Too Long in the Wind

May 2010

Memorial Day service and reunion

[May 31]   The annual Memorial Day service is at 11 a.m. today in the Pawnee Rock township cemetery.

The weather forecast for the morning is pleasantly warm and partly cloudy, with thunderstorms possibly developing later in the day.

The Pawnee Rock school reunion begins at noon in the Lions Club depot in downtown Pawnee Rock. There will be a lunch and lots of handshakes and catching-up.

The now-annual golf outing, remember, is scheduled for August 21 in Great Bend.

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About Camp Pawnee

[May 31]   A reader named Robin wrote to ask when the Scouts stopped using Camp Pawnee, the site four miles west of Larned. I tried to write back, but Robin's account bounced my e-mail.

I suggested that Robin contact the Central States Scout Museum in Larned, which is open daily on Broadway. Also, the state lists some campground info.

If anyone knows whether the Scouts still use Camp Pawnee, please send an e-mail to me and I'll post it here. I'm interested -- I camped there as a member of Troop 444.

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Roger Hanhardt's record of PRHS

Roger Hanhardt, photographed for the Great Bend Tribune in the late 1990s.

[May 28]   A dozen years ago, you may remember, Roger Hanhardt circulated an offer to sell a compilation of Pawnee Rock history and school yearbooks. The price was $125, which at the time priced it out of my range (a shame considering what I ended up doing with PawneeRock.org).

Roger selected stories from the Pawnee Rock Herald and copied the senior pages from all the available yearbooks from 1910 through 1972, the high school's final year. When he was finished, he had amassed 1,400 pages of material; it was printed in two thick volumes and presented as "Pawnee Rock High School 1910-1972: A Historical Composite of Annuals."

Roger went to a lot of trouble beyond collecting yearbooks. He crunched numbers (for example, Pawnee Rock vs. all its opponents in football, by decade) and collated data (a running summary of the membership of the South 50-6 League, a list of all the trophies in the PRHS cases). There are many newspaper clippings that reveal bits of school life and of course the final headlines about the demise of our school. You can see photos of kids from the 1940s and see their children 20 years later.

One of the features I especially appreciate is the decade-by-decade list of businesses that bought advertising in the yearbooks. I have been compiling such a list so I can map our business district through time, and Roger's work is a big help because it fills in gaps in my collection. The volumes show a lot of imagination and attention to the details that made growing up in Pawnee Rock a unique experience.

The Great Bend Tribune story described the book this way:

"After 10 months and more than a thousand hours of researching old files, yearbooks, newspapers and local records, Hanhardt has compiled a history book destined to be treasured by area residents for generations to come -- a history book which encompasses much more than the town of Pawnee Rock in scope, dimension and interest.

"Chock full of fascinating bits of information, wisdom and local gossip, the 1,400-page book contains facts and photographs of every Pawnee Rock graduating class from 1910 through 1972, along with references to competing schools and regional towns."

Roger has graciously given me permission to use his work on PawneeRock.org, and you can count on seeing more of it. At the least, I'll happily use it to solve one of our frequent problems -- identifying folks in school photographs.

In the book's foreword, Roger tells us what makes his volumes special:

"One of the great things about this book is that everyone is 18 again. No corporate execs, Dr's., lawyers, or Indian Chiefs; just high school kids, having fun, learning, and growing in adulthood."

• • • 

In case you missed out on your chance to buy a copy of "Pawnee Rock High School 1910-1972," you might be able to find one elsewhere. Roger sent copies to the Great Bend Library, the Barton County Historical Society, the Kansas Historical Society, the Pawnee Rock Library, and the Pawnee Rock school.

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Making the most of two hours

[May 27]   My last visit to Pawnee Rock was far too short -- a couple of evening hours. There was so much to point out to my wife and kids, and we were on a schedule that required us to be in WaKeeney that night.

We drove the RV past the ancestral estate on Santa Fe Avenue, then over to the school building. We pulled up at Gary Trotnic's house, and I chatted with him for a few minutes. Then it was up Centre Street and out to the cemetery.

Something about the cemetery draws me like no other attraction in town. I suppose it is because of all the hours I spent there as a child, or maybe it's the peaceful greeness of it all. The solemnity.

I speedwalked around the grounds, taking photos of grave markers belonging to folks I had researched for PawneeRock.org. It was a beautiful evening, and I crammed in as many thoughts and mini-experiences as I could in the hope that I'd be able to sort them out and enjoy them later.

Coming to Pawnee Rock for Memorial Day may be like that for a lot of folks. It's the once-a-year-or-two occasion when they can mingle with people other than relatives; any other time, it might be hard to round up a quorum in our hometown.

So pack in the experiences. Attend the Memorial Day service and check on the graves of those you know. Smell the peonies and the cedars. Walk around town. Pause under a familiar tree. Go admire the new elevator bins, and renew your acquaintance with the Rock. Take pictures, and leave a smile.

This is your hometown.

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Fourth grade, 1967

The fourth grade gathered in the southeast corner of the classroom for an informal photo used in the 1967 yearbook (image sent by Barb Schmidt). The kids are (from left to right): Richard Batchman, Brenda Schmidt, Andrew Stimatze, TaWanna Mason, Charles Moore, Susan McFann, Kris Underwood, Kenneth Henderson, Marla Johnson, Mrs. Virginia Fry, Jill Clawson, Ida Deckert, (unidentified, maybe Caren), (unidentified boy, maybe Jim Story or Randy Wittig), Karen May, Todd Bright, Rhonda Countryman, Leon Unruh, John Wright, and DeWayne Popp.

[May 26]   This is my class, the Class of 1975, as we were in fourth grade.

I know more about these kids than I do any other schoolmates except my sister. Most of us were together from the time we were kindergartners, and some, like Ida and I, knew each other long before that because we went to the same church and our moms were good friends.

As well as I knew my classmates, they knew me too. The longer it is from our school days, however, the more I wonder whether I really did know them well.

As we mature and gain perspective we figure out that even in grade school we protected segments of ourselves. Not one friend, for example, shared my interest in stamp collecting and so I never talked of it in school, and while I might have hinted to a girl that I had a crush, I would have been teased to pieces had any of my pals found out. Grade school is when we use taunts and fistfights to set the pecking order that will be followed whenever we're back together. I'm just relieved, in retrospect, to see that I looked so normal and happy in the company of my classmates.

We knew each other's moves at recess, and we knew which buttons to push to get our friends and enemies in trouble. We formed tiny alliances and disbanded them as easily as we tied our shoes and then untied them. The girls broke into two main cliques: Ida-Brenda-Rhonda and Marla-Jill-Susan-TaWanna. I don't remember such groupings among us boys, although I did play at Todd's and DeWayne's houses a lot and was occasionally goaded by classmates into a hissy brawl with Andrew for their entertainment.

What we learned early sticks with us. As I look into our young faces, I see only one person who was constitutionally unhappy. I'm sad to report that whenever I now find someone wearing the "world owes me a break" expression, I think of my fellow fourth-grader.

This is a meaningful photo for me in another way. It was in this year that we learned about Wally Hickel, the Claflin native who moved to Alaska and became governor, and next to me in the photo is John Wright, a boy from Alaska who was adopted by a family living north of the Mennonite Church. I eventually moved to Alaska, where I had conversations with Wally and now work with Native languages. But back then, Alaska was only a dream.

Mrs. Fry was the only teacher who encouraged us to eat canned squid, and she was the only one who read Genesis to us, in 15-minute segments after lunch.

I think the girl between Jill and Todd is Caren, last name forgotten; she's the one who looks like Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird." On the day before Caren joined our class, Mrs. Fry announced that we were getting a new friend and that her name sounded the same as Karen May's. Did we have any suggestions on how to handle this?

"Call them C-Caren and K-Karen," I suggested.

Mrs. Fry quickly announced what she doubtless had in mind all along: the newcomer would have to use her middle name as well. Caren Ann, or somesuch. It hardly seemed fair. Caren was nice, and she lasted only until the end of the school year before moving away. (You know, I could be completely wrong. Maybe that was in second grade. But it still wasn't fair.)

Five years later, in 1971-72, we were the last freshmen of Pawnee Rock High School and soon became sophomore newcomers in Otis-Bison, Great Bend, Larned, and Macksville. Brenda, TaWanna, Marla, Todd, DeWayne, and I graduated as MHS Mustangs in May 1975.

Our class will be represented, I hope, at the annual school reunion on Memorial Day in Pawnee Rock. My Macksville class is planning its 35th reunion this August in Great Bend. I attended my 10-year reunion but haven't been back for another, although I hope to make it this summer. I wonder what I'm more afraid of finding out -- that I have changed . . . or that I haven't.

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Who was who in 1950

[May 25]   Sixty years ago, the Class of 1950 collected their diplomas. Being teenagers, they had accumulated all available knowledge and were ready to say goodbye to Pawnee Rock High School.

But we all know that's not how they ended up. Many of them stayed in town, created a bunch of kindergartners, and followed them through school. They clapped for the chorus, stood by their kids at parent-teacher conferences, and cheered for the football team.

That's only part of who they were. They eventually took over businesses in town or started their own. They worked in Larned and Great Bend. They farmed. They joined the military. They went to college.

Over time, their class blended in with all the others of prehistory and soon maybe not even their own children could identify the members of the parent's class. Because of school yearbooks, however, we can look back into the lives of these babies of the Great Depression and children of World War II and examine their faces and see who stood next to whom in the chorus photos and what instruments everyone played in band. We can see who had birdlegs and who had the best hair. We can imagine that they were just like us.

Ed Durall sent me his copy of the 1950 Pawnee Chief, as well as a few other annuals, so I could make a record of the sponsors who bought ads in the back of the book. I scanned all the pages and have posted them, hoping that we will see ourselves in the fresh faces of 1950.

Presenting the Class of 1950.

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Jerry Base seeks info about 1950s

[May 24]   Jerry Base, who was with the Pawnee Rock Class of 1961 for quite a while, is looking for information about students and graduates before 1959. Jerry is a substitute bus driver for USD 400, the Smoky Valley-Lindsborg district. (The photo shows him in first grade in 1950.)

Here's what Jerry wrote:

"I don't find any info regarding 8th grade graduation in 1957; I moved from Pawnee Rock in 1959 with my family, Dan & Nancy Base, to Garfield. I graduated from Garfield in 1961, but am interested in info about students/graduates from Pawnee Rock prior to 1959. I will be unable to attend the Pawnee Rock reunion over Memorial Day."

So, if you have info from the 1950s, please send it along.

Also, Ed Durall's generous gift of the 1950 yearbook so I could scan it means that I'll be able to post each page. I expect to have that done before this year's reunion.

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The coyote hunters

[May 21]   You want a photo that says "Barton County, 1940s"? Here you go.

My dad, Elgie, had this shot of coyote hunters among some other tiny images he took when he was in high school or shortly afterward. The man wearing the necktie is, I think, my grandfather, Otis, but I don't know the identity of the man in overalls. This scene was probably on our family's farm -- the northwest quarter of the section west of the old salt plant.

Admire the autumn landscape -- as treeless and flat and dry as you want to imagine the Pawnee Rock area to be.

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Operator, give me Pawnee Rock

[May 20]   In a time of smart phones and cell phones and Internet phone calls, it seems quaint to discuss the phone lines of a century ago. A hundred years ago, however, telephone service was a big new deal.

Pawnee Rock's service appears to have begun in 1902, according to this article in the Biographical History of Barton County, Kansas (1912). The Rock Telephone Company was a series of lines connecting our hometown with the other burgs that had branches of the Lindas Lumber Co. In farm country, telephone service would remain a hard sell for decades.

An insurance tariff report says there was a telephone office on the south side of Flora Street in 1912. A photo of the Pawnee Rock State Bank, also from 1911 or 1912, shows a sign indicating that there was a telephone inside.

Here's the history of Barton County telephony in the early 20th century:

Arkansas Valley Telephone Company

When you take the receiver from the hook on your telephone and within a few seconds are in conversation with a party sometimes miles away, did you ever stop to think how much money was required and how much time and energy had to be expended in order that you might enjoy this boon of modern civilization? Very few of us have done this and in writing the history of the Arkansas Valley Telephone Co., it will be seen that were it not for the fact the officers of this company are untiring in their efforts to make their system one of the best in the country, this section like other sections of the state would still be using the old style ring on, ring off phones.

This company has kept just a little ahead of the demands made upon it for the best service and in October, 1911, the Great Bend Telephone Co., absorbed the system of the Larned Telephone Co., The Stafford Telephone Co., and later after these systems had been put under one management and were known as the Arkansas Valley Telephone Company's system the company purchased the Dodge City system and the Kinley system and all these formerly small exchanges are now merged into one of the most extensive exchanges in the State of Kansas. The wires of this company branch out in every direction from Great Bend and this consolidation into one organization has resulted in the construction of continuous, uniform toll lines which greatly improved the utility of the telephone in Central Kansas and has reduced the rates to a minimum consistent with the best of service.

In the fall of 1911 work was begun which resulted in the entire reconstruction of the company's exchange and equipment. This work was finished in June, 1912, and on June 15 the "cutover" was made and the old exchange was abandoned and Great Bend became the possessor of one of the most modern, up-to-date telephone exchanges in the country. This exchange employs in Great Bend in the neighborhood of two score people and during the construction work periods this number is great increased.

The first telephones that were installed in Great Bend were put in along in the eighties. These telephones were crude and not of much success. Later a company was organized and telephones put in all over town. By an order emanating from the supreme court regarding patents, all these instruments were taken out and burned. The town was without a telephone system again until a few years ago, when the late William Grimes started a new telephone company. The plant was originally an automatic affair, but was not a success. Later a central energy system was installed.

In April 1902, the Rock Telephone Company was organized, and toll lines built connecting the several towns in which The Lindas Lumber Company was operating lumber yards, for the purpose of placing the different yards in close touch with each other. In 1903 The Great Bend Telephone Company was organized taking over the properties of the Rock Telephone Company and the telephone interests of the Grimes company.

During all of this time the telephone interests of this section of the state, and especially those in and around Great Bend before the above mentioned consolidation was made, have been in the hands of Dr. H. E. Lindas and under his management the policy of the company has always been one of advancement. The result of the company's efforts are shown in the many up-to-date features of the system that are found in few towns of Great Bend's size. The system as now being operated has all its wires in cables, most of them being underground, and the remainder will be there as soon as conditions are such as to make it possible.

The exchange is located in one of the most modern buildings in Great Bend at the corner of Lakin and Main streets. Every convenience for the employees of the company have been arranged for in laying out the different rooms for the switch board, operating rooms, offices, repair rooms, etc. Great Bend's history as far as the telephone part of it goes is far ahead of the times, but it is the intention, backed by a firm determination on this company's part, to give the people of this section of the state the best that is possible !n telephone communication, in both local and long distance service.

The people have seen this company's interests grow from a private telephone system to its present high state of development and utility. This company has 4,500 subscribers all of whom are enabled at any time to talk with the outside world at a small cost and it must indeed be gratifying to Mr. Lindas, the manager of the company, to know that he has in his charge one of the best telephone systems in this part of the country. Dr. Lindas invites the public to call at the company's offices and secure permission and a guide to show them the many intricate details that make up a modern telephone system. This invitation is open to the public and those who accept it will find that they owe this company all the support they can possibly give them for keeping their system right up to the minute in this branch of public utilities.

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The truth behind the postcard

Here's the front of the postcard, which was sent to us by Larry Smith.

[May 19]   Barb Schmidt is a master of research. Here's a note she sent Tuesday:

Something caught my fancy in the old color postcard you published on about May 2 ("There is going to be baptising"), which seemed to be from Caroline in Pawnee Rock to Jonas Horace Nickoll in Moundridge and possibly dated 1910 or 1919. [Early card from Pawnee Rock, front and reverse]

I had a few minutes to kill while waiting for a friend to arrive one day and so did a little research on Ancestry.com, which easily turned up records confirming that Jonas and Caroline "Carrie" Nickell were married in about 1912 at the ages of 25 and 24 respectively, were living on a farm (possibly Jonas' parents' farm) in McPherson County in 1915 but had moved to their own farm in Moundridge (Harvey County) by 1917, when Jonas (blond and blue-eyed) completed his WWI draft registration card and claimed exemption from the draft as a Mennonite with "sickly wife" and child.

Something must have happened to the child, though, because the 1925 state and 1930 federal censuses report Jonas and Carrie still living in the Moundridge area but without any children in their household.

In any event, the fact that Jonas did not move to Moundridge until after 1915 suggests it more likely that the postcard was dated 1919 than 1910.

Barb added: "Loved the photo posted May 14 of the kids with the little steam tractor -- it's just great when others share their old photos."

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The tracks of my fears

[May 19]   At the end of one of my reporting classes at the University of Kansas, we were told to pick any subject we wanted and to write a long story about it. Being the goober that I was, I picked "apathy in student government" -- and predictably no one wanted to talk about it but even so I didn't have the imagination to turn that into an entertaining story.

The best story turned out to be one written by a classmate who went "training" with her hometown pals on tipsy weekends. They would lie under shallow trestles while freight trains roared over their heads and vibrated every bit of their bodies.

That kind of behavior left me aghast. Didn't they know anything about safety? And how did they ever get up the nerve to treat railroad property as a playground?

Anybody from my part of the Kansas (well, me, at least) held the Santa Fe in awe. The railroad was responsible for the birth of Pawnee Rock. It brought my ancestors to Barton County. It carried the wheat off to Hutchinson. Its trains were noisy and had the right of way. Anybody who messed -- in any way throughout history -- with the railroad lost.

It's not surprising that my friend's forbidden-fruit adventures stuck with me, even better than her name, which I think was Linda.

This past weekend I was in a park enjoying a hiking smorgasbord with son Sam. One of the trails crossed railroad tracks, and I knew that a passenger train soon would be by. I wasn't about to leave my head anywhere near the tracks, but I had a point-and-shoot still/movie camera, which I propped up on a tie five inches from the rail and turned on when the train was a good distance away.

On the drive back to Fairbanks that evening, I slipped into a thoughtful mood and came up with the idea of dropping an elliptical story about love and betrayal into the movie. Maybe doing so fulfilled a fantasy born of my friend Linda's adventures.

If you're interested and have three minutes, here's Train Story.

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One hundred ten

[May 18]   Jennie Fanshier, who was feted recently for attaining 110 years, died Sunday in Great Bend. (Obituary)

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A bird in the hand

[May 17]   Nik and I brought the dogs down the dirt street last week, heading for home. I had the beagle and the husky, and they were frisky. It was the evening walk, time for the dogs to do what dogs do before winding themselves into sleep.

Ingrid, the beagle, yanked hard on her leash in a dash for the edge of the street. I stopped her short of the mouldering yellow and brown leaves left from last fall; it would not be beyond her to eat them.

Whoa! Another inch and she would have inhaled a deceased little songbird, its brown and black back disguising it from our eyes but not from Ingrid's nose. I pulled her back and gave my 12-year-old a plastic bag, the small orange kind we collect the dogs' poop in.

"Here, pick up the bird before Ingrid gets it," I said.

I held the dogs at bay, and Nik stood over the bird. Ingrid whined and strained, and Nik wound himself tight; when she whined again, he yelled at her. He lost one bag in the breeze, and then he worked his hand through another one and dropped it, too. I gave him a third.

"Ingrid, will you shut up!" he yelled.

This was getting old. Nik, I thought, should stop messing around and pick up the danged bird. He's seen birds before. I could do it. I've picked up plenty of animals to keep them out of the boys' way or to keep the dogs from eating them. I used to do it in Pawnee Rock. Dad would tell me to. This was before plastic bags, and I'd pick them up by their scrawny toes or their flutterless wings and toss them over the back fence.

Nik was really stressing out, like he'd never had to touch a dead . . .

Oh.

"Nik," I said softly, "would you like me to pick it up?"

He turned, and his smile was the picture of relief. I gave him the leashes and took his orange bag.

We shouldn't rush kids to reach out to death. He'll be ready when he's ready. I was ready about a year after I picked up my first dead sparrow, if nightmares are what we judge maturity by.

Using the bag -- caution around animals that carry lice is appropriate -- I scooped up the tiny bird, and before I could close my hand on it and tie the bag, it rolled over. It cocked its head, and I could swear it looked at me curiously.

"Nik, look at this! It's alive!"

We admired its yellow-brown belly feathers and its sharp beak. It had beady black eyes, without irises to reveal warmth or distrust. It was just a bird, somehow interrupted.

Now I had a new problem. Dad, I'm sure, would have taken my bird from me and made its death a quick certainty. If I left the bird out in the chilly evening, it might recover or its last moment of warmth might be the enveloping breath of a fox. To save it the pain, should I break its neck?

I wished my little songbird well, and then I gently rolled it out of my hand onto a secluded bed of leaves and walked away. Nik saw what I did.

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Stories from Radium

The grain elevator at Radium rises above the Arkansas River valley's trees south of Pawnee Rock. Jim Dye made this photo Thursday.

[May 14]   There may not be much left in the Radium townsite, but Radium Nation apparently includes a lot of people spread around the country. And a lot of them gather to share photos and tales around the electronic coffeepot at the Radium blog.

Take a look at the school photos, and they're just about as populated as those from Pawnee Rock High. Read the stories gathered by Beccy Tanner and Kathy Foster, and you'll see lots of names of people doing interesting things. I'll mention the photos again, because there are some great family shots -- and even a nice one of John Schmidt.

High on Radium's May agenda is the school reunion scheduled for May 29 in Great Bend.

Maybe it's time for a reminder about the Pawnee Rock school reunion, coming up on May 31 -- Memorial Day. The day begins with the 11 a.m. service at the cemetery north of town, and then folks gather at the depot for lunch and lots of reunionizing. (Reunion page)

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Lushness

Greenery along the Arkansas River.

[May 13]   In Pawnee Rock's cultivated riverbottom where irrigated acreage fills the view with green and the air with humidity, our part of Kansas still wants to be dry. The current weather aside, Pawnee Rock is marching headfirst toward the parched months when even the Arkansas River ducks its head under the sand to hide from the sun.

Regardless of the season, the Arkansas feeds a slender greenbelt of cottonwoods, willows, and assorted other trees, brush, and grass. And this time of year, when all the plants are happy, the riverside is a profusion of fast-growing flora.

Jim Dye made several photos yesterday out by the Pawnee Rock Bridge. I like this one, which doesn't have his dogs or even the water, because it reveals so much of life along the river.

Think for a moment about what we see: rough-bark trees, a dead and fallen branch, grass, some wildflowers/weeds, and taller plants that might include poison ivy. Imagine how much we don't see but know from experience: mosses, birds, rabbits, ticks, chiggers, flies, snakes, and pretty caterpillars in the undergrowth -- plus worms and tiny dark insects beneath the sandy surface. Imagine that jungle stretching along both sides of the waterway from Colorado to the edge of urbanized Wichita, and from south of the city on to Oklahoma.

This verdant belt is the oasis of dryland Kansas, and Pawnee Rock has a share.

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The lay of the land

Cover of Barton County township map book, sent by Barb Schmidt.

[May 12]   My dad was born near Pawnee Rock and he drove a school bus and a mail route. He knew every road and every farmer and her dog.

I grew up in town and sometimes rode the bus. I had a glimmer of who lived where, but often when Mom or Dad identified a farm for me it went in one ear, hit a stone wall, and fell out onto the floor. I just wasn't aurally focused.

But my spot at the table was an arm's length from our books of Barton and Pawnee county township maps. These books, about 6 by 9 inches and printed on inexpensive paper, showed who lived where -- an indispensable aid when the rural population was much higher than it is today.

The maps often were my suppertime reading. Yes, I looked up the houses of girls I had a crush on and plotted out routes so that I could ride my bike (later, my car) past their farms. Other times, I measured out hiking routes. I found the homes of old people who sat in the back at church and whose names I knew but couldn't put a face to.

I was fortunate to have grown up in central Kansas, because my mind is fairly square and the roads conveniently divide the land into a grid. These maps and I were made for each other.

Thirty-seven years after this particular set of maps was delivered to the Paul Schmidt home northwest of town, Barb Schmidt (who now lives far northwest of town) sent several township maps -- Pawnee Rock, Clarence, Liberty, Buffalo. It's a real thrill to once again find the country homes of people I had forgotten or misplaced.

Barb suggested that perhaps someone has a book of Pawnee County maps that could be scanned and sent along. I think that's a great idea. Most of what is on PawneeRock.org is from Barton County, and adding Pawnee County maps to the site would more realistically reflect our hometown life. So, if you have a set, please send the scans. If you would rather send the map book for me to scan, write to me and I'll send you my address.

Detail of Pawnee Rock Township map, 1973, sent by Barb Schmidt.

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Cedar tree, how big it was

Broken cedar at Pawnee Rock historical marker pullout, May 10, 2010.

[May 11]   The historical marker at the edge of town was not visited by Pawnee Rock's residents very often -- we often left it to the long-distance drivers who needed to relieve themselves, their children, or their dogs -- but once in a while I'd pull off U.S. 56 on the way back from Larned and pause before diving headlong into our city.

I have a few happy memories from the little park. For example, I marveled that the state would have a sign that bragged about our big Rock, which I was quite familiar with. I liked to sit there and watch the trucks and cars go by. I would think, every time, about listening to the Lions Club members josh as they operated a traveler's aid station there on Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends. Sometimes I walked over to the cedars and thought about trying to climb them like I did when I was a kid, but by adulthood I had tired of picking sharp pieces of bark out of my hands.

(This photo shows the cedar in January 2005.)

The cedars may have been meant to provide shade, but I think they were more of a low-maintenance symbol of human spirit. Those are tough old trees.

One of the big trees that had long shaded our marker finally gave in to the wind on Monday, falling backward toward the old Santa Fe tracks. As much as I hate to see that (in Jim Dye's photos), I am sorry that I can't be there to take part in a ritual that should always accompany the downing of a cedar -- sniffing the inner tree.

When our family took care of the township's cemetery, we often pruned the cedars or picked up tempest-tossed branches. The needles and bark were unpleasant as we dragged branches to Dad's pickup, but the aroma of the fresh wood transcended all the troubles.

As light as the breeze after a storm, it's a glorious final gift from our cedar.

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By sunflowers obsessed

Sunflower and bee near Pawnee Rock.

[May 10]   I have tried to cultivate few enough vices to keep myself out of trouble and just enough to keep me interesting (at least to myself). One of those cravings is a compulsion to commit an extremely large number of film frames and pixel piles to sunflowers.

Most of my shots in the beginning were black and white, so I looked for settings in which the flowers would stand out in tones of gray. Later, when digital color became affordable, I found a whole new world every time I stepped into a summer ditch.

I don't think I am overly patriotic to Kansas' floral symbol, even years after Iowa declared it a noxious weed. Maybe I am fascinated by the bright yellow or by the bugs the flowers attract. I certainly don't care much for the touch of the plants themselves; the hairy, tacky feel is at best unpleasant.

In the end, I guess that my sunflowers are like any other vice -- there's no good reason for my devotion. It's an addiction. The rising question is whether I am exploiting the flowers, or whether they are exploiting me by enticing me to make them more desirable and thus better protected from ditch mowers.

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Benjamin H. Unruh of Hillside Farm

Grave markers of Benjamin H. Unruh and Anna Unruh, in the Mennonite Memorial Cemetery north of Pawnee Rock.

[May 7]   Benjamin H. Unruh was one of Pawnee Rock's multitude of Ben Unruhs, but he appears to be the first. His family arrived in Kansas with the mid-1870s Mennonite migration from Russia, and they eventually settled north of where the Bergthal Mennonite Church now stands north of town.

This profile of Mr. Unruh and his farm appeared in the "Biographical History of Barton County, Kansas," published in 1912.

"Hillside Farm," the country home of Benjamin H. Unruh, stands on a a gently sloping hillside thirteen miles west of Great Bend. The farm embraces three hundred and twenty acres of beautiful lying land, and the soil is very fertile. Mr. Unruh also owns one hundred and sixty acres in Pawnee County, and both tracts are in a high state of cultivation.

The "Hillside Farm" is improved with a one story and a half frame containing nine rooms, and is furnished modernly. The barn is 32x60 and has stalls for fifteen horses and ten cows. There is a granary, model milk house, and other outbuildings, and some metal grain bins scattered about. The house is painted gray, the barn red, and these shades harmonize well with the green of the orchard leaves and the shade trees about the premises.

Benjamin H. Unruh was born in Central Russia on September 5th, 1864, and came to America with his parents, Hein and Katherine Unruh, when ten years of age. They arrived in Newton, Kansas, on December 24th, 1874, and little Benny spent his tenth Christmas in the new world. They finally settled at Pawnee Rock, but eventually entered a homestead three miles south of the farm here described. The father died in November, 1884, but the mother still resides on the homestead.

Benjamin H. attended the public schools of his district and assisted his father and mother on the farm, and entered and proved up on a claim of a quarter section. On April 14th, 1899, he married Miss Anna Smith, of Harvey County, Kansas. They have five living children: Alvin, 10; Ruth, 8; Augusta, 6; Paul, 4, and Freida, 3.

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Hanging around the lumberyard

This receipt was issued in January 1957, just a few weeks after I was born. I wasn't there when Dad made this purchase, but I went often as a young fellow.

[May 6]   I would imagine that most of us have special memories of shopping with one or another of our parents when we were very small. For example, I remember digging through the metal-airplane bin in the basement of the Ben Franklin store in Fayetteville, Arkansas, with my mom and her parents.

In Pawnee Rock, I followed Mom or Dad along to Farmers, to the gas station, to Hixon's grocery, to the drugstore, to the dress shop, and to far too many stores in Great Bend and Larned. The store that was special, however, was the Clutter Lindas lumberyard.

Because it was just across sandy Pawnee Avenue from Dad's place -- Elgie's Craft Shop -- he walked over two or three times a week to buy glass for cabinets or a few lengths of lumber that he turned into a home improvement for his customers. When I first went with Dad, I hung within an arm's reach of the hammer loop on his overalls, but later I felt safe enough to stroll up and down the wooden floor along the two aisles running the length of the store. I've mentioned before that I was fascinated by the fishing tackle, but with manager Bill Levingston's tacit approval I also fiddled with the small pulleys, nuts and bolts, and rope.

Once in a while, Dad and I sat on the bench under the awning and drank Pepsi pulled from a chest cooler. I'd try to draw water up with the tree-shaded hand pump, and Dad let me strain at it -- lifting myself off the ground as I hung on the handle -- until one afternoon I actually did succeed and he gave me a proud smile.

Of all the lost businesses of Pawnee Rock, and aside from Dad's shop, I miss the lumberyard most of all.

Clutter Lindas Lumber Co. in 1974.

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Evolving beyond Roundup

A weedless field of soybeans north of Pawnee Rock.

A map that went with a story yesterday in the New York Times showed that Kansas leads the nation in species of weeds (six) that have evolved to resist Roundup, the superherbicide created by Monsanto.

That means that you can spray all the weedkiller you can afford on your fields and get less and less benefit. It's a big deal because Monsanto makes elevator loads of money by also selling patented crops that are resistant to its pesticide. In other words, Monsanto's broadleaf poison won't kill its Roundup-resistant soybean plants while it does kill the weeds. Or did.

A lot of folks might not cheer for Monsanto to make a comeback. For all its cleverness, Monsanto has a lot of enemies. Some people think it's an unfriendly corporation because of the way it treats farmers whose crops contain Monsanto's genes -- even if the wind pollinated them.

So what is Monsanto going to do? If life were a TV show, Monsanto would surreptitiously create and spread genetically modified weeds and then sell a new poison to kill those weeds. And woe to the poor organic farmer whose fields contained Monsanto's weeds.

On the other hand, crop yield has increased because of Monsanto's products. That often trumps all other concerns.

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The girls' river adventure

Alice Schmidt, Maxlyn Smith, Ruth Smith and Helen Schmidt set out across country. Barb Schmidt sent this family photo.

May 4   After I posted the photo Barb Schmidt submitted of four young girls on their way to a grand adventure, Robert Schmidt sent a wonderful bit of writing composed by his mother, Maxlyn Schmidt. You may remember her well because she was a doer; she was especially involved in the Mennonite Church, and she taught commerce and speech at Pawnee Rock High School. Maxlyn and Earl Alvin, the eighth-grade teacher, ran a farm north of Pawnee Rock.

Robert, who now lives in Georgia, sent this note and attached Maxlyn's account of the girls' trip to the Arkansas River:

"Friends,

"Thanks so much for providing and publishing the picture of the four young women on April 19. I vaguely remember hearing this story from my Mom, Maxlyn, but your account leaves out an important detail. The attachment, taken from a collection of stories written by an over-50s creative writing class at BCJC, tells the rest of the story."

I asked Robert for permission to post Maxlyn's article here.

"Please feel free to publish," he wrote back. "Maxlyn had become quite the web surfer in her last months and would be delighted."

Arkansas River Folly

By Maxlyn Schmidt

We -- my neighbors Helen and Alice, and my sister Ruth and I -- planned the day carefully. We would take extra clothes for playing the water and food for two meals. We would walk the six miles to the river early in the morning, stay all day, and walk home again just before dark. I do not know how old we were, maybe 11 to 14. I cannot imagine why our parents approved of such a venture, especially mom, she was such a worrier. They did though. Helen and Alice's mom even baked a "spitting" pie for us -- sand plum. Helen was a little ashamed of it; she thought her mom was the only one who ever baked pies using unpitted fruits. What she didn't know was that my mom never pitted cherries for pie and that one of dad's favorites was sand plum pie. Of course, one couldn't pit those things.

On the chosen day, Helen's sister took a picture of us; we organized our things, and away we went. We were not accustomed to walking great distances, and I can't imagine how we could even walk that far, but we did. To play in the water, Helen and Alice had made some crude swimming suits from old everyday clothes, but Ruth and I each wore an old dress and a pair of homemade bloomers. I suppose they were yellow; most of ours were made from feed sacks.

Although I do not remember it, we must have been dead tired by the time we reached the river. I suppose we changed clothes behind some bushes and then lay in the water of the Arkansas, letting it flow around us to ease our tired muscles until our strength returned. Then we had a wonderful time "puddling about." The water was warm and shallow in most places. Sometimes there were cooler pockets. We found the deeper channels and lay on our backs, letting the water carry us downstream. We dug holes in the sand. We chased minnows and tried to catch the elusive little fish, but they were quicker than we were and when we opened our hands, they were always empty.

At noon we devoured our food, especially the sand plum pie. We didn't mind spitting the seeds. Playing in the water makes one very hungry.

In the afternoon it got cloudy; it was sort of nice not to have the sun beating down on us. Our skin felt warm, but as long as we were in the water it wasn't too bad. Of course, we didn't know about sun tan lotion then. Most people tried to stay white in the summertime, often wearing sunbonnets and smocks to keep out the sun. Occasionally we tried it, too, but sunbonnets and smocks were hot and we soon opted for comfort. This day we had thrown caution to the wind.

Finally we ate our supper and started home. It was then we realized two things: we were very tired and we were very, very sunburned. We dragged along, slower and slower, resting often. One mile, two, three, four. By now we were really hurting, and it was getting dark. At last, about a mile from home when we were ready to collapse, we saw headlights approaching. I prayed that it might be our parents. Sure enough, they had worried and come to find us. For once we did not chide them for not trusting us to take care of ourselves.

Ruth and I were sick and feverish that night. We were terribly burned on our upper arms and on our legs above the knees. Those parts of our bodies were usually covered by our dresses, but as we lay in the way, it had pushed our dresses up, exposing more tender parts of our arms and legs to the hot sun. We could not bear to have our parents touch us to apply salve. Great blisters appeared.

Our misery was nothing compared to that of Helen and Alice. So much of their bodies had been exposed to the sun since they had worn those homemade bathing suits. Their mother had to cut off their clothes, and they couldn't stand to have anything touch them. They shivered all night but could not endure even the weight of a sheet over their blistered bodies. They must have had a terrible fever. No one thought of going to the doctor. They had no aspirin to deaden their pain. It took them a long time to get well.

The Arkansas River is dry now. We are sad when we drive across its bridges and have to look hard to find even a little puddle of stagnant water here and there. Those of us who grew up near it have many good memories of picnics, playing in sand, and fishing within its banks. There is one day at the river which I especially enjoy remembering and talking about, but which I certainly would not care to repeat.

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