Page 138 - Been There… Done That!

Gary Graham
bars, I learned that, for the most part, they traveled to Columbia, about sixty miles from Sedalia, to go out for an evening. To me, that was a long way to drive after drinking and all the negatives that go with it, not that driving any distance after drinking was acceptable. I talked with my wife and told her that if we could find the right building, we could make one hell of an impact on Sedalia and with my experience in the bar business, it would work. She was not excited to say the least, but we moved forward with a plan.
After a lot of work and not listening to the naysayers, we opened Cruisers on Thanksgiving Eve, 1990. It was hard to believe the crowd and lines waiting to get in. I put everything I had into that club with all my years of experience. It was more like something people would see on the West Coast. I put a 1957 Chevy in as the DJ booth and a 1957 Metropolitan at the entrance. I had traded a few classic cars along the way and liked that idea for a theme. One day a man I knew, whose name was Glen Wigglesworth, called to say that in his upcoming auction in Kansas City, one of the cars in the auction would be a 1955 Lincoln Capri convertible once owned by Marilyn Monroe. Figuring that I probably couldn’t afford it, we decided to go to the auction anyway. Glen told me we should come up the night before because the forecast predicted a severe ice storm. We checked into a hotel right across from the auction site and it was good that we did. When we got up the next morning the amount of ice was unbelievable. We could hardly walk across the street, let alone drive. I met Glen at the door and my question was, “Is there even going to be an auction?” He replied that there was and we might have a chance to get Marilyn’s car as KCI was closed, so Richie
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