When Fred and Gay Mason opened their Gay Parita gas station in 1930, the highway it served was the great thoroughfare of the nation.
Built in the 1920s, the 2,400 concrete miles of Route 66 stretched from Chicago, Ill., traversing eight states on its way to Santa Monica, Calif. It carried men and women on the run, families on vacation, salesmen and con men. The ordinary and the famous, drifters and seekers, movie stars and gangsters followed its promises of adventure, romance and fortune.
In the 1930s, refugees attempting to escape the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl took to the road in droves, seeking better lives.
Everyone was looking for something, and all believed the Mother Road would lead them to it.
For many who lived along the highway, it was a road paved with gold. Gas stations, tourist cabins, restaurants and other businesses sprouted up to serve the thousands who rolled down the highway every year, and they flourished.
Gay Parita was among them.
From the station in the tiny hamlet of Paris Springs in Lawrence County, Mo., the Masons sold Sinclair gasoline, Royal Crown Cola and the sandwiches Gay put together herself.
They also offered other necessities of the road – dry goods, notions, meats and groceries. Travelers could shop or spread their lunches under a shade tree while their vehicle got an oil change, tire repairs or a diagnosis in a field stone garage just a few steps to the east.
For those weary of the road, cabins out back offered respite for the night.
Gay Parita served the public 25 years. Fred Mason continued to operate the station a couple of years after Gay died in 1953, but when a fire consumed the station in 1955, he did not rebuild. He retired to the rock dwelling on the property that had been Gay’s dream house. Fred died in 1960.
Then came the interstate highways, and the world followed its dreams along different routes. Route 66 faded away, except in memory.
Gary Turner remembers Route 66’s zenith – and he saw the beginning of it’s decline. When he was a kid, Gary’s family drove Route 66 every year, headed west.
“We were fruit tramps,” he said. “We’d go to California to pick cherries.”
On one trip, his mother convinced Gary’s dad to take a new turnpike through Oklahoma. The new road was smoother, faster and the miles seemed to melt away.
“We enjoyed this new ride, but we didn’t realize what we’d left behind,” Gary said. “We didn’t know it had happened, even.”
Today, Gary and his wife, Lena, live in Gay Mason’s dream house, having purchased the property several years ago – and soon after moving there discovered that in spite of more modern roads, Route 66 is still the highway of dreams.
The old 1926 stone garage, so obviously a relic of the highway’s golden days, often entices travelers to stop for photos – and with a hope of hearing some of its history. Gary found that most who stop are traveling the route not by chance, but by choice. They love the road as he does and are hungry for all they could see and learn.
“The people that come here, they say it’s the dream of their life to travel route 66,” Gary said.
For them, and for his own memories, Gary began rebuilding the Gay Parita station in 2006. The 10×16-foot wood frame building is not a duplicate of the original stucco design, which would have been more costly, but it is true to the styles of the era.
Gary’s son-in-law, Steve Faucett, designed the structure, and he and his son, Steve Jr., put it up, working on weekends. Antique “Mae West” gas pumps out front – named for their curvaceous shape – vintage vehicles and other accouterments add to the feeling of authenticity.
Since completing the station, the Turners have added a separate shop where they sell T-shirts and Route 66 souvenirs and books. A pavilion provides a shady spot and picnic tables where modern-day dream seekers can have a rest.
“We started with the station and one gas pump, and we just kept adding stuff,” Gary said.
What he hoped to create was a stopping point for travelers, where they would receive a living history lesson. What he hoped for was a place that would convey the romance and adventure of the legendary Route 66.
He got that and more.
Visitors today can relive the highway’s glory days not only by seeing genuine and reconstructed examples of its architecture, but through the vintage vehicles, photos, memorabilia, books and published articles Gary has collected. And, if he is in a storytelling mood – which he always is – listen to his own stories of the road.
The new Gay Parita was never intended to be a working station, and neither did Gary realize what it would become.
Five to six thousand visitors a year sign the guest books Gary keeps on a counter in the station – books that contain names and comments from people not just from the United States, but from around the world Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Japan, Scandinavia, Germany and South America.
One July day, a tour group of 16 motorcyclists, with riders from Australia and Portugal, arrived from the east at about the same time a group of 45 Scandinavians pulled in from the west. Both groups were traveling the length of the highway. Gay Parita is a regular stop for one of the touring companies, which has scheduled 24 stops there this year alone.
“I just can’t believe it,” Gary said, shaking his head.
Those who stop become part of an extended family, he said.
“They call and write,” he said.
And many return, time and time again.
“People seem to like it,” Gary said. “They keep coming back.
“They say it’s because I’m a character, but I don’t know for sure,” he pondered. “Do you think I’m a character?
“I try to be an ambassador for America and Route 66 and Missouri,” he continued. “I’m out there seven days a week, except when we go to the doctor or something. I don’t like leaving here.
“I like meeting the people. There are nice folks from all over the world,” he said. “Sometimes I get tired, but I still love the people. And I never know who’s coming next.”
Gary said he believes that people like traveling historic Route 66 because it is an adventure through time and history, and the romance of the road lingers.
“This was the Magic Highway,” Gary said of Route 66’s heyday. “That was the dream, to get on it and go.”
