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Ray Braun
Hatteberg's People
Reporter: Larry Hatteberg
| March 12, 2006--He likes the smell of oil, dirty hands from changing tires....and the people he meets. Ray Braun of Edgerton, Kansas has spent 60 years at the same little gas station. It's a station that has been part of Kansas’s history. |
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“I went to the doctor the other day and he said ‘Ray, go home and fix a tire.’, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
Along highway 56, in Johnson County, Ray Braun has fixed thousand of your tires.
“ Yeah, always different people, something different every day.”
Like a picture from a scrapbook, Ray Braun’s 60-year-old service station in Edgerton, Kansas has weathered history and time.
“That’s the oldest ticket I got, June 1947.” |
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Back when gas was cheap.
“$.17.9, that’s what we sold it for $21.9. That’s one thing I got is a lot of memories.”
And it is those memories that has put Braun and this little gas station on the map….this man Richard Hickock lived in Edgerton… |
“Him and another guy that was on parole robbed about every business in town.
In Truman Capote’s book, "In Cold Blood" and the subsequent movie, Hickock became infamous for being one of two killers who murdered four members of the Herbert Clutter family in Holcomb,
Kansas back in the fifties. The day after the killings, Hickock returned to Braun’s gas station. |
“Fill ‘er up buddie.”
“And he was driving his dad’s car and that’s what made it funny to me. Cause his dad never let him drive that car since he was in high school.”
“Well them birds don’t know it, but it is their last day on earth.”
“Everybody round here knew the reason for the crime….he was so polite to his mother and he could get away with it and nobody would prosecute him.”
Ray Braun’s little gas station became part of the lore surrounding the In Cold Blood story…but today…that story and his station are becoming history’s footnotes.
“I may have to take that back off.”
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Ray’s old cat is constant….
Everything is worn, old but comfortable. What was yesterday, is still today…and will be the same tomorrow.
“You get 84 and you got to rest. I been blessed, but I’ve had a lot of help from a lot of good people.” |
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Ray has spent most of his life here….only took time out for a heart attack.
“I’ll probably come down here as long as I’m able. Time goes awful slow if you’re just settin’. You think you’d like to set….but boy when you have to…that’s the hardest work I’ve ever done.”
“Oh yeah, I’m well satisfied. I don’t know know what else you can get out of life….what else is there.”
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