The Little Apple 071810

The next planned stop on my trip was to the Little Apple: Manhattan, KS. When I was in college, I spent about a year in Manhattan. Granted, only about 6 months was I in school, the rest of the time was spent trying to make enough money to go back. It's amazing how expensive college is when you have to pay as you go.

This picture is one of the views I saw a lot the last 6 months I lived in Manhattan. As I drove back into town from St. George, KS, I would see the mountain and water tower. (But I'm getting ahead of myself...)

I also went scouting on my trip into Manhattan. I really wanted to see if I could find the places where I used to live and work. Although it's been more than 10 years since I had been back there, I don't think I did too bad. Well, okay, I got lost a couple of times and ended up driving for a while on a wrong road out of town... and another very nearly "off roading" road, I don't think I did too badly.

1021 Vattier: This was.... well, the location of the first place I lived in KS. It looks like it's now owned by K State and is used as off campus apartments for the students. When I was there, it was a big blue house with white trim. There was a cute porch out front (that I don't think I ever used.) The entrance I used was near the back side of the house. It was home to not only myself, but also 4 other co-eds. (What can I say, it wasn't my choice to co-habitate in a house with boys also. But I didn't have much of a choice. The owners would sign leases for the individual rooms. We didn't get to pick.

But, this was the house where we had quite the interesting adventures. If you can call it that. The guys who lived upstairs were slobs (sorry Jeremy). We had to deal with their bathroom over flowing, a termite infested couch, some flooding, and probably various other "disasters." It was a good time though. From there, my roommate Michele and I decided to move into a trailer park.

I think when we signed the lease, we were under the impression that the park was still in Manhattan. Much to our chagrin, the address was actually considered in St. George, KS. St. George is this teeny little town, about 5 more miles up the road from where we lived. Which makes it about 10 miles from Manhattan (if memory serves correctly. Fortunately the park hadn't changed too much, so after a miss-turn getting there, I found the trailer Michele and I lived in... thankfully looking the same as when I left it.

3884 Chestnut: I have never considered myself "trailer trash"... but I think living here made me come pretty close. My favorite memory from this place was when Michele and I realized we had to mow the grass. Naturally, we didn't have a mower, so had to borrow one from the office. The office was clear on the complete other end of the park from where we lived. I would almost say it was too far to walk, except that we could have managed it, if we really wanted to. But we didn't. So, we took Michele's Camero to the office... she drove back while I hung out the back of the car (her trunk was open, while I sat in it) and I dragged the mower behind the car. Picture it: I'm sitting there, with my legs dangling out the back of an old style (kinda junky) Camero, dragging a lawn mower. Awesome!

After I found my places of residence, I was on to trying to find my places of employment. The house and trailer might have been easy to find (had I used my GPS) since I already knew the addresses. I didn't know what the addresses were for the places I worked... So I was really driving blind now.

KHCA Angel 95 was my favorite of the jobs I worked at in Kansas. I got to be an on air DJ as well as the music manager for the station. Which meant I got to pick the music that was played on air.

Not bad for a sort of college student!

This picture (right) is an outside view of the studios. (I happened to be in Manhattan on a Sunday, which is when Angel is basically closed.) The window on the right corner of the building is a studio used for editing and clips that were used for shows later. The other two windows consist of the main, on air studio. This is where I spent most of my time at Angel.

Funny enough, right next door was an answering service. (As in telephone answering service. It's actually down a hall on the opposite side of the building from these windows.) I worked there for a short time while at the radio station. Lets just say the owner and I didn't exactly see eye to eye. I was actually known to run down the hall to help fix problems when I knew another DJ wasn't around... while at work on the phones. I didn't exactly last long there.

When my stint at the answering service came to an end, I still had to find work elsewhere. (I SOOOO love working two consecutive jobs.) I found a job at a Dara's Fast Lane (gas station). At one of the locations I worked at, I remember asking a gentleman to take his cigarette outside. No, there weren't any signs up either way, I just decided that I didn't want to breathe in what he was blowing out. Lucky for me, I found out after the fact that he was the owner's father. Whoops. Not long after that, I was moved to another location... this time a little ways out of town. (Maybe it was one that the father didn't frequent, at all...)