We got a late start driving home from Afton tonight, and of course there's also the matter of changing all the clocks and getting less sleep in the morning, thus wanting to wind down and go to bed early tonight, so (here comes the big excuse!), this will be a short, quick post.
It was actually a very good day at Afton Station, although we waited all day for the Mustang group to show up. When I got home, I looked at my calendar and (my bad!) it isn't until next Saturday! Sometimes I can be a complete idiot!
But anyway, we had 15 visitors today, which is excellent for this early in the season. They came from Wichita KS, Galena KS, Miami OK, Grove OK, Aberdeen SD, Springfield MO, and Peoria IL. The folks from the very nice Galena Museum (KS) came to pick up some of my brochures to distribute to those heading our way. So nice of them! Glenda, Tommy, and Tonya Pike drove down from Springfield, MO to pick up some of the Oklahoma Route 66 Trip Guides to distribute in Illinois. It was fun catching up with all these folks and finding out what's going on with other state Route 66 associations. All the other visitors were on actual Route 66 trips, several of them taking the full Chicago to Los Angeles trek. Good for them!
Here's Tonya Pike pressing some pennies which she intends to turn into rings. This sounds like a great experiment.
David obtained an original hubcap (of sorts) from the 1917 Packard Motor Home we have on display. It's solid brass, very heavy, and it says Pickwick Auto Stages on it. I'm guessing that "auto stages" is what they called anything that was similar to a motor home back then, since it wasn't all that many years since stage coaches were carrying groups of people across the country.
Here's the motor home, minus the hub covering. They do exist on two of the four wheels.
Tom Bassett cut a hole in the front of his family's defunct.grocery store (since 1922) and put in an overhead garage door. He now stores vehicles in the former store. I hate to see the old buggy factory building (built in 1911) defaced in this way, but at least it hasn't been torn down!
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2 comments:
Does Tom Bassett have restored cars? Is he setting up a vintage car display in the Buggy Factory? Would that be competition or would that create a double draw for travelers to stop in Afton? Am I getting way ahead of myself?!!!
No, he doesn't collect cars. He just keeps one of his pickups in there, plus a lot of other stuff. Strictly storage at this point. I hear he's also going to fix the leaking (actually, collapsed) roof, so that's a good sign that he's not going to tear down the building. It would be lovely if he did turn it into some kind of museum. One of David's friends once wanted to buy the building next to us set up a motorcycle museum, but the deal never happened. We wouldn't consider anything like that as competition, but rather enhancement of the town.
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