Advertisement
Published: March 22nd 2007
Edit Blog Post
The morning in Amarillo begins with a threatening stormy sky. We gotta get to Cadillac Ranch before the rain comes pouring down. I’m excited because this is the start of the hi-brow/low-brow portion of the trip which starts in Amarillo, takes a detour to Oklahoma City, comes back to Texas (Dallas/Ft. Worth), and culminates in Memphis at Graceland, the holy grail of pop culture. There’s a side of me that appreciates museums, the arts, and culture (hi-brow) and then there’s the side of me that can get just as excited over tacky kewl roadside attractions (lo-brow).
Cadillac Ranch can be seen from I-40 going eastbound between exits 60 and 62. It’s about 200 yards south of the highway. We park on the frontage road and walk across a land mine of cow dung in a field to get to the row of Cadillacs stuck in the ground. We quickly take photos because it starts to rain. It looks just like the many images I have seen of Cadillac Ranch over the years. Does not disappoint. Cadillac Ranch was created in 1974 by helium millionaire Stanley Marsh, III. Marsh and The Ant Farm, a San Francisco art collective, gathered ten
Amarillo, Texas
Cadillac Ranch car detail Cadillacs and half-buried them nose-down. BTW, Amarillo is the self-proclaimed helium capital of the world.
We get back in the MINI and take off for the Golden Corral, a restaurant/cafeteria nearby that has a squished penny machine. It’s very yellow and bright inside. We go there just to squish Cadillac Ranch and Route 66 pennies. After squishing, we come out to the parking lot and the sky is falling. It was the Amarillo Deluge. I try driving onto the main business loop road that leads into downtown Amarillo but it was half flooded. Didn’t want the MINI to drown and risk stalling out. I do a Starsky and Hutch U-turn and find another road. After driving through downtown Amarillo, we get back on I-40 eastbound and the rain just hit harder and the hail started. It was like driving through a car wash—couldn’t see a damn thing but a good result is that all the smashed bugs on the windshield have been washed away. Then all of a sudden it stopped and all was right in the world again and we continued to the next destination—Shamrock, Texas.
A Bit o’ Ireland in Texas Where and what is
Texas Panhandle
Big steel cross as seen from the highway in Shamrock you ask? Why, it’s the easternmost town in the Texas Panhandle and has a cool restored, 1930s Conoco Gas Station turned visitor center on old Route 66. Evidently, it was used in the animated film, “Cars,” but I haven’t seen the movie yet. It is a lovingly restored Art Deco gem and one of the biggest and nicest historic gas stations I’ve seen. We go inside and chat with the visitor center lady who must be a volunteer. She’s a very friendly woman in her 70s (everyone in Texas is friendly—its state motto is the “Friendship State.”) Thought it was “Everything is bigger in Texas.” She shows us around the rest of the building—there are some displays of Route 66 related history and local pioneer history. The other spaces are rented out for special events. It’s too bad the old café isn’t functioning anymore or we’d eat there. There were women quilting in the rooms while we were there. All were very nice. All were surprised we had come all the way from Seattle. One of them says there’s a lot of history in Shamrock. I ask why it’s called Shamrock and no one could really tell me
Shamrock, Texas
Old Route 66 painted sign on ground or there are various versions of the story, but evidently some Irish dude came into town in the late nineteenth century and founded the town and named it Shamrock to pay homage to his homeland.
We continue our conversation with the visitor center volunteer woman who is asking about our road trip. Then she asks in this nice Texas drawl with her cute smile, “So are you just friends?” We don’t miss a beat and say yes, we are just friends. I was going to say we like boys but decided to keep the mystery going. Of course, later in the car C and I are laughing our asses off that she asked us. It was the opposite of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Every once in awhile during the trip, out of the blue, one of us will say, “So are you just friends” in our best Texas accent and start cracking up just to amuse ourselves. I move the MINI from the parking lot to the port cochere of the gas station to take pics of my baby next to the cool old gas pumps. We drive off into town to
Shamrock, Texas
Conoco Tower - restored Art Deco gas station check it out. Find a preserved 1920s gas station and head into Oklahoma.
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma In an effort to cover as many previously unvisited states as possible (I have a goal to visit all fifty states by the time I’m fifty), we go to Oklahoma City to check OK off the list before heading south to Fort Worth. It wasn’t that much of a detour, not when you’re driving so far anyway. OK City was a pleasant surprise—nice scale to it with a good collection of intact historic buildings and a former warehouse area revitalized into an entertainment/restaurant district. We are in OK City to look for specific Modern buildings that I had heard about (not that OK City is a hotbed of Modernism but I was there so why not). We combine a lo-brow experience (taking pics of a cool neon sign) with dinner and eat at the Charcoal Oven—cheesin’ and pleasin’ since 1958 as they say. It’s an old-fashioned drive-in so we drive-thru, park under the gigantic neon sign, and eat inside the MINI. Got the sunroof open and chowin’ down on a burger and Suzy Q fries. Doesn’t get much better than that.
We spot the third other MINI of the trip. Tomorrow is hi-brow day in Fort Worth.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.085s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 13; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0368s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Susan
non-member comment
Still Back in the Office
Hey you (twinkle twinkle) just friends....too funny! You could destroy the mystique and save further indiscreet inquiries by getting tee shirts that proclaim your innocence. I'm sure they sell them whereever squished pennies can be found. I think it is time that you got out of Texas! We are all checking the blog every day!