Too Long in the Wind

April 2007

Helping Patty Lee move

[April 30]   There are many neat things about Pawnee Rock. One of them is the residents' willingness to help other people.

With the sale of the school (more information may come out at the May council meeting), Patty Lee needed to move the stuff she had stored in the grade school classrooms down to her antique store along the highway. (Gallery photo of Patty)

Twenty-one people chipped in with their muscles, including postmaster Kathy Pechanec, rural mail carrier Toni Stimatze, Mike and Nancy Woodrow (she has sent us several photos for the gallery), and Alita Felts and Gary Trotnic (frequent contributors to our site).

Gary wrote that the old-fashioned picnic under the kindergarten awning featured Patty's barbecue pork sandwiches, Alita's potato salad, deviled eggs, and Nancy's pork and beans.

It sounds like hard, dusty work, but not too bad a way to spend a sunny spring day.

Days that kids remember

[April 29]   Do you remember a perfect day when you were a kid in Pawnee Rock?

Maybe it was a day when your mom or dad took you someplace special. Maybe it was shopping in Great Bend or playing catch, or maybe it was just a day when you got to do something new that showed you were a little more grown up.

Those events stick with us long after we leave childhood and Pawnee Rock behind. We tell our own kids about them, but we soon learn that it's a lot more fun to give them super days of their own.

Yesterday morning, I took Sam and Nik on the Heart Run, a 3.1-mile run near the universities in Anchorage. For the first time, we ran in the competitive division instead of with the mob that's just there for the social scene. Also for the first time, I told 10-year-old Sam to run ahead of us and we'd meet him at the finish. He disappeared into the pack and 35 minutes later was waiting patiently for us.

When we got home from eating lunch at Subway, my wife took Nik off shopping for Sam's impending birthday. Sam and I loaded up into my sporty car, he with one of his beloved Goosebumps stories in hand.

First stop: The gas station, where Sam got to fill the tank. Then we:

• Drove to Palmer, a Hoisington-size town. We visited a race track out in the woods, where a sports-car competition was under way. It was Sam's first live car race. He watched with his "Can life really be this good?" smile.

• Dropped in at a small bookstore in Palmer, where the owner brought out a cardboard box of Goosebumps for Sam to sift through. Bought five.

• Climbed into a 1916-era locomotive once used to haul coal down the valley to Palmer. Back on the ground, Sam measured the distance between narrow-guage rails (five and a half of his shoe lengths) and between the full-size Alaska Railroad tracks (almost ten of his shoes).

• Bought fried chicken at a grocery store and ate in the car.

• Drove up the valley to Sutton to see where the coal used to be loaded onto the long-gone railroad. Looked at the crowd gathering for the Coal Miners' Ball.

• Stopped for ice cream on the way back.

At home with his brother, Sam watched the recorded broadcast of the day's NASCAR race at Talladega. His favorite driver, Tony Stewart, caused two spectacular wrecks.

When Sam went to bed, it was with a new Goosebumps book and a grin.

Saturday was pretty good for Sam, a day to remember.

For me, Saturday was a perfect day.

A photo I like: No. 34

[April 28]   Our family drove this blue Dodge Coronet 440 in the late '60s and early '70s. I remembered the car as having sleeker lines, but that probably is because I felt fast when I was behind the wheel. It's also possible that this car looked good for its time. Mom, who is standing beside the car in our driveway, taught me how to drive when I was 12. This was my car until it burned up on this spot in the winter of 1973-74.

I like this photo because it shows Anita, my mom, and a view of our yard and the house across the street. It shows two of the big elms that aren't there anymore. I also like this photo because I can't imagine why I was taking pictures from behind the backyard fence while looking through leafless shrubs.

Hello from Arlyn Smith

This, I'm pretty sure, is the former Houdyshell home as it looked in January 2005. Its appearance has changed a bit over the years.

[April 27]   Arlyn Smith of Wichita wrote earlier this week.

"Found your pawneerock.org site by accident and want to thank you for the wonderful pictures. My maternal great grandmother and her family lived there for many years -- Mrs. Lucy Houdyshell. My mother, Jacqueline (Houdyshell) Smith is still alive and living in Tucson, AZ, so I plan to make sure to find some way for her to look these over. The family names -- Lile, Brewer, Gilbert, Holland and others that are prominent on the family tree and on this site -- bring back a lot of memories.

"Thank you for all the hard work you must have done to get this in such a fine condition -- it is appreciated. And please pass on thanx to those who worked to locate and provide photos and identifications."

I wrote back, asking about Lucy's Dress Shop, where my dad had done a bit of carpentry.

"Yep it was a dress shop in her house. Don't know if the house is still there or not -- was through there a couple of years ago to give my kids a general tour of places I grew up but things had changed enough I wasn't able to pick it out, assuming I was on the right street."

Well, Arlyn, thank you for the kind words about PawneeRock.org. I'll accept them for everyone who helps.

And to all those who help: Thanks for sending photos and identifying the folks and places in those and other shots. It really does mean a lot.

Where's the taste of Germany?

[April 26]   If you're German and you grew up in Pawnee Rock, did you eat German foods?

I'm thinking of verenike, German potato salad, zweibach, and moos.

I'm not counting those red sausages from the giant jars on the counter of the Rock Cafe or Betty's. And speaking of Betty's, I know you didn't drink much German beer, unless we count Coors, Budweiser, and Schlitz.

After I read this column by my sister, Cheryl, in the Emporia Gazette, I hadn't realized how much of my heritage I had missed out on. Oh, I had plenty of ethnic food: Mexican, Italian, American farm. But beyond bierocks, there was very little German food, even at our grandparents' table. As for the bierocks, we bought those in Great Bend at a Tastee Freeze. I've never had verenike or moos.

Cheryl suggested that this was because our Pawnee Rock ancestors had assimilated into "American" life so quickly. It occurred to me that our enclave of Mennonites may have been so isolated from others of our kind that we -- unlike the German-speakers of, say, Yoder or Goessel -- never had any community support for our ethnicity. In the Pawnee Rock area, there just weren't enough Mennonite churches nearby to join us for sauerkraut and sauerbraten.

Instead, we fried chickens and poured condensed soup out of cans and once in a while ate pfeffernusse cookies, which our great-great-great-great-grandparents might have had as children back in Danzig or Karolswalde.

Can this white-bread situation be fixed? Perhaps.

How about this: One day next week, let's all fix a meal that's from our heritage, whichever one it is.

And how about this: Wouldn't it be nice if Pawnee Rock had an ethnic restaurant? The undiscerning crowds could still get their fill of McDonald's or Kentucky Fried Chicken or Taco Bell or Perkin's, but once or twice a month they might drive a few miles to scenic Pawnee Rock to sit down to a meal that has real flavor. Mexican, French, German -- every one of those cuisines would be worth a trip.

Who knows? With all that wheat lying around, maybe somebody could brew up some beer. Pawnee Rock Pilsner, anyone?

Cats are the cruelest pets: Cheryl mentioned early this month about how April is known as the cruelest month, thanks to T.S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land." She was right -- as the flowers came up, her cat walked out on her.

Cheryl hung posters, urged friends to be on the lookout for Tiger, and in general was sad. Sure, her pals said, cats do this all the time and then when they've broken your spirit, they come back.

Seventeen days after leaving to chase some personal demon, the cat came back. Just in time for help Cheryl eat birthday cake.

Cheryl, who has had cats for many years, would have been well off to remember another quotation from Eliot: "When a Cat adopts you there is nothing to be done about it except put up with it until the wind changes."

Happy Birthday this week, Cheryl. You'll recognize the setting in this photo right away, but I'll tell everyone else that this is you as a high-schooler, splayed with one of your first cats on the living-room couch.

Historical writing and stupid vandalism

[April 25]   We Pawnee Rockers have always taken it as our birthright to scratch our initials into Pawnee Rock. It was done by Santa Fe Trail travelers long before our hometown was settled, and no doubt it'll continue to be done as long as a chunk of sandstone remains.

Our poor Rock has, over the past hundred years, also put up with painted grafitti. If you've visited the Rock's pavilion, you know the generally low class of artistry involved.

I don't think it's all the doing of Pawnee Rock kids. I'm sure little angels and their teenage brothers from our neighboring county seats, as well as U.S. 56 travelers, have contributed to the mess.

A couple of years ago, I noticed the tarry moustache put on the Indian on the park's spire. And now there's another blemish, without even a hint of humor.

Some yahoo has sprayed some visual trash -- obviously a form of self-identification -- onto the spire.

This insults our history. Although it's unlikely that the kid with the paint can will be found, I hope that the punishment is severe.

The photo of the vandalized spire is provided by Dawn Bryant of Nebraska, who visited Pawnee Rock recently and admired our scenery. "So sad to see such senseless acts!" she wrote on a geocaching website.

N 38º 16.337 W 098º 58.927

[April 24]   Kent Volgamore is a pilot for the Galichia Medical Group, which residents of Kansas of a certain age and with certain heart conditions no doubt have heard of. When he uses his alias "barondriver," he's also a geocacher.

That means he uses his GPS unit to track down certain spots where other enthusiasts have left a cache. Sometimes the cache is physical -- a notebook, a bucket of items -- and sometimes it's virtual -- just a location with a great view.

He sent us a note to mention the virtual geocache he recorded in Pawnee Rock State Park. You'll need to sign up as a member of Geocaching.com to see all the good stuff (it's quick).

Geocaching.com sends out an e-mail newsletter late each week providing a few places to visit in my (or your) area. Some, like the Pawnee Rock site, are pretty easy to get to. Others require you to hoof it for a while. I found a list of 14 geocaches within 12 miles of Pawnee Rock.

All it takes to play the geocache game is a GPS unit and a sense of adventure.

Kent is good at his game. As for me, I'm just a beginner. And you can call me yukla.

Through a glass, darkly: My mom, Anita Byers, wrote from Arkansas after reading yesterday's item about Bill Levingston's tumble while painting the Pawnee Rock fire station next door. She was at home:

"I remember the day Bill fell. I heard a noise and went over. He was in shock, so I took him a glass of water and a blanket after I called the ambulance, then Bonnie. It took what seemed like a long time for the ambulance to get there, and by that time Bonnie was there."

You know, we remember the funniest things. Until Mom mentioned that glass of water, I had forgotten how in my mind that particular glass was "different" for years after that. I avoided it when I could, but I don't think I ever said a word about what was troubling me.

I didn't have any ill will toward Bill, but the glass had been used by someone who had just suffered a very large shot of bad luck. Could I catch it?

Do other kids think such things?

I also wonder what Bill thought whenever he walked into the fire station after his fall. Did he get the shivers?

Cooking right along: Once in a while, I find an object that fits my life perfectly.

Twenty-two years ago, it was my bright blue Viner 12-speed bike. I have a fishing pole that feels as if it were made for me. I am quite caught up with my new Motorola cell phone, and one day soon I'll figure out how to send a text message back to my sister.

Today, so much of our snow was gone that I celebrated by cooking steak and burgers outdoors on my Weber grill, my anytime-but-winter pride and joy. After using poorly made and open-top grills for so long, I was ready to give up on the sport of outdoor cooking. But then a few years ago my wife gave me the Weber One-Touch Silver grill, and now I can do no wrong with it.

(Safety note: I moved the cold grill up onto our wooden deck just for the photo late last night.)

Thank you, Weber folks, whoever you are.

Bill Levingston leaves his mark

The former fire station, July 2006. Bill Levingston's accident happened about 40 years ago in the near driveway.

[April 23]   Bill Levingston was painting the front of the fire station when he fell. We found him next to his ladder, lying on the concrete in a pool of blood-red paint.

Bill was a tough son of a gun.

He didn't cry or shout, but he may have cussed a little. I don't remember that he laughed. He did get up on an elbow and hold a normal conversation about when the ambulance would be there and no, there was nothing else we could do except call Bonnie.

So we stood there around the west driveway, the one leading into the bay where the active firetruck stood. I think we all felt sorry for Bill, but no one wanted to wade into the red paint.

Bill spent many years as the fire chief, and he was the manager of the Clutter-Lindas Lumber Co. yard. He was a prominent member of the Lions Club. In the 1960s, the Great Bend Tribune printed a feature by Dorothy Bowman about how Bill had been briefly famous nationally for tracking down a woman who had left her purse in town.

The blood-red stain faded slowly from the concrete. The scene has faded, too. Our sheltering elm next to the fire station was cut down and carted away. The fire trucks were moved to the new steel building downtown.

Bill died in 1982, about 15 years after his fall. He's buried in the eastern addition at the Pawnee Rock cemetery, next to Bonnie (Bona Jane), who died 16 years ago Thursday. Their son, Robert, owns the old fire station now.

History, as tolled by the bell

The town's bell sat atop the 1908 building along Centre Street.

[April 22]   I grew up scarred by Pawnee Rock's fire siren, which wasn't far from my bedroom window. The siren was so loud that, when the wind was right and I was at my grandparents' place, I could hear the siren from two miles northwest of town.

Before the siren was installed -- I don't know the year yet -- the city relied on the bell atop the 1908 Lindas building downtown. You know: the bell we all grew up throwing rocks at.

I can't imaging that the old bell pierced the brains of young kids quite the way the siren does now during emergencies and at noon. But life was quieter then, when people weren't shut up in their houses with the television yelling at them, and more volunteer firemen lived within hearing distance of downtown.

For some folks, the bell had a personal meaning. Leon Miller, who grew up on South Centre Street, was the son of the man who operated the Mobil pump station in town. After he saw the photo of the bell on the homepage yesterday (now in the photo gallery), he sent this note:

"I remember the fire bell very well. It struck terror in the hearts of the community whenever it rang as you knew there was trouble. The two most significant times I recall was when the Methodist Church burned around 1940 and my Dad's (Cobb Miller) pump station burned in 1942. In this instance my Dad and an associate were loading gasoline in a tank truck when a spark set off a blast that started the fire. The explosion blew my Dad off the dock but he survived. Don Ross mentioned in an earlier story about the Boy Scouts manning a bucket brigade to try to put out the fire.

"Through their efforts they were able to keep most of the tanks from catching on fire, and my Dad and the town was forever grateful for this.

"On Halloween, local teenagers would crawl up on the roof of the building and ring the bell as a prank. This was one of several pranks that were played on Halloween, with the most prevalent being tipping over outhouses, sometimes with the owner in it.

"Johnny Morris was the acting law enforcement official and had a one-man challenge to the boys to keep the law and prevent anyone from getting hurt. I don't think anyone ever did. It was just a lot of fun."

Gluttons for gluten: I'm sure there's some reason that pet food manufacturers and pork feeders buy their wheat, corn, and rice gluten from China. Perhaps the price is so rock-bottom low that it doesn't matter how adulterated the gluten is -- the manufacturers just figure the cost of lawsuits against their savings.

But with Kansas and the rest of the grain states cranking out so much cereal that the farmers can get the government to pay them not to use their fields, why isn't our own surplus being turned into pet food filler?

Surely somewhere in our national breadbasket we have lower quality grain that would be suitable for being reduced to gluten.

Let China choke on its melamine. Kansas gluten for American pets!

Earth Day: In the days leading up to the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, Pawnee Rock kids embraced it. Our group -- the Brights, Smiths, Tutaks, Bowmans, Ritchies, and I -- stood behind the telephone building between the Brights' and Wilhites' houses and talked about how to control pollution and clean up Earth.

I do not recall any other time in my childhood, or later, when we all agreed on something nationally important. We were split, for example, on the Vietnam War, on civil rights, and on whether Nixon should be impeached or beatified -- when we talked about those things at all.

We weren't worldly wise. But we did have a sense of our Earth -- literally, to the land that we used as a garden, to the water we drank and fished in, and to the air.

It was that week that I think of as the shining moment of our town's kids. In our hearts, we believed we would make a difference.

Considering the current shape of Earth, you and I must stop doing something bad and do one or two good things. Let's plant a tree, make less trash, and drive a few miles less every week.

We don't even have to brag about it. We'll just do it.

A photo I like: No. 33

[April 21]   On a parched August afternoon on the northwest side of Pawnee Rock State Park, the only liquid available to a yellowjacket and a fly might be the elm sap running down the canyon between chunks of mossy bark.

Yellowjackets flew in and out, with a half-dozen waiting to fill up. They were the royalty; other insects kept their distance when the big bugs moved up. I suppose it was like a watering hole in the savannah -- every critter is welcome to drink, if only to keep the food chain alive.

Time flies, and trees grow

[April 20]   Nothing's the way it used to be, I'm told. When I look at these two photos of Pawnee Rock, I might agree.

I took the top photo on a September evening in 1973. It appears I was standing on the edge of what used to be the road around the pavilion.

I took the bottom photo in at midday July 5, 2005. I was standing atop the pavilion.

What's new in the intervening 30 years? To start with, a shelterbelt between the road and the field to the south.

There's a new house between the viewer and the big elevator, and you can barely see the white trailer. A new shed rises at the right side of the photo.

A photo taken today would not have the second elevator, the old metal one that's in the right half of the photo. It was pulled down in February.

I hadn't compared these views until last night, and I was surprised. It explained why recent visits to the Rock didn't have the same open-air feel they had when I was a boy.

Too many deaths: It's hard to grasp the enormity of certain events. The deaths in Darfur would be the same as losing everyone in Wichita. The number of traffic fatalities nationwide every year wipes out the equivalent of several western Kansas counties. The war in Iraq has killed 3,300 U.S. soldiers and thousands upon thousands of Iraqi civilians. How do you get a handle on that?

In my job as the wire editor, I sift through dozens of photos of the victims of wars, religion, terrorism, greed, government abuse, and outright stupidity. The subscribers of our newspaper don't see most of those photos. But let me tell you, it's a grind. Every day.

Now we have the shootings at Virginia Tech. No matter how many wire-service stories I read about that, I'm at a loss to imagine 33 body bags lined up the way they can be in Iraq. These are folks I don't know, but they're people who could be from our hometown or just down the street from where we live now. Anybody who went to college could be there.

My wife has a niece at Virginia Tech. Miranda was in her dorm room when the killings occurred, having skipped her 8 a.m. class that day. Three of her 8 a.m. classmates were killed in their next class.

I am going to focus on these students during the mourning period. I cannot go with 32 who didn't deserve to die, but I can be there with three.

Flat-out freedom

[April 19]   This past week, the roads cleared enough so that Nik could roll his 20-inch mountain bike out of the garage and get some decent exercise. He in his happy life had never had a flat, but now it was obvious that something was wrong.

Last evening he and I took his wheel off and he pried the tire off the rim. We dipped the tube in the kitchen sink to expose the leak (a treat in itself), patched the hole, and put it back together.

For a nine-year-old whose native speed is "quick," he was remarkably patient and determined. He doesn't know the term "rite of passage," but he knew it was a time to pay attention.

My passage came on the front porch of our house in Pawnee Rock. You probably remember the thorns of summer, and I wouldn't be surprised if you collected quite a few in your own bike tires. You probably also remember how having a flat turned your winged wheels into an awkward pile of pipes, until Mom or Dad showed you how to patch the tube and you walked the bike over to Farmers' or Vickers' and blasted some free air into the tire.

Parents, you can teach your kid to read. You can teach him to mow the yard. You can teach him how to fry an egg. You can teach him, or her, all these things, and he'll be much better off.

But when you teach him how to patch a bike tire, you will have made a real difference in his life.

On a bike, the kid has speed and, if he's like me, a death ray mounted on the handlebars. Put the kid on a bike, and he's no longer bound to the pedestrian ways of little kids and adults.

You've given him freedom and a way to protect it.

Did Jesus eat divinity?

[April 18]   As a kid, I thought divinity was holy candy.

Could it be like holy water? Was it like angel's food cake and the opposite of devil's food chocolate cake and deviled ham? Did Jesus eat divinity?

You know how kids are with their superstitions. For years I wasn't sure whether I should enjoy chocolate cake, and that may be why I'm ambivalent about chocolate to this day.

Divinity differs from all other candy. Its appearance is like snow viewed from a distance, beautiful in the abstract. All other candies look artificial or like, well, a chunky semiliquid that splashed on the floor.

Divinity is food for the holidays, so softly rich in magic that one piece, even when it is cut carefully by an adult, will satisfy a kid.

It wasn't until recently that I found out why. Once again, I'm the last person on earth to know something.

Divinity is almost pure sugar. Of course, all candy is. But divinity is hard-core sugar, powdery stuff that melts into your veins. To find out how it is made, I did what Grandma never did: I asked Betty Crocker.

Betty's recipe starts with boiling a half-cup of water and a half-cup of light corn syrup (Karo to you and me), then mixing in two cups of sugar. After it has cooked awhile at 250 degrees, slowly pour it into two whipped egg whites and whip the whole mixture as you do it. Perform this work on a day with low humidity.

Betty Crocker reduced the recipe to chemistry. I think I'd rather have enjoyed the magic without knowing how Betty and Grandma did it.

After all, magic is what divinity is all about.

Healthy clubs: Our Dallas friend Leon Miller felt a connection with yesterday's column about the health club in Great Bend:

"I have to admit I have become a member and user of a health club. Up until 14 years ago I never set foot inside one. But after having my first knee replacement and patellectomy April 16, 1993 (and a second one in September 1993), I was prescribed by my doctor to use a rehab facility here in Dallas, known as the Baylor Tom Landry Fitness Center, to recover from the surgeries. The therapists and trainers literally brought me back from the living dead.

"Today as I was going through a workout with a petite little girl (she said she was 35), I exclaimed that I was 73 and closer to 74. She gasped and said her father was also 73 but nearly confined to a wheelchair with many maladies and health problems. So if you get with the right trainer and right program, I am convinced you can extend your life expectancy by as many as 10 years. When I was 60 I felt like I was 90. Now at 73 I can pass for someone who is 60.

"Just a thought."

Disaster in the grill: I don't want to suggest that it's not safe to drive in Kansas, but you'll want to read this item on Peg Britton's blog before your next trip.

What kind of man goes to a health club?

[April 17]   Now that spring is here, at least here and there, some of us might be starting to consider how we'll look in a swimsuit this summer. And that means we might hit the road as cyclists, runners, or, to use an old-fashioned term, joggers.

Quite a few Aprils ago, when I was in high school, I enrolled in a night class at Barton Juco called Interpersonal Communications. One of the students was the manager of Great Bend's new health club, which even then may have been called the Town and Country Racquet Club.

I don't remember his name, but he wasn't the kind of forget a girl's name. He wore tight shirts that were opened to reveal a gold chain. He had curly hair on his head and chest. He was, in fact, the answer to the magazine's question: What kind of man reads Playboy?

He was a hustler, as I imagine you'd have to be if you were running a health club in Great Bend in the mid-1970s. In the last class session, he handed out passes good for a test drive of the club.

So I showed up with my tight little cotton shorts in Macksville Mustang red and my high school T-shirt. I tried the Nautilus machine, the treadmill, and the swimming pool; I had to get dispensation to enter the pool because I didn't have a proper swimsuit.

I met a girl in the pool and we went to the Pizza Hut afterward. We never saw each other again.

These days, I've given up on health clubs. I don't even consider meeting women in the pool anymore, and no matter how hard I try I'll never have the right kind of clothes.

So I ride a bike on a trainer indoors and run on a treadmill in the garage until full-blown spring gets here. Where we live now, summer's gone so quickly I don't put much thought into my choice of swimming trunks.

But I do like to think back to the possibilities found in that health club on West Broadway. I could have become a man who goes to a health club.

The Larned Butcher Block: A couple of days ago I wrote about Rankin's butcher shop in Larned, which reminded Pawnee Rock native Kay Steed of its successor, the Butcher Block:

"How good is the meat at the Larned Butcher Block?? Well, some of the Steed family travels from Kansas City to Larned, at least once a year, to stock up on their secret ingredient, home-made Ham Loaf. Two of my three grown kids insist on having it as a second meat at Thanksgiving and now the good loaf has traveled to Ft. Scott to in-laws as well.

"According to the owner, the secret ingredients were passed on or "guessed at" by a butcher shop in Leavenworth, Ks., but was only made about once a year. Upon investigation, I found that was not a relieable source either and the Larned shop can't ship meat, so if you want to taste a really delicious treat, you'll have to travel to Larned, Ks., and buy one for yourself. We think it's worth the trip."

Dreaming of a white April

[April 16]   A little springtime snow/slush/rain can spoil a weekend pretty fast, or at least make it miserable for those who are outdoors. But there's beauty in it, too, and the kid in all of us likes the snow.

On Saturday, Nancy Woodrow of Pawnee Rock wrote:

"The snow was something else yesterday. The kids got out of school early, although it wasn't as bad as they had forecasted. It was so beautiful outside. Kansas weather is just great!"

Nancy sent us a few photos she and her kids took. I encourage more readers to do that.

When you're in our hometown with your digital camera, photograph a few things that mean something to do you: your old house, the new elevator, a particularly pretty tree, some names carved on the Rock. Let your imagination run wild.

I've encouraged Nancy to give her kids the camera and let them show us what's important. If you're not a youngster any longer, try looking at Pawnee Rock as if you were.

Size the photos to 600 pixels wide and e-mail them, with information for a caption, to leon@pawneerock.org.

Church and school: Don Ross saw Sunday's photo of the original Mennonite church near Dundee and sent this note:

"The Mennonite church also served as a school in the early days. My grandpa Charles Ross would point out to us when we drove by, that he and others of the Dundee area went to grade school in that building."

Thanks, Don.

Born at Pawnee Rock? One of the world's Santa Fe Trail experts, Larry Mix of St. John, e-mailed a discovery to us about the family of "Uncle Dick" Wooten, a mountain man and trail scout who blasted a nice path for wagoneers over Raton Pass in the mid-1860s:

"Thought this was some neat information about PR. I'm sure you know who 'Uncle Dick Wooton' was and his connection to the SFT. Well, his family might have a connection to PR.

"From this link go to the family tree and read the letter of 1933 for the [maybe] PR connection.

"Had another 7 inches of snow on Friday!! AH Kansas!!"

Larry and Carolyn run the Santa Fe Trail Research Site.

Butcher business

[April 15]   As I waited for the butcher store clerk to wrap up my burger and steak Saturday afternoon, a man and his grown son came in.

"Man, doesn't that smell good?" the dad said.

It does. The smell of a butcher shop is like no other.

Our family used to shop at Rankin's Meat Market (I think that was the full name) along U.S. 56 on the eastern edge of Larned. As I remember it, the late Leon Rankin had his counter and glass case, the lighting was subdued compared to the harsh Pawnee County sun, and there was a freezer that held ice cream novelties to placate antsy kids.

Out back, a pen held cattle and pigs that had a date with the knife. This wasn't a big operation; a farmer might drop off one or two head for his family's freezer or a stockyard might run a few cattle through.

Uncle Laramie sent a steer or heifer off to Rankin's every year or so, and we'd all chip in to cover the expenses. A few days later, Mom and Cheryl and I would pack home a trunk full of steaks and ground beef and stew meat wrapped in slick white paper. Grandma kept hers organized in a Deep Freeze in the pantry, and we stored ours in a large upright freezer in the basement. One of my favorite chores was running downstairs at Mom's request to pick out a package for supper.

Once it went downstairs in the late 1960s, the freezer stayed there forever. After it wore out, it found a second life as a storage unit for everything from stamps to leftover fireworks.

The fireworks were there appropriately, because they too came from Rankin's. In the summer of 1975, I and Walter, a fellow from Larned, ran a fireworks stand in Rankin's parking lot downwind from the alfalfa plant. At the end of each day, we took the proceeds inside where it was air conditioned and counted the cash there.

Maybe that's why I like butcher shops -- the meat smell is associated with money.

Nowadays I don't eat as much meat as I used to and I'm a lot more picky about the cuts I do eat, so I find myself buying three-quarters of our meat from our town's butcher shop.

The meat's good. It's wrapped in slick white paper. And every trip to the shop makes me think of happy times at home.

A photo I like: No. 32

[April 14]   The cemetery behind Peace Lutheran Church, in Rush County seven miles north and three west of Pawnee Rock, is just what you'd expect: neat rows of stones, and peace.

I parked here last summer because it had been quite a while since I last visited the church. As a kid, I had a certain respect for the Lutherans because they were just as German as our Mennonite Church but they were even farther out in the country from Pawnee Rock. I guess that made them hardier and mysterious. (Aerial photo)

The church itself looks European -- strong with a tall steeple -- and a lot like the limestone Catholic churches that are common in the towns north of here: La Crosse, Liebenthal, Victoria, Hays.

On this visit late in the afternoon, I strolled through the cedars and paid my respects to the names I recognized. A meadowlark trilled atop one slice of gray granite, and two robins chased bugs in the shelterbelt.

Lard sandwiches

[April 13]   Our dad, Elgie, grew up on a farm northwest of Pawnee Rock. There must have been all kinds of good food on the family table -- fried chicken, beef, eggs, pie -- but all he ever talked about taking for his school lunch was a baked potato or a lard sandwich.

I concede that if you ate lard sandwiches that you'd probably never forget them. But still . . .

Dad belongs to the age group that was born in the dirt-poor 1920s and grew up in the even poorer Great Depression, and his culinary habits hung on. He cleans the bacon plate with a piece of bread, when the doctor's not looking, and until recently he used to suck the marrow out of chicken bones.

"We did that when I was a kid," he used to tell us around the table. I never understood whether he wasn't able to let go of the 1930s or whether he was doing it to gross out us kids.

His old lunch menu of comfort food has always stuck with me. His baked potato was fresh out of the oven in the morning so that it could warm him on the two-mile walk through shoulder-high snow to his one-room schoolhouse.

The lard on his sandwich was cheaper than butter or oleo. Maybe to our refined tastes it's not too healthful, but it's what they had.

Come to think of it, my own preference in childhood meals wasn't anything to write to Betty Crocker about.

I survived a yearlong fascination with ketchup sandwiches. And after Mom decided she could trust us with cooking our own breakfast when she went off to work, we burned hotdogs in the frying pan and later in the microwave. I wrapped a lot of those in a slice of well-ketchuped Rainbo bread to eat on the three-block walk to school through snow up to my shoulders.

My work-lunch menu today is hardly more varied: a yam with no condiments; or a whole-grain peanut butter and jelly sandwich; or a half-can of refried beans mixed with corn, shredded cheese, jalapeño slices, and a little chicken if it's available. That's all it is, week in and week out.

Maybe a fixed menu is just a guy thing. Our young son Sam has had a fried egg for breakfast almost every day for three years. Thank goodness he isn't interested in ketchup sandwiches, and he won't touch lard.

Someday he'll probably tell his kids about how his old man used to get his kicks microwaving a yam.

"Poor Dad," he might say. "He never got over the Sixties."

Driving yourself silly: You've probably played around with online maps. You tell a website where you want to start and where you want to go, and a precise set of directions pops onto the screen:

1. Drive 1/4 mile on Pawnee Avenue
2. Make a gentle left turn onto US 56
3. Drive 198.3 miles

With that in mind, Kay Steed passed along this bit of fun with Google maps.

1. Go to www.maps.google.com
2. Click on "Get directions"
3. Type "New York, NY" in the first box (the "from" box)
4. Type "London" in the second box (the "to" box)
5. Scroll down and read step 23

The Tin Man captures a heart

[April 12]   Mike, the fellow who sits across the desk from me, brought up "The Wizard of Oz." His five-year-old daughter had been given a Tin Man doll, and when Mike told her what it was she gave him one of those what-are-you-talking-about looks that kids do so well.

To better explain, Mike dug up a copy of the movie and played it for her.

"The Wizard of Oz," as we've all known since childhood, is Kansas' theme movie. Long before the movie came out in 1939, the series of Oz books put Kansas on the fruitcake map as the place where everyone lives in black and white and where we are pawns in great economic battles. We scoff knowingly at the movie, but we love it because it's real.

I've seen 13 tornadoes over the years, but I'm sure that the only one that has really truly scared me was the one I watched as a credulous child standing before a B&W Zenith in our basement.

It was easy to imagine being in Grandma Unruh's farmhouse during a tornado. My little dog could have been Toto. In a tornado, cows could fly. So, I suppose, could packs of trained monkeys. (As an adult, I sometimes find myself beset by flying monkeys.) And maybe lonely farmgirls did sing about rainbows.

My friend Mike said little Emily watched the movie and didn't show much of a reaction. But the next day he heard her singing about a yellow brick road.

And when you're five years old and the Wizard is still behind the curtain, that's a dandy song.

What Pawnee Rock is worth

[April 11]   The Pawnee Rock water tower has an assessed value of $2,480. That's down $380 from last year.

The Christian Church is valued at $239,590. That's up $21,060 from last year.

The New Jerusalem Church is valued at $194,980. That's up $16,920 from last year.

The former Methodist Church, owned by Sarco Pawnee Rock Co. LLC, has an assessed value of $4,680. That's down $480 from last year.

The Southwestern Bell Telephone Company's building at 321 Bismark Avenue is valued at $0. That's what it was last year, too.

The Pawnee Rock school/city building has an assessed value of $333,340. That's down $911,930 from last year.

The Great Bend Cooperative Association -- Farmers Grain -- owns a half-dozen properties valued at a total of $167,870. That's down $1,700 from last year.

Don't you just love public records?

These valuations, set by the Barton County appraiser's office, are public because property owners pay the county's operating expenses. Having them out in the open lets everyone make sure they're not paying more than their fair share -- compared to what their neighbor is paying.

And, frankly, I like them simply because I enjoy comparing numbers.

What made property values go up? Or down? Were there improvements? Is somebody getting away with something? If the property is for sale, is the asking price close to the county's idea of its value?

Furthermore, you can use the tax records to see who owns a piece of property. And by going street by street, you can see that some folks own quite a bit.

For our use on PawneeRock.org, I copied the section of the valuations that lists property within the city limits of Pawnee Rock. (It's a six-page PDF file of about 650K, so it's going to take a moment to download. Also, ignore the little bit of Galatia info at the beginning and the Olmitz info at the end.)

The information is sorted by street. Street numbers are followed by the owner, then the 2006 valuation, then the 2007 valuation.

If you'd like to see the whole Barton County list of property values, which includes rural Pawnee Rock, go here.

Meet Mike Kirkman, mayor-to-be

[April 10]   Pawnee Rock's new mayor says he got into politics because he thought he didn't get a good enough answer to his questions about city taxes that were "too dad-burned high."

He eventually was asked to run for the city council, he says, and then to run for mayor. And after the April 3 election, which he won over a write-in campaign by outgoing mayor Jack Link, he'll get his chance to lead our hometown toward what he hopes is a firmer financial future.

Three new members will join the council during the changeover in May: Joe Billus, Tim Parret and Gary Adams. Walt McCowan remains on the council, and someone will be appointed to replace Mike.

Mike lives one house away from the water tower and near the former school, which now houses the city offices. He bought the house after noticing it on a visit to his daughter's home across the street.

He is a well-traveled guy who grew up in Great Bend and worked in the oil patch and in construction, living in exotic locations such as Pratt, Montana, and Virginia. He moved back to Barton County when his mother became ill.

"There's a lot of good people in this town," he said Monday.

He'd like to see more of those people move to town -- or stay in town. He likes to see them involved in town activities. Getting them a place to work is important, and a new business would bring in property taxes.

The city needs to come up with money quickly, he said, echoing recommendations made last summer by a group of accountants. Selling the school/city building could greatly reduce the city's expenses, he said, but even so the cost of running the city is getting larger for each property owner as the town's population shrinks.

Using profits from a sale of the school could help for a while, he said, but eventually that would be used up unless other changes are made.

"I think that [the school profit] ought to be put off to the side and still make the town run within its limits," he said. "If it don't sell, what are we going to do? Hopefully it will sell. I'm praying it does."

Beyond the school building sale, he's encouraged by signs of growth at Farmers Grain. Also, he wants to bring in new business, either in the school building or elsewhere in town.

"I'd give anything to have eight, nine, ten jobs in that school building," he said.

(Contract negotiations over the school apparently are continuing. One bid to buy the building has not been settled yet. Calls to Mayor Link's number on Monday went unanswered.)

Mike says he's going to look into a grant program that helps towns remove dilapidated buildings.

"We got a lot of houses that got to be torn down and hauled off," he said.

That presumably would make the town more attractive to the dozens of new employees to be hired by Larned State Hospital, about 15 miles west of Pawnee Rock.

We're ready for spring

[April 9]   Welcome back from the weekend, a safe and happy one, I hope.

If you're making plans to travel next weekend, check out Flyoverpeople.net. Cheryl Unruh and Dave Leiker have been testing the roads of spring and have filed reports from Peabody, Hutchinson, Albert, Great Bend, and Junction City.

Flint Hills photos: Kay Steed of Edgerton recommends a photo exhibit by Kansan Jim Richardson:

"I thought you and your readers might be interested in knowing about a traveling Exhibit of photos by Jim Richardson. He has done a piece for the April National Geographic magazine, with pictures of the Flint Hills. We viewed the pics in Olathe and they are stunning. The exhibit will now travel all around Kansas until next December. You can get more info at www.TravelKs.com.

"Jim has a gallery in Lindsborg, where he lives and his online address is www.smallworldgallery.net.

"He has really captured some interesting aspects of life in the Flint Hills that you don't normally get to see by driving through, although, that alone is breathtaking, in my estimation."

Easter update: On the heels of last week's unpleasantness with the snowfall, there was some un-Eastery weather Sunday in Pawnee Rock. The temperature at sunrise was 26 degrees, 15 degrees lower than the average low for the day, which apparently took the fun out of having the annual sunrise service on the Rock.

Gary Trotnic wrote:

"Because of the weather they held the Easter service at the high school. I guess about 150 people showed up, and we went afterward to the depot for rolls and coffee."

Rising on the Rock

[April 8]   Welcome to Easter, everyone. I hope everyone who went to a sunrise service got plenty of sunshine. Or Sonshine, if that's what you were looking for.

I don't think I ever made it to a sunrise service on the Rock. You know how it is with kids: You can't drag 'em out of bed with a tow truck, especially on chilly mornings when it's still dark. But now I wish I had been there at least once, if nothing else than to join in the singing before the three crosses standing above the eastern face of the Rock.

I suspect it would have been one of those emotional moments that meant a lot later.

In my twerp years, when I first learned what Easter symbolized, I was spending a lot of time at the cemetery with my family as we mowed and clipped and picked up in preparation for Easter. I was quite sad, I remember, when Easter came and went and none of the graves was opened and empty.

But then, growing up on the flatlands, I was still puzzled by the idea of a tomb with a rock in front of it. There were some above-ground, granite-encased graves in Great Bend or in northwest Arkansas, where our family went often. Maybe, I thought, that's where people got out on Easter morning.

I've since worked out some of the puzzle. Yet you can still find me staring into sunrises half expecting to see a spirit ascending into the heavens. At dawn, forever seems possible.

The Ash Creek navy: Leon Miller, who used to live at the south end of Centre Street, spent a lot of time in the wilds south of town. After I posted the photo of Ash Creek yesterday, he wrote:

I remember the Ash Creek bridge well when I was growing up although the trees weren't there in the '40s. The place brings to mind one of the times when as a youngster, maybe somewhere around 13-14, my buddies and I would build our own "canoes" and have canoe races on the creek.

The method of construction was this: We would take an old piece of corrugated metal, about 3' wide and 8' long, bend the metal on one end into a 3-sided square, form it around a 12" square piece of wood which was usually the end of an orange crate (remember those), then shape the opposing end in the form of a "u" which was attached to a short 2 x 4, making the bow of the canoe. We then took some coal tar pitch and sealed the wood and metal joints on both ends to keep the boat from leaking. Lastly, we would attach a cross beam in the middle of the canoe and secure an old one-gallon kerosene can on each end which would help keep the canoe from tipping over in the water.

Then we would launch the canoes in the water and have "naval battles" to see who could tip the other person over in the water (it was never more than 3' deep).

This was one of the ways we spent our time before the days of Star Wars, iPods and X-boxes. And the best thing was, we picked most of our stuff out of discarded junk, which was free.

All the elections: The Hutchinson News compiled the results of all the western Kansas elections. Jodie Cook found the list and sent the link Thursday. I told her I'd post the link that night and, Jodie, I forgot. I'm sorry.

Look over the list, everyone. You might find someone you know.

And thank you, Jodie. Please keep on sending stuff.

A photo I like: No. 31

[April 7]   How many of us have fished here or made this our destination for an evening bike ride, out where Ash Creek stops for a rest near where the round barn used to be?

This pool is pretty reliable, holding water when it's not flowing elsewhere. It's possible that bullheads and turtles live here with the barn swallows and a million flies, and I am sure white-tail deer, raccoons and opossums still make their way to the pool at night. Cattle drink the water and it carries their waste and whatever chemicals wash out of the planted fields, so Ash Creek is not exactly swimming-hole water these days. Yet, even with those conditions, I like to stop by and enjoy a stream of memories.

Change in the weather

The Weather Underground radar shows Thursday's big band of wet snow moving across central Kansas.

[April 6]   Nothing says "Easter weekend" like a sharp freeze and a new layer of snow, does it. I watched yesterday's storm move across central Kansas on wunderground.com's weather radar, and it was fairly impressive.

But I bet that all across Pawnee Rock Township there are kids just dyeing to color their Easter eggs. As I found out a few years ago, things have changed from the immersion-with-a-spoon method we grew up with. Parents voted with their pocketbooks for painting kits and rub-on dyes and glitter packets, so that's what is on the shelves these days.

I used to get a kick out of writing my name on the hard-boiled eggs with a white crayon and then dipping them into the bowl of green or blue or purple or red or yellow dye. The egg would be colored except for the lettering. Actually, no one ever confused my eggs with anyone else's. Like good hens, we knew our own eggs.

Come Easter morning, I would raise the blind and look out my bedroom window hoping to catch the Easter bunny in the tulips. You didn't do that? Well, let the one who is without sin cast the first Easter egg.

Nowadays, our sons are still willing to give the bunny legend the benefit of the doubt because the occasional plastic egg contains coins or Matchbox cars. But Nik turns 9 this weekend and Sam's almost 11, and they'll call us on it pretty soon.

Snowy day: St. John correspondent Larry Mix sent us a photo taken out his back door as the temperature falls into the 20s and an inch of snow falls into his back yard -- and onto a blooming redbud tree.

School sale: Pawnee Rock's city and school gear and memorabilia are being moved out of the old school building and into the former Methodist Church, reports Gary Trotnic. The contract to sell the school is being signed this week. I'll have more details as I can get them.

If you have information about the sale or the buyer or some photos of the move, please send them to leon@pawneerock.org.

Karen Lou Symank: Karen Lou Symank of Dundee died Monday in Great Bend. She was the daughter of Fred and Thelma Ridgeway and the sister of Wayne and Marsha. You may remember them from school in Pawnee Rock.

Mrs. Symank, a certified nurse aide and social service designee, will be buried at 1 p.m. Saturday in the Pawnee Rock Cemetery. She was 61. (Obituary on April 5)

Election results, with write-ins

[April 5, Part 2]   The results of Tuesday's election won't change. Mike Kirkman will be the mayor, and Gary Adams, Joseph Billus, and Timothy Parret will join the city council.

Kirkman, now a council member, will be replaced on the council. Walt McCowan's seat wasn't up for election this time.

All the major write-ins were folks familiar to Pawnee Rockers. Jack Link, of course, is the outgoing mayor, and Merita Rice and Shane Bowman are departing from the council.

Gary Trotnic, who ran on the ballot but wasn't elected, got these results from the county clerk's office in Great Bend:

Searching for customers and truth

[April 5]   The Hutchinson News ran a story yesterday about how the city is trying to figure out what residents of nearby counties like or don't like about Hutch.

The Hutchinson/Reno County Chamber of Commerce discovered that people from "rural" counties -- Barton, Edwards, Ford, Harvey, Kingman, Marion, McPherson, Pratt, Rice, and Stafford -- and "urban" counties -- Dickinson, Geary, Riley, Saline, Sedgwick, and Shawnee -- were going to Hutch less often for clothing and household goods and that they went more grudgingly. Fewer people said the town was pretty or progressive.

The rural countians, the group said, didn't go to the Cosmosphere as much they used to. On top of that, the group discovered, the entrances to Hutch are unattractive and too many people who haven't been to Hutch let their impressions of the town be formed by the gas explosions in what the paper coyly called the "less affluent" part of Hutch.

Hutchinson and Reno County are drawing more visitors from Sedgwick County, which is bursting at the seams with subdivisions. The four-lane K-96 between Wichita and Crupper's Corner helps make visiting Reno County palatable for Wichitans.

But the big attraction? Yoder, Buhler, and Hutchinson are enjoyable because of their rustic qualities. In other words, Wichitans like Hutch because it's full of quaint rural people.

Well, that's enough fun at Hutch's expense. I like Hutch, but the entrances indeed are ugly. I don't remember the last time I bought anything there besides a hamburger. And driving in town isn't pleasant. But it has a good paper and the Cosmosphere and the fair.

I especially admire the Hutch News, and reporter John Green, for running what looks like an honest story that holds a sharp light up to the town. The people who wanted to find out about how other people felt about Hutch deserve praise too. Not every town has leaders like that.

Take Larned, for example.

In the 1970s when I was reporting for the Tiller and Toiler, a press release from the U.S. Census Bureau crossed my desk. The story said the population of Larned had dipped below 5,000 in the middecade census estimate, so I called the president of the chamber of commerce and the mayor and a few other people to find out their thoughts on the matter.

It wasn't a half-hour later that the editor's phone started ringing and ringing and ringing. The chamber president, the mayor, and the owner of a furniture store demanded that the Tiller not run any story saying the population was down. Why, such a thing was wrong and bad for Larned!

By the time the editor got through with my story, it sounded as if Larned were thriving.

The most recent middecade census showed Larned with a population of 3,874, a loss of about 14 percent from 4,490 in 1990. Pawnee County's population now is 6,515, down 14 percent from 7,555 in 1990.

(Pawnee Rock's population went to 346 from 367, a decrease of 6 percent, in the same period, and Barton County's population also fell 6 percent, from 29,382 to 27,511.)

Now, it may be that Larned's present leaders have taken a healthier approach. The expansion of the state hospital ought to generate enough economic growth to jump-start a dead horse, and the rest is up to the marketers.

The difference between old Larned and present-day Hutchinson is that the Reno County folks aren't in denial. They saw that fewer people are going to Hutch, and they set out to determine why. They asked questions and didn't hide behind falsified newspaper stories.

And there's the lesson for all towns in rural Kansas: Ask honest questions. Draw up ideas. Be active. Live like there's a tomorrow.

The votes are counted

[April 4]   The votes for the Pawnee Rock election have been counted, and I wish I had a list of winners for you.

I can tell you the totals for the candidates who were listed on the ballots. But there were so many write-ins that one of them could have won a position on the city council. As of late Tuesday night, the official totals hadn't been posted by the county clerk.

But here's how the races went, according to the preliminary countywide results from the Barton County Election Office:

In the council race, write-ins accounted for 36 percent of the vote. The 82 write-ins were the most for any city race in the county.

Kirkman, a member of the council, will become mayor and someone will fill in his position on the council. Adams and Billus seem to have clinched a spot on the council, and it's possible that one of the write-ins bumped Parret. The three winners, whoever they are, would fill empty seats.

It's possible that you'll know whether there's a write-in winner before it's published here. If you do, please pass along the news and I'll update the site ASAP.

Finally, to all the candidates: Thanks for being willing to shoulder the burden of government.

The town next door: Cheryl Unruh, my sister and maybe your former schoolmate, wrote a nice column in the Emporia Gazette about going to Larned and Great Bend as a kid. Do you remember the Great Bend lumberyard's neon sign of the carpenter sawing a board? Cheryl does too.

Not Dean Ross?

[April 3, Part 2]   Don Ross of Dodge City wrote this morning to say that the second fellow identified in the 1915 basketball photo is not his uncle Dean Ross. "I believe the other names are correct," he wrote.

The search continues. . . .

Names, water, and votes

[April 3]   Another mystery is solved, thanks to a stash of family photos. Leon Miller, Class of 1951 and the son of Cobb Miller, sent a note this weekend:

"In one of your early photo groups, No. 4 I believe, you had a picture of the 1915 Pawnee Rock boys basketball team. I discovered a copy of that picture in my own archives which had names of the players and coach on the back. FYI, the names on the back of my picture are: Maurice "Cobb" Miller, Dean Ross, Guy Daniels, Mr. Davisson -- Coach, Bert Smith. Front row: Paul Holland and Bing Gilbert. They were a tough-looking bunch."

"My Dad was born July 3, 1897 and would have been 17 when this picture was taken."

(The photo was sent to us by Don Ross, who is the nephew of Dean Ross.)

The way the river used to look: Larry and Carolyn Mix, a St. John couple who operate the Santa Fe Trail Research Site, stopped in Pawnee Rock and Dundee over the weekend and photographed the construction of the new elevator and the full-to-the-brim Arkansas River.

After Larry sent a double handful of images, I suggested that all that water might have spoiled the day for big boys with big toys. I was wrong. Larry wrote:

"It didn't ruin the 4 wheelers' day any. There were about 10-15 down at the day and that many on the south side. South on Radium road just east of the dam and just south of the bridge they have put in an area where they can ride. Costs about $50 a year plus so much per bike.

"The rain was a slow-moving front that started on the west side of the state with 26 tornadoes and moved east of the next two or three days. Here in SJ we had over 5 inches last week. We were across Quivira on Sunday and talked to a ranger and he told us that it is full and running over."

Election Day: The river may have water, but the big news, of course, is that today is Election Day.

In Pawnee Rock, three city council seats are being fought over by four candidates on the ballot and several write-ins. One formal candidate is running for mayor, but he may attract opposition too.

Here's some background on the races.

I hope to have the winners here tomorrow. As always, PawneeRock.org appreciates photos and comments. Send them to leon@pawneerock.org.

Good luck to you all.

The emperor's hymn

The flower garden of the 1960s was outside my bedroom window, the one toward the back of the house.

[April 2]   The small garden outside my bedroom window was where spring came first.

Crocuses popped their little yellow and purple heads out of the leaves and crusty snow, and then came the hyacinths, daffodils, and forsythias. Finally, up from the ground arose the tulips.

These were majestic tulips, emperor tulips. Big red petals forming a cup a foot off the ground, shouting with pleasure at being alive.

My mom saw me spend a lot of time amid the tulips -- tiptoeing, I imagine -- and "gave" them to me. I hid Easter eggs under them and drove my little trucks nearby, scooting over now and then for a sniff. It always puzzled me that such showy flowers didn't have a stronger smell, but the waxy scent has stayed with me.

Within a week of blooming, however, my tulips went the way of all floral flesh, sagging outwardly and then falling to the turf. The seed pods that replaced the blossom were fascinating too. They grew swollen without the emperor's clothes, and I suspected just enough about reproduction to make touching them a little thrilling and frightening.

Eventually, Mom planted different colors of tulips, yellows and purples and maybe oranges. All of them were glorious, but none was as dramatic as my emperors.

For me, the emperor tulip was one of those items we pick up in childhood and associate other things with. For example, the "Emperor's Hymn" was composed by Haydn for Kaiser Francis II, but it's a walk in a garden for me and one of my musical favorites. (To hear it, go here and scroll down to song number 7 in the "Listen to Samples" section.)

Kansas yards may be awash in tulips these days, but where we live now our flower garden on the sunny side of the house is still under a foot of snow. Crocuses, daffodils, and tulips are a month away.

Here's the good news: Our climate is a lot like a florist's refrigerator. When the tulips do come, they will last twice as long as they did when I was a kid.

To fill in the gap, I bought my wife a clutch of tulips from the grocery store (thank you, Netherlands), and she photographed them for us after they opened in the kitchen. They look a little frou-frou. But you know what? I like them.

They smell like spring.

Friends wherever they are

[April 1]   A friend of mine at the newspaper has quit and is moving home to New York City to work for the Times. We're all sad to see her go, but we're also proud to pass along our 25-year-old star to the biggest stage in the country.

This makes three good work-friends who have left since last summer. Even in a career field that's notorious for job hopping, that's a lot of hopping from one department in one office.

Not too long ago (or so it seems), I was the one leaving. A few days after graduating from college, I posed for photos with my folks and sister and little dog in our front yard on Santa Fe Avenue and then drove away as an adult. I spent four years in Austin, three in Wichita, four in Dallas, six in Anchorage, two in Dallas again, and now nearly eight in Anchorage again. I have abandoned a lot of coworkers over the years, and I admit that I used to be hooked on the thrill of creating a new life and leaving old problems behind.

My colleagues and I are happy that Lillie's getting her shot at the big time (except for our existential worry that maybe we'll be stuck here for the rest of our careers). We promised we'd keep in touch and stop by if we're ever in town. But, really, how likely is that to happen?

Take life in Pawnee Rock, for example. People who move to Great Bend never seem to find the time to visit their old friends. People who move to Dallas would need to take a few days of vacation to come back, and there's the cost of gas, and the kids have school, and you know how it is.

When I go back to Pawnee Rock, it's still my hometown but not "home" the way it used to be. I have new friends in town, but each lifelong friendship hovers at the level where we left it 20 or 30 years ago. On the other hand, because we're friends we can immediately be comfortable with each other.

We at the newspaper will think of Lillie as she's doing her part for the New York Times' website, and we'll probably be a little jealous. We'll think of what it must be like to work in the world's most important city, of seeing civilization as it's made, of hearing a dozen languages in one day, of being paid very well. And, I suppose, I'll keep my eyes open for my own dream job or some position that's closer to our families or maybe even a job that's simply in a city with year-round warm weather. Maybe one day I'll again be the friend who leaves.

Friends come, and friends go. We get to walk together for a while, and that's the part we must remember.

Sell it

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

Or tell someone happy birthday.