A veteran recently purchased the 1939 Texaco gas station in downtown Galena, Kansas, and plans to restore it in the coming years.
Aaron Perry, a veteran from Wakarusa, Kansas, closed on the deal in the fall for the property at Sixth and Main streets (aka Route 66) in Galena. Wakarusa is about three hours’ drive from Galena.
According to the Joplin Globe:
Perry is no stranger to the Mother Road and has traveled it numerous times by himself and with his wife, Kelly, and their two daughters, Jaxy and Bentley.
Last year, Perry was traveling to a Route 66 Festival in Springfield when he passed through town and noticed a “For Sale” sign in the Texaco station’s front window. He closed on the building on Oct. 26.
“We’ve been to Galena lots of times and have seen Cars on the Route,” Perry said. “I’ve seen the Texaco in the past, and my wife and I have talked about finding something to retire to on Route 66. I stopped again to get a picture underneath the Texaco sign with my 1958 Ford, and I looked at the building and saw the sign.”
The opportunity to acquire the building was a dream come true for Perry, who described himself as both a gearhead and Route 66 enthusiast. […]
“I can hang out on Route 66, talk to travelers and share their stories and adventures,” Perry said. “It will be a place to hang out.”
Perry holds an eight-year plan where he wants to bring back the station’s neon lighting, renovating the interior and exterior and adding vintage gas pumps. Perry also plans to sell his “gearhead” artwork (hence the Gearhead Curios name for the station) and Route 66 souvenirs.
Perry launched a GoFundMe.com page to help him with the station’s renovations. He’s currently replacing the station’s roof.
Renee Charles, president of the Kansas Historic Route 66 Association and co-creator of Cars on the Route in Galena, told the newspaper she’s “excited” about the station’s new owners and thinks it will create another attraction for Route 66 tourists.
In fact, Perry recently acquired a 1951 Hudson Hornet — the same model as Doc Hudson in the “Cars” film — and received Charles’ blessing to continue the film’s theme at his station.
In other news about old garages in Galena, Ed Klein recently announced on his Route 66 World website he was abandoning his efforts to restore the Front Street Garage building across from Cars on the Route. He acquired the 1896 property in 2014.
Among several things, he cited a long ordeal to get an updated deed on the property and an even longer and fruitless ordeal to persuade the previous owner to remove his belongings from the garage.
Klein also cited “small town politics” as a reason for his leaving. He wrote:
What I have found out which is the most disappointing is unless you are Cars on the Route, or a business which is owned or ran by a person connected to those calling the shots; you are second fiddle in that town, if you are even that lucky. […] Projects and plans through the town seem to either take too long, or not go as planned. The small additions or changes which happen in town really are only photo ops at best, as that doesn’t bring any real revenue. At the end of the day, you just close the blinds and plan to do it on your own, and even that plan has to have someone else’s finger in it because they feel left out in the cold then. Control. It is all about control.
He also said he was slapped with a bunch of “BS” code violations with the building.
Charles and a clear majority of roadies who commented disagreed with Klein’s assertions. You can read her post and the comments here, but here’s the gist:
Ed will say I’m being defensive ( as he did in the nasty text I received from him) which is absolutely correct! I am very defensive when it comes to our home town. The rant does nothing but smear a small town and the people that live there and who have worked hard and still are to improving the way of life for their citizens, promote economical growth, and to enhance the experience of the visitors from all over.
Galena was moribund 20 years ago, but Cars on the Route and a later streetscaping project in the downtown area of Route 66 improved the business climate there immensely.
The Front Street Garage saga shows problems that might occur if you don’t get specific requirements in writing with the acquisition and, most importantly, decide to stay an absentee landlord. Historic preservation requires hands-on supervision by someone who lives there, or at least nearby — not more than 1,000 miles away.
The irony is as one person leaves Route 66 in Galena, another comes to town to fulfill their dreams. When one door closes, another opens.
(Image of the 1939 Texaco in Galena, Kansas, via Gearhead Curios on Facebook)
I like how you report on speculation and onesidedness to push what you call news. No one else but myself knows or had to deal with certain people in that town but we do not talk about the failures in the last 10 years in Galena because that would support my arguement. Again, when you can’t keep a MAJOR Route 66 attraction like COTR open even half the time, it’s hard to be taken seriously when someone is talking business. This Texaco station has gotten more support from a certain person in the town exponentially more than the FSG ever did and the reason is: they never wanted me to buy that building. Not once was any news or information shared by anyone other than myself on any KS FB pages. Ron, you dropped the ball here with your ‘journalism’ abilities as you know better than to be one sided. It’s easy to copy and paste existing articles to populate the majoroty of what you call news, and then fill in with your opinion.
Of course I’m one-sided and speculative — for Route 66.
And running a website never is easy.
I linked to your missive about Galena. I’ll let readers make their own decisions about it, if they haven’t already.
Looks like a neat old station…I wish them luck with it.
I am very disappointed to read the “update” on the Front Street Garage. There are very few 66 sites I devote time to. This one daily, used to read Laurel’s blog from Afton Station daily (now closed with an uncertain future), and a few other sites every few months. This FSG page was one of those. Sad to see it end.
An absentee owner should not expect to satisfactorily navigate the twists and turns with opening a business from a distance. It is a challenge and a full time job to open a business even as a local. It takes negotiating and working with different individuals on many levels. The process is severely hampered doing it as an absentee owner. Maybe that is not how things should work in a perfect world; however, we don’t live in a perfect world. Owning a successful business requires real time navigating bureaucracy and personalities.
Why not just walk away and realize that you made an investment that would not work for you. Move on to your next endeavor. There is a negative value to airing differences in media. It exposes the possible reason things did not work out.