Picking the Kan-Okla 100 Mile Highway Sale

The 8th Annual Kan-Okla 100 Mile Highway Sale has begun.

An Eagle reporter is spending Friday along the Kansas route of the sale and sending dispatches, starting in Independence.

3:15 p.m., last stop, Caney

On a side street in Caney, one of the Kansas towns participating in the Kan-Okla sale, 48-year-old Michelle Sullivan was scrubbing on a mint green Chambers gas stove sitting on a trailer Friday afternoon.

She’s asking $300 for it.

If you were a movie-set guy who wanted the perfect kitchen stove for a late 1930s to early 1950s film, this is your stove. It’s a quiet, sophisticated shade of mint green that catches your eye. Sullivan says it has all of its original parts, including the stew pot. And it’s a Chambers: There is a universe of people who worship Chambers stoves and share information about how to keep them going. They swear by the quality.

So what is this stove’s story? According to Sullivan, it came out of a farmhouse near Sedan. She thinks it’s a 1936 to 1941 model. She got it several years ago and used it for awhile.

“I still like the look of it, but why have it sitting around if I can’t get any use out of it?”

Whoever gets the stove will need more than two strong backs to move it, Sullivan and her friends said.

That mint green covers some very heavy metal.

1:45 p.m., in Tyro

Tyro is a tiny town west of Coffeyville on U.S. 166, so it’s not every day that a Californian shows up early to your yard sale. Then again, the yard sale is along the Kan-Okla sales route.

Even before 73-year-old Mandy Blackburn could set up her items in her sister’s yard in Tyro on Thursday, a California man came up ready to buy.

“He was mostly interested in old toys, and that’s what he bought,” Blackburn recalled Friday. “I had an Evel Knievel doll, and boy, he got that in a minute!”

Thursday was the day before the official sales days, Friday and Saturday. But people who collect or deal know that the trick is to get there before other buyers swoop in on a coveted collectible.

Was Blackburn worried that she sold the doll of the daredevil stuntman for too little, considering how quickly the Californian snapped it up?

Blackburn didn’t hesitate before laughing and replying. “No. I just wanted to get rid of it.”

Californians weren’t the only out-of-staters coming to the Kan-Okla sale Friday. In Tyro, Blackburn also saw license plates from Arkansas, Missouri and Texas.

12:30 p.m., leaving Coffeyville

One of the busiest stops at the sale Friday is Punk’s Junque, just west of Coffeyville on U.S. 166.

At one of the tables set outside the shop, 89-year-old Clyde Gatewood was selling everything from old fruit jars to country-western memorabilia.

He’s been going to large estate auctions and buying and selling since around 1958. “Wife and I, we have a ball doing it,” he says. Now, the World War II veteran says, “We don’t like to travel too far (to auctions) ’cause we’re getting older.”

He likes all kinds of old things, but especially country-western and Native American.

What is his favorite find over the years? Some “good Indian pottery,” he says. As he recalls, it was Navajo. “It was good stuff, and it was signed.” He sold it to a doctor.

10:15 a.m., on the way to Dearing:

Oh, boy. This is a place where you have to stop and look.

It’s an old white farmhouse with a picket fence and lawn ornaments. Out in the side yard: Old dark green, embossed pop bottles on tables. The rusty remains of an old bicycle. Ancient grinding wheels on metal stands, the stone edges worn down by use.

It’s John Wade’s place, south of Independence. Wade, 64, has been picking through and collecting junk and antiques for three decades.

A man with a British accent is about to drive off, in a hurry to find the next pile of rusty gold. He’s Alan Green of Rose Hill, who drives a tall white van like the pickers on the TV show use.

“With a little knowledge, you can find some wonderful things out here,” Green says. “This is fun, and it’s also a picking vacation.”

9:15 a.m. Starting in Independence

At 9:15 a.m., a few out-of-towners had set up at one spot, a parking lot off the town square.

Madge Blackburn, of Lawrence, was displaying some of her jewelry and small decorative items, including cowboy boot key chains.

Kay Jones, of Neodesha, was selling golf balls, $5 a dozen, in egg cartons from the back of her SUV.

The show is Friday and Saturday. Signs and banners help mark the basic sales route, along U.S. 166 and 169 in Kansas and U.S. 60 and 75 in Oklahoma. The route connects these Kansas towns: Caney, Coffeyville, Dearing, Independence and Tyro; and these Oklahoma towns: Bartlesville, Copan, Delaware, Dewey, Lenapah, Nowata and South Coffeyville.

The sale includes individual garage sales, citywide yard sales, group sales and more than 30 antiques shops. The idea is that people can go from sale to sale without having to drive too far between spots.

This story was originally published September 11, 2015 at 11:52 AM with the headline "Picking the Kan-Okla 100 Mile Highway Sale."