Too Long in the Wind

March 2010

Bobby Wycoff: A Celebration of Life

[March 15]   Pat Croff, Bobby Wycoff's sister, sent her brother's funeral program from California. She wrote:

"It was a beautiful memorial. Bobby touched so many, many lives!

"The Methodist church is quite large and there was standing room only."

Also, Kerry Benefield of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat wrote an obituary that mentions his years in Pawnee Rock.

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The nearly invisible plaque

[March 15]   Ed Durall sent this note:

I was interested in the discussion of the Santa Fe trail plaque. Attached is a close-up of the corner of the old high school. There is an oval object attached there. I went to school for six years in that building and have no memory of that plaque, but as the picture shows,it certainly was there.

By the way, in the story of the homecoming picture, you refer to 1950 in the text, but the caption of the picture says 1954. Think anyone but me would notice?

[Thanks, Ed. I fixed the caption.]

Ed

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Bob Wycoff has died

Last year, Bob Wycoff sent this photo of his family's home in Pawnee Rock.

[March 12]   Bob Wycoff, who grew up in the small house in the northeast corner of Rock and Santa Fe and moved on to the Navy and eventually to a teaching career in California, died March 1.

Bob graduated from Pawnee Rock High School in 1947. He is survived by his twin, Billy, and sisters Patty, Vera, and Vena.

Bob was one of our first Friends of Pawnee Rock.

A mention of his death appeared in the Larned Tiller and Toiler and was sent to us by Janice Schmidt. Patty has written to say that she is sending more information about Bob's life.

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Hello, Alan Mead

[March 12]   Alan Mead was a year ahead of me in school, and he lived in the big house in the southwestern corner of Houck and Santa Fe until his family built a new place just south of there on a lot where a bunch of us youngsters previously played football.

Here's what he wrote Thursday:

I just found out about your web site and wanted to tell you that I have richly enjoyed "perusing your musings" and wandering through your photos. It brings back such warm memories of my youth and reminds me of a simpler time when city limits defined my playground and mothers, blocks away from my own home, were as apt to get after me as sternly as my own mother would -- and then call her to let her know what her son had done. Of course, when I returned home there was an additional serving of discipline waiting for me! What a time! What a town! There were things Pawnee Rock couldn't offer that other larger cities could, but I wouldn't trade my time growing up in Pawnee Rock for anything. Truly a community where neighbors cared for one another and could always be counted on for anything from a cup of sugar to a short-notice babysitter!

I remember your dad being involved with different things when I was as a youngster, but didn't really get to know him until he worked with us (Meco Construction) in the late seventies. His carpentry skills were second to none, and I learned a great deal from him simply by watching. I thought that I was a pretty fair carpenter, but I soon realized that his years of experience and knowledge had my piddly skills unmercifully beaten. It didn't seem to me that Elgie worked very fast, but when the day was over he had accomplished a large amount of work- proving that he not only knew how to work his trade, he knew how to work smart! I truly hope that he is doing well.

As for my wife and me, we have been married for thirty-one years, have three daughters, and are spoiling five grandchildren. I work in McPherson, KS for a major pharmaceutical manufacturing company. Our home is in Lindsborg, just fourteen miles north of McPherson. (I know that as a Kansas boy you are familiar with the area).

Keep up the excellent work, Leon. I look forward to catching up on the things I haven't yet seen on your site, and enjoying the daily additions you have in store.

Once a Brave always a Brave, Alan Mead

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Something to fix on the Rock

Pawnee Rock State Park's pavilion and monument.

[March 11]   Visitors to Pawnee Rock State Park know of the damaged area in the middle of the pavilion's roof; if I remember right, vandals burned a tire there and the heat overcooked the top of the concrete, which was poured in 1920.

One visitor, Bill Zimmer of Heizer, proposes a solution:

"The top floor of the Pawnee Rock pavilion needs a bag of concrete patch squeegeed into the developing problem -- not my problem, but would take only a few minutes and $$. Local direct action rather than getting the state hist. society involved, you know. A bonding/adheasive agent first, before the patch, but I don't know about these things.

"I live south of Heizer and like to bike to the Rock and the hills around the area."

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Tracking down a Santa Fe Trail sign

Paul Schmidt photographed doors at the Pawnee Rock school in 1952.

[March 10]   Barb Schmidt used her sharp mind and her dad's photos to make a bit of Pawnee Rock history visible. She sent some photos and this e-mail. Following it is a note from Larry Mix of the Santa Fe Trail Research site.

Here's what Barb wrote:

Recently you posted on pawneerock.org a couple photos of PRHS football players my dad (Paul Schmidt) took in fall 1952. The same day dad took those photos, he also took the two photos I am sending you now. One is a scratchy photo of a set of entry doors at the old Pawnee Rock High School building (with dad partially reflected in the window, showing off his best farmer's overalls!).

The other is a clear photo showing one of the Santa Fe Trail "oval signs," a topic you have covered in the past. For example, in your July 9 and 16 and August 2, 2007, blogs, you reported on the oval sign Gary Trotnic bought at an estate sale in Ellinwood and then sold on ebay to a buyer in New Mexico (thanks for posting a photo of Gary's sign in your Gallery 31 -- also, thanks for including a search engine on your huge website!).

I believe the oval sign my dad photographed in 1952 was mounted on a corner of the old PRHS building. If you look at the 1950s photo of the old high school in your Gallery 77 (sent by Ed Durall) and focus on the corner of the building about a third of the way from the left edge of the photo, it looks like an oval sign is hanging on the bricks. If you look at the oval sign my dad photographed in 1952, the sign is hanging on bricks similar to the bricks in the photo of entry doors to the school building that he took the same day.

Thanks to your earlier postings, I was led to Larry and Carolyn Mix's website for more information on the history of the Santa Fe Trail oval signs and learned:

"The Oval Santa Fe Trail Markers were placed on or near schools located along the Santa Fe Trail in 1948, by the American Pioneer Trails Association with Headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri. . . . The Association provided a plaque for every school along the Santa Fe Trail and suggested a dedication program for November 16, 1948. Students were to conduct the ceremony and give the addresses. They were encouraged to dress in pioneer costumes for the occasion."

I wonder if any of your older readers remember anything more about the oval sign that appears to have hung on the PR high school building?

Or recall the "dedication program," if there was one? Or dressing up in pioneer costumes?

Or perhaps someone has a copy of the 1948 PRHS yearbook and could check to see whether it has a photo or other information about the arrival of the oval sign?

And whatever happened to the PRHS Santa Fe Trail oval sign in later years?

Maybe there is a clue on the Mix website, which reports that "an antique dealer in Pawnee Rock" bought such a sign "at a garage sale in Pawnee Rock," then put it in his antique shop and sold it to a buyer who "then sold it to Ed Dowell, Ulysses, Kansas on November 17, 2002." The "PR sign" was sold again in November 2004 by a Kansas auction house to an unidentified buyer in Cedar Crest, New Mexico (slightly east of Albuquerque). Perhaps this sign was the PRHS oval sign?

And is there any chance the New Mexico person who bought Gary Trotnic's sign lives in Cedar Crest and bought both signs? (Probably not, but I can't help but wonder.)

Larry Mix responded:

Sure looks like the same building to me that the sign is hanging on. Thanks for think of us and sending us the photos.

I quote from your email: "Maybe there is a clue on the Mix website, which reports that "an antique dealer in Pawnee Rock" bought such a sign "at a garage sale in Pawnee Rock," then put it in his antique shop and sold it to a buyer who "then sold it to Ed Dowell, Ulysses, Kansas on November 17, 2002."

This is the logical story for the sign that is in your photo. Thanks again for thinking of us and using our site!

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Little feet begin a big journey

Dana Hines' birth certificate shows earnest little footprints.

[March 9]   Dana Smith Hines, who shares a timeline with me very closely, found her own birth certificate from St. Joseph Memorial Hospital.

She wrote:

"This set of my little fresh footprints shows no clue of the path they will take in life. Imagine that -- not a step yet taken at this point! Today, my feet have tread many miles, endured both happy and sad journeys, but still hold me up, thankfully!

"Here's to St. Joseph Hospital, which gave us this great remembrance of our first days on this earth.

"My certificate, like yours, was attached to a magazine which was full of articles about caring for the new baby! It's lots of fun to thumb through and read the articles and look at the advertisements. I'm thankful to have been born in that era -- makes me nostalgic!"

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It looks like Patty McCurdy

The Pawnee Rock High School homecoming queen and her court in 1950 (left to right): Charlie Aldrich, Merrilee Keely, Ralph Fry, Patty McCurdy, Lawrence Bright, Vivian Welch, Carol Stansbury, Lynn Welch, Frances Schultz, and Johnny Woelk.

[March 9]   Ed Durall, Pawnee Rock Class of 1954, did some research after seeing some photos in our collection:

"I was looking through the picture galleries and I can make an identification.

"In gallery 93 are two pictures from the 1950 basketball homecoming. One is of the whole court and one is of the kiss. I believe the "unidentified girl" is Patty McCurdy. I identified her from the pictures of the seniors in the 1950 yearbook."

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My life in one day

[March 8]   I woke up and went back to sleep. That was a mistake.

My second-sleep dream -- obeying the phantom logic of unconscious problem solving -- involved girls I had gone to high school with. I do not know why they came to taunt me now when so many of them ignored me 35 years ago, but the end of the dream left me in a sweat without even a remembered hug.

Now as then, I was but a moment's diversion in the hallway, and I grumped my way around the cabin.

For lunch yesterday, I burned my pizza.

I went on to do what I had promised myself as a weekend project -- look through cardboard boxes of Pawnee Rock stuff that sister Cheryl had rescued when Dad and Betty were going to toss it out a few years ago when they sold their place.

Deep in one box was a yellow plastic bag of the sort we get when we buy a stack of postcards. In it were a letter from me to Dad, a couple of my Pawnee Rock Informer newspapers from 1968 and 1971, a uncashed $10 check I wrote him in 1987, the 1908 fundraiser booklet Echoes of Pawnee Rock, a church history, the 1973 Lions Club contract with the Harlem Queens basketball team, and my high school graduation program. And there was my long-lost 1972-73 Macksville High School yearbook, in which I was pictured for all my activities during my sophomore year. The photo of the band includes the girls who took me on their little joyride earlier in the day.

The big, unexpected discovery was tightly encased in what looked like Saran Wrap. It was my birth certificate, and it was scorched.

The embossed certificate -- sporting my tiny inked footprint in the upper left corner -- was packaged with what looked like a promotional magazine from the hospital. Had there been a fire at home I didn't know about? Had the papers been tossed into Dad's woodstove at the shop and then rescued at the last moment in a fit of recognition or regret?

I held the package in the window light, suddenly fearing that I'd find a lie in the facts on which I had based my life. But my birthplace matched what my folks had told me, as did the minute, hour, day, month, and year of my birth. I read it again to be sure.

I wrote to ask Mom what she knew about the certificate, and she replied:

"It's very possible that a birth certificate was included in some sort of magazine-like gift from the hospital. That seems to recall a memory for me. This would have been kept with your baby book. I have no idea how it might have been scorched. I don't know if this is an official birth certificate, or if it's official when it is filed in the state office. Anyway, it must have been a shock to see it handled in such a disrespectful fashion."

Well, yes. However, . . .

I am grateful that Dad, at one time an indiscriminating keeper of things, protected pieces of my life during the years when I was too heedless to do that myself. What he really saved, I suspect, is partial answers to questions that come uninvited.

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History on the move

[March 5]   Larry Mix, who started the investigation into the Daughters of American Revolution monument on our share of the Santa Fe Trail, has found a lot of monuments.

Here's what he wrote yesterday:

I always have said that the only thing the DAR did wrong was they didn't put wheels on the markers. There isn't hardly any of them that haven't been moved at some time or another. I've found that when the markers were placed they were placed right on the trail. In your earlier email about it being on the northwest corner of Pawnee Rock in my judgment that would have put it right on the trail.

On the 19th of this month we are going to give a tour on the SFT for some of our people over here in SJ, one of the stops this time will be Pawnee Rock west through Larned and beyond. We have a elderly lady who is a member of the DAR and she gets a big kick out of seeing these markers and we just like to get the facts right. This will be the third trip we have had, the other two went east.

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Lions Club dinner is Saturday

But first -- do it today -- mail an 80th-birthday card to the lively June McFann.

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Tracking the DAR marker

The long-ago photo of the Santa Fe Trail marker placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution. It appears to be in the northwest corner of old Pawnee Rock, at the western end of Bismark Avenue. Larry Mix sent this photo.

[March 4]   Larry Mix is asking for our help with another bit of Santa Fe Trail history -- specifically the Daughters of the American Revolution trail marker that now sits at the entrance to Pawnee Rock State Park.

Here's what Larry, of the Santa Fe Trail Research Center in St. John, wrote:

"In the early 1906 DAR book I have on where the markers are set it states that it sat "At northwest corner Block 25, city of Pawnee, Barton County." Would that be where it is now?

"The reason we were asking about the DAR marker is that we have a photo of this marker and it doesn't match with where it is at now. If you look at the way it sits now, in this photo the Rock should be in the background but it isn't. Also the fence don't match any of the fences that are shown in early photo of the Rocks entrance, the corner is wrong.

"Guess inquiring minds just want to know! Thanks for your help anyway, some day we will get it figured out, maybe."

Northwest corner of Pawnee Rock, in the 1902 plat of the city. The DAR marker originally was in Block 25, very close to where the Santa Fe Trail ran after it passed the Rock and headed toward what is now Larned.

In the park's early days -- it was purchased in 1908 to become a park -- the monument was emplaced at the entrance. Larry Smith sent this photo.

Two men pose next to the DAR monument, most likely after it was dedicated in May 1912. Many elms were planted along the road to the park not long before the dedication. This photo was found in a batch taken around 1914, according to Don Ross.

On March 7, 1931, the DAR monument is visible at the extreme right of this photo of the park entrance. Larry Smith sent this photo.

The DAR marker in January 2005, tucked in by a lilac bush.

A close-up view of the marker in August 2006.

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Muscle memory

My ski trail through the birch and spruce forest and bog near Fairbanks.

[March 4]   The temperature warmed up to the 20s yesterday afternoon, so I put on my fleece shirt and pants and went skiing after work. It was the first time I had skied in a couple of years, and to my proud regret I used lots of muscles -- triceps, for example -- that don't get used in normal behavior. I didn't fall down in an hour of sweaty exercise.

Because it was also the day of the big basketball game between the beloved Jayhawks and K-State, I had to think of basketball practice at Pawnee Rock junior and senior high. We ran wind sprints -- from one baseline to half court and back, then all the way to the other baseline, then to half court and back, then all the way back to the first baseline. And we did the duckwalk.

The duckwalk is walking while you're squatting. It's a method for improving balance and thigh muscles, and it was effective at making boys walk the hallways like very sore ducks for the first week of practice.

That's how I expect to feel today, and with every ungainly step I will happily remember those long-ago afternoons in T-shirts and cotton shorts.

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Ring around the monument

A photo from the Christian Schultz family book shows the monument in 1914.

The Pawnee Rock spire, apparently before the pavilion was built in 1920.

Visitors to the park see the sights; the monument has its "ring. The year is not shown.

The wreckage in 1938.

[March 3]   Our friend Larry Mix of St. John (operator of the Santa Fe Trail Research site) wrote to ask to have a bit of Pawnee Rock history clarified. I wish I could do it myself, but I can't find the info and I'm hoping that one of you will have the answer.

The monument was erected in 1912, and it was tall and fair. In 1938, a storm knocked down the monument and broke it. Now there's a smaller spire decorated with illustrations.

At some point, a "ring" appeared around the spire. It wasn't there in the beginning, and it's not there now.

So here's what we need to know: When was the ring installed? And why?

Also, when were the carvings added?

If you know, please share with us.

The monument in 2006.

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Two views of Pawnee Rock

[March 2]   Larry Smith was browsing through the Kansas Memory site operated by the historical society and came across rare stereoscopic images of Pawnee Rock.

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Tomato stress

[March 2]   One recent summer when I was passing through Great Bend, I bought tomatoes and a watermelon at the farmers market in the library parking lot. The tomatoes smelled like they were fresh off the vine, because they were. I photographed the tomatoes because I was so happy to have them.

The tomatoes lasted a day, because I ate them right away.

Last night I bought tomatoes at Wal-Mart. I picked up a couple and gave 'em the sniff test, and they smelled just like red baseballs and felt like it too. Then I settled for the even-more-costly tomatoes with the vine attached, because the vine had a whiff of tomato about it.

The tomatoes lasted a day, because they rotted.

My advice -- and you can take this to the bank -- is to buy tomatoes that have never seen a shipping container.

When I was a kid, I loved tomatoes but by the end of July I was tired of weeding the garden and watering the vines. Now I wish very much to have another tomato summer.

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See the children run

[March 1]   I was zipping along through the countryside yesterday when up popped "Fields of Gold," a song I hadn't heard for quite a while. I tend to get wistful on 6-hour drives anyway, and this time the song seemed especially poignant.

The song is about lovers walking through barley, and it's easy for a Kansas kid to switch out the type of grain for one we're much more familiar with.

A field of ripened grain is a beautiful sight -- undulating waves of cereal wealth, the staff of life, money on the hoof for Pawnee Rock's farmers, the very color of wedding rings -- and worthy of lovely songs. Still, something makes us remember our particular field as from a distance, so that the rows upon rows of wheat blend into an ocean of color.

A field of gold is a sensuous metaphor for longing, although you've no doubt stood in a wheat field and have a more learned point of view. Unless you're completely inconsiderate of the farmer's efforts, you look down as you stride, leaving shoeprints in the tan dust and walking as much as possible in the furrows. Wheat up close is clumps of thigh-high dry shafts topped with heads reaching out with prickly fingers. The sunbeaten grain itself is encased in fibrous husks, and the grain is hard to our bite.

The lessening of wonder is an adult thing, I suppose, and it comes as we trade our sense of mystery for the certainty of knowledge.

But can't you and I still see ourselves as youngsters on the old farm, frolicking in the wheat before supper? In my longing for the happy moments of childhood, I like to think that I can play in fields of gold with both my heart and my eyes wide open.

Here are the final lines of "Fields of Gold," which was written by Sting and recorded (in the version I have) by the late Eva Cassidy:

Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the fields of barley
See the children run as the sun goes down
Among the fields of gold
You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in the fields of gold
When we walked in the fields of gold
When we walked in the fields of gold.

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Sell it

Advertise here to an audience that's already interested in Pawnee Rock:

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