The day before ended in Hell and amazingly enough, we woke up to find ourselves in..... well, Hell. Picture yourself in a hot/way hot small dusty town in nowhere Kansas. The air is enhanced by the odiferous contribution of the massive nearby feedlot. The wind was not offering any relief and, in truth, just keeping the air positively viscous.... So should read the travelogue for Dodge City, Kansas. The only hope was that the obvious tourist trap based on local history would offer some fun diversion from stinky Hades. We found the highly authentic "genuine recreation" of an old western town. The streets had names like Wyatt Earp Boulevard and Boot Hill Road. The only word that fits what we found would be "p-a-t-h-e-t-i-c". This was the saddest (except maybe for the "Twister" museum in Wakita, OK) attempt at attracting visitors to the pull off the highway. The "historic old street" looked so lame that it's hard to fathom that anyone would spend ten cents to see it. Boot Hill was a complete fabrication as the real cemetery for paupers had long ago been "paved to put up a parking lot"/Subway/Dollar General/Whatever. We actually saw a mostly full tour bus heading that way. Those poor souls.... The only thing worse may have been had the tour guide been Jim Henager (remember the "museum" of no return). Oy ack!
We couldn't wait to escape this Hellhole. Amazingly, we did find a great little coffee shop that blessed us with homemade cinnamon rolls and an actual fresh fruit smoothie. Drive Rodney drive!
It was off to R's home state. We were wandering around the farm towns of eastern Colorado. We only had one outsider art site in line for the day. Relieved to be leaving Dodge City in the rearview mirror, headed toward Cheraw for "Junkrassic Park" by Johnnie Allen. In one of our more direct to goal routes, we found the target easily. The research gave us no reason to expect finding much more than a few pieces in a farm field. We came over a small rise to find a sea of painted steel characters. As with many of our artists, many have some serious health maladies. Mr. Allen was no exception. Sadly he has a terminal case of punextremiosis; he is an incurable (thankfully) punster. Apparently every piece was inspired by either puns or celebrities with "pun-able" names. It was all very whimsical and we had a grand old time skipping around the outdoor gallery. There must be close to a hundred pieces on display and a few large murals. We were hoping that Johnnie would come out of the house but symbolic good mental health, he chose not to join the Oddasee lunatics out on a day pushing a 100 degrees. It was great fun and recharged our spirits.
Love from fields of corn, wheat and welded steel,
Rodney Earp and Susan Holliday (aka Doc)
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