kcwildmoon

[kcwildmoon]

America's hometown fill-up

America’s hometown fill-up

My dad was a mechanic. Everybody knew him, and most everybody brought him their vehicles for tune-ups, oil changes and major repairs. His shop was also a filling station, gas station, whatever it was you called them.

He sold Texaco gas. “You can trust your car to the man who wears the star.” My dad wore one. The big, bright Texaco star. So naturally, we always bought Texaco gasoline.

Secret…

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Old Russellville Pike

Before there was US11E, Russellville had a Main Street. It’s a block north of the highway, which ate up a street once called Chestnut. My family’s stores were down there, the old library/community meeting space, homes, and past the hill that rises up to the north with the other streets of the town (somebody please explain Dodson Ferry Rd on the side of hill), farmland.

Actually, let’s take a…

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Back in the day

Back in the day

Between 8th and 9th Avenues North, between North Ocean Boulevard and the King’s Highway, there sits a big old empty lot, different from other empty lots only because of the zipline installed in its western end. A smaller, completely empty lot  sits across the street between North Ocean  Boulevard and the Myrtle Beach Boardwalk, which is now made of boards, although for the entire time I knew…

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'Lying in our County of Green on Fall Creek'

‘Lying in our County of Green on Fall Creek’

Fall Creek cuts under the railroad and flows across the edge of a flat bottomed field until it disappears under a road I’ve known by more names than I can remember. Now it’s called Warrensburg Road, but I never knew it by that name as a kid running over the bubbling, hot tar surface, trying to avoid stepping on snakes stuck in the asphalt and squished flat by the daily passage of cars and trucks…

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On top of old Smoky

On top of old Smoky

Not covered with snow on this New Year’s Day, but still quite beautiful. I finally got my chance to retrace US441 through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was fall, it was winter, and it was a holiday – but traffic was relatively light, and boy was it a great ride.

I started in Cherokee, North Carolina, going backwards from my childhood memories to Gatlinburg before heading on in to…

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Historic Old US441

The very first post on this website was called “Edge of the Gorge,” and it included a trip on the northernmost section of old US441 in Georgia, from near the North Carolina state line down to Tallulah Falls. This time, I picked up 441 south of the gorge and wandered on down until 441 left my route to pass through Homer and Commerce and Athens and points beyond.

Sadly, I missed getting a shot…

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Skyland Drive

I’d been wanting to do this one for a long time. Old US 23 in North Carolina. Of course, there’s lots more of the old highway yet to do, but this particular stretch – Skyland Drive – was just sitting there waiting, and for the longest time, blocked by a “road closed for construction sign.” This winter, that sign was gone. And so, I turned off the Great Smoky Mountain Expressway and headed up.

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Old US78

It’s hard, sometimes, to find the old roads. They vanish completely, like that spot where US 441 once dove off Newfound Gap into North Carolina, or they pick up new names when their shiny, four-lane replacements speed travelers around the towns and landmarks linked by those older thoroughfares. Quite often, they’re completely forgotten.

I find them by knowing where to look — a Main Street in a…

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A question of progress

A question of progress

Progress. What exactly is it? For some, it’s a change in attitude, an enlightenment. For others, it’s new technology. Still others look to business development. And sometimes, they all come together — roads can do that quicker than anything. And they can change how we view it as well.

Such is the case in Eufaula, Alabama, a quaint town once known as a major inland port on the Chattahoochee…

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Gem of the day

Gem of the day

Way down in west central Georgia, in Meriwether County, there’s tiny little unincorporated village called Imlac. I know something of unincorporated hamlets, as I hail from one myself, but Imlac is so small that the Census Bureau has no population data for it. It barely exists, but there is a sign on State Route 85 and it looks just like the one in my hometown, with the exception of the name.…

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The road home

This is the road I lived on for nearly all of my childhood. It’s now called Warrensburg Road, presumably because it ran between Russellville and Warrensburg, a town I never knew existed until the road was named for it. That’s been fairly recently. It was called either Three Springs Road or Fall Creek Road back in the day.

The image above is just before the second bridge over Fall Creek, the…

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Family vacation

Back before Interstate 40 followed the Pigeon River over the mountains, our annual or sometimes semi-annual trip to the beach started with a trip over a narrow, winding road over Viking Mountain in Greene County. Still known as the Asheville Highway, it is State Route 70 in Tennessee (not to be confused with US70, which crosses the mountains near the French Broad conjoined with US25E) and changes…

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Stage 2

When new roads are built, the old ones need names. In the case of numbered highways, the name often becomes “Old Highway Such-and-Such.” But if it’s prior to the use of numbered roads, and, say, maybe the new road is being built because the old one just isn’t working for automobiles, the old one gets a name like “Stagecoach Road,” because that’s what ran on it. It’s paved now, so cars travel on…

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All the world’s a stage In the beginning, there were animal trails, and the aboriginal peoples followed those and made their own.

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Childhood memories

US11E, known as the Andrew Johnson Highway in some parts for our 17th president, is another of Tennessee’s split highways, along with US25 E&W. US11W splits from its fellow 11 in Knoxville and runs on the other side of the valley in the shadow of the Clinch Mountains while 11E heads north in the land between the lakes Douglas and Cherokee, finally becoming whole again in the Virginia half of…

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The Cumberland Gap Here's a look at one of the oldest roads in Tennessee and Kentucky -- the one that goes through Cumberland Gap.

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Mud Creek rising Here's a video of Mud Creek covering McCullough Cemetery Road beneath the railroad. Captures the scene even better than the photos in Muddy Waters. I thought about trying to drive through. Not.