures of everything I saw. If anything, it was nostalgic. I don’t think there are many people in America, at least, who haven’t seen The Wizard of Oz on television. Since the book and play Wicked was released, new life has sort of been breathed into The Wizard of Oz fandom and there certainly was an ample amount of Wicked memorabilia/merchandise in the museum, too.

We stayed longer than intended. Our 15 minutes turned into about 25. This was even more of a setback, especially since when we got into the car, it was another million miles through the boring flat plains of Kansas. Despite this, we made one more stop to an old historic schoolhouse. I wanted to take pictures of it for my collection. In addition to loving old things, I like broken down and abandoned things.

Our day ended at Russell, Kansas. As luck would have it, our Days Inn was right next to a Sonic, so we ate the crap out of some food there and watched HBO until we all collapsed with exhaustion.

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