Too Long in the Wind

July 2011

Elgie Unruh, a man of Pawnee Rock

Elgie and Betty Unruh at their home in Pawnee Rock in 2002, with grandsons Sam and Nik.

[July 27]   The funeral for Elgie Unruh, a longtime resident of Pawnee Rock and attendant to its history, will be Saturday.

Mr. Unruh died Monday evening in Great Bend Regional Hospital. In the last two weeks of his life, his situation required extensive care, and he alternated between a nursing home and the hospital. He had long feared a future spent in a home, having watched his mother linger in one, but he was spared. On his last day, he ate supper enthusiastically, said goodbye to daughter Cheryl, and a short time later his body and soul surrendered and he died peacefully.

Mr. Unruh was born on March 26, 1926, in a two-story, poorly insulated farmhouse northwest of Pawnee Rock, the third child of Otis and Lena Unruh. He graduated from Pawnee Rock High School in 1944. He was raised in the Mennonite Church, and he never lived anywhere but Barton County. His siblings -- Wayne, Juletha, and Laramie -- preceded him in death.

Like others of his time, he was shaped by the Great Depression and life on the rim of the Dust Bowl. He was thrifty to the point of frugality, tipping only a dollar at restaurants, and at home he sucked the marrow from chicken bones and used bread to clean the breakfast platter of bacon grease. As a child walking to the one-room school north of his farm, he used to say, he had carried a lunch of either a baked potato, which helped keep him warm on cold days, or a lard sandwich.

He married Anita Jepson in the 1950s, and they eventually divorced. They had two children, Leon Unruh of Fairbanks, Alaska, and Cheryl Unruh of Emporia, and two grandchildren, Sam and Nik Unruh of Fairbanks. He later remarried, joining Betty Brittain in the summer of 1987. All survive him.

Elgie and Betty lived in Pawnee Rock until about five years ago, when they moved to an apartment in Great Bend.

Mr. Unruh was most widely known as a carpenter, first building truck beds for the Drake and Blackwell Truck Bed outfit. After a few years, he established Elgie's Craft Shop, which occupied the old brick "Garage" building on the southeast corner of Centre and Pawnee streets. In the beginning, the front windows displayed his handiwork in the shade of a glorious elm, but vandals broke the plate glass and eventually he boarded them up. After he retired and was moving his goods from the shop, it collapsed.

He was a woodworking instructor for the Pawnee Rock 4-H club, and he often was called on to judge woodworking projects at the county fair. Some of his own earlier work could be found at the Barton County Historical Museum, which displays his models of a truck and a farm scene. He once created a model of the pavilion in Pawnee Rock State Park, and it was used during events sponsored by the Lions Club, of which he was a longtime member and once the president (and often the tail-twister, a kind of court jester). As a young adult, he was the assistant scoutmaster of Troop 474.

He constructed his family home in the late 1950s, expanding a basement home just west of the old fire station on Santa Fe Avenue. He worked on other houses in town as well, shingling and painting, adding cabinets and repairing walls. He built fine cabinets for families and businesses in Larned and Great Bend. His last carpentry was invested in making canes and walking sticks, decorating them whimsically with carefully stamped proverbs or notes about the Santa Fe Trail or with grain, pebbles, and miniature toy animals.

Mr. Unruh also drove a school bus for 18 years. He covered the area south and west of Pawnee Rock. A traumatic moment occurred in 1974 when a crew of workers heading for the O'Rourke Bridge drove into his bus and overturned it near the Mulls' feedlot. At least one child was injured. Mr. Unruh also suffered an injury, when, in his hurry to attend to the children, he was forced to release his seat belt as he hung upside down.

He later drove the Pawnee Rock mail route, succeeding Virgil Smith and being succeeded by Toni Stimatze, and he was a stamp collector. He also collected coins, bullsnake skins, padlocks, bottles, license tags (from all 105 counties), and barbed wire. He had no interest in politics beyond his collection of campaign buttons.

He enjoyed bad jokes: "It looks like the train was just here," he would announce at a Santa Fe grade crossing. "It left its tracks." He didn't mind when the joke was on him; he never tired of telling how he had burned down the family outhouse while playing with matches. His favorite type of clothing was Key bib overalls; he would sometimes startle strangers who also wore overalls by stepping up and saying in a loud voice: "There goes a well-dressed man."

Mr. Unruh had long taken photographs, starting in the 1940s with scenes of the unpainted family farm and his Model A. In the 1980s, he returned to the hobby with enthusiasm, photographing deserted farmsteads along his mail route. He set a goal of photographing every post office in Kansas and may have come close to doing so. His photos of events in Pawnee Rock, from the relocation of the Santa Fe depot to floods to vacation Bible school, have been an essential part of PawneeRock.org. He collected boxes and grocery sacks of historical material -- books, depot records, family letters, photos, newspaper clippings -- that other families or organizations had discarded or had given to him because he was interested and had an idea of its significance.

Mr. Unruh was a discreet person, having endured a rough childhood because of his skin condition, and he often identified with the underdog. For all of his good points, he was slighted easily and bore a grudge with determination. Still, he had a kind heart for the less fortunate, such as Bruce Robinson and the elderly, who he seemed to regard as abandoned; perhaps they saw him as a good listener who understood Pawnee Rock. He stopped to chat in their homes, and after his mother died he sat with the infirm in nursing homes.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he was the sexton of three cemeteries -- the township cemetery, the Mennonite cemetery near the church, and the Dundee Valley cemetery near the original Mennonite settlement site east of Dundee. Many years after other cemeteries switched to backhoes, he dug dozens of graves with a set of shovels, cutting the soil as perfectly as he could because of his obligation to the deceased, who were often community elders or classmates or the children of his friends. When he required help, he got men from town or hired his son for a couple of dollars.

He spent many hours mowing the township cemetery's acreage, cutting around stones while his wife and children trimmed with clippers the grass that the mower couldn't reach. He put up the chain-link fence that extends around the east side of the cemetery and planted and watered the cedars that have matured into an evergreen wall, creating an area of remembrance and solitude and relief from the wind.

After his divorce, Mr. Unruh wandered through a personal wilderness until he found friendship in evangelical Christian churches. It was in one of those that he became acquainted with Betty, and in their 24 years and one week of marriage she guided him along the religious path. They were, he said, "perfectly yoked." He found a medicine that relieved his skin condition, and he became outgoing. He forgave all who he felt had wronged him, and in his new persona he even sang in front of the church. He earnestly prayed before meals, ending each prayer with "and bless the hand that hath prepared it."

It was Betty's hand that had indeed saved him after the most calamitous moment of his life, an October morning in 1996 when he was struck by a pickup as he walked on the wrong side of the street into the sun. Because of his head injury, he was airlifted to Wesley hospital in Wichita, where he lay in a coma for two weeks. Betty's steadfast love brought him back to near where he had been before, although afterward he was troubled by an increasingly large set of medical problems.

Mr. Unruh had faith in everlasting life, and in his last year he told his wife of his desire to go to Jesus. Mr. and Mrs. Unruh long ago chose their grave site, and their simple gray headstone has waited patiently as plots up and down the row have filled up. Mr. Unruh's side is decorated with a cross and sprigs of ripened wheat, a symbolic carving that will be echoed in the floral spray adorning his coffin. He will be buried in a pair of overalls purchased and held for the occasion.

Mr. Unruh's arrangements are being handled by Bryant Funeral Home, on Patton Road in Great Bend. Visitation will be from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, and the family will be present from 6 to 8 p.m.

The funeral will begin at 10 a.m. Saturday in the First Assembly of God church, also on Patton Road. Burial will follow in the Pawnee Rock Cemetery, within view of his town and of the farm where he was born.

Memorial contributions in Elgie Unruh's name may be sent Bryant Funeral Home, 1425 Patton Road, Great Bend, Kansas 67530.

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Former schoolteacher Ehly dies

[July 27]   Walter Ehly, who began his educational career as a science and math teacher in Pawnee Rock's new school in 1956, has died. He was 83 years old and lived in Claflin, where he was born.

Mr. Ehly's funeral will be at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Claflin. (Obituary)

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Nature on a big scale

Fire south of Fairbanks on July 24.

[July 26]   Here's a photo I made Saturday evening as a forest fire burned south of Fairbanks. In the middle of the plume flies an Anchorage-bound Alaska Airlines 737, and the Tanana River is in the foreground.

As a kid in Pawnee Rock, I always begged Mom or Dad to drive me out past fires in oil sump pits and in wheat-stubble fields. The rising smoke stood out sharply against the Kansas sky, and there was always the excitement of seeing matter change from solid to gas with bright orange flames.

Chasing fires got me my start in daily journalism. For $3 and $4 a shot, I sold photos of burning fields, vehicles, and buildings to the papers in Larned and Great Bend.

But my goodness, for me those adventures have paled in comparison to fires in Alaska's interior. Plumes worthy of volcanoes extend for miles from the burning birch and spruce trees; in this weekend's case, the fire is 19 miles south of town and the smoke was dark and dense above our heads and on to the north. It carried ash, dropping a good share of it on my car's roof. The fire, caused by lightning, burns in a roadless area littered with possibly unexploded ammunition from Fort Wainwright's maneuvers, and so the fire won't be fought unless it moves much closer to town.

When forest-fire smoke settles close to earth, there are times when we can see barely a block away, and even before sunset the air glows orange -- not the distant sky, but the air in our yard. We taste the fire with every breath, and that breath makes us feel helplessly guilty for inhaling another load of microparticle soot.

For the next month or so, Kansas will remain as hot as blazes. My advice: Be glad you live in a convection oven instead of a woodstove.

Evening fire glow in Fairbanks (last year).

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Former music teacher Fry still in band

[July 24]   Eighty-nine-year-old Frank Fry, who once taught music in Pawnee Rock schools, is featured in an article in the Emporia Gazette. He joined the municipal band in 1941 and is still playing the euphonium -- 70 years later.

Check it out.

Thanks to Cheryl Unruh for pointing out the story.

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Pawnee Rock makes Wichita TV

[July 23]   My cousin Laramie Unruh, who lives in the Wichita area, sent me a link to a KAKE TV show suggesting that viewers trot on up to Fort Larned and Pawnee Rock.

Check it out.

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July 22, 5:26 p.m., 106 degrees

The weatherunderground.com page for the station at the Great Bend airport on Friday afternoon.

[July 23]   Oh, stop complaining -- Friday afternoon's 106 degrees wasn't so bad.

It was 74 degrees above freezing, yet it was still 106 degrees below the point where your blood would actually boil.

Furthermore, the fine print under the temperature says "Feels Like 106," so you know it was an honest heat and not one of those made-for-TV temperatures that involves the affects of humidity.

Also, you can rest easy knowing that, when your final day comes, wherever you end up will have a climate that's more pleasant than central Kansas in the dead of summer.

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The Little Giant from Pawnee Rock

The Little Giant power hammer that once worked in Pawnee Rock.

The Little Giant's flywheel is housed here.

[July 19]   A fellow named Daniel Erickson of Snohomish, Washington, seeks information about three men who lived in Pawnee Rock a century ago. His curiosity rose from a bill of sale that accompanied a power hammer.

I looked in early Pawnee Rock High School yearbooks and didn't find names of the families he is asking about and none of the three names shows up on the cemetery's registry, but maybe the information is known by someone with more experience than I have.

Here's the note and photos he sent late last week.

I am a knife maker from Seattle. I am hoping to find some information from Pawnee Rock in 1909.

I recently purchased a 102 yr old "Little Giant" power hammer (used for pounding hot metal). The original sale of the machine was from 6/16/09. It was sold to a L.B. Davis and A.G Dyk from Pawnee Rock, Kansas. I was hoping to find out what kind of business they were in. I figure they were probably the local blacksmith or built wagons or something to that effect.

I found in your blog, Jan. 2009, a picture and article about the Blacksmith, Dutch Smith, on Centre st. from around the 1920's. I was thinking that Davis and Dyk may have been the blacksmiths before Dutch Smith.

Any information you find would be appreciated.

I enjoy the Historical aspects of people, places and items. Thank you for taking the time to record Pawnee Rock History.

[On Monday, Daniel sent a follow-up note.]

I was talking to the owner of little giant power hammer and had him double check the old sales record. He said there was a third name on the sales record that was harder to read. The third name was "J.C. Fuller".

So again the three names on the sales record are:

- L.B. Davis - A.G. Dyk - J.C. Fuller

I told the owner (Sid) about Dutch Smith being the blacksmith and his father before him, and he suggested that it might have been a farmer who purchased the hammer for farm work. Since there were three names maybe there were three farmers that went in on it together.

Daniel Erickson, of Ring of Fire in Snohomish, Washington. His website is ringoffireforge.com.

Mr. Erickson created this knife.

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Parade scheduled for August 6

Howard Bowman and Janice Schmidt led last year's parade down Centre Street from the north side of town.

[July 18]   Good news came from Janice Schmidt:

The Pawnee Rock Lions Club will have its second annual parade on August 6.

The parade will start at 10:30 a.m. and move down Centre Street. Entries are welcome. Last year's parade featured tractors, riding mowers, RVs, trailers, horseback riders, and very nice old automobiles.

Also, a reminder: The Lions Club serves breakfast on the third Saturday of each month at the depot. The hours are 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., and the cost is a donation.

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Hometown writer is recognized

[July 14]   Cheryl Unruh is the most recent subject of a Kansas State writer: Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development. He profiles Kansans who work to celebrate and improve the state.

His column starts out:

"The author reads her work as the audience enjoys her well-written prose. Was this in a coffee shop? Bookstore? Library? No, this particular reading took place in the chamber of the Kansas House of Representatives. Wow. That venue is especially fitting when one learns that this particular writer is a true Kansan -- and is creating wonderful columns celebrating our great state." (Whole column)

You've read a lot about Cheryl on this site, which you expect because she's my sister. Personally, I'm glad to see her recognized by someone else, too. She has earned it with a lot of hard work and, most of all, thinking and being brash enough to put her words in front of the public.

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A nod from Zane Grey

[July 12]   One might think that with all the westerns written by Zane Grey and others that Pawnee Rock -- once the most feared spot on the Santa Fe Trail -- would play a prominent role. That doesn't seem to be the case.

I flip through a dozen or so westerns every time I visit a used-book store, hoping to find a mention that I could tell you about. Beat myself against that barn wall as often as I will, I still haven't found an indication that our town mattered to folks who wear chaps when they type.

Perhaps it is because the Santa Fe Trail just isn't very sexy, at least in terms of the literary requirement of a lonesome cowboy against the sunset. The trail doesn't go to the Pacific Ocean, so it's not a Manifest Destiny route. A lot of the trail's history preceded the Civil War, so it's too distant for many readers. Furthermore, it wasn't a north-south cattle trail, so it doesn't fit that cliche either. It was basically what U.S. 56 is now -- a trade route joining New Mexico and Kansas City.

Yesterday, however, came proof that our hometown exists in the cowboy-book world. My sister, Cheryl Unruh, sent me a paragraph that Ron Wilson sent her. She had written about Ron's work as the director of the Huck Boyd Institute for Rural Development.

She passed along Ron's message. He wrote:

"I was reading an old Zane Grey novel this weekend (good cowboy poetry inspiration) and came across a couple of references to Pawnee Rock -- and immediately thought of you -- the book is Fighting Caravans (1929) about the Santa Fe Trail. In fact, on page 225 of my copy of the book, it describes Pawnee Rock as one of the hero's 'favorite camps along the great trail.' The book has several references to Larned and Council Grove. I thought that was a cool connection."

And there you have it. Zane Grey knew the name of our hometown.

The book became a movie. Assuming he read the book, screen legend Gary Cooper also knew the name Pawnee Rock.

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A race to the finish

After a victory early in the season, Nik chats with Jaime Schwarzwald, a local CBS sports reporter who also filmed last night's race.

[July 8]   I've written before about my son Nik and his Bandolero-class auto racing. He has driven expertly and cleanly this season, winning six of eight races on the asphalt track, a 13-year-old defeating opponents almost double his age.

Last night his two feeling-most-threatened rivals, women 20 and 24 years old, caught Nik on turn 3 -- one turned sharply left to cut him off at 60 mph and the other pushed him broadside off the track as he was spinning from the first hit.

It was a moment of horror and beauty. Who knew that a flesh-and-steel package weighing 750 pounds could be tossed about so easily? No one at the track had seen it happen before.

A TV sports reporter was there, and he played me his video a couple of times. Nik's brightly painted 48 car got trapped and struck. In a flash, the car was pushed over, spinning and pounding upside down, bouncing off the roll cage, fiberglass body pieces flying away, again and again until he stopped hard on one side in a storm of dust. (My wife also filmed it, but I didn't see it until we got home.)

Everybody in the bleachers -- it was a full house for military-appreciation night -- stood up, I suppose. I said a single word and ran through the brush to the wall closest to the turn, thinking, "Nik! Nik!" The track crew sprinted to the car, made sure Nik was still with us, and rolled it over.

Nik's first question, the track crew said later, was about how badly his car was damaged. He looked over the car, and then he walked back to the pit. A tow truck lifted the car off the ground by the roll cage and carried its carcass back around the track to the trailers. People applauded the car.

You may have watched a disaster unfold yourself, and you understand my sense of helplessness. I don't wish that on any parent, no matter how snug their kid is in his roll cage, gigantic helmet, head brace, and five-point harness. I'll see it in my sleep.

Nik, my proud young man, didn't win the race. As his dad, I say with conviction that the victory was stolen.

When the evening was done, fans flocked to the pits to chat and take pictures. The 20-year-old woman with the trophy stood off to the side with her sullen friends. The fans had come to see Nik, a hero.

Nik lost this race, but he stole the show.

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June is now available

[July 8]   An update I made in haste early in the week wasn't done right, and so last month's Too Long in the Wind page wasn't available for a few days. Ed Durall wrote to point out the problem, and it's fixed now.

Thanks, Ed.

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Former mayor Jack Link dies

[July 7]   Jack Link, who had been mayor of Pawnee Rock for 10 years not long ago, died Tuesday. He was 74 years old.

Mr. Link is survived by his wife, Joyce; a son, Victor, of Great Bend; two brothers; four grandchildren; and three great grandchildren.

He was retired from a career as a mechanic, having worked for several companies including Straub International, his last employer.

In Pawnee Rock, he had served on the city council, as a volunteer firefighter, and as a reserve deputy sheriff for Barton County. He belonged to the Christian Church and the Lions Club, as well as the Christian Motorcycle Association.

Mr. Link's funeral will be at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the Christian Church in Pawnee Rock, and burial will follow at the Pawnee Rock Cemetery. (Obituary)

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Reunion reminder

[July 6]   Now that everyone's mind is clear of the smell of gunpowder and punk, it's a good time to make your reservation for the annual Pawnee Rock reunion.

It'll be on August 20 in Great Bend. Golf is in the morning, and the chat-and-chew part is in the afternoon and evening.

Details are on another page.

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Hello, Carl Munger

[July 5]   A very interesting email arrived this weekend from Carl Munger, who attended school in Pawnee Rock in the 1950s.

Here's what he wrote:

Wow, I never would have thought there would be such a website as pawneerock.org. Glad I bumped into it. My mother, Ida Munger, and her three sons (Leon, Dennis & Carl) lived in Pawnee Rock from about 1951-1959 in a flat top, 2 bedroom shack on the northeast part of town, backing up to the drainage ditch there. I call it a shack because it had an outhouse instead of a bathroom. I recall one hot humid summer day my two older brothers climbed a tree next to the house to access the roof to spread tar along all the seams to stop a leak that had occurred. Being the youngest I wasn't allowed to climb but was stationed on the ground to tie materials to a rope so my brothers could hoist them to the top . . . it's better in the telling than it was in the doing.

My mother worked at a laundry in Great Bend 5 1/2 days a week for not much money before she landed a job at the Larned State Hospital where she could make more but we we thought we had inherited a fortune because we went from being fatally poor to just being poor. My mother did her best to instill Christian values in her sons by making sure we attended the First Methodist Church in Pawnee Rock every sunday until we moved to Larned. I went to school in Pawnee Rock with kids named: Lola Loving, Eddie Crosby, John Flick, Ann Schmidt and others I don't recall offhand.

Being semi-retired now-a-days I often travel around the country on a motorcycle to see sights I had missed or wanted to see again. Oftentimes I'll stop in Larned to visit with old high school friends and catch up on the local gossip before heading out again. Whenever I'm in that part of Kansas I always do a quick detour to ride around the Pawnee Rock Monument. Doing so brings back a lot of childhood memories from bicycle, "coaster" racing down the step side of the mounument to being terrorized by my oldest brother by hanging me off the top level of the monument by my hands or feet . . . again better in the telling than in the doing for the last part. The last time I was through there I did a little riding around some of the streets it was decerning to see how many empty, unkept houses there are there now because when I lived there it seemed totally alive.

Anyway, good to read your website.

Carl Munger

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YU-2

[July 5]   Last week I went to the Athabaskan Languages Conference in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. It was a drive of a little over 600 miles each way, with a side trip afterward of 140 miles each way. I did a lot of driving, but it was through some of the prettiest scenery on the continent.

Much of the countryside (our countryside, and our neighboring country's side) is mountainous and either forested or brushy. It's not a perfect match, but it reminded me of the broadly open country that our ancestors must have seen on their way to Pawnee Rock in the days of trains and telegraphs.

Because the Alaska Highway skirts the Coastal Range of the Yukon and British Columbia, there's a lot of water -- lakes, glaciers, rivers, creeks -- and it's frozen over for several months a year. There again, it's not like our home area, but it helped me think of how our ancestors had to struggle to find water in their own desert.

Those were the grand scenes, but our journey (I took son Sam along) was made memorable by little things.

•  We parked on a gravel street to watch kids in the Upper Tanana village of Northway light fireworks and commend a yellow candle-fired hot-air balloon to the heavens, just minutes before a thunderstorm arrived.

•  We threw rocks into the Yukon River and a gloriously blue lake in a Canadian national park.

•  Bears ate sedges and grasses 20 feet from our car.

•  On our trip home, we were remembered -- "You're back, eh." -- by a lovely waitress in the best restaurant in the town of Beaver Creek.

•  We spoke American English and Canadian English, and we tried our skill at French, Tlingit, and Upper Tanana.

•  We saw a dressed-up Mountie, and at the conference I sat next to the wife of the commander of the Yukon Mounties and enjoyed her entertaining stories.

Kansas is often made fun of because of its purported lack of obviously scenic vistas, and there is some truth to that. The city where I live now, Fairbanks, is much the same. So it was with great pleasure that I spent seven whole days in distant regions of my state and in our neighbor to the east -- vacation destinations that people pay thousands of dollars to visit, and all it cost me was a little gas and hotel money.

If you'll indulge me, here are some photos from the trip. Sam took a couple of them; it was the first time I counted on someone else to take photos, and it turned out okay. And that reminded me of when my own parents handed me a camera and turned me loose.

Different states, different scenery, different cameras, but in the end it's all the same. As my sister, Cheryl, reminded me, our hometown's phone prefix, back in the days when people used words instead of numbers, was YUkon-2. I was more at home last week than I knew.

The boundary marker on the Alaska Highway.

A pond near the Alaska Highway, Yukon Territory. (Sam's photo)

Wildflowers at Kluane Lake, Yukon Territory.

A DC-3 cargo plane that has been turned into a wind vane at the Whitehorse airport. I thought it was just a tourist gimmick until the wind turned dramatically and the plane's nose swung into it.

Brown bear feeding on sedge along the Haines Highway, Yukon Territory. (Sam's photo)

Million-Dollar Falls, near Dalton Post, Yukon Territory.

Cruise ship and fishing boats, Haines, Alaska.

Sitka spruces on a drizzly day, Chilkoot State Recreation Area near Haines.

Rocky shore and flowers, Chilkat State Recreation Area near Haines.

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Curt Delgado dies

[July 5]   Curtis Lee "Curt" Delgado died on June 16 in Pawnee Rock. His obituary appeared July 1 in the Great Bend Tribune.

Mr. Delgado was described as "a free spirit" and an artist.

His ashes will be interred this morning in the Great Bend Cemetery. (Obituary)

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