Road trip.

For five summers after I graduated from high school I worked for the Kansas Turnpike Authority as a relief toll collector. Mostly the job was to fill in for the veteran collectors who were on vacation, and also to provide additional help for the summer traffic increase. I worked four different stations, three in Wichita and one in El Dorado. It was interesting work, sometimes. Dealings with the public are always that way. The summer before I graduated I also worked for the KTA, but that time as a guard-rail painter. That was a whole lot less interesting but it was nice to be outside. At least I got a nice tan out of it.

But in the toll booth it was a bit more demanding. You had to know the tolls, of course. And you had to know how to 'class' vehicles as they approached, always by axle count which was checked by a treadle in the lane next to the booth where the car or truck passed. Also you had to be good at handling cash, and a lot of it. Not huge amounts of money--although some days the take was pretty good--but always a weighty volume of coins and one-dollar bills. I spent many afternoons and evenings rolling quarters to send to the bank. And then, you had to be conversant in directions, mileages to everywhere and where to get a good meal.

There were lots of characters out there, besides just the travelling public. The very head of the KTA, the Chief Engineer-Manager, was a tall, grey-haired, distinguished-looking man by the name of L. W. Newcomer, a man with political connections, savvy, and a fierce loyalty to his alma mater, Kansas State University. It was no accident that many of my fellow guard-rail painters were high school kids who had athletic ability and had expressed an interest in K-State. Bill Fitzgerald and I were the lone KU enrollees. I guess L. W.'s savvy was so tuned that he would not discriminate, even against Jayhawks.

Mr. Newcomer often told this story which happened late one hot, still summer night. Much of it unfolded on the highway patrol radios which were also used to communicate to each toll booth. I was not on duty that night but I really wished I had been there to hear it unroll: In the wee hours, a middle-aged couple drove south from Kansas City toward the Oklahoma border. It was learned later that the wife was napping in the back seat. Needing to refuel, they stopped at the Belle Plaine service area a short distance south of Wichita. When the gentleman went into the service station office to pay for the gas, his wife apparently woke up, crawled out of the car and went in a different entrance to the service station to find the ladies' room.

So, yeah, the fellow paid his bill, went back out to his car and drove away. Shortly after the lady comes back out to find her husband and car both gone. She panics a little, and the attendants reassure her that they can call the highway patrol dispatcher and he can radio ahead to the South Haven toll gate to watch for her car. South Haven is the southern terminal and all traffic stops there to pay tolls before heading on into Oklahoma. They tell her the men at the toll gate will advise the husband that she is not sleeping in the back seat and to return to pick her up.

And as good as their word, armed with her description of the car the toll collector at South Haven spots the car in short order. "Hey," he tells the driver, "you left your wife back at the rest area when you got gas."

The man looked up and leveled his eyes at the collector. He said, "Hell, don't you think I know that?" and drove off into the night.

No, we never found out what happened after that, but it was old L. W.'s favorite story. I have no reason to doubt it actually happened because some people do very strange things. This certainly qualifies, and we will revisit the good old KTA another time as we are always looking for something strange to communicate!