Gasoline Alley by Jim Scancarelli for November 13, 2023

Lots of places for you guys to get into a “tangle”!

Fat boy Slim must be asleep in back.

Joe and Rufus have motored into Mr. Scancarelli’s neck o’ the woods.

Slim must have been bounced out of the back a hundred miles ago, there’s no way he could still be sleeping through city traffic.

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We have us a three-handed update for the 13th. Rufus, Timber, and Bob Wyer feature today.

I like Charlotte’s airport. It has Bojangles Chicken, where I bought a meal to eat on the plane.

My interest peaked up when I saw this one! My niece lives in Charlotte and used to work in that building with the triangular shape on top. Not a bad rendition of the Charlotte skyline!

Are they going to drive through all the cities in America?

Well, considering that they were in the woods just outside Gasoline Alley and now they’re coming into Charlotte NC, I guess we know where Gasoline Alley is!

So, the “277” referred to last week is auxiliary highway of I-77 in Charlotte, NC. But, what was the “66”? Could it be an uncolorized sign for I-66 in Georgia?

Okay, given the context of Charlotte… NC State Route 16 runs southeast towards Charlotte and becomes I-277 just before the big interchange of I-277 and I-77 somewhere north of Charlotte.

As if we needed any further evidence that the Frank King vision of “Gasoline Alley” is totally dead, we have Jimbo’s not-so-bright idea to relocate GA to Charlotte. Sacrilege! From the 8/25/22 Monroe County Herald: “Gasoline Alley was the nickname for Superior Avenue in Tomah [Wisconsin, where King grew up], back in an age when automobiles were becoming popular and you could find a gas station on almost every corner … hence, Gasoline Alley. After graduating from Tomah High School in 1901, Frank King moved to Chicago, where he began as a cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune. In the corner of his cartoons, he would print “Gasoline Alley,” for his hometown of Tomah, Wisconsin.”

Slim said he’d just come FROM delivering tires in Charlotte.

So Rufus drove the wrong way all the way back to where he just came from!

Well,there’s hotel rooms in Charlotte,assuming nobody recognizes The Disaster Boys

I imagine that the long, long time readers of Gasoline Alley must know of some reference in the strip’s history as to just exactly where the Alley is. I never would have guessed North Carolina, though. If there was indeed a specific geographical reference to it at some point, I’d be curious.