My Kansas Kronikles: Alan Clark's filling station in Eskridge

The small town of Eskridge, in Wabaunsee, County calls itself the Gateway to the Flint Hills. As I noted a few posts back, after taking some photographs of Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church, my next goal was the Flint Hills. I headed south on the first road I could find, and eventually reached the Kansas Native Stone Scenic Byway.

My gasoline gauge was dangerously close to "Empty," so I knew I had to find a gas station quickly. Right in the center of town is Clark's Service Station at 202 S. Main, (to use the term Kansans use) an old-fashioned filling station. That's Alan Clark, the businesses owner, out front.

Alan of course noticed my Illinois plate, and I explained to him that I was from Morton Grove, a suburb five miles north of Chicago. He told me he'd been to Chicago once, "for a rock concert at Soldier Field in 1969, just after he was released from the the VA hospital at Great Lakes Naval Training Center."

Clark told me he was wounded in Vietnam, which is how he ended up at Great Lakes.

He was definitely impressed that I was from the Chicago area, and Kansans have great admiration of Chicago and the people from the region. Much of my out-of-Illinois travels take me to Wisconsin and western Michigan, and many of the people I encounter there I quite stand-offish to me, and occasionally rude. Wisconsinites refer to people such as myself as FIBs, short for "Freakin' Illinois Bastards." Except they don't say "Freakin.'" They do take our money, however.

So after my encounter with Clark, I played up my Chicago ties with other Kansans, with great success.

There is no self-serve at Clark's Service Station, he fills your tank up. Remember, it's an old fashioned filling station.

It was easy to figure out that Clark wasn't used to Illinoisans in Eskridge, and he asked me what I was doing there. I told him that I'm a part-time independent journalist driving through Kansas for my blog. I explained that the Flint Hills were my second major stop of my trip, the first took place about an hour earlier at Phelps' church.

Clark responded, "He's not to popular in these parts." I explained that I was vaguely familar with the nut over the years, but he first appeared as the center of my radar two years when Westboro Baptist Church protesters disrupted the funeral of a Portage, Indiana soldier--an event well covered by the Chicago media. And I told Clark, "As far as I know, Phelps isn't popular anywhere."

"Well," Clark added, "they just ran him out of California a few weeks ago when he tried to protest there."

I handed Clark a Marathon Pundit business card, and he made sure I took photographs of two other buildings. One was the red brick structure on the right, the Waugh Bank Building, which was built in 1906. It's on the National Register of Historic places. The other was the limestone building below, probably native stone, with the painted Butter-Krust advertisement on the side.


But then Mr. Clark showed me one last structure, the modest brick shed behind his filling station. "That," he told me, "was Eskridge's first library. I just keep old stuff in there now."



Then I began to drive off to my next destination, Council Grove. But Clark flagged me down, and asked--he obviously looked at my Marathon Pundit card, "What's a blodger?"

I explained, then finally left, with regrets. I really wanted to spend more time in Eskridge and with Mr. Clark. But a marathon runner, and a Marathon Pundit blogger, always has to keep on pace.

Still, maybe that was a good place for me to slow down just once. I learned that there were some interesting places in the Eskridge area that I missed.

Related posts:

• My Kansas Kronikles: Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church
• My Kansas Kronikles: An overview
• My Kansas Kronikles: This has to stop
• My Kansas Kronikles: The Sunflower State
• My Kansas Kronikles: The Flint Hills