Too Long in the Wind

August 2010

St. John -- just 'round the corner

[August 31]   You know how it is -- you come into a town you've visited a dozen times and all of a sudden there is something you've never seen before.

It was that way for me a couple of weeks ago in St. John. I was driving my mom and sister around south of Pawnee Rock, reliving past days in Radium and Macksville, and then we turned our tourist eyes toward St. John. We took a bad dirt road up from U.S. 50, bouncing into town from the south.

Night was falling hard, but we were on a mission. Cheryl said there was an interesting Dillons store on the square. We eventually stumbled onto the square and motored our way around it. And there it was -- a Dillons with a rounded front.

The building was constructed a long time ago, and I don't know how long it has been a grocery store or a Dillons. Parking seemed like it would be difficult, but no worse than in any other small-county town where grocery stores have parking at the curb and maybe a little out back.

The building is an oddity in a square-cut state, a structure showing the flair of a long-gone architect and builder. Maybe it started life as a dime store with apartments above.

I guess I just wasn't receptive to different architectural styles when I lived in Kansas. Thirty-five years ago, however, there might have been enough buildings of this sort that this particular corner store especially didn't stand out.

On my recent trip, all the county seats of St. John's size had more good stuff than I expected, from St. Francis and Atwood to Johnson City and Ulysses. The schools and restaurants and parks have long been there; this time I saw them not as a glassy-eyed young Kansan but as a tourist who was paying good money for the adventure.

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Reunion photos posted

[August 30]   Sandy Haun's lively photos of the 2010 Pawnee Rock High School reunion have been posted. (See the photos)

Roger Hanhardt identified as many folks as he could, but the photos contained some faces he wasn't sure of. Please -- if you know who the people are, let me know and I'll add their name. E-mail Leon

Thanks to Sandy and Roger for their time-consuming work on these photos.

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Alberta Lucille Troll dies

[August 30]   Alberta Lucille Troll, who once ran a beauty shop and laundry in Pawnee Rock, died Friday, August 27, in Great Bend. She was 92 years old and a member of the New Jerusalem Church.

She was born at Dundee to Herman and Lucinda Rudiger Unruh, and she married William Troll in 1946. She had a brother, Leslie Unruh, and four sisters: Evelyn Base, Mildred Dodd, Elsie Porter, and Alma Lewis.

Mrs. Troll's funeral will be at 10:30 Tuesday morning at the New Jerusalem Church in Pawnee Rock, and she will be buried at the Dundee Valley Cemetery just northeast of Dundee. (Full obituary)

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Dundee Valley Cemetery's neighbor

Operations at the Venture Corporation asphalt plant south of U.S. 56 northeast of Dundee. I made this photo in mid-August 2010.

The Dundee Valley Cemetery is the small block of green.

The Dundee Valley Cemetery gate in 2006.

[August 30]   The recent nationally publicized slaying of young Alicia DeBolt of Great Bend and the discovery of her body at the Venture Corporation asphalt plant near the Dundee Valley Cemetery brings to mind another matter. (Background about the DeBolt case)

Since the 1870s, the land surrounding the cemetery had been in Mennonite hands. It is part of the sections where the plots were occupied by the colony newly arrived from the Crimea.

Eventually, the woman who owned the land sold it, and then the new owners sold it to Venture. According to my dad, who talked with her about it, she said that had she known that the land would be used this way -- especially around the cemetery -- she wouldn't have made that deal.

Now, Venture may be a great corporate neighbor. This posting does not cast any aspersions on the company, which does what companies do -- it produces something to make money. In fact, in the past three or so years Venture has built a white fence around the cemetery on the three sides facing Venture's sand pit and asphalt yard.

Still, it's a loss to not just the Mennonite community but also to those who value our area's historical legacy that a few hundred square yards of burial ground has been surrounded by a mining operation that is unsightly and, at the moment, distasteful to consider.

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Reunion photos on the way

[August 27]   Sandy Haun took a bunch of photos of alumni at last weekend's reunion in Great Bend, and Roger Hanhardt will send us the identifications. I'll post them as soon as possible.

"In the meantime," Roger writes, "please convey a big thank you to all in attendance. It was great."

The benefits of winning: Nik meets new fans after his victory at North Pole Speedway.

Mr. Competitive: I don't mean to push my family in front of you too often, but I do want to update a story I wrote last month about my 12-year-old, Nik. At the time, he was starting his racing career. Last night, on his fourth day of racing, he won the feature event to cap off the evening. He led most of the way, but then was in a nasty wreck and had to work his way back through the pack. He's a kid competing against a bunch of 20-somethings and a 17-year-old, and I wonder how far up the road he has set his sights.

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Big birds headed your way

Migrating sandhill cranes sweep through a grainfield in Fairbanks, Alaska. I made these bird photos Wednesday and the Quivira photo (at the bottom) earlier in the month.

[August 26]   I hear them in the morning, the honking songs of the sandhill crane in flight. The cranes convene early in a barley field near the university, then take to the air about 8:30 and move by the dozens to a field near our cabin in Fairbanks.

Great gangs of cranes have gathered, coming in from thousands of tundra lakes and staging for their trip down the flyway. I don't know how long they stay here, maybe a day or maybe a week, while they gorge on grain left in the fields.

When the thought comes to them, they'll head toward Texas. They'll cross the Canadian border and aim for North Dakota and then go south past the sandhills of Nebraska and into Cheyenne Bottoms and Quivira on their way to the gulf. The route may look awkward on a flat map, but it seems perfectly normal if you trace it on a globe.

This is the height of crane season in the Tanana River valley, and Canada geese and various ducks -- mallards and pintails, for example -- show up as well. They arrive in the spring, spread out across Alaska's interior, make their babies, and -- cowards that they are -- tuck their tails and fly out before the snow comes.

As a boy in Pawnee Rock, I was enthralled by the fall migration. The sound of geese in the high distance was the essence of the season, and I felt mighty lucky if a flock flew directly overhead and I could count every bird in the V.

I could relate to geese. Grandma Unruh had as many as three at a time on her farm. I suspected they were good to eat, and apparently a lot of hunters thought so too. (In retrospect, I wonder whether geese were popular with hunters because they are bigger and slower targets than ducks.)

Because my childhood coincided with the rush to preserve the whooping crane, I listened in class to teachers describing the saga of the big white birds. I read the newspaper stories with their blurry photos of whoopers at Cheyenne Bottoms or in a distant marsh at Quivira, and I yearned to see one. I still haven't.

Sandhill cranes, however, were an afterthought in our world. They weren't endangered, and "sandhill" didn't bring to mind good eating. Furthermore, the birds weren't saintly white, like the whoopers.

Now that I've met the sandhill cranes, I am a big fan. For all their ungainliness -- they fly like prehistoric relics, their neck out straight and their stick legs dragging behind, and they run to a stop upon landing -- they have an elegance I didn't expect. They move through a field gracefully. They're comic, too. When they have a spat, they leap straight up, kick their feet forward, and shout at each other.

You may know the honk of a goose, discerning its richness from the flat quack of a duck. The crane's song is the same order of magnitude more interesting than the relative squeak of a goose. These birds put the romance in flight; poems could be written about cranes that a goose could only dream of.

More than three dozen Canada geese -- part of a flock of a hundred -- practice flying together over Fairbanks.

Birds from Alaska will migrate through Canada and on through Kansas, as shown on this map in an exhibit at Quivira National Wildlife Refuge southeast of Pawnee Rock.

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My sister, the published author

Cheryl and I along the Santa Fe Trail southwest of Pawnee Rock. Our mom, Anita Byers, made this photo.

[August 25]   The big news in the Unruh camp this week is that Cheryl's book -- Flyover People: Life on the Ground in a Rectangular State -- has come off the press in Newton. Cheryl drove over from Emporia yesterday loaded her car with book boxes, and now she's going to sell those books. I encourage you to buy one.

Pawnee Rock is discussed frequently because it's where my little sister spent her formative years. There are also many other essays dealing with Kansas' climate, activities, and geological features. It's a good read and maybe you should buy a couple. Christmas isn't far away.

Kids, let this be a lesson to you -- brothers can help their sisters even if it takes five decades before his skills and her needs match up.

Early this year, Cheryl invited me to edit her book. She had done all the hard work -- travel, think, and write -- and so my duties of helping form a schedule, prepare the essays, design the book, and chat with the printer were fairly easy.

Working together when we were competitive kids was unthinkable. I'm glad we grew up.

More about the book

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Twilight devotions

[August 24]   In a world of constant and accelerating change, at least one thing remains constant -- young adults drive to the Rock to stand close to each other at sunset. This couple showed up in a pickup one evening while I was walking around the rim of the park.

It's a magical time -- the town below fades and all the sounds are louder -- and emotions are aroused. The day's dying breeze stirs the air. At twilight, there's no more romantic public spot in Barton County than our Rock.

The pavilion was erected in 1920, or about 32,800 twilights ago. Who among us has not shared one of those sunsets on the Rock when hand-holding becomes a hug becomes a gentle kiss under the evening star?

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Paul and Bernice Schmidt's farm

[August 23]   Barb Schmidt, who grew up on the first farm west of the salt plant, has sent us many interesting photos, but I think this series of her parents' first year on the farm to be among the most important.

For one thing, the series reveals the true-born landscape of Pawnee Rock -- before there were shelter belts and other human-planted woody areas. Our farmers claimed their territory not just at the courthouse but also by telling Nature what would be grown on the dry land.

Here are the photos and what Barb wrote about them:

1 Photo showing all the farm buildings: On page 47 of the 1916 Barton County Plat Book, this farmstead is the "Benj. J. Koehn" farm in section 29 (about 1.5 miles NW of PR). My dad took this photo 70 years ago -- round about July 17, 1940, which was the date he bought the 160-acre farm from the Koehns for $7,000. The barn (minus the cupola) previously appeared in the September 7, 2009, edition of pawneerock.org in a drastically altered state. (See the barn)

In my youth, I was often told how "lucky" I was to have come along in the years after the outhouse (visible just right of the house) had been replaced with indoor plumbing. The building immediately to the left of the house was always used as a granary and in the 1960s also became a wonderful backstop to knock tennis balls against on a warm summer evening. It took me quite awhile to save enough to buy a wooden racket and 3 balls at Gibson Discount Center in Great Bend, but oh what fun they brought me.

The building to the left of the granary was for many decades a chicken house, but some of your readers might remember that by the late 1960s and early 1970s my mom had converted it into a ceramic shop. And if you look far on the horizon toward the right side of the photo, you will spot the Otis Unruh farmhouse. Sadly, almost nothing you can see in this photo remains today except the sky and the dirt.

2 Photo looking east toward the farmhouse with Pawnee Rock on the horizon: The farmhouse dad bought was definitely a "fixer-upper," but at least it had a full set of lightning rods!

3 Photo of farmhouse and dad's "auto-MO-beel": I don't know exactly when dad proposed to mom, but his journals reveal that 10 days after he bought the farm on July 17, 1940, he took mom to Komarek Jewelers in Great Bend on her birthday and bought her an engagement ring ($51). One of the many questions I wish I'd asked my parents is whether mom (a Great Bend "city girl") saw dad's farm for the first time before she accepted dad's proposal or whether he waited until after she said "yes" to drive her out to his farm for the first time! And no, I don't have a clue what was in that old trunk sitting on top of the front porch roof.

4 Photo of barn, haystack and pig shed: The pigs left before I arrived and the wooden barn was twistered before I was old enough to remember it. So I guess I have nothing much to say about this photo except that it kinda seems like a classic farm building photo from days gone by.

5 Photo of dad planting tree: I love all these photos but this is my favorite. After recording in his journal the purchase of the barren Koehn farm in July 1940, dad did not record the purchase of any trees until January 24, 1941, when he went to "Fort Hays" and bought "trees" for $2.00. In this photo, he looks mighty pleased at planting this particular tree so I suspect this was the "first" tree he planted (at least with mom watching), either near the house or perhaps to start one of the three shelter belts he planted on the north, east and south sides of the house. The fact that he planted this tree wearing a white, Sunday dress shirt and a going-to-town hat suggests this particluar planting was of a ceremonial nature rather than part of a long and sweaty day of hard labor.

In any event, this tree may still be standing on that (no longer Schmidt) farm, though you could never pick it out from the many old trees on the farmstead today, all standing like weary soldiers against the ever-warring wind. But at least I can finally point to one thing in all these photos that I know for a fact still exists today: the shovel in my dad's hands. It rests snugly in my garage, where in 2010 it still comes out every spring and summer to do "farm duty" on my little weeds-and-roses patch in West Seattle, where, by the way, dad planted a tiny, $10 Colorado Blue Spruce 27 years ago that towers high above the rooftops today. And, yes, I always clean the dirt off the blade after I use it -- just like Pa taught me.

PS: $51 might sound like cheap engagement ring, but dad paid $7,000 for 160 acres, which works out to $43.75 per acre. So the ring cost more than an acre of farmland, which, to me, sounds like just about the right value to put on an engagement ring, don't you think?

I drive by and take photos of our old farm every time I visit Kansas. The last time was May 2009, when the only building still standing on the farmstead was the sheet metal barn that replaced the twistered wooden barn in the early 1950s. However, the three shelter belts still surround the area where the house and farm buildings used to stand.

Also, the long earthen dam and the ponds in the pasture (not pictured in the 1940s photos as the dam wasn't built until the early 1960s) are still there. The trees planted around those ponds so long ago are now mature and provide cool shelter to cattle sometimes quartered there by the current owner.

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Reunion is at hand

[August 20]   This Saturday -- tomorrow -- is the long-awaited annual school reunion at the Angus Inn in Great Bend. Last year's golf-and-dinner event drew at least 200 folks.

The folks who spearhead the event should be commended. Glenn Mull, Roger Hanhardt, and Ed Crosby have shephered the reunion, now in its third year. Also on the alumni association reunion committee are Sandra Haun, Marilyn Haynes, and Vivian Bright, according to the committee's letter (PDF here). (The Memorial Day reunion in Pawnee Rock continues as well.)

Reservations were required for the catered supper and the golf, but you can drop in between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. just to chat and get yourself in pictures. (See last year's photos here and here.)

Several folks asked me during my recent visit to Pawnee Rock whether I'd be at this reunion. I'm sorry, but I won't make it. My schedule didn't work out this year, and I thought it was better to be in PR when I could rather than miss it altogether.

I hope you all have a splendid time.

Please send photos.

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Fun, and photos to prove it

Crowded sky: Vacation inside an Alaska Airlines 737.

Perfect sky: Vacation near Pawnee Rock.

[August 19]   On my flights home Tuesday evening (Denver to Seattle and Seattle to Fairbanks), I mostly read the first 200 pages of a paperback novel but now and then I added to a list I was writing in the back of the book. By the time I fell asleep somewhere over British Columbia, I had itemized three dozen sure-fire things about Pawnee Rock to write about.

When I got home about midnight (3 a.m. Pawnee Rock time), I puttered around for a while with my wife and kids and dogs and then slept until noon. Fortunately I had scheduled a day-after vacation day as well. And here it is time to write serious stuff again, and I find myself still getting over my vacation.

As I compose this in one window, my Mac is churning away at a backup DVD containing 2,778 photos from the trip. I made four DVDs, and I suspect that I shot around 5,500 photos altogether. There're not all of Pawnee Rock. I'd wonder about my sanity if they were.

My family members certainly entertain doubts. They suggest that my next vacation should be somewhere with pleasant weather and mountains and an ocean -- a scene that sounds remarkably like Alaska and Hawaii. I think they're just jealous because I got a suntan.

Give me a little time, and I'll start on my back-of-the-book list of ideas. Just as there's no apparent end to the photos one can take in central Kansas, Pawnee Rock is a bottomless well of inspiration. But even if I do run out of ideas, I'm not surrendering my tan.

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The ball and the wall

[August 17]   Sometimes a boy's best friend isn't even his dog. There were many days when I wanted to play catch and had no one handy, so I threw a tennis ball against the red-brick west wall of the fire station if we didn't have any cars parked there.

If I hit the wall squarely on a brick, it would bounce predictably and I'd make a decent catch. If I hit the crack, the play was a little more fun. And when I threw it against a spot where the bricks were uneven, the result was like having to field a bad hop.

The ivy -- Virginia creeper, I think -- on part of the wall made it more entertaining because of its deadening effect on any throw. After I moved on to college, Dad put up a carport. Succeeding owners let the yard plants overgrow, and I'm not sure anyone would be able to play catch there now.

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A break in the weather

The storm's leading clouds move over Pawnee Rock, as viewed from the cemetery.

The breadth of the storm is visible on radar.

Trees on the north side of Pawnee Rock turn away from the north wind that came with Sunday's storm.

[August 16]   Where I live now, the sky is not an important part of the landscape. Sure, it provides all the usual services -- rain, snow, northern lights -- but it is rarely a show by itself. That is why, I suppose, I've been so fascinated by goings-on in the sky during my weeklong visit to Pawnee Rock.

There were several evenings of very warm days when it looked as if Barton County would be soaked, but it never seemed to happen. During my entire week in town and in Great Bend, it was hard to hold a conversation with anyone in the agricultural world without bringing up the subject of whether it might rain. "Not that it would help," almost every one of them said. "It's too late to do much good."

What we did have were beautiful cloud shows at sunset.

Yesterday morning -- my last hours in Pawnee Rock -- I was taking photos at the cemetery when I noticed that the sky to the west was turning spooky. The clouds were wavy and colored white and blue-gray, and the horizon disappeared into a gray curtain. I shot a few headstones while lightning flashed, and then I scooted for the car. It looked as if this would be a good rain.

I came down from the cemetery, spun around the Rock one more time, turned on the wipers, and drove west into the storm. The sky show was over.

Driving southwest out of Pawnee Rock in the rain.

It was good to see so many longtime Pawnee Rock people on this visit and to become acquainted with new folks. Thank you for your hospitality. I hope I'll be back soon.

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Where the sun really shines

[August 16]   Rick Clawson, who grew up in Pawnee Rock, sends a reminder that Barton County is not the hottest place on Earth, a suggestion of which may have appeared in my postings of last week.

Here is Rick, writing from Nevada:

Hi, Leon,

I saw your blog on the temperature in the Great Bend area and wanted to respond with my own Las Vegas temperature note. Last week ended a streak of 45 consecutive days in which the Las Vegas area temperatures exceeded 100 degrees. The only longer recorded streak was in 1944, I believe it was said.

My first year here in Las Vegas, 2005, we had 17 straight days over 110 degrees. One day longer and it would've tied the longest streak for that record. This year, I am glad to say, we've had but a few days over 110 degrees. But our July temperatures, as a trade off, were the highest average daily temperatures for a single month ever recorded, almost two degrees higher than the average.

Can't wait for the fall temperatures to arrive. We've got another month of heat before temperatures will ease below the 100 degree mark. It'll be especially nice to not hear my air conditioners running 24 hours a day, and to not having the $300 a month electric bills to go along with it.

Rick

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Waiting for fortune to call

[August 13]   On my way to my Macksville High reunion last Saturday, I bought two Powerball tickets. As I prepared to follow another diner into the restaurant, I spotted and picked up a tarnished penny from the graveled parking lot. Incredibly, fortune didn't smile on me and I am not rich.

Nor am I rich after Wednesday's drawing.

So the question is, should I counteract my bad luck by buying a ticket on Friday the 13th?

I thought so. I'll see you at the counter, and maybe we'll split the expected $75 million or so.

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Fire in the sky

[August 13]   When I am in Alaska, I amuse myself by watching the weather radar as storms sweep across Kansas. Inflamed red spots in the night sky bring to my mind the sound and fury of lightning storms. I always picture the worst.

But sometimes the sound and fury signifies nothing, as it did last night.

I was driving around after supper and kept an eye on the cloud bank rising in the north and west. When the light show began, I pulled onto a dirt road and held my point-and-shoot -- not the best camera for shooting lightning without a tripod -- against the roof of my car. I shot and shot and shot.

I moved a couple of times to driveways entering different alfalfa and cornfields and, because the lightning was flickering closer overhead, I stayed in the car rather than try to imitate a lightning rod. I positioned the camera against the open window's sill, pressing the shutter again and again. The lens stayed open for a second each time. I did it often enough to capture a few more episodes of earth and sky exchanging electrons. I was lucky.

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Happy anniversary!

[August 12]   Jared Smith writes to offer these wishes:

Just wanted to wish a Happy Anniversary to my brother Larry and his wife Cora, and my parents, Virgil and Joan Smith(their 60th!).

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Hot enough for you?

[August 12]   A bank thermometer said 110 degrees, and the temp at the Great Bend airport was reported to be 102. I figured the parking lot at the Dillons on 10th Street would be hot enough to cook an egg.

With my mom and sister in tow, I bought a half-dozen large eggs in the store about 5 p.m., when the asphalt should have been as hot as it was going to get. Clouds were moving in from the west, and I thought we would have only a short time before Nature turned down the broiler for the day.

I had parked far from the store, out where it was unlikely that anyone would want to park next to us. Also, it was away from prying eyes and surveillance cameras, which might bring a curious store manager. There was a band of sealing oil, hot enough to take the tread print from my sandals, snaking across the stony asphalt, and that's what I chose for my stove.

The eggs were cold from the store's cooler, so I tried to take the chill off by putting an uncracked egg on the parking lot and another on the hot car. Maybe it helped, maybe it didn't. I stood around like a mother hen waiting for my eggs to incubate.

This was exciting. I and every other kid grew up hearing that "it's hot enough to cook an egg on the sidewalk," but how many of us ever give it a try? When I was a kid in Pawnee Rock, my mom wouldn't have been nearly as lenient with eggs as she was yesterday. I expected my biggest problem to be trying to pick up the cooked egg without a spatula.

I squatted next to the black oil and cracked an egg, laying the juicy mess on the oil.

Nothing happened right away.

"We'll give it five minutes," I said.

My sister, Cheryl, was recording it on her camera.

She kept shooting.

The egg sat there.

My wife called from Alaska. Go back in the store, get some Pam spray, and cook the egg on someone's car, she suggested.

I told Cheryl she could quit filming anytime if she wanted to.

"Is it getting milky here?" I asked, pointing to the egg's not-yet white.

The egg reclined gracefully, basking in the heat.

Five minutes came and went.

Two more minutes, and then another thirty seconds. The egg remained as raw as the day it was laid.

I gave up, declaring the cooking test a bust. We piled into the Dodge and drove off to east Great Bend's Kiowa Kitchen, which we discovered was closed. We turned around and headed to the Classic Inn on the west side, and on the way we pulled back into the Dillons lot to see whether more time had made the difference.

Was the egg done? Well, it was done for.

Someone had driven over the egg. The beautiful yolk was splattered, and a wheel's circumference away there was another egg sample. And none of it was cooked.

I was disappointed. Maybe it works in Arizona or deepest Texas, but cooking an egg on asphalt certainly didn't happen in Great Bend.

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Light in the sky

[August 11]   The storms came up late in the afternoon, dropping the temperature by about 20 degrees. Strong downdrafts came with the rain, and there was some lightning. Where the rain fell, it fell hard.

By sunset, the rain was over. The thunderheads settled down or moved east, and the western sky began to open up. Clouds that had been ominous when they stood between us and the sun became fluffy mounds of popcorn after they moved past and revealed their sunlit faces.

I was driving southwest on U.S. 56 shortly after 8, and I hurried to the hilltop north of the Rock to get some photos from high elevation boosted by stepping inside the door of my car. After that, I parked at the Rock and ascended to the top deck of the pavilion. There I -- and three girls from town -- watched the light change the face of the surviving clouds.

What began as the sunset's quiet fire along the horizon spread yellow and pink light across the heavens. Bland clouds exploded into color -- shifting as the half-minutes passed until the western light was finally eclipsed by the rolling of the earth.

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Art in the sky

Wheat painted on the southeast side of the Farmers Grain elevator.

[August 10]   The opera house has fancy upstairs brickwork, and the doomed brick building west of the post office had flair until the upper bricks fell in recently. The post office itself has semi-fancy cornices. The Pawnee Garage had a Corvair mounted tree-high along the highway.

As a whole, however, Pawnee Rock isn't known for its decorative excitement. I wish it were -- perhaps someday houses will be painted cheerful colors or a mural illustrating the town's historic roots along the Santa Fe Trail will appear on a downtown wall.

But for now, our hometown's biggest artworks are the heads of ripe wheat painted halfway up the Farmers Grain elevator. Pawnee Rock isn't the only town to have such wheat, but it looks sharp and it's ours.

I remember when the wheat was first painted in the 1970s. The whole elevator had been sandblasted and repainted white, and then one day we noticed that the painters were creating something special. I don't think the artwork was universally approved; my dad came home to lunch talking grumpily about how much that wheat must have cost.

I know Farmers Grain measured the expense back then, and I'm glad someone decided to go ahead with the frivolity. Our hometown is better for it.

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Homecoming

[August 9]   I feel like a son who has come home. Not a prodigal son by any means, but one who is glad to be back among friends and relatives and scenery that I have known since my parents first took me outdoors five decades ago.

After my overnight flight into Denver on Friday and a drive that took longer than it should because I wanted to visit St. Francis and Atwood in northwestern Kansas and then I decided to visit the World's Largest Prairie Dog in Oakley and then I went looking for bierocks in Hays and then I stopped to photograph a small hilltop cemetery near Albert, I slipped into Pawnee Rock at dusk Friday.

The cicadas played their chorus from the elms, and the gravel rustled under the tires of my rented Dodge. What was left of the day's wind was only a whisper, and it was soothing.

I came back to Pawnee Rock the next morning for the parade. Janice Schmidt's cautious forecast had me half expecting only three tractors and a barking dog, but the parade turned out to be An Event.

The tractors were there, as well as a coyote-hunting flat-bed truck, the area's state representative in a Model T, a Metropolitan car, two horseback riders (one of them a balloon-toting clown), a mounted gun, motorcycles, a Santa Fe Trail researcher, a riding mower, a towed ancient truck, a towed boat with a cardboard sign touting the Tea Party, a camouflage-painted camper, and the city's white fire truck. The parade descended Centre Street from Bismark until it reached the highway, then it doubled back and gave folks on the east side of the street a good view.

Any parade is fun to watch, and this one must have been fun to be in. There were nearly as many people in the parade as there were spectators in the shade at the tennis court and at the Farmers Grain building and across the street in front of the 1908 Lindas building.

The best part for me at the parade and later at the flea market and Lions fundraising lunch was shaking hands of long-missed and new friends. My cousins Laramie Unruh and Brenda Jones drove in from Valley Center and Great Bend, she with children Julie and William. I finally met Jim Dye, who has been sending me photographs for the website for many months and whose mugshot appears here. Larry Mix, the Santa Fe Trail research expert from St. John who has provided so much information to this site, was there with his wife, Carolyn. I chatted with Janice and Earl Schmidt, Durward Smith, Kirk and Wanda Smith, Gary Trotnic and and Aleta Felt, Patty Lee, Howard Bowman, Dick Taylor, and Ed Crosby.

On Saturday night, I attended my Macksville High School class' 35th reunion. After Pawnee Rock High was closed in 1972, I enrolled the next day at Macksville and spent my final three years there with a number of my hometown refugees. Two others from Pawnee Rock -- Brenda Schmidt Girard and TaWanna Mason Callahan -- showed up for the reunion at the Classic Inn in Great Bend.

I hadn't seen any -- not a one -- of my classmates since the last reunion I attended 25 years ago. I am happy to report that the ones who shared prime rib and sweet-and-sour Saturday were my friends and a joy to be around again, and we laughed together as we went around the table and described our lives. Those who went to Macksville may remember them: Louise Goudy Kearney, Kathy Parker Clark, Clayton McAllister, Darrell Hamilton, Tod Ross, Janet Doran Crane, and Marlene Anschutz Martin. Our Class of 1975 walked out the door that May with 33 graduates; one has died and 10 attended the reunion.

It surprised me that the nine others, who all live in Kansas, don't see each other very often. We sort of keep up on Facebook and e-mail, and maybe the reunion will inspire us to hang a little more closely.

The Pawnee Rock reunion is in less than two weeks, and I would have liked to be able to attend it as well. It just didn't fit the calendar of when I could travel this summer, however, and I will have to raise my hopes for next year. Ed Crosby told me that alumni response has been very good so far.

On Sunday, I caused a stampede. I was driving around northwest of town, ending up at the cemetery's north end, where a herd of cattle branded RR were grazing near the fence. They looked at me, then shuffled off toward the center of the section. When I bent down to photograph a closely shorn tree stump, they practically ran back in an apparent desire to become my best friend. Alas, when I stood up, they turned tail and fled.

To the farmer, I apologize for burning off calories from your fine-looking cattle. It wasn't intentional. It was, however, fascinating to watch the herd go through the stages of wariness and curiosity and finally discretion, pivoting on a dime and dashing off to safety.

Later on this toasty Sunday, I drove my mom and sister to town and Larned from the motel where we're encamped in Great Bend. I couldn't help myself -- details about Pawnee Rock poured out. It was the release of four and a half years of day-by-day study and contemplation. I am far from an expert but I was surprised how being here has brought strands of details together in my mind. I think this visit is going to be a lot of fun.

I'll be around Pawnee Rock a lot this week, taking photos and talking to lots of people. If you would like to talk about PawneeRock.org or our hometown, please grab me. I want to gather as much as I can. Recording what we know can be our legacy.

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Hello, Janet (Everett) Brown

[August 5]   Janet (Everett) Brown, who grew up in Dundee and attended Pawnee Rock High School through the 11th grade, writes to say that she's coming to the school reunion this August.

She now lives in Las Vegas and is a retired administrator of medical offices. (Read it)

Woody Kasselman: Woody, who grew up along Pickle Creek, graduated from Pawnee Rock High, and now lives near Tuttle Creek Reservoir, has updated his Friends of Pawnee Rock entry. (Read it)

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Friends with edible ideas

[August 5]   I wrote yesterday in search of bierocks and general dining advice in the greater Pawnee Rock area, and a number of folks responded. In the order of appearance in my inbox:

•  Brenda Jones, who recommended LeAnn's in Great Bend for bierocks and the Great Bend visitors bureau dining guide.

•  Julie Jones of the Great Bend Convention and Visitors Bureau, who sent information about dining in Great Bend and contact information for the Larned and Ellinwood chambers of commerce.

•  Doyle Mayse, who mentioned spots in Larned, Seward, and Burdett.

•  Roger Hanhardt, who recommended LeAnn's in GB and Schilleci's Bakery Deli for bierocks in Hays, as well as several other restaurants in Hays.

•  Dalton Keener, who suggested LeAnn's and a cafe on Main Street in Stafford.

•  Leon Miller, who said that the best bierocks are said to be in Hays and that Perkins Restaurant on West 10th in Great Bend is a good general restaurant.

I'm looking forward to sitting down for bierocks and chicken at a bunch of these places. I'll let you know how it goes.

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As corny as Kansas in August

[August 4]   Not all of Barton County's corn is the sweet stuff you buy at a farmers market or at Dillon's. This hard feed corn, grown in a field near the Mennonite Church, could just as easily replace driveway gravel as round out a plate of meat and potatoes.

Speaking of food, does anybody know where I can find bierocks when I'm in the Greater Pawnee Rock metro area this coming week?

I can make my own bierocks and sometimes do, but when I'm among the Germans I want to be treated right. So, if you know of a bierock shop anywhere between Wichita, Dodge City, and Hays, please let me know: Leon's Bierocks Hotline.

Furthermore, I'd really like it if you all could recommend restaurants in Great Bend, Larned, or towns nearby. I don't mean places like Applebee's, but sit-down restaurants with heavy china cups and pie in a stand on the counter. Or, simply the best place to eat.

Thanks, everybody. Enjoy your corn.

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I followed the bouncing ball

[August 3]   Mitch Miller has died, and I thought he was already dead.

Mitch dominated the black-and-white Channel 2 TV broadcast out at Grandma Unruh's house on, what was it, Monday night? Sunday night? He and his "Sing Along with Mitch" chorus performed the songs that old people -- my relatives -- knew, and the words were superimposed on the bottom of the screen and a bouncing ball over the words showed us which syllables were being sung at the moment. He encouraged us at home to sing along.

Perhaps it was the birth of karaoke. Maybe it was the forerunner of music videos; listening to the singers dwindled in importance as we used our eyes as much as our ears.

I am positive that none of my cousins, uncles or aunts, ever sang along with Mitch, although I understand that Grandpa liked to carry a tune. Our family generally was not a joyful singing family, saving that chore for church. Still, I hope that we sang along in our heads, because for that hour we shared an experience with all the other families in thousands of parlors and living rooms across the time zone.

Whether the songs were hip or not didn't really matter. I sat on the carpeted floor, listening and reading, probably swaying nearly in time with the music. In my family, it was going to be my only exposure to popular music of that era, the swinging ballads and folk songs that would soon give way to Porter Wagoner and then to the Beatles and their descendants. I was a young elementary student at the time, and Mitch Miller influenced my taste in music. I still like the standards.

Because I hadn't heard recently about Mitch, who made it to 99 years of age, I guess I assumed that he had already joined an angelic chorus. The news of his passing gives me a good reason to remember again how much he did for me almost 50 years ago.

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I will be among you soon

[August 2]   It has been a long time -- three years, or too long -- since I walked the streets of Pawnee Rock.

You all have been kind to me in my absence, regularly sending news reports and photos about our hometown. I'm grateful for the help and glad to pass them along to the rest of the expanded Pawnee Rock family.

"I will be among you soon" is a movie line some of you may be familiar with. In my favorite science fiction adventure, "The Fifth Element," a dark planet whose only purpose is the extinction of all life is moving toward Earth. Shadow, a voice from the planet, tells the movie's human antagonist, "I will be among you soon."

The evil planet gave 48 hours' notice; I'm giving Pawnee Rock 120 hours and I promise not to be evil.

I'll see you Saturday at the parade.

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