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Too Long in the WindWarning: The following contains opinions and ideas. Some memories may be accurate. -- Leon Unruh. Send comments to Leon July 2008Robert Merten, bank director
The 1902 Barton County plat book shows that Robert Merten owned two and a half sections of Clarence Township, and other Mertens owned land as well. The following biography comes from the "Biographical History of Barton County, Kansas," which was published in 1912. Robert Merten
He continued in this business until 1865, when he went to Denver and spent one summer, after which he returned to St. Joe, Mo. Then he went back to the old home place in Iowa and in 1875 came to Barton County and in the following year brought his family to the new country. He was married May 1, 1861, to Miss Maria Becker and they are the parents of six children as follows: Albert N., who is farming in this county in Clarence township; Annie, who is now Mrs. A. B. Willcutt and resides in Clarence township; Mary, who is now Mrs. H. J. Campbell, also resides in Clarence; Frank, resides on the old home place in this county; Edwin M., who lives in town and is in the farming business, and Susie, who is now Mrs. E. E. Bohl, and lives in Ottawa, Kansas. When Mr. Merten arrived in this county he bought railroad land and from time to time added to his holdings and now owns in this county 320 acres of land and also owns 700 acres in Pawnee and Rush counties. Mr. Merten is vice president of the Citizens National Bank of Great Bend and is a director of the Pawnee Rock and Hoisington State banks. Since his retirement from active farming he has occupied a fine residence at 2423 Forest avenue in Great Bend. Mr. Merten has held township offices and served as county commissioner for one year. He has always taken a leading part in the development of the county's resources and has been closely identified with its business and agricultural interests. All of his land in this county is being worked by renters and is in a high state of development. The voice of perspective[July 31] Pawnee Rock native Cheryl Unruh spoke yesterday on Kansas Public Radio about vanishing points and perspective learned partially at the table of the late Ruth Deckert. Find her recording here. A taste for travel
[July 30] Last Sunday was a rare time for me -- a weekend with a pause between free-lance projects. So I fulfilled a promise to son Sam and took him fishing. We chose to go after pink salmon in Hope, a gone-bust gold-mining settlement about a hundred road miles from home. Sam, wearing his first set of hip waders, hooked three salmon and was a pretty cheerful fellow. On the spur of the moment, we decided we'd eat supper in Seward, about 70 miles on south of Hope. We hadn't been there for a year and this would give us more Dad-Sam time and a chance to walk on the docks with the big fishing and tour boats. We ate at Sam's favorite Chinese restaurant, and he even tried something new -- a taste of my spicy chicken and horseradish dippin' sauce, a mistake he says he'll never make again. In Kansas, this little trip would be like driving from Pawnee Rock to Salina after lunch and then deciding to drive to Manhattan for supper (although our trip was somewhat more forested). I imagine we've all made trips like that. By the time Sam and I headed home from Seward, it was 10 p.m. and there were intermittent showers and only a couple of hours of daylight left. Not wanting to fall asleep at the wheel and tired of soft drinks and clean-the-bathtub-strength tea, I did something for the very first time: I bought myself a cup of coffee. I'm not a coffee drinker by habit; in fact, my first cup was cooked in an aluminum pot on a Boy Scout campout along the Arkansas River and served in a green plastic Scout cup, and in the intervening 38 or so years I've tasted coffee only twice. Some people don't like broccoli; I don't like coffee. And I didn't like this coffee despite the happy recommendations of the women behind the counter at the gas station. It sat like sips of marsh water in the back of my mouth, and the aftertaste was worse. Sam, who is 12 and likes to mix himself a cup of joe (one part coffee, one part milk, one part sugar), volunteered to show me how to make it taste good next time. But I will say this: I did not yawn once on the three-hour drive home. I did not get tired until 3:30 a.m. Coffee may be nasty stuff -- it hasn't improved in almost four decades -- but I can see now that it has a purpose on this earth. A nice sidelight to this trip was going to Hope and Seward, the Kansas versions of which most of us are familiar with. Both Sewards were named for William Seward, who spearheaded the drive to buy Alaska (1867). He was the secretary of state during the Lincoln years. Gas 'n' golf[July 29] Need to fill up? Count yourself lucky, or not. Here's what the cheapest unleaded gas costs in these 14 cities, according to gasbuddy.com:
Golfer from Larned: Many of us have heard of Ralph Terry, who is from Larned and who pitched baseballs for the Yankees. He had style with a golf ball, too -- and he taught some of his appreciation for the game to Larned's Bruce Vaughan, who grew up and last Sunday won the Senior British Open. Here's a story about Bruce in the Hutch News, which claims him for Hutchinson. Earl Allen Schmidt's 80th birthday[July 28] One of Pawnee Rock's longtime-favorite men is having a big birthday party. Janice Schmidt gives us this notice: "Earl Allen Schmidt will be celebrating his 80th birthday on Saturday, Aug. 2, at the First Methodist Church in Great Bend, 2123 Forest, with an open house from 1:30 to 4 p.m. Come have cake and punch with Earl." Apparently it was my dream home[July 28] Isn't it nice that mothers have the kindest way of saying their kid is, well, perhaps not nuts but certainly on the wrong path? My mom, Anita Byers, read the posting yesterday about my memory/dream of a gray house north of the tennis court and sent this note: "That's a most interesting dream! I don't remember a house ever being there, or any sign of a foundation. But you must have some psychic connection to that lot because when you were in kindergarten you were planning to build a house and live on that lot. You drew a picture of a two-story house and colored it black." So, I'm back to the subconscious drawing board. It's disheartening to find out that what I was sure was one of my earlier memories is a faulty recollection. Nevertheless, I'll hold out the hope that there was such a house long, long ago and I have some weird time-warp connection to it. Did this house exist?[July 27] The gray house comes to me in dreams. It is an old small house, and I am very young and with an adult, maybe my mom. The house appears across the street and south of where I stand in the dream. We take -- or talk about taking -- a bucket of coal from the home of my Aunt Clara Schultz, where the big pines are, to the old man who lives in the house. We stand on his porch, which faces Centre Street and is covered and made of lumber that even I can tell is thin. The man who lives there is old and maybe in his last years as well, and the tone of the dream talk suggests that he is feeble. The house of my dream sits in the lot north of the tennis courts, diagonally across from the Christian Church, and east of where Tom and Mary Flick lived. By the time I had more of my faculties, the location was a vacant lot overgrown with weeds where no one played. But it is hard to imagine that a house was not ever on that lot. I want to know that the house did exist. It's one of my earliest sensations -- not quite a memory, not quite a ghost. I appeal to Pawnee Rockers older than I. Did this house exist in the late 1950s? Who lived in it? A photo I like: No. 97
[July 26] It's easy to let a local landmark such as our late elevator become just a piece of background to our lives. The result of that is that we forget the details. In the case of the elevator, we might remember that it was a large white object and forget that it was a collection of cylinders with pipes on top and that it had a drive-through where we watched trucks line up and dump their grain when we were young. Looking for old Tillers[July 25] This past week I got an e-mail from Bobbi (Bair) Bowman, who grew up in Larned and then moved away to go to college. She was married to Jon Bowman but is no longer, she wrote, and their son is interested in tracing the Bowman family tree, which has roots in Pawnee Rock. "I have enough info to support his search but I keep wishing I had some old (1950-1960) copies of the Tiller and Toiler because they used to have Township news in them and Pawnee Rock was included in that category. My sister got some old T&Ts when she went to her high school reunion but those had been revamped and no longer had the township news. "It isn't seriously important but I do think he'd enjoy seeing a whole column with the name Bowman repeated copiously!" So, I'll look for suitable copies of the Tiller the next time I dig into my old stuff. My wife would be glad for me to hand off pieces of my Kansas collection; I'd like to give them away rather than throw them away. Maybe you'll look through the dusty boxes in your garage and basement. If you have any such Tillers, let me know and I'll pass your e-mail address along to Bobbi. Also, Bobbi sent along some photos that were brand new to me. One shows the first store in Pawnee Rock and another shows the Rock Hotel (said to be the first building in Pawnee Rock) and the mill that was next to it. The Bowman store is in the photo gallery. Hot time in the old town
[July 25] Jim Dye sent this photo taken yesterday afternoon from atop Pawnee Rock. The note that came with it said it was 100 degrees. Can't you feel the heat? Summer's haze is sitting hard on the plains. Tour Rock City[July 24] For as often as we've all heard about our sister town, Rock City, how many of us have been there? I thought so. Fortunately, Cheryl Unruh has, and recently. She wrote about this landmark up by Minneapolis in her Emporia Gazette column yesterday. On the beach
[July 24] When I saw Jim Dye's new photo of the sandy Arkansas River bottom, I yearned for a trip to the river. What I had in mind was a weekday afternoon, much like this one, and a blanket and a cooler of drinks. I wouldn't even need a fishing pole, although I might take some bug repellent. I want to find a relatively smooth "beach" with soft sand and spread the blanket, lie down, and scootch around until my hips and shoulders are happy. And then I'd take a nap. Where you are, maybe you're tired of summer's 90-degree days (or 105-degree days in you're in Arizona). But where I am, we've had only two days above 70 degrees and everyone's complaining about the month of clouds and unusually chilly weather we've been having. The line of thought is that we earned a good summer by living through winter, and if we don't get some warmth soon we're going to demand our money back. But, back to the Arkansas, where it's warm and the air smells of mud and drying grass and sizzles with the zip of grasshoppers and the swush of running water. Won't you join me? And on the way, could you pick up some hotdogs and buns? See you there. Some track athletes identified
"My best guess on today's photo. I had to knock a few cobwebs out. Time 1978. Front row, left to right: Becky (Smith) Parrett, Sharon Bowman, Susan (Levingston) Marley, ???, Teresa Unruh, Cathy Claphan, Dawn Clark. Back row, left to right: Rayetta (Navarro) Crist, ????, Konnie Welch, Tina Bright, Mandy Myers, ????, Coach. You remember Rick and Jill Clawson[July 23] Yesterday afternoon I got an e-mail from Rick Clawson, who grew up in Pawnee Rock and was a couple of years behind me in school, in the same class as my sister, Cheryl. Although I didn't know him well, I remember him as a fun kid. Here's what he wrote: "This is Rick Clawson from your life long ago. I came across the web site you created and wanted to say thanks for giving something back to us. I never knew you as a kid, only the face and name. The pictures on the site have brought back many memories, many quite fond. I left home when I was 17 and joined the Marine Corps and haven't been back much since. But I do miss Pawnee Rock, a place I still call home. "I saw your most recent picture on the site with the girls track team. That was from the mid to late '70s. The coach was Mike Simmons, who arrived the year after Cheryl and I went to 10th grade. Not for sure how long he stayed but I'm sure it wasn't too long." I sent Rick a note back saying how good it was to hear from him, and I asked him to say hi to his sister, Jill, for me. She was in my class. Shortly afterward, I got an e-mail from Jill, who is now Jill Haremza: "I was just as elated as my brother Rick was when he got on this website. He had to call me and tell me of what all he found, and sent me your e-mail, that was very nice." "I live in Garden City, and have been here since 1987, where my husband and I finished raising our 3 kids. We now have 6 grandkids. I am the Assistant Store Manager at Dillons." "I have often wondered where everyone has ended up and I really had no way of even imagining of how we could all get in contact with each other. It was neat to read the messages from others and would like to send them a response of someone they knew. I have so many memories of P.R. and it seems like it was just yesterday that we were all out pounding the streets having fun." "We lived back in P.R. in 1984-87 with our kids. My oldest says he had so much fun there and he will always remember the things he did and of course he was pretty ornery so I probably don't want to know what he is referring to. We lived in the house that George and Susie Unruh grew up in on the corner at 601 Santa Fe and Houck. My parents lived in the house down the street. Mom cooked at the school then when my kids were there. They thought that was the neatest thing!" "I would also like to tell old friends I was the daughter of Earl and Elaine Clawson. Siblings are Jeff, Randy, Rick, and Cindy (if they cannot remember which family we were)." More about Ruth Deckert[July 23] More information was published yesterday about the energetic and artistic Ruth Deckert in the Great Bend Tribune obituaries. Scroll down to the July 22 entries. A name is a name, but less often[July 22] Those of us who are of a certain age and who grew up in central Kansas are likely to bear a name that isn't all the rage. Maybe it was once, but not anymore. For example: Leon. Or Irma, June, Arthur, Duane, Nancy, Henry, Virgil, Ruth, George, or Howard. Our names were all semipopular at one time or another, but now they're generally owned only by people familiar with the word "moniker." If you've wondered whether your parents spent too much time in the wind before they named you, check out the statistical frequency of your name at nametrends.net. In my case, the site provides proof that "Leon" once was a welcome name (2 per 1,000 boys in the 1920s, and 1 per 1,000 when I was born), but then it dived to about 2 Leons per 10,000 boys. You may know plenty of young Ashleys and Jessicas, but how many young Leons do you know? How many young owners of Your Name do you know? Ruth Deckert dies[July 21] Ruth Deckert, a mainstay of Pawnee Rock's community for decades, died yesterday at her home. She was born in September 1922 and was 85 years old. Ruth married Bennie Deckert in 1944, and they lived in the house he grew up in -- the Peter Deckert house coincidentally featured here yesterday. Bennie died in 1996. Ruth and Bennie had two children, Esther Sayler and Warren Deckert. The funeral will be at 10 a.m. Wednesday at Bryant Funeral Home in Great Bend. She will be buried in the Mennonite Memorial Cemetery, a half-mile south of her home. (Obituary) Ruth was many things to me -- a rock of the Bergthal Mennonite Church, a Sunday school teacher, an art teacher, and a pleasant friend after I grew up. She wore farmer's denim as easily as she wore church clothes. She seemed comfortable with herself, and she had a good sense of humor. 
The girls are identified
"The girl on the left is Dorothy Hemken, Jeanne Ritchie is in the center, and on the right is Rhonda Tammen, now Rhonda Tutak. They were together posing as the football homecoming candidates for fall 1966. "Also, the 'mystery fish' on the other page is a long eared sunfish." Age of innocence
[July 21] Last night after work I stopped at the grocery store. As I made my rounds -- chicken, bread, eggs (the chicken came first), milk -- I saw a brother and sister glide up the aisle toward me. The kids, maybe 8 and 10 years old, were wearing footwear with wheels in the sole, not quite skates and not quite shoes. They laughed and held each other's hands and spun in loose circles. What they were doing might have annoyed Mr. Whipple, but they were sweet kids. Brothers and sisters can have such fun when they're kids. When they get a little more self-conscious -- when they've eaten the apple, so to speak -- they wouldn't be caught dead having fun together. You know what's that's like. My sister and I were good playmates for the first years of our lives. We "camped" in blanket tents, played hide-and-seek in the cannas, rode bikes around Pawnee Rock, and competed at Mr. Wiggly. I think it all goes back to days like the one in the photo, which Mom sent yesterday. Dad photographed me with Cheryl and Mom on our brown couch, and we were all at ease with our dolls. Mine was named Brenda. I'm happy for kids who haven't outgrown that unself-conscious glow. Maybe I'll get it back in my second childhood. Identifying the high school girls
[July 20] Susan Unruh Ellis saw yesterday's homepage photo of three Pawnee Rock High School girls and has an idea of who at least one of them is. "The girl in the middle is definitely Jeanne Ritchie. As for the other two, these are just guesses on my part," Susan wrote. "The first one, on our left, might be Dorothy Hemken and in third position, on our right, looks like a Schneider, Connie or Gloria." I agree with Susan that the middle one is Jeanne -- she babysat my sister and me during our grade school years. If anyone else knows the other girls or why they're posing together, please let us know. Peter Deckert, Pawnee Rock pioneer[July 20] Peter Deckert was an industrious fellow who arrived with the Mennonite colony of Dundee and who settled three miles north of Pawnee Rock. His place was in the section of land between the present Mennonite church and the Mennonite Cemetery. The following article and the photo came from the "Biographical History of Barton County, Kansas," published in 1912. [Added later: Virgil Smith wrote to mention that the children who followed Ivan (who was a missionary in Africa) were Harvey, Adam, Bennie, and Dinah.] Peter J. Deckert
The home of Peter J. Deckert. The life story of Peter J. Deckert of "Silver Medal Farm," three miles north of Pawnee Rock if told in any other state or county would read like fiction. He was born April 8, 1872, in Russian Poland, and his father died shortly afterwards. In the spring of 1874 his mother was married to Peter H. Dirks, now living in Liberty township, and with them he came to the United States and Barton County, Kansas, in the spring of 1875.
At an early age he learned the value of money and how to save it by passing through the hard times that followed, or really only began in 1893 when he had reached the age of twenty-one. There had been hard periods previous to that time but for four years there were almost complete crop failures and when in 1897 the good crops came Mr. Deckert had learned the lesson that was necessary to make him the practical farmer and prudent business man that he is today. Two good crops enabled him to marry and purchase a quarter section of land and from that date he began to accumulate and lay the foundation for his present prosperity. Today he owns four hundred acres of the finest agricultural land in Pawnee Rock township and he has it in the best possible state of cultivation. His home is a three story frame with thirteen large airy rooms. It is well and modernly furnished, beautifully painted and surrounded by a grass plot in which there are set numerous trees, shrubs and plants. The barn is 30 by 46 and has a large hay loft and stall for all stock in use on the farm. There is a good granary, machinery shed and the other necessary outbuildings, and three good windmills. There is also another two story, eight room tenant house with a good barn 40 by 60 with machine sheds and other buildings and this is occupied by his farm help. In the front is a blue grass plot and a number of evergreens. Peter T. Deckert and Miss Susan Ratzlaff of Pawnee Rock township were married November 9, 1898, and they have been blessed with the following children: Lyndon, 12; Erben, 9; Otto, 7; Arbin, 4; Louise, 2, and Ivan, an infant of two months, at this writing. The mysterious fish
Larry Smith, who lives down the Arkansas in Wichita, wrote this entirely plausible suggestion: "It looks like a gold fish. Small gold fish are used for bait and this one looks like it got away." That sounds like a good possibility. I later had the bright idea of looking at the Kansas Wildlife & Parks website to see whether its fish gallery had the answer. The closest species seemed to be the green sunfish, which also has the big dark mark on its "ear." But it's not a perfect fit. Any ideas? Let us know. The KWP site did remind me of something else -- that never in my life have I caught a walleye (277 KB pdf). There's a project for my next visit to northern Kansas. The crazy-making wind[July 19] Leon Miller and Ray Randolph, both of whom grew up in the Sunflower State's zephyrs, had a few thoughts about Denyse Toelkes's letter about whether the wind makes Kansans crazy. Leon Miller wrote: "A few years back I was visiting my sister in Hays on a Memorial Day weekend. We scheduled a side trip to visit her son, my nephew in Manhattan, and left Hays going east on IH 70 with the wind blowing straight out of the north at what seemed to be 40 MPH. I noticed a flag on the south side of the interstate around the Ellsworth cutoff blowing straight out, no flutter, no waviness, JUST STRAIGHT OUT! We stayed overnight in Manhattan and on our trip back to Hays the next day came back by this same flag but this time the flag was blowing STRAIGHT OUT out of the SOUTH! "Love that Kansas." Ray Randolph wrote: "I don't believe the Kansas wind will make you crazy, a little lopsided maybe. But living in Southern California will certainly make one crazy." A photo I like: No. 96
[July 19] Many's the day I used this sidewalk when I was growing up. From our place on Santa Fe Avenue, this was the direct route to Pawnee Rock State Park. I also played at lot at Rob Bowman's house (Howard and Carole's house) and in the ditch just north of there. At one time I knew how to swing my bike at full speed back and forth to avoid -- or hit -- every little bump between sidewalk sections. The stately pines are one of my favorite parts of Pawnee Rock. They used to frame a two-story house; I remember it being painted a mustard yellow. I wished that we had trees like that in our yard, just for the pine cones. Does the wind make us crazy?
[July 18] As you'll see in the e-mail that follows, people wonder whether the wind makes Kansans crazy. I've given it a little thought, and I bet you have too. If it did, how would we know? Most Kansans have been in the wind so much that even if we were made crazy, we'd still be normal by Kansas standards. But back to the e-mail, which arrived from Denyse Toelkes in Southern California. She has family ties to Plainville, which is 38 miles north of Hays on U.S. 183. Denyse tells a good story, so here she goes: What Kansas does to peopleI found your poetic site when I was trying to substantiate my husband Pat's nighttime story for the kids. He claims that the settlers in Kansas went mad from the never ending howling of the wind. He cupped his hand and gave us a sample of the sound the wind makes where he grew up in Plainville, KS. The boys and our dog were truly impressed. But they didn't get how that would make someone go crazy. I googled Kansas winds. "Dust in the wind" caught my eye and I opened up to "Too long in the Wind," February 27, 2007. Although I couldn't find anything about Kansans crazy from the wind, I deeply enjoyed your page. I have spent the past 17 years discovering Kansas and its people after I became Mrs. Patrick Toelkes. The touching photos of Pawnee Rock sent me back to Plainville and the streets I've walked and compared to where I have grew up in Southern California. The pictures and stories on your page captured so much of what is special to me about Kansas. The buildings, their history, the elevators, the cars, the never ending view and the people. My husband's dad passed in March of this year. The picture and story of your dad in his overalls talking about a rock brought tears to my eyes. I miss the Kansas air. We couldn't afford to fly our family of four out there this year. I didn't get my Kansas alignment. Yet looking at your beautiful pictures and reading your stories helps me to remember what the air smells like and how I relax when I spend time there. Oh, how I wish we could get away from this rat race and walk to the Plainville pool, let the kids drive the car in the country and go to the ballfield to watch everyone in town watch the games. Hopefully next year! Pat, my husband, has been in California since graduating from Fort Hays in Geology. The oil business was bust so he came for a job out here in California in 1988. We were married in 1991. When we found out we were expecting in 1995, Pat said he didn't want to raise a kid in So Cal. He took a cut in rank and pay to go work for the Kansas Corporation Commission. So sight unseen, we quit our jobs, packed up and drove his 1978 Bonneville to Liberal, KS. It was November. I was pregnant. I cried the whole time. I hated Liberal. We lasted one week. I could have made it in Plainville with his family and friends but Liberal was not anything like the Kansas I've come to know. Pat returned from a trip to Plainville this March after spending the last days with his terminally ill father. He asked me again seriously if I would reconsider moving to Kansas. He still wants to move back. I don't want to live there year round. We are in a stalemate. I am (somewhat) of a city girl that loves Kansas and appreciates the simple life there. Yet I am not a Kansan. Do you know what I mean? I see how different my husband acts when he's back "home." It troubles me. Can he ever really be happy in So Cal? Yet I know that I need the ocean and the winds of Santa Ana. It's probably best not to marry outside of one's culture or state. Anyway I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed discovering your page. What a nice surprise for me this summer day when I am missing my annual Jayhawkers trip. Thank you for beautifully capturing for others the specialness of Pawnee Rock. I bet many people must enjoy your tender writing and pictures. You paint a great picture of what life was and is like growing up in Kansas. Sincerely, When words count[July 17] Dad and I were coming back from some appointment near the river back around 1970, and he had just driven across the tracks by the Spreier place a mile southwest of Pawnee Rock. He must have been looking ahead, and I was looking at the farm, which had a Quonset barn that fascinated me. We didn't see the eastbound Santa Fe freight train. It passed, screaming and shrieking, within yards of Dad's tailgate as we pulled up to the stop sign. Dad turned to me and in a very quiet voice said, "Sorry." An excuse would have cheapened the moment, and Dad was no doubt frightened and embarrassed to his roots. Yesterday I was driving to work and as soon as I got on the highway I had to stop because a belly-dump 18-wheeler had just laid a 15-ton load of dirt and rocks across all three lanes. By driving in the shoulder, I got around the mess in time to see the trucker move into a pullout. Immediately after that, the highway was mostly closed for two hours and traffic backed up for three or four miles. The evening news revealed that the truck driver was incensed that TV crews and a newspaper photographer (responding to my phone tip) had quickly arrived to film him and the cleanup. A cop settled him down. Now, if a simple "sorry" can cover a near-accident with a freight train, think what a hapless truck driver could have done by turning to the TV cameras and saying, "Folks, I don't know what went wrong. But I'm really sorry that you've been inconvenienced." It was a nasty little episode that may cost the trucker his job. Still, think how he could have deflated his situation by acknowledging the problem. It's Public Relations 101, and I wonder whether his boss noticed. I bet his kid did. Beatrice Sayler dies[July 17] Beatrice Sayler, the widow of Art Sayler and a resident of the Albert area for more than 65 years, died Tuesday. The Saylers owned a bit of Pawnee Rock property over the years, including a house built on Santa Fe Avenue west of the Christian Church. Mrs. Sayler no doubt appears in many informal histories of the area. In addition, she is quoted in a retrospective look at Farmers Bank of Albert. She will be buried Friday afternoon in the Great Bend Cemetery. (Obituary) Here's a nice piece about Art Sayler, a talkative gentleman who knew many things and was never short of friends. Seeking a rollicking good novel[July 16] I'm a big fan of wild crime novels, especially those set in wacky states such as New York, Florida and Texas. It occurred to me that I haven't found such a book written about our Kansas. Does Kansas have laugh-out-loud crime literature? If you know of such a book, let us know and I'll (1) mention it here and (2) read it. Photos not made: Anyone who has spent time with a loved one in the intensive care ward will know what Pawnee Rock expatriate Cheryl Unruh is saying in her Emporia Gazette column published yesterday. Here's mud in your toes
The Arkansas River still has shallow water and moss, as this photo by Jim Dye shows us. [July 15] Given a trip to Pawnee Rock and a spare afternoon, here's what I'd do: walk in the Arkansas River. That says "summer" to me as much as sitting on a hot vinyl car seat or sniffing a homegrown tomato. We kids used to walk in the river every chance we got. Sure, we had other names for it, like "chasing a stick," "fishing" and "looking for rocks." We liked the way the bathwater-temperature river felt, and we liked the ooze of the mud, and we probably even liked the thrill of thinking that a channel cat was about to grab our toes. Now that I've moved north of the 61st parallel (Pawnee Rock is 15 miles north of the 38th parallel) and live in a glacial maritime climate, I've forfeited my right to moan about not having a warm river at hand (or at foot, as the case may be). But a lot of us have moved away to places where there is no running river, or where the water is polluted, or where the river is just too deep and dark to trust. One thing binds us together, though, and that's Arkansas River mud. As long as we remember our adventures below the bridge, we can each have an endless perfect summer day. A park with happy memories
Dana Hines, photographed on Pawnee Rock by her son, Spencer. He also photographed the picnic table (below). [July 14] Pawnee Rock State Park is a big part of the memories held of each of us who grew up in town or live there now, and maybe we take our big sandstone outcrop for granted. I'm the first to admit I didn't understand how much it means to people from other towns. One of those people is Dana Hines, who grew up in Larned and is the great-granddaughter of Lucy Houdyshell and the granddaughter of Vin Houdyshell. She recently provided us with a history of the Houdyshell family. I'm always glad to hear from Dana. I met her (then Dana Smith) when I worked in Larned for the Tiller after high school, and we were classmates at KU. Now she lives in Arizona. This past month, Dana brought her teenage son, Spencer, on a grand tour of Kansas. As she relates here, their visit to Pawnee Rock produced pleasant experiences and poignant memories. Dana and Spencer Hines' visit to Pawnee RockOur trip back to Kansas was, as always, emotional. I'm so thankful the Lord gave me another wonderful trip there with my mother and also with Spencer. We spent a few days in Lawrence, savoring friends and family there, plus spending a lot of time on the beautiful campus of the fabulous Jayhawks! Spencer and I retraced my paths there, poking our heads into buildings where as a young, and often-times, quite foolish girl I had endured both interesting and boring classes! Remarkably, most buildings were unchanged. The Campanile proved very fascinating for Spencer, and we went racing up the "Hill" several times to be closer to its beautiful, yet somewhat haunting, chime. Our time in Larned was great, too. My brother Arlyn, his son Tyler, and daughter Liz drove out to see us. We got together with Ginny Houdyshell in Pratt. It was the first time I had seen her in about 40 years! We had a nice lunch at the Uptown Cafe in Pratt. Harvest was in full swing, so that was a real treat for Spencer to see. We drove through Greensburg and on out to Dodge, where Spencer tasted his first "real" A&W Root Beer, returning to Larned via the fields north of Rozel. We even saw a movie at the State Theater. Oh, the memories there!!! Spencer and I had the pleasure of meeting MacArthur, Winston, and Churchill at P. Lee's Antiques in Pawnee Rock. The three adorable doggies introduced us to Patty, who was sweet enough to mail a postcard to cousin Vance Houdyshell for me. I wanted it to be postmarked from Pawnee Rock, so she kindly said she'd put it in the mail on that following Monday.
We oftentimes had picnics there -- it has met so many of my ancestors and has been party to many family conversations. It's also where my son Spencer tasted his very first s'more. On July 4, 2004, my parents, brother Arlyn and his family, and Spencer and I had a great old-fashioned picnic there. We used the "charcoaler" there to cook our hot dogs on a stick and toast our marshmallows for the s'mores. That day was the last time my father would ever be there. He passed away suddenly on January 28, just a few months from that happy Fourth of July day. I'm so glad that table is there! It has been the special guest at many other family gatherings, I suspect. Our trip out to the Pawnee Rock Cemetery was, as always, a mixture of both happy memories and sad reminders. Each time I visit, I recognize more names on the stones. My heart breaks a little more each time, but I am so thankful for the imprint so many there left on my life. I'm always going to be a Kansas girl at heart, I guess. I'm proud to have been born there, raised there, and that Spencer also feels a solid connection to it. "There was no pretense"
Betty Svoboda lived in a trailer house parked behind Betty's Cafe. I don't think this is her trailer, but the placement is the same. This photo was made in 2005. [July 13] In my piece Friday about the late Betty Svoboda, I couldn't provide as many details as I wanted to and as Betty deserved. Fortunately, people who knew her better sent e-mails that help round out her personality. I'd like to thank Virgil and Joan Smith and Leon Miller for their recollections. Virgil wrote: "Betty did serve sandwiches. Joan and I, both, remember eating her juicy hamburgers. Betty was the kind of person that treated you as you treated her. There was no pretense. "Probably, it was the late '50s or the '60s when she bought a new sub-compact car. I don't remember what make it was, but it was small and not a car that most people would consider at that time. Maybe now they would, with the high gas prices. "She was very proud of it and wanted to take me for a ride in it to show me how well it rode. I agreed to go with her and we were going down the highway about 55 or 60 mph when she suddenly jerked the steering wheel and drove off of the pavement. It was rough going, but the car handled well and she drove it back onto the pavement. I assumed that some car salesman had demonstrated this to her. "Betty was a different kind of a person, but could be a real friend if you were one to her. I think that knowing her made me more tolerant of people that were outside of the accepted mold." Leon wrote: "I knew and grew up with the Svobodas, although Betty was a grown woman by the time I got to be a teenager. Ann Svoboda was one of my mother's dearest friends. Carol was several years older and Bill, their brother, was a year older than me. When my Dad bought the old KP Hall he rented it out to Louis Svoboda for a restaurant for a number of years. I recall Betty tending the 'bar' there and dispensing local, colorful wisdom to the customers as they came through the door. "Betty was different and was probably the only lesbian the town had ever known, although no one even mentioned such a word back then. If you were her friend, you were her friend for life. She was one of the people who made Pawnee Rock so unique and a great place to grow up. "The Svobodas lived in a two-story house on the south side of Pawnee Avenue between Centre and Rock Street in the middle of the block. Louie, as he was known, didn't do too much of anything as I recall and seemed to jump at the chance of running his own cafe. I can't remember what he called it, but know he loved to cook. "The place had a horseshoe-shaped counter and was originally known as Brazda Cafe, the owner being a man named Frank Brazda. My earliest memories of this place was that it had gas pumps and a Texaco sign on the south side of the building with a garage in the rear where the proprietor would change tires and do minor repairs on cars traveling up and down US 50N (as it was known at the time). This goes back into the '30s." A photo I like: No. 95
Photos: Cottonwood tree west of the salt plant north of Pawnee Rock; salmon-bearing creek in the Chugach Mountains. [July 12] Now and then I feel as if I'm living in a postcard. Everywhere I turn, there's a grand view that becomes too big to absorb if I give it much thought. This sure isn't Kansas, I tell myself. I've come to the realization, however, that I need Kansas. Had I not lived in Pawnee Rock in my formative years, I wouldn't appreciate my current world for what it is. The odd thing is that now I better appreciate the landscape and biology surrounding Pawnee Rock. Now that I live in the land of glaciers, little things in the Kansas landscape stick out more when I visit my hometown. One state provides the grandeur, and the other provides the glory. Anymore, I'm not sure which is which. In Betty's Cafe
It's not Betty's Cafe anymore, and the big Schlitz sign on a pole is gone from the front, but the peppermint pink paint of the bar still shows through. [July 11] I was looking at a photo of the old barbershop that stood at the south end of downtown, and that made me think of Betty's Cafe, which later stood on that site. My dad used to take me to Betty's now and then for a Pepsi. This was before the law said that kids couldn't sit with beer drinkers, and I am grateful now that I had the chance to mingle with the men. It always was men, and Betty. She had short dark hair and covered her heavy figure in a white short-sleeve shirt and dark pants. She had a European last name that wasn't Schmidt or Schultz or Smith but Svoboda. She swore. She smoked. I was never sure that Betty was a woman, and I really enjoyed her company. She was unlike anyone else in Pawnee Rock. I don't know Betty's whole story. I doubt that she was a saint, but I do think she worked hard. Elizabeth L. Svoboda would call a spade a spade, and there was likely to be an adjective in front of the spade. But in Betty's Cafe, no one covered their ears. Like the wooden floor and pressed-tin ceiling and the Schlitz signs, hard talk and direct opinions were part of the atmosphere.
The bathroom was in the middle of the cafe, toward the back, and behind that was another room that I think was a storeroom. A lot of guys stepped outside and watered the weeds on the north side of the building. Betty lived in a mobile home tugged up behind the cafe. In a small town, where "different" often means "unwelcome but tolerated," some people find it expedient to keep to themselves. I don't know what polite society thought of Betty. I never did see her anywhere but the cafe -- not at the grocery store, not walking downtown, not at a basketball game. The cafe was her world, and people who didn't think they would (or should) feel welcome simply didn't open her screen door. We all knew who did go in -- we saw their cars, rusted from sitting at the salt plant during the day -- and we heard grown-ups talk with a bit of a sneer about some guy or other being "down at Betty's." The week I turned 18, I went down to Betty's and ordered a Schlitz. She knew I was legal. I think Betty paid attention, and she knew our town's secrets. After all, guys had been telling them to her for many years. 
Betty, Louis, Carol Ann, and Anna Florence Svoboda share a grave marker at the north end of the cemetery, on the east side of the old section. "Whiter Shade" and older shadows[July 10] Last night when I got home from work my son Sam showed me his new sheet music handed out by his guitar teacher. It was "A Whiter Shade of Pale," by Procol Harum. If you were tuned in and maybe turned on in 1967 through the 1970s, you know this song and are probably batting it around in your head right now. If you went to a school dance, you danced to it -- if you had a slow-dance partner. You may have even figured out what the lyrics meant, although I've never been able to. "We skipped the light fandango "And so it was that later
I imagine that all of us have key songs like this; maybe yours is by Elvis or Janis Ian or Frank Sinatra or Jewel. The songs imprinted on our consciousness as we were going through an emotional period, and now we don't hear them without having to rummage through that box of memories and emotions. I dug out my soundtrack of "The Big Chill" movie and played "Whiter Shade" for Sam. Bless his heart, he was glad he was playing it the right way and he didn't even mention the tug of the music. For him, just playing is soothing. My night, however, was shot. I stayed up very, very late working on a book, but my soul spent the hours in Pawnee Rock. I'm still forced to try to understand my teen years. As difficult as they were, however, at least I had a good soundtrack. The Methodist chuckwagon[July 9] Here's a good question for everyone from Larry Smith, a frequent contributor to our site: "I was wondering what ever happened to the old chuckwagon that the Methodist church brought out when they had their chuckwagon suppers?" Required reading[July 9] Cheryl Unruh, raised in Pawnee Rock, set off to find her future with a Barton County and KU education and set up shop in Emporia. She may be a city girl now, but she feels the open space in her blood. In her column for this week's Emporia Gazette, Cheryl writes about the wide-open country and vanishing points. An excerpt: "Sometimes on the lonesome Kansas Highway 156 between Larned and Garden City, you might gallop along for a half hour without seeing another car. The irony is that with no visual obstructions such as hills or curves, there are also no vehicles that need passing." A few thoughts about Berdene Russell[July 8] Her Hutch News obituary contains few details -- relatives' names and dates of death, birth, and marriage -- but Berdene Russell's life must have been fairly active. (Update: Tribune obit has more information.) I didn't know her well when I was a child, but I did see her at 4-H events and school games and programs. She and Charles Wilbur Russell had five children, and they always were doing something good. The Russell farm was just west of Pawnee Rock on the north side of the correction line, too close to town to be a big farm and too close to the country to be a city house. The Russells were playful; theirs was the only farm I knew that had a tall ranch gate built over the driveway, and I think it said "Chas Russell." Because of that sign and how much I enjoyed going out to their farm, I thought of Berdene as a rancher. Whenever I needed a face to put on a ranchwoman's character in a novel I was reading, hers came to mind. I imagined her to be tough, and I remember her as kind. Berdene Russell was 85 years old, having died nine days past her birthday. She and Wilbur had been married since 1942. Their daughters are Rosalie Burns, Jacquie Russell Haynes, and Lynda Russell Wilson, and their sons are Mark and Wade. She leaves a sister, Jacqueline Williamson, and eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. She was the niece of one of Pawnee Rock's early ministers, the Rev. Beverly E. Parker. Her funeral will be at 11 a.m. Friday morning at the Pawnee Rock Christian Church, and she will be buried in the Pawnee Rock Cemetery. Wade, a pastor, and Don Paden will officiate. Here are three instances of Berdene Russell in the pages of PawneeRock.org and the SantaFeTrailResearch.com: Pawnee Rock Community News, and Easter pageant on the Rock, and the Santa Fe Trail newsletter. At the end of the fence[July 7] For as long as I can remember, our old home place on Santa Fe Avenue had a white picket fence. It ran from the fire station to the house and then from the house to the property line we shared with the Tutaks.
But my favorite part of the fence was the post at the end of it. I couldn't tell you when the post was placed there, but it was worn smooth by the time I got to know it. The post was about four feet tall, and it was set in plain brown dirt inhabited by doodle bugs. Maybe it was a trunk of osage orange, which lasts practically forever. I often ran my palm over it as I walked out of our yard on the way to school. My wife, who sometimes gets exasperated with me, says that I would argue with a fencepost. Maybe I would, but not with this one. Berdene Russell dies[July 7] The Hutchinson News reported this morning that Berdene Russell died Sunday at St. Joseph Memorial Hospital in Larned. Services will being arranged by Beckwith Mortuary in Larned. The Russell family place was just west of Pawnee Rock along the correction line and practically on top of the Santa Fe Trail. Cutting yesteryear's grass
I mowed the east side of the Pawnee Rock Cemetery more than 30 years ago, when the cedars and I were young. [July 6] I mowed the lawn today -- second time in this dry year -- and got a good coating of dust and macerated cottonwood fuzz. It's a small yard, and much of what is not taken by the house is alive with trees, so it doesn't take much mowing. Still, the dust and heat brought back to mind mowing the township cemetery in Pawnee Rock, which is one of the finest pleasures ever bestowed on a teenager. Dad always did the cutting around the gravestones, but as I got old enough to drive a straight line he let me handle the eastern section, which at the time -- the early 1970s -- had only a handful of graves. Old-timers will remember the white shed that stood in the northwest corner of the cemetery; that's where we kept the mower, shovels, and wooden frame that we laid around the place where we'd dig a grave. The mower drove in and out of the building on a ramp with three long boards, one for each wheel. Compared with today's riding mowers, the township's battleship-gray mower was a beast. It was tall and had handlebars that resembled a bicycle's, and the metal seat belonged on a tractor. It had a clutch, if I remember right, and a gas pedal; you let off the gas to stop. The Briggs & Stratton engine was brought to life with a three-eighths-inch knotted cord that fit into a slot on a flared tube attached to a flywheel (perhaps someone will remind me of the proper term), and I wound the cord around the tube, gripped the wooden handle at the other end of the cord, and pulled. Sometimes the knot flew into my face, and sometimes the mower yanked the cord out of my hand. But once the mower was running, I was a king on wheels. I'd engage the blade and send the unlucky grass, weeds, and sometimes floral wires flying. Dad used to mention the bull snakes and blue racers he scared up, but those were rare on the east side, where there were too few ground squirrels to attract predators. The main attraction of mowing was that I was driving; I was at that age when any kind of driving was worth the effort. I doubt whether I wore a cap in those days, so I must have gotten a good tan. I know my arms got a good workout holding the vibrating handlebars. The only part of me that didn't work on the mower was my brain. It didn't take long for my muscles to remember what to do -- drive straight south down the wheel mark of the previous trip, slow down for the turn -- drive back north -- so I was off in la-la land in no time, dreaming of rescuing girls from some dire circumstance, or of building rockets, or of the camera I'd buy with the dollar or two I was earning. The work was greasy, dusty, dehydrating and perfect for me. I think Dad liked to mow as well, but it probably wasn't the most profitable way for him to spend his sexton's salary and he gladly passed the easy part to me. And just as I now think of those happy days whenever I crank up my Sears mower, maybe Dad in the 1970s thought back to his teenage days in the 1940s when he drove a bone-shaking tractor on the farm. We all have our secret pleasures. One day I'll try to explain this one to my sons, but to them it may be more of Dad talking crazy. It might be something they can't understand until they've spent seasons in the wind and sun, riding alone for hours on the dusty grass. But you know what I mean. A photo I like: No. 94
[July 5] I made this shot while flying from Wichita to Denver, and it must be the 10 millionth photo ever made of a wing. What is special about this one is that it's over Pawnee Rock. I'm sure many of us have made this photo; it's hard not to if you want to photograph anything outside the plane. But I think wing photos go beyond that. Human flight occurs because we have learned to operate within certain physical laws. Still, I can't see the air scoot over the wing's curved upper surface, yet the wing provides lift. I can't see the superheated air blast its way out of the engines, but we are pushed forward. I can't see where our overstuffed, uncomfortable aluminum tube is headed, but we hit the runway every time. Although flying shouldn't be an act of faith, it is. Once in a while I need a photo like this to reassure myself that it works. One morning on the Fourth of July[July 4] The neighbor lady offered each of my boys a long sparkler. Her granddaughters, up from Texas, already had some burning by the time we got to our block's usual gathering place in the middle of the street at the cul-de-sac. Even though it was almost time for the 12:01 a.m. ignition of the annual fireworks show down the hill, Sam wanted to burn a sparkler. I huddled my hands around the ends of the sparklers and our neighbor went through an entire box of matches trying in vain to light them in the breeze. We gave up on the sparklers. The boys sat on their camp stools, and shortly after midnight this morning we turned our faces toward our town's Fourth of July fireworks. A couple of late arrivals from a block up the street walked up behind us. Then a dad and his daughter, she running ahead, arrived from the house across from ours. Always thinking of what I'd write, I was trying to draw parallels between what I was seeing and what I last saw 30 years ago at Memorial Stadium in Larned, but it just wasn't working. I asked myself whether I had lost my sense of wonder. The sky was illuminated by the reds, the greens, the blues, the shells leaving a tight spiral of sparks on their way up. Our elevation was 600 feet, about 400 feet above the park where the fireworks were launched, so some of the shells exploded at our level, albeit almost a mile to the west. "Maybe next year we'll go down to the park and look up at the fireworks," I told the boys, who despite having colds wore shorts. They were squeezing their knees together against the 48-degree wind blowing off the inlet and up the sloping street into our faces. I heard someone walking in a yard behind us but saw no one when I turned. That must have been Sam rubbing his legs, I figured. Two nights ago, the sky was clear and I could have read the newspaper outdoors at 2 a.m. Last night at midnight, clouds sat heavily and the fireworks exploded against a gray curtain. "You guys can't see the mountains across the way, right?" I said. "That's because there's a big rainstorm over the inlet." More fireworks. I relaxed my view and saw how they were framed by our neighborhood's birches and spruces. "It wasn't ever this pretty in Larned," I thought. We counted the seconds between the flashes and the retorts. Four seconds, almost a mile. Sam pulled at my sleeve and pointed south to Hiland Mountain. The interceding valley was filled with puffs of gray smoke, moving en masse as the wind willed. We watched a jetliner approach the fireworks and talked about how three years ago we had seen this show from a 767 red-eye as we flew off to vacation in Pawnee Rock. The grand finale arrived with its sparkles and chest-shaking bangs and red flares that turned into a swarms of crazed birds. Dogs barked and car alarms went off. And when it was over, we heard the applause from the park. The boys folded up their stools and waved goodbye to the neighbors and the kids from Texas. As we turned, Nik spotted three moose -- a cow and her twin six-week-old calves -- just beyond our house. The moose, so dark we could hardly see them until they moved under a light, had gone through our yard and crossed the street behind us while we watched the fireworks. Now the cow was daring anybody to walk close; no one did because no one wanted to die at the hooves of an overly protective horse-size animal. So I invited our up-the-street neighbors into my Civic and taxied them past the moose. When I got home, I collected the boys and we lit the leftover sparklers at the end of the driveway. That got the mooses' attention and even from a hundred fifty feet we could see the mama's ears and hackles rise. I instructed the boys to drop the sparklers and go in the house if she ran at us; I'd like to think they would do that anyway but an overly protective dad has to make sure. The sparklers soon died and now lie in ashes on the asphalt. The moose have moved down into the woods. The scent they left on our grass drove our beagle puppy crazy when I took her outside later. And that was the first half-hour of our Fourth of July. We had our annual community gathering, we had distant fireworks and those at hand, and we had wild Alaska. It wasn't like in Larned, and it wasn't like in Pawnee Rock. It was, however, perfect for where we are now. Things that go boom in the darkness[July 3] The loudest Fourth of July I ever tried to sleep through was three years ago in Great Bend. The boys (then 9 and 7) and I had flown into Denver that morning and then drove the nine or ten hours to Great Bend and Pawnee Rock. If you remember, it was a hot, breezy day (87 with an increasingly east wind). We were tuckered, but I was determined to show the boys a good time.
We were dilettantes. Another fellow there had a roll of ten thousand firecrackers, and they cracked for a good five minutes. But that was nothing compared to what we heard later outside the Black Angus motel. When we went out the next morning and drove up Madison Street, I was stunned to find the pavement covered with shredded paper and tubes and bottle rocket sticks. And so was the next street, and the one after that. When we were kids in Pawnee Rock, we were relatively frugal. For my first few years of launching cans, firing "cannons" by dropping firecrackers into pipes, separating leaves from plants, and blowing up piles of driveway sand into which I had arranged twig "soldiers," I spent only two or three dollars. It was a big deal when someone in the neighborhood bought a half-dozen screaming nighttime fireworks or a package of roman candles. I used to think that our firecrackers and sparklers did signify something special about Independence Day, but it was a vague feeling then and anymore I'm even less sure. As all kids do, I tried to imagine the bottle rockets being a symbol of the rockets' red glare, but that wore out quickly as it became more fun to aim the rockets at my friends. One kid in a hundred might have gotten a lecture about how those little explosions mimic gunfire and military detonations, which have the purpose of killing people. I think we all understood that to a degree, however, and we played God until we settled certain issues in our hearts and minds. Larned and the wild Pawnee
The happy side of the Pawnee wall in Larned's Schnack Park. [July 2] The recent flooding in Iowa and Missouri brings to mind the excesses of our own Ash Creek and Arkansas River. That stream in Larned -- Pawnee Creek or Pawnee River, depending on your upbringing -- also made its way into the news occasionally. Although I understand the desire to protect houses built in the flood plain, I was disappointed back in the 1980s when the city scrapped its earthen dikes and erected a tall concrete wall between itself and the Pawnee. To me, one of the best parts of Larned had been its day-to-day association with the Pawnee. Families came to picnic under the big cottonwoods in the park and fish in the creek. People -- our family, for instance -- sometimes went to Larned on Sundays just to drive slowly along the bank, admire the trees, and talk about whether the water was actually moving. The Pawnee and Larned interacted; at the least, the people of Larned acknowledged the Pawnee. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore. For practical purposes, the Pawnee is out of sight and out of mind. It just amazes me that Larned doesn't make more out of its connection with the Pawnee and Arkansas, but then there's very little of that before you get to Wichita, where the Arkansas and the Little Arkansas are dammed and have become the city's main natural attraction. (Of course, Wichita doesn't have a flood problem now that it has the big ditch around town.) On recent visits to Larned, I have driven through the park and relived the church picnics, the little railroad rides, and the Saturday evenings when I walked hand-in-hand with a friend to the swings for a bit of canoodling. The Pawnee was always there, gurgling gently as it slid beneath the branches. "Country" begins on the other side of a barbed-wire fence on the south side of the Pawnee. Deer and other animals still come to the Pawnee in town, but now fewer people see them. Fewer kids fish for bullheads or dig clamshells out of the banks. Like children who don't know where milk comes from, they know less and less about the lifeblood of the plains. And that's what Larned lost when it walled in its people and houses and told nature to go away. Houses of Pawnee Rock
The house of the Hixons, Countrymans, Eppersons . . . [July 1] Most of us now live in towns and cities where new houses -- even new subdivisions -- go up every year or two. It's quite a change from our days in Pawnee Rock, where the houses we knew as youngsters are pretty much the ones that are still there. There are a few new ones. Kirk Smith's, near the salt plant, is one. There's the new Bright place on the way to the Rock. The house above the former American Legion basement was erected with lumber from my Unruh grandparents' farm. There is the house (Lillian Sweeney's?) the Welches moved to their corner along the Mennonite Church Road. The Meads put their house in on Houck, and the Bowmans built a home near the tennis court. Galen Unruh built a house on the hill, Gerald Schmidt built a house in the 1960s along Santa Fe Avenue, and I think Art Sayler built the only house on the south side of Santa Fe in the old nursery. The Hixons took a piece of the old school grounds and built their odd-angled house at Pawnee and Houck. No doubt there are older folks who liked the view of our part of town before my dad raised a one-story home over our basement house next to the red-brick fire station. That's as far back as I go. Everything else, I think, was there when I was born. Not much has changed over the years among our town's 160 or so houses, 130 or so of which were occupied when the 2000 census was performed. I will admit that I get a little antsy when I see a new house being built. It's not that I resent a new family or a family moving up in circumstances; it has nothing to do with them. I think it does have to do, however, with memories of when my life was most nearly perfect and my deepest geographical emotions were drawn. I want to put a fence around that landscape. I must be afraid I'll lose a piece of my childhood if a vacant lot is filled or a dilapidated house is replaced with a livable structure. I'm afraid that somebody will lay claim to a place where I have special memories. Perhaps every person who moves to Pawnee Rock has that feeling too; I imagine that their map is the one imprinted in their minds on their first day in town. Youngsters build their maps as they go and fill in the blank areas when memorable things happen. But things change and we all have to adapt if we're going to understand our place in the pageant of history. Still, I'd appreciate it if you'd check with me before you build. |
Sell itAdvertise here to an audience that's already interested in Pawnee Rock: Or tell someone happy birthday. Advertise on PawneeRock.org. |
One of the men who came here in 1875 and has had a great deal to do with the farming and commercial life of Barton County, is Robert Merten. He was born in Elberfeldt, Germany, December 13, 1839. He came to America with his parents when he was eight years of age, the family first locating in Keokuk County, Iowa. Robert remained there until 1863 when he took up the occupation of freighting across the plains.
[July 21] Homecoming court: Kalie Tutak wrote to solve a couple of mysteries from last week.
They at first were members of the Mennonite Colony which settled near Dundee, but in 1877 the step-father purchased a home near the western border of the county and it was there that young Peter grew to manhood on the farm, and received his education in the schools of that district.
[July 19] Jim Dye found this fish in the Arkansas River, but he didn't know what kind of fish it is. I asked yesterday on the homepage for help identifying it.
The place was called Betty's Cafe for a reason, I suppose, but I don't think I ever saw anyone eat anything besides pickled eggs and stubby hot sausages. People didn't sit at the J-shaped bar for supper. Still, her screen door did carry a push-bar advertising Rainbo Bread.
Whatever 
It was a fine fence. I considered myself an adult when I could step over it.
We bought firecrackers at a stand in Kanorado, and I shot off a couple for the boys at Mount Sunflower. When we arrived in Barton County, I thought it was a good time to do it right, so we headed to the Dundee dam and the boys got to jab their burning punk at the fuses of a few dozen Black Cats.|
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