Big Blend Radio

Kathleen Walls - Kansas Oddities and Roadside Attractions

From the Oz Museum and the Ad Astra Missile Silo to the World's Largest Belt Buckle and the World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things, this episode of Big Blend Radio's "Food, Wine & Travel" Show with IFWTWA travel writer Kathleen Walls focuses on interesting oddities and roadside attractions in Kansas. Read Kathleen's article about it all here: https://blendradioandtv.com/listing/theres-something-odd-in-kansas/

Kathleen Walls is publisher/writer for American Roads and Global Highways at https://www.americanroads.net A member of the International Food Wine & Travel Writers Association, her articles and photographs have appeared in numerous magazines and online publications.

Learn more about the International Food Wine & Travel Writers Association (IFWTWA) at https://www.ifwtwa.org/

Follow this podcast here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzIUCV2e7qm1chVylr9kzBMftUgBoLS-m

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Duration:: 32m
Broadcast on:: 12 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Welcome to Big Blend Radio's Food, Wine, and Travel Show, where we go across country and travel the world with members of the International Food Wine Travel Writers Association. Let's go. Welcome everybody, you know we love our second Friday Food Wine Travel Show with the International Food Wine Travel Writers Association, because we get to chat with travel writers and find out where their last destination was, and they take us there virtually, and today we're welcoming back Kathleen Walls, she's a travel writer, photographer, author as well, and she's going to tell us about her adventures in Kansas. In fact, we're focusing on odd Kansas, like oddities and oddness. I don't know if there's such a word as oddness, but I'm making that one up. But she went through Kansas, she's going to be back on one of our other shows too, talking about the prairies out there, but today we're going to oddities, which is one of our favorite things to talk about on the show. And I encourage you to go to the travel website for Kansas. It is travelks.com. Keep up with Katie at katiewalls.com, that's her author website, and her travel blog is americanroads.net. And her article about the oddities was some photos that show you all kinds of things from monsters to giant balls of twine. That is up on blendradio and tv.com. All these links I'm talking about are listed from the episode notes. So whether you're listening on Apple or watching on YouTube, look in the show description and you will see the links, and also the link to IFTWA, which is the International Food Wine Travel Writers Association. You can go to iftwod.org, that is i f w t w a dot org. Whoo, that was a mouthful. Was that odd? Oddness? Oddity was odd. It was odd. It was odd. And so it was Kansas. What's the Kansas is? That's, you know, I like Kansas. And I like Jerry's. It has some of the weird and you, the last thing in our huge expound, I mean, we started this trip with the Wizard of Oz Museum, the Oz Museum actually. You can't get anywhere in the Wizard of Oz, can you? Well, I don't know because you've got quite a good list in this article. Yeah, but it's not a weird. It's hard to say which is the weirdest. Well, I guess if I had to pick the weirdest feeling for me was going down into the missile silo. That's weird. That's weird. And it's amazing what the gentleman who's Matthew, who's redoing it, what he's trying to do. This was an actual missile silo. It's stored in Atlas missile, which had Russia attacked us. We would have retaliated with these. And one explosion from one Atlas missile that was still in this very place would have been bigger than the bombs that landed in Japan after the war. So you can imagine the feeling in that. It feels like a museum. It's not. It's, um, he's converted the top portion of it, which is where the kitchen and bathroom and medical supplies, except he's converted that into an Airbnb apartment. Wow. When you go down to the bottom level, what he's planning for that is like a school type program that people would learn basically to live on other planets, which kind of looks like it's coming. So that gets about as weird as you get. And then when you're on that lower level, there's a little child almost like walking through a drain pipe big enough to stand up in just barely. And you look down and that is the actual place where the Atlas missile sat and you look up and you can see from when you're up, getting ahead of myself, when you're above ground before you go down into the missile silo, you can look as a big deep circle there. This would have opened, had the missile apart. When you're down underneath, you can see the metal parts of this. That actually would have opened, but virtually never had to. And, um, the missile was no longer there. But that, that really hit me to the weirdest of any place on there. It's kind of creepy in a silo itself. I mean, you have silos all over the Midwest because they store silos. So it's kind of interesting how, so did they choose that for like it was a hidden by being in a silo or missiles actually kept in silos? Do you think with that when he, he kind of fell in love with the idea, I guess, and he bought silo and he's can bring the outside is going to, it's already in RV talk, but he doesn't have the hookups yet, but it's coming as a full head or a book and it's beautiful up there. Then when you go down below ground, that's, it's just strange. It's just the weirdest feeling like you're standing in a science fiction story. I've watched people renovate silos into homes, like all silos. Well, that's been made into big a condo or some things. And why not? He wants his to be available to the general public who wants to come there. There's something weird about going underground if it's not like a natural cave. And there was an underground hospital we went to in and Guernsey in the Channel Islands between England and France. So Guernsey, Sark and Herm, those islands were occupied by the Nazis. And so we went into this underground hospital and it was, it was used as a hospital during the occupation and they still had the beds in there. There was water leaking down the walls because this is a wall. This is, it's under like partially underground. It's weird. And there's a mold and well, not mold, but moss and lichen growing on the walls. It was one of the creepiest. And I've been in, you know, just about every castle you can imagine in the United Kingdom, the Scotland, England and Wales. And I'd go into the dungeons, you know, as a little girl and that freaked me out, going into the prison side of it, the jails and where you saw the execution chambers and stuff like that, that kind of freaked me out as a kid. But I would like to see that would be creepy, I think. But beyond the ground is even creepier in a way. I mean, because you're thinking all that earth up above you. Yeah, because we're above earth people. We're not, you know, we don't borrow. We're not designed to live underground. But I know they always say that we're going to have underground cities sometime. And I'm not interested. No. You think that if we do form a live on other planets, if it's not enough atmosphere, they'd have to either go underground and condition it or build it on. I just think fiction fan back in my teen years. I think, well, that's what we're always talking about, right? As these other universities, other worlds. And, you know, that's what I always wonder about all these utopian societies across our country is like, it was a net what were they what what was so bad at that time that they decided we need a new kind of society. That's fascinating to me. But it's it's yeah, this kind of thing going underground. It's like when people the people do live underground. There are people who in New York in the tunnels. I've heard I've never seen this. But the central station below the subways, there's all sorts of unused tunnels. And they're these people mold people they call themselves that live, you know, homeless and live down make their homes underneath there. Yeah, I don't think I can handle that. No, they think. Yeah. All right. Now you freaked me out. Well, I can think about a little more. Oh, the auditorium. Oh, well, he can't call the auditor anymore. He's called it the Igoa Curiosity and Monster PC. That's cool. I want to go and do that. Definitely. And he's got all sorts of really strange things. The two strangers, there's a skeleton in a glass case in there. And he says it's Frankenstein's skeleton. And then there's a piece of mummified creature. Oh, that's supposed to be a mummy of a Bigfoot. I'm not sure if I believe but I believe either one. It's definitely worth seeing. And one of the really cutesy things about, you know, I can't just always put heads and animals on the wall. Well, instead of heads, he's got the tails. There's even a cat out there. That's a cat. There's a tail mounted on the wall. I didn't ask him how they ended up being a little bigger. I don't think I wanted to know that. I don't want to know. But pin the tail on the donkey. That's kind of odd. You know what I mean? It's up there. Yeah, that was and it was a full size one. And of course, he has all sorts of little odd things in there. I mean, it's just almost more than you can get around or looking at in, you know, little things all buried around the place. Tell us about the toilet. Oh, now that's another weird, weird one. When you approach the toilet, you're coming up there on a on a safe pathway, you know, regular, seem that sidewalk pathway. But if you look up where the pathway is coming from, there's a sculpture of a roller toilet paper and it's unrolled and that makes the pathway. And then when you get to the door of the bathrooms, which are really public bathrooms for use, it's a little tiny town and they didn't have a big restroom. So they decide they make art out of it while we were doing it. And when you go up to it, it's made like a giant toilet tank. And in the front of the toilet tank, there's something that looks like a toilet bowl seat cover. And you open those doors and walk in and each of the bathrooms to each side, men's and women's are decorated with murals. So women's mostly have like little doll heads and teacups, you know, more feminine things. And the men's side has got little tiny miniature cars with the ones that really caught my eye. You know, like the kids used to collect a little. Yeah, yeah. Just a whole circle mural made of those. There's jugs that look like moonshine jugs joined the attract all sorts of little things creating a mosaic. The whole entire wall of the bathrooms, all of them are covered with this mosaic. And that's kind of written and just outside the museum, that's what they call the fork art. And each of the things is made like either a table fork or a pitch fork or something from there. And it's all maintained by the ring art museum there. And this is what this is the where is this? This is this is in Lucas, Lucas, Lucas has got the weirdest whole city. I mean, the whole city of Lucas is kind of focused on that. And the it's the grassroots art center is the name of the building. The wonderful, better word, the major energy that focuses and they manage the bathroom. They also have the gardens and then they have several homes that you can walk over to the Florence Depot house and walk through that. And the art there is often, everything's green, the grassroots means recycle. Everything has been recycled art. And the museum downtown is all recycled art. The house is really strange. Everything in the house, when you walk in, you're like the inside of a tin foil cabinet. That is weird. That is everything or looks like tin foil. Some of it is that insulation that has a tin foil look to it. And that's pretty weird. And then right in the same town in Lucas, but not affiliated with the art museum is the Garden of Eden. And the guy who created the Garden of Eden, he was a bit weird himself. One of the, the, not me, but me the weirdest thing. When he was 82, I believe, somewhere in his 80s, he is his first wife to die. He married his second wife in her 20s. And they managed to have two children. And when he died, he wanted his body to remain on the premise. He also had his first wife, is in the mausoleum, which is sort of like a piece of art. And you walk up to the mausoleum and it's your choice. You can go in and look if you want, or you don't have to if you don't. If you're kind of squeamish, or you just had lunch, you might not want to look. But anyway, his body is in a glass tomb in there, and you can look in and... Oh, cool. Is it, is it kind of, did you go look? Yes, I wanna look. Okay, so weird, I had to go. I mean too. I mean, so is it, is it like a museum? I'm not a, I like a mausoleum. It's really like he will be in a real mausoleum. It's a image-shaped building. And his tomb is right as soon as you walk in the door. But you can see his body in the tomb. Oh, you can see what's left of him in. Remember, he's a Civil War bastard. He died quite a few years back. Okay, so is it embalmed, right? So is it so? It was embalmed, but it's really all is a skeleton. And then there's some hair and his clothing. Oh, cool. The clothing, that was under the flesh. There's no flesh. Oh, that's freaky. I've always wanted to know what happens under, look back underground again, right? But this guy's not underground. So this is, no, no, he's, he's a mausoleum above ground. And he kind of, he was very much of a showman. And he did this on purpose. And his art is focused. It's kind of a political sentiment about how people taking from before, taking the money for people's money. And it's, he's got politicians and preachers and everything like that in cement or all of the artists done in cement. And it's sort of, you know, like the Hank Jr. song about yet the preacher says, send your money to go. I'm going to give you his address. Well, that's, but that's, see, I love that. And, and, you know, to me, somebody was actually just telling us to go to the Garden of Eden. I'm like, well, Katie did it, but we're gonna have to go. I want to go in the mausoleum. I mean, you know, she got to go see it. She want to see the mausoleum. And I've seen dead bodies before, but I want to see what it happens. Well, this is a very, I mean, I've been a few rolls and wakes, but this is so he's passed. He's passed the, the, the weekend at Bernie's thing where they're just propping him up and taking him around in the movie, the dead guy. I don't know if you've seen that movie, the weekend at Bernie's, but they kept propping up dead Bernie and taking him around places. It was, oh, miss that one. Oh, you should watch it. It's funny. It's silly. But, you know, silly is good. But I know I'm just, I know that we all have that curious, one, maybe not everyone, but that curiosity. But let's go back to the world's largest belt buckle. Seriously, this is, this is kind of a new oddity, isn't it? That's no as strong in Kansas. It's a, but I'm like, I have a real belt buckle. It's all pretty big. Let's see. It's, um, how big was it actually? Well, I have it right here in your article. 19 feet, 10 and a half inches wide and 13 feet by 11 and a quarter inches tall. That's pretty darn big. That's pretty big. It's, it's an Abilene, Texas. So not, I mean, not Abilene, Texas, Abilene, Kansas. Abilene, Kansas. So, yes. So they have a cowboy art trail. That's pretty cool to do. Yes. And I didn't get to follow that. That's something that they're working on. I did get to the Eisenhower Museum, which of course, really is weird, but it was really worth seeing if you're up there. Oh, I want to go. I went to his farm. Hinson, I went to his farm. Oh, I want to remember from politics was I like I funds, but I was way too young to vote. Well, Eisenhower was a hero in World War II. I mean, he really was. Yes. And you know, the thing I liked about him the most, uh, when D-Day was coming along and he decided to go with it, a lot of his advisors said, oh no, you know, whether maybe too bad, it doesn't look like it's the right day. But he knew the longer he rated, the more chance there was of the secret leaking out. And the night before he wrote a letter taking full blame, he said, should something go wrong? It's my fault, mine alone, nobody else's integrity. How many politicians would do that today? Don't start me. Don't. Politics could be an oddity. I mean, it is. I mean, at this point, if you were to be an artist, he should aim for just being honest. Oh, there. Oh, well done. Giving us the, um, oh, speaking of oddities, this is kind of getting away from Kansas. I have some little rocks. They have a t-shirt up there. Join the Capone party. Oh, you, uh, if you have to vote for a crook, vote, Capone, that's funny. I don't usually buy t-shirts from the gangster museum, been to the rock. I had to buy all you got to go to the gangster. We didn't get when we were there. It was when we still in COVID, but we had a ball in Little Rock. I had no idea what's going to love. I love Arkansas. I truly are our springs. Oh, that's what that's what's going on. Springs is awesome. It's it's one of our, we're going to be there in a month. We'll be there. Oh, well, do make sure you get to see the gangster museum. We haven't done that yet. So we're going to be at Timmy's bed and breakfast again out in Bismarck. And I think you were on a show with them actually. And it is absolutely, it's a nature destination. It is, you're out, you're only 20 miles away, but yeah, Hot Springs has some insane history to it. I mean, but anyway, let's go back to Kansas. You know, I had not realized the gangster connection. Yeah, we're getting off of the odd ones. I know, but the baseball and the gangsters all went anyway, that's a whole and what we get through a whole lot of the show on that one. Oh, man, don't start me on our, I love Arkansas and our friends, you know, our friends at the at Tiffany's bed and breakfast. So there her history is Kansas. That's her, her roots. So that's kind of interesting. So, but so we, I'm just, I'm tying them together. How about that? Okay. Well, another odd is the world's largest ball of twine. And I've been wanting to see that is really, really neat. It's so big. They said when they first started, they've had to rebuild the shelter. That's over a couple of times because it kept getting bigger. And then let us take the ladies out sailing the collie and her nickname is the bell of the ball. And she and she doesn't look like a southern bell. She's sliding around my age and really a sweet person. She brought some twine with her. And she let us all take twine and wrapped around the ball. And so it keeps getting bigger. But as of September, oh nine, it was 19,000 pounds and still growing. And it's seven million something feet long. I don't know how they go. I mean, how long it is because, you know, we're gonna keep wrapping the twine in it. Oh, man, this is so cool. I, I know it weighs over 26,000 pounds. Are you kidding me? That's huge. No, that's a big ball of twine. And it's right down the street from the Eigos curiosity and monster museum. Oh, cool. So when you go, because, you know, everybody loves these roadside attractions. Come on, it's it makes road tripping fun. This is the ultimate way to road trip, right, is to go and pull over, have some fun. And that's hard the whole time. Tony, little towns that really you wouldn't think of as a tourist destination. Well, they've got something like this. People are going to come from all of the world to see it. And Kansas, you know, I find Kansas amazing. Like when we were in Dodge City area, there's this huge city. I love Dodge City. We didn't get to spend the amount of time we wanted. Yeah. The, um, everybody knew, you know, Marshall Earp was kind of the one for the, um, the, um, the movie, the show, the gun, the war was a big gun, rocks, oh boy. My brain went dead for a minute there. The movie, the TV show was gone. Gunsmoke. Gunsmoke. Oh, Marshall Earp. That, he was a, but I had never realized, but there was a young woman there who had been a nightclub entertainer who ends up getting shot while she's in the mayor's apartment. And the guy who's going to shoot the mayor thinks he's shooting at the mayor, but shoots her instead. And she was kind of the miskitting idea behind that. I mean, Kansas is cool. I mean, it really, you know, and I think it just people need to understand outside of the Midwest, the Midwest will go and move around. But for people who come from outside of the Midwest to Kansas, it is a destination, you know, without, I know we're going to talk about the nature of part two, but the oddities really help smaller destinations, like you're saying, for people to get out of their car, experience something fun and unique. It's, it is Americana history to have oddities and these attractions, you know, and the Wizard of Oz, that's, that he would go to Kansas just for that. What was that? I mean, it inspired books and movies and toys and it's still inspiring things. And you know, possibly the reason why it's got all of the odd things, it's, and you can go there and see it. It's the geographic center of lower 48 states. So you're in the middle of the country when you made it. Yeah, you went to the actual spot, right? Actually, it claims it's the spot, but if you look it up, they say the spot's really about two miles out in the field, but you're pretty close. Okay. So when, okay, so you've got to go to the main, yeah, I know what you mean. Like in South Africa, there's two K points. There's a real point, and then there's another point where Vasco da Gama landed. Yeah, I mean, he didn't land on the tip. Everybody says, Oh, and the tip of Africa. Well, I've been to the tip of Africa, I've stood there and watched two oceans just crash into each other, which is amazing, but you know, it's like, but here's the real tip because this is where Vasco da Gama landed, but you can't go traipsing out in people's fields and you better wear big boots if you do that. Yeah, and prairies can prairies have snakes and things, but this is interesting when you think about that's where humanity goes from originally. Yeah, I mean, just even the history of like the Santa Fe trail going through, you know, the Oregon trail goes through there. It's Kansas, you know, just homesteaders, you know, so what they went through to, and then they have intense winters too. So you better have some oddities in there, but tell us a little, oh, and tornadoes, let's talk about the Wizard of Oz going to that museum has got to be on a lot of people's bucket list. Definitely. It's definitely worth seeing the museum. When you go in the building itself, looks like something from ours. It's good to think of the colors on and everything. It's that green color decorated and all of the buildings in town are extremely old buildings. And directly across from the Wizard of Oz, if you walk across the street, that's where the yellow brick road is and it's an archway and alleyway. And as you walk through it, there's a little total sitting in front and as you walk through the alley, there's all sorts of murals from Wizard of Oz up there and then back further down the alley, next to one of the murals, there's one of the painted totos. And the totos, there's, I believe, 18 or 19 of them all over town. Oh, cool. Like the towns do for the little icon of town. Yeah. Right. And each artist decorated it differently. We didn't have to see all of them. There's one right in front of the museum, one just a little further down the block. And the whole town just feels like it could have come out of the Wizard of Oz. The buildings are all early 1900s, the late 1800s, and the Columbia Theatre, which is just down the street. If you're standing looking directly out the Oz Museum and across the street and you look to your right, you'll see the old Columbia Theatre, which is now doing live performances and stuff, it's an old vaudeville theatre. If you look to your left, there's a winery, Oz Winery and all of the lights. They're all named for Wizard of Oz things. I have the squishy squishy squishy. I don't remember which one it was. And it was a nice, sweet wine, really good. And the one town, the connection between the whole thing, at one time, the winery had been a hotel in the turn of the century, late 1800s, early 1900s. And the actor, this actor who was staying at the hotel was warming down there to the theatre. And he died at the hotel. And his name is Frank. And our guy at the winery was telling us that he's kind of manifested himself a few times there at the, at the winery. Yeah. Wow. That's, I find that fascinating because we were talking about wine, right? So we've got Kansas wine as a real deal. Yeah. And some of them, they do have a hybrid wine, a grift that they grow, they, they make wine for most of the wine, the grapes company. But all of the wine is made right there in the distillery. And it all has the Oz names. And of course, the building, again, it also is painted to look like something. And when you think about, I mean, all of these buildings are early 1900s or late 1800s buildings. So, you know, they would be something if you were looking out there at Kansas when Dorothy was branching around Kansas, you'd think, this was her hometown. Wow. That's, that's a trip, man. I mean, because it's really something so iconic for everyone. So this is definitely a road trip bucket list destination. So, and I just wanted to weigh in. What is that? What is it? They have so much in the music. There's the artifacts that adults to be more interested in, you know, actual artifacts from the movie, the dress, the Dorothy war. And then later on, when they remade the African-American version, the whiz, Diane Ross's dress is in there. Oh, there's a big life size sculpture, the Tin Man. But then as you get further back into the museum, there's some interactive things where the witch does a little thing with a globe of a world and, you know, she forecasts stuff with it. And then there's a curtain where you build a curtain and there's the whiz of behind the curtain. Wow. And you got Richard Pryor's script book, he said in your article, that's cool. Yes, it has tons of stuff. And tell me these little things you don't notice. And then there's a if shop where you can buy a lot of things. Oh, man, of course. Yeah, that's naturally. That's dangerous for fans. Yeah, gotta have a souvenir. Yeah, so this isn't Whamego, Kansas Whamego. Whamego, Kansas, right? And of course, right next door, if you're hungry, you can go over and get or close tacos. The whole town has embraced it. Oh, well, yeah, well, you should. It should. It makes sense to look, you know, you're looking around and see if you see Dorothy coming. I love it. So I want to get to also Rock City Park, because that's kind of interesting. And that's a real natural creation. When you look at it, driving up to it, it's huge rocks, round spear shaped rocks, roughly spear shaped. They're not perfectly circles, but they're, you know, spherical. And the gentleman that was saying, I took the ones who said, one to go on a go-kart rod through there or the back in it, it'll see even more of it. So I got to see quite a bit. The rocks were formed originally the, it was, Kansas was the sea at one time. And the rocks were formed from compression of fossils and shells. And when they formed, and then when the sea dried up and was gone, of course, the sand that was between them was the easiest thing to blow away. So the sand blew away, leaving the rocks above the ground, and it makes for some really weird rock formations. There's one back in there that I walk back to, I walk back to where there's a tree growing right now. It looks like the formation had been split open, maybe the roots did it or whatever, but the tree is growing right up against rock formation. Wow. So you're sharing it. I think they're all alive, you know. They're just amazing. And they use you in a percentage of different shape, and it's in public park, people can walk through a rod through it, have a picnic in it. Do they have rock? Cool. So everyone, you got to go to Kansas and go look up oddities and add to them, you know. So I encourage you in the show notes, you know, comment on YouTube or if you see this on Facebook, comment with any oddities that you've seen in Kansas. We want to know. Because there's probably a lot that I've missed. Yeah, I mean, there's going to be, there's always something, and there's ones that aren't even documented at half the time, you know, which I think is interesting too. So Katie, the International Foodline Travel Writers Association, that's how we connected originally. Right. A few years ago, actually, how long have you been a member do you think? About 10 years, maybe a little about 12 years by now. It's a great organization. The fellowship, the members, everybody is a sharer. I mean, if you have a question, you know, you're going someplace, oh, do you know a contact person here or there? They'll give you that. We'll share things. And then, of course, they do the press trip, which make it really nice. And then every year they have a convention. And I haven't been there, I've been to a couple of them. This year is going to be up in New York. You know, upstate. Yeah, that's then by near the Corning Museum in Corning, New York. And I'm going to that and I've already been accepted to the press trip, the post press trip to the endless mountains in Pennsylvania. So when you go to the convention, you also have a chance for a free post press trip. So, you know, it's really, it's well worth the money that's just been a member. The endless mountains. That's the lower islands, right? That's the lower islands. They do lower islands. That's one of the trips that they're offering this year. I had been one of the other years when I went up there. Oh, cool. Oh, I didn't pick that one, but it's just a very, very good organization. Awesome. Awesome. So everyone, IFWTWA.org is the website for that. Again, all the links are in the show notes. Katie's links and then also the article link. So you can see the photos of these oddities of Kansas. I feel like we should have the oddities of Kansas voice. But, you know, there is so much there that side. And this was just a north central portion that I was getting this time really. So then, you know, all of the Kansas, I'm hoping to go back again next year. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks so much, Katie. Always a pleasure to have you on the show. Well, I always enjoy it. Thanks for having me. Thanks. Thank you for listening to Big Blend Radio's Food, Wine, and Travel Show featuring members of the International Food, Wine Travel Writers Association. We encourage you to visit their website. We say IFWTWA, which is i-f-w-t-w-a dot org. You can also follow us at bigblendradio.com. Happy travels, everyone. (gentle music) (gentle music)