[Music] From the biggest cities to small rural towns, car shows, rod runs and cruise nights have become a regular focal point of history, culture and community on the high plains.

[Music] Automobiles and machines are big in the history of western Kansas.

The Model T's and Model A's in the early days, everybody had one, although they weren't sometimes all that good.

You get into a farming community, especially in western Kansas, where everything is so distant, everybody drives.

Cars and automobiles, transportation has always been a big thing.

And so it's part of the culture too.

But today we're talking with Rick Moss, who is part of the Hoxie Hot Riders Club.

And Rick has, he has the genetics too, because his dad was a car collector.

Yeah.

And so Rick kind of grew up with the stuff too.

Rick and I were mentioning earlier about where east of Hoxie, there was a kind of an area that they called the Quarter on Highway 24.

Where on Sunday, drag racing was a big deal.

And so you had an eye out for the county sheriff, an eye out for the highway patrol.

But there were a lot of people that participated, and there was a lot of squealing tires and fast moving.

And the other thing with the automobiles, gas was cheaper.

And a lot of times, especially on Sunday afternoon, there wasn't anything to do.

So on Saturday night after the movie, on Sunday afternoon after church, there was a lot of dragging Maine back and forth.

And this was like a 50 car parade that went down one end of Main Street and Hoxie, Kansas, and back towards the other.

And maybe U-turning went back.

So it was always something going on.

Why don't you tell me how some of this history started with these Hoxie Hotrodders?

2007 is where it started, and it was a pretty small club.

I think we had maybe 13 members at that time.

To go to the drag races, we had a insurance, and it was getting pretty pricey.

So the Lions helped us out with that.

So we started in 2012 or 13, I can't remember, but we started with the Lions Club, and they helped us out with the insurance on that.

A lot of the civic organizations had folded because of the lack of population and things moving in.

And so the Lions Club was a very prominent thing in Hoxie, and they kind of dissolved as people got older.

And so these guys stepped in and secured it.

And since being at the Lions Club, we are helping the community in several different ways.

Of course, the car club has a car show every year.

We do a benefit Super Bowl.

We try to raise around $23,000 a year.

We give money to, like, the Mahanna Pharmacy.

We have a fund in there.

If people can't afford their prescriptions, we pay for that.

Same with the city office.

We have people that can't afford their city bills, so we pay for that.

Eyeglasses is a big part of the Lions Club.

Our car show in June.

It's the third weekend of June every year.

We started out with about 50, 60 cars.

Now we're up to over 200.

And we do it on Sheridan over here.

And we do drag races.

We get a lot of different varieties of cars.

We get anywhere from the 30s to the modern cars.

The car show, that's a big event.

It's turned out to be a big event.

And the thing that I like about it is it's also a kid's event.

We have free swimming.

We've got our own bouncy house now.

We've got our bone bouncy house.

We've got the bumper balls where the kids run into each other.

And then we have the train that goes down, up and down.

And we've got so big that it's gone down Sheridan five blocks.

And we've got to keep this going in the community.

And we're trying to encourage younger kids to come in.

We have a scholarship that we do for the high schoolers.

And it's either for eyeglasses, if they're going into optometry, or if they're going into mechanics or something like that.

It's going to be a scholarship for them.

And we try to encourage that part of it.

And as far as the car show goes, the people that come from other towns, they can't say enough about our car show.

How polite we are.

How welcome they are to come in.

And we've heard that over and over and over, you know.

And we try to make people welcome when they come in.

Bring your family, bring your kids.

And we're seeing more and more of that.

We're also getting a lot of family reunions during this time.

Because we're starting to get a lot of families coming in with their kids and bringing their cars.

And grandma and grandpa, this is a meeting place for everybody.

And they can have a good time.

Yeah, because family reunions and class reunions, they want something to do.

Yes.

And you have those people, I mean, we give each other a hard time.

You know, the Mopar guys give the Chevy guys a hard time.

And the Ford guys, you know.

What are you doing driving that piece of junk in here?

Get it out of here.

Did you live, did you tow it in?

Yeah.

I'm surprised it made it this far.

But no, it's good.

It's good.

[music] What are we going to shop now?

Are these yours or these?

Yeah, these are mine.

That's what I do for a hobby.

I guess you'd call it a hobby.

Well, a hobby is something that you enjoy, but it costs you money too.

These things are expensive.

Don't get me wrong to overhaul them.

Is there a lot of aftermarket stuff for this?

You almost have to go to somebody that is in the salvage business for car parts and stuff.

Well, like all that stuff on that rack over there, a lot of that's used stuff that I picked up along the way.

But then you take a car like this that's got the beautiful paint on it, and you stick that tail light on it that's got the scratches, and you're going, "That doesn't look good."

So you put a new one on it.

I guess I'm too picky because I like looking good when I get done.

Here's a nice orange car.

Yes, this is a 69 Roadrunner.

And the way you can tell it's a 69 is the reflectors on them are square or oblong.

If you see one, you know, "Well, that's a 69.

That's how I tell."

It is a Roadrunner.

The Roadrunner was after a cartoon that they had on TV in the Beep Beep Roadrunner.

They have a horn on here, and it goes, "I got the Beep Beep horn."

Beep Beep.

What I've done with this one is we put new floor pans in, trunk pan, went in there and rebuilt the whole infrastructure of it because of rust.

And the back end of the Roadrunner is kind of unique.

They've got the curved window in them, which are a booger to put the glass in.

Yep, the different body styles, you know, they changed them up a little bit.

Now, like the Dodge Charger, they didn't change those up as much.

If you look at this, the reason they, this body style, they call this the Coke bottle, because it looks like a Coke bottle when you, yeah, it comes in and it gets wide, you know, kind of like one of my pop bottle collection up there.

But they go in and out, and then it widens out, and they call that the Coke bottle.

You get to where you know.

Oh, yeah.

It's like I said, I'd see a car go down the street like that.

I'd say, "Oh, that's a 68 Roadrunner right there, a 69 Roadrunner."

I can tell which ones, which because, I mean, I grew up with them.

I know them.

Yeah, but they're going a lot slower than what you remember.

Yeah.

And I do have a purple Cuda that's a 73, 440 with a six barrel in it.

Anyway, I have to wipe the drool off that car every time.

The high school kids just seem to love that car.

And I've got, well, there's two in the museum at Hill City, and if you get a chance to go to the Hill City Museum, that's a nice little museum over there.

It is.

I've got a 41 Willys in there, and then another black Charger over there, a 69.

They've got some cars in there that are Hollywood cars that maybe you've been in there.

Yeah, I have.

And the thing about the Hill, the car museum at Hill City is they rotate out, in and out.

So it's always new.

My name is Phyllis Weller.

I'm the treasurer of the Graham County Auto and Art Museum here in Hill City, Kansas.

I'm here with one of our board members, Ray Toll.

We've been open now since April of 2021.

We've had about 3,000 people come through the museum of 20, representing 29 states and four foreign countries.

So, you know, what we try to do here is have a great history of automobiles.

You'll see some great ones here, some very unique ones here, and that's what we try to have here in the museum.

We rotate them out every year, so you get a fresh set of eyes on new cars.

We have one gentleman that was born and raised here.

His name is Steven Tebow, and he has five cars currently in the museum right now.

He has a private collection in Boulder, Colorado, but he's been very gracious to us with exchanging out some very rare cars.

Currently, we have a 1951 Mercury that was previously owned by Buck Owens.

Right now, we have a Kaiser Deren, which is very rare.

In 1954, they made 470 of these, I think.

And then on the front, this grill didn't allow enough air to cool the car, so it has a dam down underneath here that collects air and takes it up in there to cool the car.

And it was an efficient system because before they got that figured out, they were running hot.

But a pretty unique car.

And then the door, pocket doors, that's how they close.

It actually comes out to here and then pops out flush right at the end.

Just before it latches, it pops out there.

See how it popped out?

This one, I ask everybody to guess what it is when they come into the museum, and so far, nobody can guess yet because it has absolutely no markings on it.

But it's a custom-built 1941 Ford.

We have an Edsel, sweet car, really sweet car.

We've had lots of unique cars that Steven Tebo owns that he has been very generous in swapping out.

But as we go into the back room, you'll see all of those are locally owned.

This Impala up here is owned by a friend of mine in Hoxie.

He puts it in the Hoxie car show almost every year.

I would guess whenever I work here, which I always ask people what their favorite car is, I would say the biggest percentage of the time it's been people who picked this white Impala out.

Four years of hard work to make that car.

But there's... it's 327 four-speed.

It's all original as far as parts.

So, beautiful car.

And that's a 47 Studebaker, what they call the business coupe.

They didn't make very many of those.

There were 3165 of this model made.

Yeah, pretty unique.

When Dan Lewis originally bought it, he shares the history of the restoration with us in a picture album.

And, you know, it was not in very good shape when he got it, obviously.

But anyway, now you can see what it's like now.

And when Dan takes quite a few car shows and when he's ready to go to a car show, he just hops in and drives it to the car show.

It's not a trailer queen.

He drives it.

So, garners a lot of attention to any show he goes to.

So, this car is owned by Fred Pratt here in Hill City.

In 2019, he came to me and said, "We need to start an auto and art museum in Graham County."

It was at least two years in the making before from that time frame to when we opened up the museum.

But then this is what we have now.

But anyway, this is one of his cars that is in the museum.

And then this pickup here was some high school kids who stored this over at Moreland when they had school over at Moreland, which they no longer have, but they did this in the shop over there.

It's an older restoration but a beautiful pickup.

They did a great job.

This is 1924 and 1925 Model T Fords.

They both were used in the movie Paper Moon.

They're owned by the McWilliams Brothers from here in Hill City.

And actually both Jess and Everett volunteer here at the museum.

And this is a 26 Ford Model T. It's owned by one of our Hoxie contributors again.

And it also was used in the movie Paper Moon as a prop vehicle.

This is a fabulous car and it's had one owner in its lifetime and it's Ray.

So, he bought it new.

It's a beautiful car.

I bought this car brand new in 1969 when I was in the Army at Superior, Nebraska.

Couldn't afford it when I bought it, but give a big whopping $3,200 for it.

So, you don't see too many of them.

This 69, they started making them in 68, changed the body style in 70, and it's got 52,000 miles on it.

Original interior, original engine, numbers, matching.

The wheels and tires are different now, but I do have the original wheels yet.

It's a big block, four speed air conditioning.

And Ford said in 1969 they only made 100 of them.

Well, this article in Hemings Muscle Magazine said, this expert, he said, "I don't think they made that many because he'd only seen one."

And I didn't even realize that until I read the article.

This car is owned by Judy Romy.

She's from Moreland originally.

She was a Moreland, Kansas girl.

She took this car back and forth to Hayes when she went to college.

And she kept this car over the years and had it restored her and her husband, Jerry, and had it restored its beautiful restoration on it.

And it's 1953.

So she got it in, her dad bought it for her in 1954.

And I just love, I mean, just look at the grill on this thing.

It's a piece of art.

You know, like, say, I mean, you just look at that grill.

Now look at that.

You can take that grill out and put it up on the wall, and somebody say, "Man, that's a piece of art."

And it is.

And that's not a Cadillac.

That's a Chevy.

I mean, it's a, and they put that kind of effort and quality.

Like I say, they could just take it out and put it on the wall, and it'd be a piece of art.

And it was on a car.

So it's just the character of the vehicles, I guess, from that, you know, back in the day.

They all had a lot of character.

[music] The history of the cars themselves, I guess we're going through a transition period because my dad's generation are gone.

The 30s are not as popular as they were.

Now we're getting into the 40s and 50s that these are the cars that the people wanted.

In my year, I went to the 60s, 70s, and pretty soon, you know, we're going to get another 10 years.

There was a car you wanted all of them, I think.

The reason that's advanced is the teenage car.

When you were a teenager, what car you wanted?

My dad loved the 50 Chevy, and he had two or three of them.

And that's all he talked about, 50 Chevy.

He said, "I don't care about a 50 Chevy."

That was a 69 Roadrunner.

69 Charger.

But, yeah, he was in love with it.

It's just the era.

You know, the history of the era, I guess, is who wants what car?

That is what we want today is what I wanted back then.

The car I wanted in high school is I wanted a 69 Dodge Charger, but I couldn't afford it.

Now that I've gotten a little bit older, and that's what everybody is up against now, is they can afford these cars now, and going through our era, everybody wants a 69 Dodge Charger.

I mean, that was the car to have.

And that's kind of the history of what, and the Mustangs, you know, the Shelby, the Shelbys, whoo, they're up in the millions of dollars, some of them, but, yeah, and people have those memories, and they are collectors.

So a lot of people are buying them for the historical value, but they're also buying them for investments, too.

As far as restoring these old cars, it is history.

If you go to any junkyard around, you'll see a rust bucket, and I'm talking rust bucket.

These things, when they came off the factory line, they were rusting out.

They had rust on them.

And they drove hard.

I mean, they weren't garage queens.

They were drove, and through the years, when you got, like this Charger, for example, in 69, that was a $2,500 car.

Yeah.

It was expensive.

That was expensive.

$2,500, then was a lot of money.

And now that we have restored it, this car now can fetch anywhere between $70,000 to $100,000.

People are wanting these cars.

The Chargers are popular because of Duke's of Hazard.

They wrecked...

The General Lee, and they wrecked a lot of the General Lees and stuff.

So there are fewer and fewer and fewer of these cars around, and then any bandit car that you see...

I was going to say Burt Reynolds.

Yeah, Burt Reynolds car.

The bandit cars, people love them.

My brother's got one, and if you see one, you know what it is.

They're harder to find parts for, too, and that's the problem that we're running into.

They remanufacture a lot of parts, but a lot of them, they don't.

You have to be somewhat creative when you build these cars because there may be a rust spot in the inner fender or something.

So you cut that out, and you weld a patch in there if you can't get the piece.

But a lot of cars, what you see on the outside, there's more on the inside that there's more creation to than actually what you see.

There's an older gentleman that comes to our car show every year, and he built his own car, and he won best of show twice.

He's got a flathead, and it's a beautiful car that he built himself, and he's very humble about it.

Anyway, he told one of our members, he said, "If you give me best of show next year, I'm never coming back to this show again."

So he's never won best of show again, but it's a beautiful, beautiful build and a beautiful car.

I mean, there's a lot of builders around here that are really good at what they do in their craft, but when you get them done and you get them back together, that is history.

John Steffen, I'm from Cunningham, Kansas.

This truck was in my family all my life.

It was my dad and my uncle came back from World War II, and it was their farm truck, and they hauled wheat down with it for a long time.

You know, it had a 200 bushel bed on the back of it, wood bed, and we took this cab off and set it on a S-10 pickup, fixed it up, and repainted it.

And I have a friend there in Pratt that helped me do it.

He'd done several pickups, and they're are a lot of work, and there's a lot of work up and down this show of people who put a lot of time in these things.

There's a story behind every one of them, and there's a lot of guys in gals, been a lot of night working on these things.

I guarantee you, after work, and it's just kind of a passion people have.

It's a lot of fun.

You get to meet a lot of good people.

This is a great show up here at Hoxie.

It really is.

We here at Hill City started a car show two years ago.

The first year we had 77 cars, the next year we had 86 cars.

So, to start out with, I think we had a really good representation from all of northwest Kansas.

We had people come from Colorado, from Nebraska, one from the Kansas City area, and several from western Kansas.

When you come to the car show, you'll see all sorts of cars, from ones that are being restored all the way up to these pristine cars.

And it's just a really cool gathering.

And in these small communities, it's just a way of bringing people together and having a good time.

Waukeene has them.

Oakley's Goodland has one in the fall.

Atwood, of course.

Norton has one.

Phillipsburg has one.

And oh, and Stockton.

Well, you just start talking and every town around it seems like they're trying to get these car shows going and stuff.

And they are being real successful because there's a lot of great cars out here in northwest Kansas.

And everybody wants to take their car around and show it.

And it's got a lot of pride in their cars and the work and everything that they've done.

A lot of money, too.

So, I think that's a lot of the reason why it's caught on so much.

The people that have these old cars, they have memories in these cars.

This is the first date I had in this car.

And you talk to people going up and down there, "What's special about this car?"

"Well, this is one my dad had and he handed it down to me."

I've talked to so many people that have been going through the car shows and I said, "Oh, I wish I had my car back that I had in high school."

You hear that all the time.

So, there's a lot of tradition in the cars that they have stories behind the car itself, not just the car.

It's the people and the car.

And that's what I like about it.

[music]