 Clare
B. Richardson1 ,
2 , 3,
4, 5,
6, 7,
8,
9, 10,
11, 12,
13, 14,
15, 16,
17, 18
| I called Janna Rider at Dairy Queen headquarters
in the outskirts of Minneapolis and told her it was Arkansas 1953. The hills in
the background must be part of the Ozarks and there is a fire station in the picture
that says "Fire Dept. Company No. 4" so it must be a larger city in northwest,
Arkansas which I reasoned to have at least 4 fire stations. I later learned that
the company number and number of fire stations were not necessarily the same as
some company's replaced older ones and there were actually three fire stations
in Hot Springs at that time of the photograph. Janna said she just got word from
someone that the mural picture was in Coffeyville, Kansas. I found that suspicious
but possible because Coffeyville is located in the extreme southeast portion of
Kansas near Missouri and maybe it was possible for three cars to travel from northwest
Arkansas to southeast Kansas for some sort of car show centered around the old
Dairy Queen. But the hills in Kansas didn't seem likely. Janna e-mailed me another
picture taken at the same time and at first I thought didn't appear to be the
same location or event. One picture showed some sort of government dome in the
background with a spire. (Later I would find that this was actually two domes
with one eclipsing the other and the spire was actually the edge view of a cross.
That place turned out to be St. John the Baptist Catholic Church as viewed from
the Hot Springs Dairy Queen on West Grand). Because the two pictures she sent
me were different sizes and there were no hills in the other photograph, the location
didn't seem like the same place. Janna pointed out certain features that tied
the house in the right of the picture (later determined to be home to the Bennett's)
to both pictures and it was now clear indeed they were taken at the same event
in the same location. |
| Well it
was now February, 2002 now and my son, Brian, was on break from his year round
school schedule where he was off the months of February, June, and October, one
month at a time rather than three lumped together in the summer. This meant it
was time to travel with him and we had selected going to Wachita, Oklahoma to
see where major portions of our favorite movie "Twister" were filmed, then on
to Clear Lake, Iowa to see where Buddy Holly last performed and his plane crashed.
We would also add seeing Mall of America in Minneapolis and then go to see Mount
Rushmore in South Dakota before returning home. When Janna said the mural was
in Coffeyville, Kansas I told her that was directly in line with where we were
headed and would verify it. I was pretty sure Coffeyville, Kansas was going to
be flat and it was and certainly not the site of the photo. Still I verified all
two locations of known Dairy Queens in that town to totally prove the information
about the picture being Coffeyville was incorrect. I later found that the lead
came from a fax to DQ headquarters that said their Dairy Queen in Coffeyville
looked like the photo. Back in early 1950 every one of the nearly 1,000 Dairy
Queen's looked like the photo - they were all built to the same basic plan. The
person didn't make it clear that the location with the hills in the background
could not have been Coffeyville. |
|
Time went on with occasional correspondence by e-mail between Janna and myself
but no new insight into the two pictures. It was just my goal someday to seek
it out on a future trip back east whenever that was. I just always gazed for several
minutes at the beautiful mural every time I still took my son to that Dairy Queen.
Seems like a year went by and I decided to ask another employee where that picture
was. He responded "New Jersey." So even though I had told the store it was Arkansas
in 1953 nothing had really been accepted. I recall bringing my book and showing
the employee to set him straight. The store passed the test a few weeks later
when another employee said "Arkansas" but didn't know when, the employee said. |
|
In September 2003, I was preparing to go to Springfield, Illinois to attend a
Route 66 convention when out of the blue I got an e-mail from Janna Ryder asking
if I remembered her and she sent me two more pictures. She said that she was 99%
sure the location was Baton Rouge, Louisiana because some of the people in the
picture were identified as franchise holders from that city. Timing couldn't have
been more perfect, for my son had already finished scouts in January and I had
nearly forgotten about the mural since we rarely seemed to go to that Dairy Queen
anymore now that cub scouts was over. But I took a stand and told Janna that since
all three cars have Arkansas plates that I was betting with the 1% the picture
was in Arkansas and not Baton Rouge, Louisiana. "The managers in the picture may
be from Baton Rouge and they came up to help open the place or something but that
is not Baton Rouge!" I wrote her. I responded based on my knowledge of the town
being close to below sea level. In fact I also told her "now I'm on a mission
and I'm going to find the location of that picture as I am going to route my journey
to Springfield, Illinois through Arkansas." |
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