Max McCoy, Kansas Reflector

The visitor center at Baxter Spring is a restored 1930 gas station along historic Route 66. (Photo by Carol M. Highsmith / Library of Congress) By Max McCoy Kansas Reflector On warm nights when my bedroom window was open I could hear the endless stream of vehicles on Route 66. We lived in a small house at the east edge of Baxter Springs and across the street from my window was a pasture and on nights when there wasn’t any wind the sound of escape — the rushing of tires, the shifting of gears,...

The sun sets, as seen from the side of the road west of Meade on Nov. 4, 2025. (Photo by Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector) By Max McCoy Kansas Reflector This is a story about a car. And of time, memory, and knowing when to let go. On the last long trip in our old Jeep I topped a hill west of Meade in southwest Kansas one evening and was buffeted by the wake of a double tractor-trailer going the opposite direction. Trucks on that stretch of U.S. 54 Highway don’t dawdle, and the turbulence rattled my...