When you look up Platte County, Missouri on the Google box, you are greeted with a small slide show of the highlights and landmarks around this beautiful county. These include the new KCI Airport and… um… uh… Park University and… um… uh… Argosy Casino? Sure, you can highlight a number of other features but when you compare that list to, say, Clay County which includes Worlds of Fun and the 84 Home Depots in Liberty, Mo. Folks, Platte County needs to seriously discuss taking more land.
I was thinking about this as I was traveling along 169 Highway – which basically marks the border between Clay and Platte. All the “good” stuff is on the east side of that highway. The golf range. The Hawaiian Brothers. The Chicken N Pickle. To the west? Well, my dentist is over there. Zona Rosa – the “poor man’s Plaza.” Weatherby Lake – the “poor man’s Smithville.”
It would only take a few hundred troops – maybe get one of those tank things that the Platte County Sheriff’s Office takes out to parades. We can take some of that land pretty easy. The old Metro North Mall area would crumble under our engagement. They wouldn’t know what hit them. We could add at least six QuikTrips to the county’s footprint.
Now, advancing the theater to the west would be a little more difficult simply because of the river. I don’t think Platte County owns any amphibious vehicles. So our only other options would be north or south.
If we take land to the north, that’s… uh… nothing really. We’d need to go pretty far to get St. Joseph and that really only nets us, like, a creepy mall and a “Saint” in our footprint name. So let’s look at other options at this point. We can’t really go into Jackson County because we know what kind of firepower they’re packing. Plus, we’d need to basically take over North Kansas City and Gladstone before we started thinking about advancing south into Quinton Lucasville. And going straight south would bring us up against that pesky river. And besides, that’s the Kansas side anyway. Do we really want to shed blood taking over Fairfax? Or Quindaro? We would absolutely lose resources in Quindaro.
So here is the plan, reader. We march at dawn. We attack to the east. And we don’t stop until Worlds of Fun is under our control. We will add Oak Park, North Kansas City, Staley and Winnetonka along with the Liberty schools to our ranks. We will add Chicken N Pickle, Smokehouse BBQ and the many strip malls of southern Liberty. We will take the Liberty square.
We will triple the number of casinos we have adding Harrah’s and Ameristar. We’ll leave Claycomo alone. Let that remain the only remnants of Clay County so they will never forget.
Trust me. I’ve lived in Clay County my whole life. These people won’t put up a fight. They’ll roll over like a dog in a car wash at any sign of trouble. Platte County needs to expand their footprint and they need to do it today. (And before you think this is a cockamamy plan, Ivan Foley, just think of how many more subscribers it would bring.)
Let’s go. We will get at least towards North Oak before a shot has even been fired. We will fly the Platte County flag atop the Mamba when the work is done!!
MOUNT UP!!
(Author’s note: I should really not write my column after taking my night time cough medicine.)