When the weather forecast for the weekend was published few days ago, I knew it was time to get out of town for few hours. Nothing clears out the mind like two hundred miles in rural Kansas on a first sunny and warm Sunday of the year. I started to look for a place to visit on the best Kansas travel resource but nothing grabbed my eye, so I just looked at the map and noticed a place called Admire, KS. I knew I had to go there and admire it.

U.S. Route 56 leaves Olathe, passes through the armpits of Johnson County known as Gardner and Egderton and makes its way towards Oklahoma through the fields as far as the eye can see. Rolled down windows let the fresh air in and the smell of old hay, burning leaves and an occasional skunk filled up my lungs. I was on the way to Admire.
By the way, have you ever been to Scranton, KS?

Now you have.
Much more interesting is the town of Burlingame down the road.

Burlingame looks like a worn out Mayberry…

…where Aunt B’s is the name of a restaurant.

Aunt B’s niece is getting married next week, so you’ll have to eat elsewhere.

Flower arrangements by Missy’s Flower Shop.

Meat for the wedding is already stored in the Meat Locker.

The Wedding announcement will be published in the cleverly named Newspaper (founded in 1863).

On the guest list is the frequent customer and an old-timey lawyer…

…who enjoys spending his lunch hour from 12 to 1 at Aunt B’s.

Miss Jandi and her students will also be in attendance.

Cheer-leading poodles are the only advertisement for her business.

Church is conveniently located around the corner.

Burlingame will have to wait for another visit, when I may be able to solve the mystery of the piano keys above the tire shop windows.


I still had a long way to Admire.

People in these parts still keep cannons in their front yards, just in case.

Finally I was close to my goal. While taking this photo I drove into something that I can still smell on my car and can only describe as putrid.

Admire was right in front of me.

At least it was a god-fearing town.

High school looks little over-sized for the population of 117 (0.56% Native American, 0.56% from other races, and 3.39% from two or more races. 1.13% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.) That’s .65 of a Native American, must be handicapped or something.

Every tall structure begs you to admire it.

Last Chance Cafe is the best and the only pizza deal in town.

Another water tower was built mainly to display the town’s name.

I had a short drive to Emporia…

…where Jesus Christ wanted me to stop and accept him. Sadly there was no parking.

A friendly cock pointed the way home.

I felt tired but refreshed at the same time. With my head cleared up I settled down on the couch thinking about the roads, small towns, open spaces and partial Native Americans.

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This blog is so well-known in certain marketing circles that I almost feel obligated to bring up a subject which may be of interest to them. Today I will showcase talent, fresh approach and marketing savvy of creative geniuses who brought you this innovation:

♥Fine Print On Billboards♥

Lets say you are driving North on I-35 around 127th street overpass and you notice this enticing billboard. “GasoLean“, just what you always wanted, but something is not right and no amount of squinting allows you to see just how “GasoLean” this vehicle is. Is it closer to “GasoBulemic” when it actually throws up most of the gas it consumes, or is it bordering on “GasObese”?
It’s simple. All you have to do is drive up to 127th street, park your car at the nearby apartment complex, walk up on the bridge and read the fine print.

Still can’t see? You must be getting old, have a closer look. That’s all, just a quick drive and a short walk away.

Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?!

Next: Why I dropped my subscription to the Consumer Reports Magazine.

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Preface:

I was going to Paris fully expecting to hate it. According to the minimal online research I did before the trip, Paris was flooded with pickpockets, scammers …  rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists. OK, maybe not Methodists. French people were supposed to be at the least unfriendly, arrogant and condescending.  And it was dirty, trash-covered and filled with people desperate to get to the nearest disgusting public bathroom but forced to tap-dance in hour-long lines in front of it. None of this turned out to be close to the truth.

Face:

Looking back on our trip I think a little more planning would’ve been nice; I did some research but apparently not enough to get us to the right places at the right times. We played it by the ear and I think we ended up fitting as much into the three days we’ve spent in Paris as was possible without it starting to feel like work. We also realized how much we rely on our phones to find our way around, discover places to eat, buy tickets, look at train schedules and subway maps. Since a certain phone company’s charges for the international data plan are incompatible with my sanity, our phones were set to WIFI only, and free WIFI in Paris is not as abundant as I thought. Talk about socialism fail. Having some roaming internet access would’ve been helpful.

People in Paris turned out to be fine. Some of them spoke better English than others, but between their English and the only French phrase I know “I don’t eat six days” (Je ne mange pas six jours) we did fine. There were some things I thought I could’ve resolved better if I knew more French, like I am pretty sure we were screwed by a cab driver but he didn’t respond to my plea about the six days of hunger. Or I wouldn’t have to stare at the chalkboard menus and then just order something so I don’t hold up the line. But mostly we found our way around and with the help of the internet access at the hotel were able to plan our sightseeing and subway trips.

In the end we both loved Paris, its sights, its food, its atmosphere. Three days is not nearly enough to see even a fraction Paris has to offer but it’s enough to make you want to come back.

I am sure every traveler to Paris take a silent oath not to bring back as many photos of the Eiffel Tower as those other losers.  Resistance is futile. From the first glimpse of the Tower on our first day we couldn’t stop photographing it until we left town. There will be about 50 photos of it in this post.

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Since there is no large-scale event like an All Star Game planned in Kansas City in the year 2013, I propose to make the 30th anniversary of the movie The Day After the theme for the year. Granted, The Day After is a horrible, poorly acted, made for TV movie, with special effects that make The 7th Voyage of Sinbad look like the Star Wars, but it scared the crap out of millions of Americans and convinced President Reagan to sign a Nuclear Treaty few years later.

The movie demonstrated  that it only takes hours after the nuclear strike for the American Military to disband and start fending for themselves, few days for the food riots to start, and few weeks for most people to lose their humanity and forget the English language. It also showed that the government will be predictably unprepared, a nuclear shelter doesn’t protect against a big gun and that people will still ignore the warnings and go to a movie theater right before being blasted with inexplicably excessive number of nuclear devices.

The idea of using The Day After to promote tourism in Kansas City is not new and not even mine. In his article “Kansas City after “The Day After”” published in the Travel Holiday Magazine in June 1984, John Garrity quotes Richard Pfanenstiel, director of the Missouri Film Commission saying:

“The Day After was the best thing that ever happened to Kansas City, Kansas City looked good”.

then goes on to write:

“If you caught the final 20 minutes of the ABC’s The Day After, last November’s doomsday movie, you probably don’t agree with the above statement. You saw Kansas City as an ash-gray rock pile, a windy moonscape dotted with small fires around which a few radiation-ravaged survivors huddled for warmth. The Day After,  you guessed, would not o for Kansas City what Where the Boys Are did for Fort Lauderdale.

“As of Sunday night,” Kansas City Times columnist Arthur Brisbane wrote after watching the film, “we’re famous as the city ABC blew up.”

Or, as some other wag noted, “There goes the neighborhood.”

“If it weren’t for the honor of the thing,” a television newsman deadpanned, “I’d just as soon have passed it up.” This last remark, of course, paraphrased Mark Twain, the most famous of all Missourians, who predicted that mankind’s folly would bring it to just such an inglorious end.

Others contend that ABC, by blowing Kansas City off the map, actually put Kansas City on the map. The film has now been shown to nearly 200 million viewers around the world. And if The Day After  depicted Kansas City as unlivable after a nuclear strike, its pre-attack footage captured this heartland city at its best: tree-lined boulevards, lush parks crowded with joggers and Frisbee throwers, monumental fountains, fashionable people shopping at fashionable store in the Country Club Plaza. The camera caught them all with an aching poignancy.

Whether Kansas City will be rewarded with a sudden influx of foreign tourists (along the lines of Hiroshima’s sober pilgrims), it’s too early to say. But even the casual visitor to Kansas City could do worse than use The Day After as an approach for a visit.

As you can see, I already completed all the necessary research, made a trip to the Kansas City Library and suffered through the entire 2 hours 6 minutes of the movie (which I have successfully avoided for my almost 20 years in this country), and now I am presenting this concept to the Kansas City Convention & Visitors Association absolutely free of charge. We need to hurry up before Lawrence steals the idea. I propose the following mottoes to be used in the campaign (sample):

• Kansas City 2013: We Haven’t Been Blown Up For Real, You Know.
• Kansas City 2013: We Are Not Mutants.
• Kansas City 2013: Come Visit, The Radiation Is At Almost Gone.

Proposed activities (sample):

• Multiple walking, bus, Segway, Volvo station wagon and helicopter tours will carry the tourists to the sites shown in the movie such as the Liberty Memorial, Plaza, Nelson-Atkins Gallery, West Bottoms, Truman Sports Complex.
• Big screen TV’s placed at these and other locations will be playing the movie as well as the KMBC special “Sunday, Nuclear Sunday” which aired on November 20, 1983, complete with commercials where young Larry Moore, Brenda Williams and non-senile Walt Bodine will discuss now outdated nuclear research.
• Restaurants will offer themed menu items like “Missile Fries” and “Nacho Cheese Meltdown”.
• This horrible song may be used for additional advertising materials.

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I am a big fan of the “Kansas City: Then and Now”  and “Kansas City: Then and Now 2” books. No matter where you live there is a history and as much as everyone makes fun of old people and their “back in my day” stories, they are actually very entertaining. These books tell the stories with photos of the past and present side-by-side and, unfortunately, the present is not always better then the past.

I wanted to do something like that for a long time on a smaller more amateur level and with the help of the Johnson County History website I will try post some photos once in a while.

A group of men gathered in front of an automobile at the ground breaking for Andy Klein Pontiac dealership.

Here is what it looks like now (click for more):

Not really much of an improvement, but I am sure Mr. Klein would have been proud. The JoCoHistory website has some additional photos tagged “Andy Klein Pontiac” as well as Mr. Klein’s personal photos.

A business like an auto dealership touches many lives and I imagine in the old days it was more personal then now. Over the years it has probably seen a lot of happiness and excitement on its sales floor. Wouldn’t you get excited buying this “General Motors Masterpiece” in 1955,or, should I say “back in the day”.

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