I need a nap like Tulsa needs Viagra.

I really feel exhausted today, and I have way too much to do to even consider taking a little rest. But maybe tonight I'll be able to go to bed early. Yes... that sounds good. Meanwhile, don't expect any great writing here today. I'm just too tired to be particularly literate (or even to proofread, if you must know).

I didn't have time to blog yesterday, but I wanted to mention a few things. First, when I got to Afton Station yesterday I found several business cards in the mailbox from traveling Australian folks. They had been there on Wednesday when we were closed. Well, you know how much that upsets me, so I started the day in a foul mood. However, about an hour after I opened, in walked Australians.... the same Aussies! Since we were closed Wednesday, they decided to spend the night in Miami so they could come back in the morning!! Boy, that's one way to elevate my mood fast! They were two couples in separate rented cars, doing the eastern part of Route 66 since they did the western end last year in a larger group. They were pleasant people with a tremendous interest in Route 66. One of the men was especially interested in old cars, so David, who was there all day with me, gave him a careful tour of all the cars, including opening many of the hoods and even starting some of them up for him.

Next, my Route 66 friend Larry Kinsey from Kansas City appeared, on a trek from his home to Texas for a family gathering. He stayed for over an hour as we caught up with each others' lives and, of course, a helping of Route 66 gossip. He's begun to learn to play the Indian flute, and he got me very interested in that. I might have to check them out on line later.

Over the course of the day, we were also visited by a trucker from Aurora MO, and two guys from Florida. I was closing up when in walked Darryl Starbird. In case you don't know who he is, he's the proprietor of the Darryl Starbird Rod and Custom Museum near here, a nationally renowned pilgrimage destination for hot rodders from all over the world. His official address is Afton, although his museum is about 20 minutes from mine. Nevertheless, I often get visitors who are looking for his place, and he told me that he has occasional visitors looking for mine, too. He dropped by to ask if I'd participate in the Poker Run he's sponsoring this weekend, and of course I'm thrilled to be one of the stops. If the weather is decent (which is actually not promising), he said I should expect 50 or more hot rods to stop by on Saturday. Fun! Check out his site:
Welcome to Darryl Starbird's Rod & Custom Hall of Fame Musuem

Finally, an interesting (and none too flattering) tidbit of information about Tulsa: This came out yesterday.
"The list of the 100 U.S. cities that are most in need of Viagra puts Tulsa at the top, according to the April edition of Men's Health Magazine". 'Nuf said. Tulsa World: Tulsa top in study's Viagra need list

Rushing

I have very little time to blog this afternoon. I have to leave for a meeting at 6, and must get ready for that. Nevertheless, I did have a very good and interesting day at Afton Station, so I think I'll just wait until tomorrow instead of rushing through it. I didn't get much sleep last night because I can't sleep soundly when there are storms and tornado possibilities nearby like we had last night. So on top of being too busy, I'm also TOO tired.

Oh, Hail !!

Just another beautiful sunrise on Route 66!
I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to start opening earlier. I might as well, since I'm awake anyway. Today I arrived at 8:45 and visitors were at the door at 9, folks from Waco, TX who emitted orgasmic shrieks over the cars. I love it when the oohs and aahs are that loud! David was here yesterday and managed to wedge another two cars into the showroom, so it's pretty tight in there now, with barely any room to pass between them and making photography difficult.

Lots of log trucks are driving past today. I wouldn't think of Oklahoma as being much of a logging state, but what do I know of it?

More visitors arrived prior to official opening time - a couple from Wyoming doing the Route. We talked about perception based on past experience. To folks from a tiny town in Wyoming, eastern Oklahoma seemed busy. To me, coming from a NYC suburb, it seems as dead as last summer's crickets. After that, in rather rapid succession, we were visited by folks from San Francisco, Kansas City, Miami OK, and Tampa, FL.

By noon, Betty had come for a visit and we'd already visited with 13 guests. Ron called from Tulsa to say that a big storm was heading my way, and we saw a lot of blackness in the western sky. We brought the flags and signs in, then sat and watched the lightning and listened to the thunder boomers. When the heavy rain stopped, Betty left and I called Ron, who was experiencing a hailstorm at that moment. So, I drove my car under the portico to protect it and waited. With no signs out, I didn't expect any more guests, so I started to get ready to leave. At the last moment my friends the Mormon missionary guys came in to say hi. Then I left and had an exciting drive home through not one, but TWO hailstorms. Fortunately, the hail was small and my car survived. I waited one out under a tree, then boldly went forth through the second one. I've had it with precipitation of any kind at this point! At least I had that beautiful sunrise this morning.

Flight of Fancy

Those who know me and know Afton Station well will realize that this is part fact and part fiction. Or maybe it should be called romanticized reality. It's a little piece I wrote one day in the winter, when I was sitting in Afton Station with no visitors. I was cleaning off my desk today and found it. Since I wasn't in Afton today, I figured I might as well post it here. It's a collection of random thoughts, a first draft, in need of work.
_________________

I'm not that worried about the screen flapping from the window of the abandoned hotel across the street, being held in place by one corner. It does bother me that the wind could pick it up and slam it into my new gas pump. Well, not new. Restored. At great expense. The trials and tribulations of trying to exist in a ghost town.

I'm determined to make something of Afton. I'm the new girl in town. We (my former husband) and I drove all the way across the country and back twelve times to get all these old cars down here. We bought a ratty old '30s gas station and spent five years spackling and painting and pounding it into shape. The first day I arrived in town, the local flea market owner walked in and asked me if I'd start a Chamber of Commerce. Just me and her. "Hah", I said, I hope not too derisively. The irony of painting the Station and fixing the windows and sealing the roof was lost on me for a while. But when the grocery store across the street "Since 1922" went out of business, I knew. It would be just me and the ghosts from now on.

Sometimes, like today, the wind blows so hard here on the plains that I can feel it through the plate glass window. I sit at the window and wait for the tourists. Sometimes they stop and sometimes they don't. Route 66 is far from dead, but today it's an acquired taste. It seems that most of that taste has been acquired by foreigners, not necessarily by native sons. A couple from Sweden thinks this rag-tag town is charming rather than ugly. A man from New Zealand thinks the '34 Packard coupe is the most beautiful car he's ever seen. The wind blows the tourists in, then blows them down the road to the next attraction -- a giant blue whale or a 66-foot high neon pop bottle.

Of the few people left in town, one or two will stop in occasionally. When I first got here, an elderly man would come in and play the harmonica for me. Betty has become my dear friend. She had the drive-in at the tourist trap down the road, and over the years she dispensed countless bison burgers and lime squeezes. But the tourist trap was closed and bulldozed over several years ago. Betty tells tales of the good old days, when the place was abuzz with road travelers, and they provided Indian dances, peacocks, trained buffalo, and all the souvenirs you could afford.

That kind of tourist trap doesn't exist any more. That kind of tourist doesn't either. Families hike in state forests, or fly to Disney World or tropic islands. Kids don't even know about barrels full of rattlers or two-headed sheep.

That loose screen across the street is still flapping. It's going to let go any second, I'm sure. I'm trying not to make a metaphor of it.

A car slows and stops. A rental. A lone woman is shoved by the wind through my door. I know I won't be lonely for the next few minutes at least. She started in Chicago and is making her way to L.A. Like me, she won't give in to the Interstate and takes only the old roads. We are so alike and yet so different. I am planted. She is rootless. Knowing for for five minutes shows me that she is free, as I was once. I was once the roamer but now, by choice, I'm the one to which other roamers make pilgrimages. I'm an attraction of sorts, written up in guidebooks, the only thing worth seeing in a disappearing town. A sideshow freakish collection of gleaming vintage cars that have survived longer than the town where they sit. And me, the aging divorced shepherdess who herded them down here and pens them up in a town that doesn't care.

The wind finally works its way under the screen and it lets go. After 50 years, it's free to take flight. Instead, it simply drops to the sidewalk below and nestles itself against the wall of the old hotel, where it will stay for another fifty years.

Twig furniture and wedding cakes and Akio and a cowboy and.....

.... a long string of interesting and varied visitors today. Some folks from Ponca City OK with an enormous truckload of twig furniture which he made himself and was selling at a festival in Grove this weekend (he's going to give me a bench for Afton Station's front porch!).... a couple from Drumright OK who make wedding cakes and do wedding photography.....full-time RVers from Maryland ..... a cowboy and his wife from Westville OK ..... a family from Missouri ....a couple from Ames IA ..... a couple from Vinita OK ..... three local Afton folks who had never been in the Station before ..... a guy on a motorcycle from Columbus OH ..... and then, at the very end of the day, our Japanese friend Akio Takeuchi and his wife Yasuko. "Akkey" and Yasuko are annual travelers on Route 66, and although he speaks very little English, he has written two books, "The Tropic of Route 66" and "The Mother Road: The Native Road of America" which are popular best-seller among Route 66 fans. Read about them here: The Route 66 Pulse - Online Newspaper. It was so nice to see them, since although I've visited with them at several festivals, they've never been able to pay a visit to Afton Station. Not just a truck full of twigs. That's very nice twig furniture, and lots of it!
Here I am with Akkey and Yasoko.
They really loved the pressed penny machine!

It was a great Mother's Day. My daughter called and we had a nice long chat. She sent me a book I've been wanting to read, The Red Letter Diary: Amazon.com: The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal (P.S.): Lily Koppel: Books. Many of our visitors today were out for Mothers Day drives, and it was a pretty nice day for it. And one of the best things of all is that Ron M. is back from his travels in California and on Arizona Route 66, so it was great to have him back at the Station today!

Short on time, but with lots to say....

... so I'll say it in an abbreviated form, I guess. It was a fine day at Afton Station today. For one thing, the sun shone for most of the day, which is a real rarity around here lately. I took another windshield photo on the road this a.m., even after promising I wouldn't. I just wanted a shot of the sunrise, since the elusive sun was actually considering making an appearance, despite the heavy cloud cover.
Then, I took a little jog onto the University of Tulsa campus, since it's on Route 66 and I've never taken any pictures of it before. It's quite a pretty campus, but I had trouble finding a good angle for a picture.

At last, I made my way to Afton, and found Tattoo Man already there when I arrived, both of us being a full hour early again. We were rewarded with a great parade of 14 visitors, well-spaced so we had time to chat with everyone. Visitors included folks from Baltimore MD, New Orleans LA, and plenty of locals. Betty brought in her houseguests from McPherson KS and we enjoyed meeting them and hearing his stories of driving Route 66 in the early 1940s. My friend Jacson from Brazil was back in town and paid another visit. He was able to stay quite a while. He's flying out tomorrow on business to Kansas City and Lakeland, FL then back to Brazil. He'll be back to Afton in July, however. At the end of the day, the fellow who sold me the pink 1957 Herter Flying Fish boat came in wanting to buy the old Mercury motor in our back yard. I had to remind him that he was the one who sold it to me! It was pretty funny. We had a nice chat.

When Ron was showing the tattoos on his back to Betty's friends, Betty couldn't resist poking him in the ribs to make him jump. I caught this photo of the hijinks (LOL). Betty's friend in the background seems quite amused.

More tomorrow, of course.

"Nice"

After a drive in pea soup fog and a stop at Clanton's for yet another "I'll never do that again because they're too big and too good" omelet (yum!), I arrived at Afton Station early at 8:20, hoping that I'd catch Dries and Marion Bessels, our Dutch friends. They stayed over in Miami last night, so I knew that they'd be early getting here today. Tattoo Man had the same idea and arrived moments later. He waited at the Station all day yesterday, but Dries was delayed by a day so he never arrived. But this morning we were rewarded when shortly after we got there we heard the rumble of a Harley, and Dries and Marion walked in. What nice people! They spoke perfect English so we had a nice long visit.
Tattoo Man showing off his tattoos to Dries and Marion.

Dries liked the 2CV. I think it reminded him of home.


Sometimes I think I'm wearing out the word "nice", but it describes just about 100% of my visitors at Afton Station. Sometimes I wish some mean, nasty people would visit, so that I could drag out a few different adjectives. Alas, my next guests fit right into the "nice" category. Michele from Sandusky OH, her mother, sister, and friend are traveling all of Route 66. Michele called early this week to make sure we'd be there, because her mother's doctor, who is a Packard "nut", specifically asked them to seek out pictures of Packards while they were traveling. I'm pretty sure I have the largest collection of Packards on the Route, so they came to the right place. When they got here, the definitely hit the Mother Lode on the Mother Road. Lots of photos were taken, gifts were exchanged, and Tattoo, Betty, and I got to give autographs, too! That's always embarrassing but fun.Michele is 2nd from left.

The sheriff came in to see if I'd mind if they set up a speed trap in front of the Station. Mind?! Not a bit! We are really bothered by people speeding through town. But at one time there were three sheriff's cars in front of and to the side of the Station, and I started wondering if that would discourage visitors. They left in about an hour, and I don't think they caught anybody.

A gentleman from San Diego was my last visitor. We had a prolonged conversation about restoration and preservation, so of course I tried to sell him the building across the street, to no avail. Nevertheless, he was very.... you guessed it.... nice!

John from San Diego

A big boat just went past! No, it's not THAT wet around here. This one was on a trailer. Today we had 85 degree temperatures and full sun. After 12 straight days of rain, the sunshine has certainly elevated my mood.