In early 2013, Mike Balthazor and I set out on an afternoon excursion traveling on Kansas Highway 383 northeast from Norton. We traveled as far as Woodruff Kansas, slipped into Nebraska and came down toward Prairie View, Kansas. On the way toward Logan, Mike said something about an old gas station south of Prairie View, situated on old Kansas Highway 36. Soon, we were at the location.
What a heart warming example of locally designed architecture. With help from Vada McDonald and Bill Palmer of Logan, I was able to ascertain the designer and builder, Bill Grieb. Grieb was Palmer's grandfather. He designed and constructed two other stations in Logan and Speed (City) most probably in the mid 1920s. All had walls of native limestone with windows and doors trimmed in red brick patterns. Each station's roof had a pagoda type sweep at the bottom. Since it was built on then Highway 36, I thought a Stutz Bearcat, maybe on a cross country journey, would be appropriate for the time.
In early March of 2013, two good friends, Joanne and Corey Johnson from Bogue, came by the house for a visit. Corey saw the painting and recognized it as being the station his mother Anne became so enthralled with when quite young. Anne Kinney's family had moved from northwest Kansas to the southwest area of the state and over time lived in Richfield and Coolidge. After World War Two, the family returned to visit her grandparents in Woodruff, Kansas. Anne, with childhood fascination, would ask her father to stop at the little gas station to buy a Coke or candy bar. That memory has stayed with Anne Kinney Johnson for well over 60 years.
Happy Mother's Day from Joanne and Corey, May 12th, 2013.