This month we went to Arcadia, OK. We went to "The Round Barn" and "Pops". We took I-44 down there and took Route 66 all the way home. The thing we noticed most about small towns is there always seems to be a Sonic and Dollar General. We will see if this hold true for the rest of the year.
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| Welcome to Arcadia! |
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| Almost There!!!! |
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| The Round Barn |
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| An Official Route 66 Roadside Attraction |
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| The roof of The Round Barn |
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| A picture of the Round Barn before its restoration by the Luke Robinson and the Over the Hill Gang in 1992. |
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| One of the many neat items to look at inside of the barn |
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| The pop bottle sculpture in front of Pops |
Some of the varieties of pop available at Pops.
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| Leaving Pops | |
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| An old gas pump |
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| The Old Gas Station |
Taken from the picture to the left:
This is one of the last old gasoline filling stations still
standing in this part of the country. No one knows for sure, but it is thought
to have been built in the late teens or early twenties. It had two pumps, one
for regular gas and one for ethyl, which was a little higher octane. Oil was
dispensed from a 50-gallon drum, which was laid down on its side on a wooden
frame. A spigot was put in the end of the drum, under which you put a quart
can, then taken to your car and put in the motor.
Seeing there was no electricity out here at that time, most
homes and buildings were lighted by kerosene lamps and lanterns. Kerosene was
dispensed the same way as oil was, from a metal drum, put in your container and
taken home.
Cold soda pop was sold only on days when the ice man made it
by. The pop was put in a large metal box with chipped ice over it. Hard candy
was sold most of the time; chocolate was sold only in the winter because in the
summer it would melt – since there were no refrigerators.
Back then, times were very hard and it was difficult to make
a living. One day, about the time Al Capone was terrorizing the City of
Chicago, a so-called salesman came by the station, offering to sell the owners
a way to make a lot of money, literally, for he had a set of plates for a
counterfeit ten-dollar bill. The story goes that the people yielded to
temptation, with the thought of being able to get rich quick.
A small room was constructed on the back of the old station
for the purpose of hiding the printing materials and a place to work. The only
entrance was through the window you see on the back wall of the station. The
window had a solid wooden door, which was kept closed most of the time. People didn’t
even know there was a room back there.
The way the counterfeiting was done was that they would
press one of the plates on a piece of paper with green ink on it, then let that
side dry for 24 hours, and print the back side of the bill the next day. Things
went along just fine for a time, but while passing one of the fake ten-dollar
bills, one of the persons was arrested and with the identification on him where
he lived, he was traced to the old station. While searching the building, the
counterfeit plates were found. So ended this crime spree, like so many others.
The person being taken to jail was overheard to say, “It wasn’t worth it”
The old station was closed, never to open again. Many years
later, which had nothing to do with the counterfeiting, a murder victim was
found in the old abandoned building. The victim was never identified, for he
had no identification on him and no one seemed to know him.
Please be careful
entering this fragile old building.
The
Owners
Rock of Ages Farm
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| The Little Blue Whale |
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| A close up of the Sign |
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| A roadside sign about the Run of '89 |
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| A restaurant near the boundary of the run in '89 |
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| a cute little bridge we saw on the way back |
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| Chandler High School Lions |
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| Chandler Water Tower |
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| A wooden Buffalo in Chandler |
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| It says Welcome but we were leaving Chandler at this point |
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| Welcome to Davenport! |
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| Welcome to Sapulpa |
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| Ollie's Restaurant in Red Fork, Tulsa, OK |
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| The inside of Ollie's has trains all over it, this is the one on the outside. |
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| A Route 66 Sign from The Round Barn in Arcadia! |
