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Every once in a while I’ll run across a building similar to this place in Howard. This one, however, is unusual in the fact that it still has the gas pumps in the driveway.
This is as close as I’ve found to the building that my dad used as his woodworking shop in downtown Pawnee Rock.
Now, like most the others, Dad’s shop no longer had the gas pumps, but when I was twirp-sized, I’d ride my bike around the vacant cement island and pretend to get gas.
Here’s a photo my brother took of our dad’s shop in Pawnee Rock in 1990. The white boarded windows were once plate glass windows and there was a big ol’ shade tree in front of the building and a ditch. The building was owned by Farmers (Grain, Fuel & Livestock.)
My dad was downsizing his stuff after retirement and had moved nearly all of his treasures to another building in town when a gust of wind came – and blew the building down. No kidding. A gust of wind. That was probably in ’93, ’94, somewhere in there.
The back part of the building was used as a garage for the elevator and men had been in and out of it right before the building collapsed.
It’s sad to me that this place where my dad worked for 46 years was gone, just like that.
Kiowa had just such a building. It was a gas station (it still might be) and inside were huge animal heads – a buffalo, some deer. In the back was a table and there seemed to be always a group of old men sitting around it.