The Flat Square States

Living in the PNW I have never really driven through the central part of America. What my husband refers to as the flat states. So this being my turn to pick a vacation spot I wanted to see the area often referred to as the middle of America...Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas. I had also wanted to go to New Mexico because my Great Grandmother was raised down there in the early 1900. She was married in Raton New Mexico in 1905 before moving to Oregon.
We flew into Albuquerque and rented a car to drive up to Santa Fe. We drove up the Turquoise Trail so we could stop at TinkerTown. I have heard of TinkerTown from several folks that have gone and I have looked at pictures on the internet...but to go there in person was magical. It's a small place if you look close but the way you walk through all the wonderful displays you would never know. All I can say is if you ever find yourself in New Mexico north of Albuquerque and you like folk environments check out TinkerTown.

 One of our main goals was to go to  Meow Wolf, a wonderful artist created environment that was built inside an old bowling alley. We spent about 4 hours inside looking at all the different rooms and interactive installations that were housed in this huge space. If you go expect to spend about 3-4 hours inside exploring the space.

Then we headed up to Taos and spent one night. I liked Taos but it really is a small artist community with a huge emphasis on shopping.  We set out for Raton after a night in Taos, driving the Enchanted Circle. I really loved the drive and wish we would have spent a night on one of the cute small towns along the way but we really wanted to get to Raton on a Saturday as we heard that the city closes down on Sundays. Our stop in Eagle Nest was a little disappointing as we stopped for a beer and thought we would get a slice of pizza at the small shop across the street that promoted Fresh Hot Pizza. Only to find out that when we ordered they had to turn on the pizza oven..?!...so we wondered the 3 block area for 20 minutes only to get a melted 10" cheese thing...not sure what happened to the pepperoni.

Raton was a bust, very depressing town, hot, not very appealing with several closed up businesses. So we had a beer and headed north to Trinidad Colorado. Oh yea...we got carted in the local beer joint...I have bras older than the young lady the carded me.
Trindad was OK, cute little town. We had Italian food at a small joint that  cooks each plate individually, that is to say we waited for about 45 minutes to get dinner.  Saw a cool looking art van and in general liked the vibe of the small town.

Getting up Sunday morning we headed out east to Kansas. Our destination was Liberal Kansas, the home of Dorthy Gale from Wizard of Oz. We drove through some of the flattest areas that I have ever seen. Lots of corn, lots of grain silos and trains moving agriculture across America. Once we got to the Home of Dorthy Gale we found the crushed penny machine was out of order...?!!! We wondered through the museum and looked at interesting history of Liberal then headed south for BBQ in Texas. We drove straight through Oklahoma..about 40 miles but I really didn't want to stop in the state. My husband had heard that there was good BBQ in Delhart Texas so that was our destination. Only all the BBQ places were closed on Sunday. We did stop at a tavern that was quite interesting. The bartender was a low talker and talked to us for quite some time but neither of us were able to really understand what she was saying. She did give us a piece of Apple Pie that had Hatch Chilies in the pie. It was quite good. Since Delhart Texas was a bust too we left and headed back west to Tucumcari New Mexico on Route 66.

The town has one route through with several old neon signs from the days of car travel across Route 66. We stayed in Motel Safari, a very cute little motel that has been nicely remodeled to match the late 50's designs.

From there we headed sort of north to Las Vegas New Mexico...a town that was supported by the railroad in the 1800's. Several older building are being remodeled and the whole town seems to be having a growth sprout of younger folks and hip stores. Several small boutiques and handmade items by local crafts folks. Still seems affordable and might just be the next place to move. After a couple of days it was back up to Santa Fe for one more night before we flew home. We really liked the Turquoise Trail on our way up to Santa Fe we decided to explore it on the way back down since we had all day to travel about 100 miles. We found a cute little town called Madrid and spend most of the afternoon in the town looking at various shops and sights. It's mostly a town to walk up and down the road looking at rugs, jewelry & clothing. Since we were not packing any else home it was all eye candy for us.

Smiley

I talked to one of my neighbors about Smiley. He said he had some photos of the house and said he would share them with me...he delivered!!!!The house that Smiley lived in was build in in 1977, this is the original add for the house from the Oregonian, it was listed on June 19, 1977. 

The house was a 960 sq foot house with 3 bedrooms, the garage is about 483 sq feet...funny that the garage is more then half the size of the house. The garage is the first thing you see when you look at the house from the street. I call this typical 70's construction. Smiley had made all these different signs for the front of the house, mostly about the God, the Creators and the New World. The building in the back is where he would go and sit in the evening, maybe looking out at the garden to the south or at the sunset to the west. It was a strange looking structure that he built from scrap wood that he found around the neighborhood. These photos were taken by my neighbor Sam in 2002. He was great at documenting the area and has a lot of great old photos of the area. 

They moved Smily out of the house in about 2005 and sold it for $203,000. You can see from the flyer they really cleaned up the house. It's too bad that these old folk environments are being destroyed. There use to he a house in Vancouver Washington that had a miniature display of the OK Corral, the man that owned the house was named Lloyd "Ace" Parsons. He's listed in a book called "Strange Sites", the house was bought when Ace got too old to live there alone and it was torn down to make condos. 

Signs

I have a love of signs, especially religious signs. These are a few that I have collected over the years and used as decoration on the fence in our back yard.  

This sign came from a house around the corner from me in North Portland.  I never met the gentleman that lived in the house, I use to walk my dog past the house and look at all the interesting signs that he had painted and had up in front. Often there was a sign that said "No Visitors Today", so I did not disturb the occupant.  I never found out what happened to the gentleman that lived in the house, there are rumors that his brother moved him, that he was taken away by social services, that he had so much stuff in the house that he moved out of the house and lived in a tree in the back yard. One neighbor told me they called him Smiley, they could not remember if they called him that because he always smiled or because his last name was Smiley. One neighbor said Smiley had a wife, the other said he was not married but had a room mate. Smiley did have some sort of tree fort that he often sat in during the evening, I believe that is why some people think he was living in the tree. Once a day Smiley would go into the back yard and ring a bell that he had hanging from the tree while yelling something that was often incoherent. One neighbor said Smiley was yelling earthquake. Not sure how many of these tales are true and how many are just rumors. I don't know if Smiley is still alive today. I wish I had taken the time to meet the Smiley, he sounds like a very interesting man. When the house sold all the signs were just put in a dumpster, my neighbor Jessie saved the sign above. Jessie eventually gave me the sign because his wife thought it was weird. It's about 4'x4' sign on a thin piece of wood. The sign has some damage to the upper left corner most likely from when it was tossed out. It has a nice green patina from being out in the weather for several year. 

When I met my husband, he had moved to Portland to buy a building up on 42nd and NE Sumner. The building was once used as a Hare Krishna Temple. The Krishna's had remodeled the building opening the walls between the apartments. Only problem is they never closed out the permits and that caused a lot of issues for us when we started to remodel the building...but that is another story. The old Hare Krishna sign was still hanging on the building when we bought it. Rumor has it that Steve Jobs use to go to this temple to eat the free rice on sundays while he was attending Reed College. Steve Jobs also took a calligraphy class at Reed and some people think that he painted the sign for the Krishna's.  

These two signs were give to me by a friend. He picked them up on a couple different trips to Mexico and thought I would like them.The top sign says that Costa Rica needs to prepare because Christ is coming soon. For the longest time I thought the second sign was a religious sign too. But it says something along the lines of "no food or drinks allowed because it disagrees with our business". 

Of course everyone has seen this sign on the side of the road...Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. I changed the sign to say "Believe in the Lord Chris and thou shalt be saved" because my husbands name is Chris. I put the sign up on the fence and my husband did not notice the sign till our neighbors came over and asked us to move the sign because everyone that looked at the house to rent found the sign disturbing.