Too Long in the Wind

October 2008

Where the wild dogs hunt

[October 31]   I was headed west to Pawnee Rock one morning 20 years ago when I realized I'd get there at an awkward time. I was in Ellinwood, so I stopped at Waxy's Cafe for a piece of pie and to kill a little time.

The place was nearly full, and I asked an older fellow at a back table if I could sit with him. He nodded at the facing seat. I saw a couple of guys across the room nudge each other and make an empty smile at me.

His jacket cuffs were frayed. His face was tired but not wrinkled. His eyes were gray in the middle and their rims were red, and I guessed his age to be about 70. I was in my early 30s.

We talked about the weather and the pie, and eventually he asked what I was doing in town. He liked that I was headed to Pawnee Rock to see Dad and the old farm, although his head drooped when I said I would also head down to the Arkansas to pick up rocks.

"I used to live near Pawnee Rock," he said. "My folks had a little place just outside town, and I spent a lot of time at the river. I knew them pastures up one side and down the other.

"One day in late October there was a bank robbed in Larned, and the robbers got away with $40,000, which was a lot of money. The sheriff's department went all over, but nobody found the robbers. I thought maybe they went down by the river, so I went out that night to see what I could find. You know, maybe there was a reward.

"The place I wanted to go was fenced off and it had a little road into it. No-trespassing signs was all over the place, but I went there anyway all the time. It was open pasture except for the cottonwoods and poison ivy and a few cows. It was dark 'cause there wasn't a moon, and I heard the wild dogs barking, but I knew my way around because I had been hunting and fishing there since I was a kid. Them dogs, though, they was trouble because a bunch of farm dogs had got mixed up with coyotes and went wild.

"I walked along the tree line, and sure enough there was a little fire up ahead where the road went behind some willows. I snuck up in the shadows. When I got close, I saw the dogs. They was chewing on two dead guys. I think the dogs killed them. I screamed and yelled and ran in toward the fire, and the dogs went back in the willows.

"I built the fire up real big and looked around. I figured they was the bank robbers, 'cause they had camping gear and flashlights and rifles but they weren't dressed for camping. I sort of looked through their stuff but didn't see no money. There was shovels leaning against their Plymouth, so maybe they buried the loot. I looked in the car. No money.

"I got one of their flashlights and looked for a trail in the grass. The one trail led straight to the river, but that was just where they went to the bathroom. So I looked around again and went around and around until I saw some bent grass headed off into the pasture. I got a shovel and went."

He paused when the waitress came by our table and poured him another cup. "You 'bout done with your pie, hon?" she asked me.

"Well, it didn't take long for them dogs to come up around me. There's not no other way to say it but I panicked. I started walking faster, 'cause I couldn't really see the dogs but I heard them. And pretty soon I was running, and that was stupid because I tripped over a branch on the ground.

"Them dogs was on me in a flash. One of them ripped into my leg, and I guess they all wanted some of my blood. I shined the flashlight on them, and a couple still had blood on their faces from the robbers.

"I don't know how I did it, but I got up and swung that shovel around and the dogs backed off. I yelled and walked back toward the robbers' fire, but I got tripped up again and turned around and all of a sudden I was in the willows and then I fell down the bank into the river. Flat. It was so cold I thought I was going to die."

He closed his eyes. "I wish I had," he said.

"But the dogs was up there waiting to eat me, so I stayed in the river and bled until dawn.

"My folks said I looked like death when I got home. And a lot of people said I killed them robbers and fed 'em to the dogs. I just said I was lucky I didn't get killed too."

I had to visit the restroom, and he excused me. On my way back, the waitress came up beside me and said, "Now, don't you believe anything he says. He ain't never been right." She refilled his cup, and he lifted it with both hands. The steam curled around his face.

"Some of these people here think I did it," he said, jerking his head toward the waitress. "Some of them think I'm a werewolf."

I slid into my seat and gave him a smile.

"Did you ever find the money?" I asked when we were again alone.

Maybe that was too much to ask. He set his coffee down.

"Son, let me pick up your tab," he said quietly, tossing a five on the table.

It seemed like an afterthought when he reached over and put his hand flat on mine. He looked me right in the eyes.

"Don't go to the river at night," he said. "Don't go alone."

I nodded, and it was all I could do to nod. His hand was like ice, and I knew.

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Hello, Gale Morgan

[October 31]   Gale Morgan was a Dundee kid who went to the Pawnee Rock schools, and when the high school closed he went on to Larned and then the big world. He was looking around the Internet and came across our site, and now he's listed in the Friends of Pawnee Rock.

I have always liked Gale. He was in the class above mine and had a great sense of humor. Now he lives in Wisconsin and is a respected man in the community.

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When a deer is not so dear

[October 30]   We all know to watch out for deer and other large animals when we're driving near the river or a creek. The basis of this concern is our knowledge that lurking in a ditch -- we don't know where exactly -- is a sharp-hooved devil determined to pop out and test the strenth of our grill.

The carnage is our roadside reminder. Flattened deer, tumbled deer, a pile of deer covered with a blanket of flies. Smashed headlights, dented hoods, sometimes a siren in the night.

Pawnee Rock, and Kansas, are not alone. The state lost eight people to deer and cattle collisions last year, according to an Associated Press story that quotes the Highway Loss Data Institute, an insurance company-funded outfit. Kansas had the seventh-most fatalities of all the states, far beyond the right proportion for population and road miles, and lost 56 lives to such collisions in the 15 years from 1993 through 2007.

And there's nothing we can do about it except slow down and be extra careful when the light's low, says a spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association. Mating season -- right now -- is when deer will be moving around a lot.

And stay out of Texas. Texas deer killed 17 folks last year.

So, be careful. The only safe deer is a John Deere.

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Sophie Koehn Unruh dies

[October 30]   The Hutchinson News carries an obit today for Sophie Unruh, who lived much of her life in Greensburg and died in Texas but lived for a while in Pawnee Rock. Her parents were Henry and Helena Wedel Koehn, and her husband, whom she married in Wichita, was Alvin Unruh. When she died, she was 95 years old. (Obituary)

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P.H. Willis

[October 29]   The Great Bend Tribune, which produced the "Biographical History of Barton County, Kansas" in 1912, wanted the subjects to buy a copy or two of the book, so it wrote glowingly of everyone. Perhaps that explains how Parley H. Willis, a Civil War veteran who tried farming and then moved into Pawnee Rock to paint houses but never held office or ran a big business, could be described "as one of the best known men in Barton County."

Willis and his wife, Christine, are buried in the Pawnee Rock Cemetery not far south of the old red pump.

Here's what the book had to say:

"In writing up the history of Barton county the Pawnee Rock department would be incomplete without mention of P. H. Willis who is one of the best known men in Barton County. He was born October 23, 1845, in Hartford, Conn., and came to Barton County in 1876 and went through the hard times with which the early day settlers had to contend.

"He took up a homestead near Pawnee Rock and farmed for ten years. He then moved to town and for the past twenty-five years has been closely identified with the upbuilding of Pawnee Rock. He was married in 1866 to Miss Christina Wrisle of Glastonbury, Conn., and they are the parents of four children. Albert, 41 years of age, lives in Pawnee Rock, Nellie 38 years of age is now Mrs. Cal Reid of California, Earnest, 30 years of age, is in Pawnee Rock and Rosie, 28 years of age, is now Mrs. B. Rose of Anthony, Kansas.

"Mr. Willis is a veteran of the civil war and was a member of the 6th Connecticut, having been enlisted in Company B. He was in the service sixteen months and saw much active duty most of it being in skirmishes.

"Since his residence in Pawnee Rock he and his sons have been engaged in the painting business and by doing only first class work and using the best of material they have gained the confidence of the people and enjoy a large patronage. Mr. Willis owns a nice residence in the town of Pawnee Rock and is one of the town's most enterprising and progressive citizens and is one of those old timers who has seen this county grow from an almost barren waste to its present high standing among the best counties of the State of Kansas."

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A penny's worth of history

The reverse sides of a recent penny and the 1958 wheat cent.

[October 28]   The bookstore clerk handed me $2.06 in change. As I always do -- I probably I look like a grouchy coot standing there nudging my change -- I flipped the coins to check their reverse sides. And there in my hand was a real trophy: a wheat cent.

I hadn't seen one of them in the wild for ten years.

I casually kept my yap shut until we got outside, so the clerk wouldn't learn to pay attention to the coins herself. I handed the penny to Sam and asked him what was different about it.

"The Lincoln Memorial is gone," he said, but without another penny to compare it to he couldn't quite place what made the wheat cent the pride and joy of Kansas. For him, the wheat cent was just another in a long line of rapidly evolving coins.

Sam has grown up during a period when the government is turrning out new coin and currency designs like a crazed cook makes pancakes. The regular nickel, the Jefferson nickel, the eagle quarters, state quarters, the presidential dollar coins, the Sacagawea dollar, the $2 bill, the new $5 bill, the purple $5 bill, the yellow $10, the new $20 bill, the wacky $20 bill.

Who's to blame Sam if he has no grounding in the history of money? In its fear of counterfeiters and its pandering to collectors, the Treasury can't decide what our money is supposed to look like. But now Sam's interest has been whetted, and he will discover that his wheat cent was made in Denver in 1958 and why the design was changed the following year.

One of my dad's favorite relics from his childhood was money. He showed me the wheat cent and the Indian penny, the zinc penny and the red and blue war tokens. He gave me Kennedy half-dollars and heavy Eisenhower-moon and well-rubbed Peace dollars. I learned to look for the kinds of dimes. With every coin came a history lesson.

You know those coins as well. When we were growing up, some of those coins were still in use, and one by one we plucked them from circulation.

And that's what will happen to our new wheat cent. President Lincoln, pitted and worn from his 50 years of travel, has found a safe home.

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What became of the Class of 1962?

[October 27]   Where do they go -- our classmates and friends and the older kids who lived down the street or rode the bus or were the best athletes?

Take, for example, the Pawnee Rock High School Class of 1962. You've seen a few of them mentioned in these pages -- Ruth Ann French and Don Lakin among them. Janet Unruh became Janet Bowman, I think, and lived in town until her death. Daniel Dunavan also now rests in the Pawnee Rock Cemetery. H.A. Smith, a class sponsor, continued to teach at PRHS for 10 more years, as long as the school was open.

Their flower was the American Beauty rose, and their colors were ice blue and silver. Their motto: "Preparation is the keynote of success." The boys' preferred hair style was the crewcut.

In the spring of 1962, they were about to launch themselves into what we now think of as a simpler world. But was it? In the April before their graduation, the United States resumed atmospheric nuclear test explosions, and the new Berlin Wall was giving the West fits. John Glenn and then Scott Carpenter circled the earth that spring in Mercury capsules, and several communications satellites were launched, opening a new era. Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a National Basketball Assocation game. In May, perhaps just after graduation, the stock market had its worst day since the Crash of 1929. On June 16, two U.S. soldiers were killed in Saigon. The national debt that summer exceeded $300 billion. The Cuban missile crisis arrived in October, 46 years ago right now.

The members of this class are in their mid-60s now, and I'm curious. Where has life led these folks behind the big smiles and somber stares?

They are:

Elaine Y. Smith, William Johnson, Lynn D. Darcey, Clifford Liester, Nancy Lou Hanna, Daniel Dunavan, Edwin Hemken Jr., Sheryl Kay Smith.

Barbara G. Smith, Ruth Ann French, Betty Marie Smith, Ruth V. Franklin, Joan Carol Deuser, Bonnie Jo Bunting.

Beverly J. Mead, Leonard A. Moore, Paul W. Santillie, Donald N. Lakin, Leroy J.C. Chapman, Howard L. Delaplane, Robert Schmidt.

H.A. Smith, sponsor; Eileen J. Unruh; Patricia L. Stewart, secretary-treasurer; Laverne E. Oetken, president; Lynn A. Wilson, student council representative; Patricia Freeburg, vice president; Sharon S. Unruh, class reporter; Clair W. Rucker, superintendent.

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Paul Schmidt's family

[October 26]   Family history, told to people outside the family, often is a dry tale. Barb Schmidt, however, draws her family in such interesting paragraphs that it is easy to become wrapped up in the story.

It's not just her story, but our town's story as well. Her father, Paul, is known to many Pawnee Rock residents, although he moved out a number of years ago, and her uncle, Earl Allen Schmidt, still lives north of town and is a township officer. The places she writes about are still there, and you can drive past them.

Here is what Barb, now of Seattle, wrote:

Photo: Henry Schmidt of Pawnee Rock, Peter Unruh, Paul Schmidt, Elizabeth Eck Unruh, Catherine and Mabel Schmidt (Henry and Catherine were Paul's parents, and Mabel was his sister); Elizabeth, Peter, Martha, Phillip, and Anna, who became Henry's wife after Catherine died.

The Schmidt family

The first photo is of the Peter Unruh-Elizabeth Eck family, taken in spring 1911, probably at their farm southeast of Syracuse. But their Pawnee Rock connections were strong, for example: After leaving Poland (Polish Russia?) with other Mennonites in 1874 for America (giving birth to their first child on board the steamship Frisia sailing from Hamburg to New York), Elizabeth and Peter lived in the PR area from 1875 to 1885. Eventually their daughters Catherine and Anna both married Henry D. Schmidt, who farmed a couple miles northwest of PR.

Henry is the young man seated on the left end of the front row, Catherine is holding their infant Mabel on the right end of the front row, and their son Paul (my dad) is the tow-headed boy in the middle. Catherine died shortly after giving birth to another daughter (who died 3 days before Catherine) in 1913. Catherine's younger sister Anna (standing behind Catherine) married Henry in 1914, adding 7 more children to the family in the following years.

As young sprigs, Paul & Mabel walked 2 miles to school at District #48 and both later graduated from PRHS. Paul became (actually he was born) a PR farmer, and from 1941 to 1973 farmed the 160 acres where the earthen dam still stands a mile west of the old salt plant. Mabel became a nurse and early in her training made a point to study gynecological surgery (can you imagine how progressive that was in the early 1930s?). She eventually became director of nurses at the Syracuse hospital and throughout her long career helped many young women avoid the tragic fate her own mother suffered (some of whom even grew up to be nurses, too).

The youngest child of Henry & Anna Schmidt is Earl Allen Schmidt -- which brings me to the second photo. As you may recall, Earl's 80th birthday was celebrated with great fanfare in August. His nephew Dr. Thomas Schmidt of Prairie Village (my cousin) photographed the birthday cake & said I could send the photo to you, but I'm afraid I do not know who gets credit for this gloriously rural cake. It tasted good, too.

By the way, my dad recalled the long rides by horse and wagon from his dad's farm (where Earl lives now) to the PR train depot, then by train to Kendall or Syracuse, then by wagon on out to the Unruh ranch. Since there were only trails and not modern roads, they had to stop repeatedly to open and close gates, crossing sand hills and dry prairie covered with soap weeds and prairie dog mounds -- all just to pay a short visit to his Unruh grandparents, aunts and uncles, whom he adored. Their family photo includes (front row) Henry, Peter, Paul, Elizabeth, Catherine, Mabel and (back row) Elizabeth, Peter, Martha, Phillip, Anna. Peter and Elizabeth actually had 12 children: the 3 oldest (Helena, Susie and Frena) died young, and 3 of the oldest surviving children (Mary, Emma and Isaac) had probably already left home by the time this photo was taken. Anna, her brother Pete and sister Elizabeth got their own small farms by claiming land near Syracuse that was still available under the Homestead Act.

Although the semi-smiles on the faces of Peter and Elizabeth look like nothing more than "sun grins," I am sure they would have worn broad smiles had they seen the 80th birthday cake of their (still) tow-headed grandson Earl -- which brings us (finally) full circle: The two attached photos viewed side by side remind me how quickly time passes and how closely we are all related to a distant past that is not really distant at all.

And be sure to look at the house in the background of the Unruh photo. My dad said that, as a boy, that house "seemed new" to him. At first glance, my spoiled 21st-century eyes see only a humble home that looks old and weather-worn. But look a little closer as it may, in fact, be proud new wood that looks old only because it is not yet finished, just like the lives of the 11 people who paused for a millisecond on a warm spring day to let a photographer preserve a fleeting glimpse of their spirits, more for our benefit than for theirs really, although that probably did not occur to them at the time.

While visiting PR in August, my cousin Tom and his wife Kathy also took photos at the Mennonite Cemetery northwest of Pawnee Rock, including a photo of my grandma Catherine's tombstone. Her marker is almost too worn to read anymore. But those of us blessed with photos like those attached and memories passed on from sons and daughters and aunts and uncles to children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews -- well, how can any of these people ever be forgotten? After all, the best treasures are those that live on in our hearts and minds.

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Death and the gardens of the desert

In the rolling limestone hills north of Pawnee Rock, where bison once roamed, our poetic land lies beneath the August sky.

[October 25]   One thing leads to another, and all of a sudden there's a dead cowboy.

I was in a contemplative mood because I had just posted Jim Dye's homepage photo of the red prairie grass and then read a piece by Barb Schmidt (it'll be here tomorrow) about her family and their history north of Pawnee Rock and on the semidesert plains of southwestern Kansas.

The thought of homesteaders riding a wagon across the empty country put me in the mood to look up quotations about the prairie (our area is where the prairie turns into the plains), so I turned to my old friend, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.

There turned out to be a few mentions of the prairie tucked into the category of "Anonymous: Cowboy Songs," plus a few scattered elsewhere. Among them are some classic lines, such as these from "The Cowboy's Dream":

Last night as I lay on the prairie,
And looked at the stars in the sky,
I wondered if ever a cowboy
Would drive to the that sweet bye-and-bye."

That naturally led to "lone prairie" songs, the most famous of which is "O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie. Sometimes that song brings to my mind the Mennonite cemetery north of town, but a tiny graveyard up along K-96 west of Albert -- lonesome stones amid the knee-high grasses -- seems a more perfect setting.

O bury me not on the lone prairie
Where the wild coyote will howl o'er me
Where the buffalo roams the prairie sea
O bury me not on the lone prairie

I opened up iTunes and listened to the song, which I had recorded long ago from one of my CDs. And that brought to mind "Carry Me Back to the Lone Prairie," which better evokes the wistfulness I feel sometimes for the open country:

Oh, carry me back to the lone prairie
Where the coyotes howl and the wind blows free
And when I die you can bury me
'Neath the western skies on the lone prairie.

But all in all, the best quotation was from poet William Cullen Bryant, who in 1833 wrote "The Prairies":

These are the gardens of the desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name --
The prairies.

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The easy grace of youth

Greg Davidson drives the volleyball as William Buller watches, in the front yard of Earl and Maxlyn Schmidt's home north of town in the 1970s.

[October 24]   The air of a summertime evening in Pawnee Rock is dry and empty, as the earth itself relaxes. Barn swallows sweep the close sky in search of mosquitoes, and the tight-to-the-ground grass is green but getting a bit of a crunch.

The air moves, as it's not yet sunset, but on the occasion of a Mennonite Church get-together north of town the wind is gentle. A volleyball hit over the net will fly true.

High school students aren't far removed from their animal days. Arms outstretched, their bodies remember when they swirled like swallows, and on all fours, when they rolled on the grass like puppies. The students bend like wheat in the breeze; they move without effort.

Children of the plains may yet be unburdened by geography, despite being two hundred miles from what they will later consider "anywhere." All of the world is a step away, and then another step, and then another until the old is gone and the new world is at hand. Like the wind, they carry a bit of dust and run with a light step toward a limitless future.

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Hello, DeEtta Komarek

[October 23]   Pawnee Rock students from the 1960s and '70s may remember DeEtta Ukens, who was in the Class of 1976.

"Howdy! This is DeEtta, use to be Ukens! A lady that works at the flea market on main street told me about your web-site! I went to schoool with you I believe! I was in the same class as Susie Unruh! I graduated in 1976 from Otis-Bison!

"My husband Frank Komarek and I live in Florissant, Co. Our daughter and her husband live in Divide, Co. and we have a 16 month YOUNG Granddaughter! Hope all is well, thanks for the webpage! DeEtta Komarek"

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Rain comes sweeping 'cross the plain

The storm pushes across our hometown at 12:25 a.m., 12:40 a.m., 12:48 a.m., and 12:57 a.m. (Radar as seen on wunderground.com)

[October 22]   The thunderstorms that come after bedtime are the scariest. Mom and Dad worry about limbs falling on their car and truck and the wind blowing the tall crops over. Brother and Sister jump when the lightning flashes and hide under the blankets when the thunder arrives before they can count to "two." Dog, with nothing better to do, makes a puddle on the floor.

This front, a long line of red from the Texas Panhandle to Interstate 70, moved across Pawnee Rock after midnight today. The front half of the storm delivered a quarter-inch of rain to the Great Bend airport a few miles northeast of Pawnee Rock.

When did the deer come back? The deer photos by Jim Dye and Larry Mix brought up a question from Leon Miller:

"The story about deer is very interesting. As long as I lived in Pawnee Rock I never saw a deer anywhere within 500 miles. You saw deer in Colorado or mountainous areas. When did the immigration of deer to central Kansas take place?"

As I remember my dad telling it at the time, the state reintroduced white-tails in the 1960s. For a while, there was an archery-only hunting season.

Does anyone else know the details?

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Visit Quivira for peace and wildlife

Larry Mix photographed these white-tail deer recently at Quivira National Wildlife Refuge.

[October 21]   Our friend Larry Mix of St. John has a sharp photographic eye, and he has sent us quite a few photos of Pawnee Rock. This time, he was inspired by Jim Dye's photos of deer in the Pawnee Rock neighborhood to send some photos of one of the greater area's treasures -- Quivira National Wildlife Refuge.

The refuge is a collection of ponds and marshes along Rattlesnake Creek in the sandhills of northeastern Stafford County. From Pawnee Rock, it is most easily reached by driving south to K-19, driving east to U.S. 281, and then taking the country road east from that intersection for a half-dozen miles.

With its companion refuge, Cheyenne Bottoms, Quivira last year was voted one of the Eight Wonders of Kansas.

Here's what Larry wrote:

Your deer photos brought me to send you a couple of photos we took at Quivira National Wildlife area.

It took Carolyn and I about 20 years before we found the peace and quite of this place. It is one of the most beautiful drives in our part of the country. We don't hardly go anywhere with out making the drive through the park.

In our drives through Quivira we have never been skunked on seeing deer. Last year in the winter time we saw as high as 360 on one drive through. Last Saturday we seen 62. It's nothing to see herds of 20 to over 100 at a time. Plenty of other wildlife out there also.

There is also danger there, as you can see! We also seen about 20 or 25 snakes crossing the road and several turtles. The snake photo is a Massasauga rattlesnake or pigmy rattlesnake about 2 feet long. We didn't stretch him out to get an accurate measurement of him, you'll have to take my work for it.

There is an old saying, "when snakes and turtles cross the road, you can expect rain." Sure enough it came true, we got an inch and three quarters.

This Massasauga rattlesnake was photographed on a road inside Quivira National Wildlife Refuge by Larry Mix.

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Searching for a grain of salt

[October 21]   We all know you can't believe everything you read on the Internet (except here, of course). We also know that many companies cooperate with Google to incorporate your geographical search terms into out-of-context results in the hope of emptying the billfold of an accidental visitor.

Last night I did a Google search for "pawnee rock eight wonders of kansas" and came up with this oh-my-goodness page. I'm sure there are some people who might need that company's services, but it's easy to see how the website's robot filled in placid "Pawnee Rock, Kansas" where "Wichita, Kansas" would be better suited.

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Miracle Whip

[October 20]   Barb Schmidt, graduate of the Class of 1969, now lives in Seattle and has a politically minded cat. Back when she was a farm girl, she got to know Miracle Whip, which was a part of yesterday's post. (The cute yearbook photo shows Barb when she was in Elva Jean Latas' sixth-grade class.) Here's a note she sent late yesterday.

I enjoy all the photos you post on pawneerock.org but particularly enjoyed the 2 posted today -- Miracle Whip kitty & '74 Mennonite Board. The latter because those good people were all parents of cousins &/or schoolmates of mine and I recall all their names and faces with fondness and respect. The former because it made me laugh out loud! Especially since my own kitty (Lucy) was sitting on my lap when Cheryl's popped into view. And, I could be wrong of course, but I think I heard my cat whisper, "I wish a certain political candidate would stick her head in a mayo jar -- and keep it there until November 5!"

But the real reason for my email is just to ask: What was the name of that poor, overly curious (or overly hungry) cat? [Note from Leon: It was Kitty.]

By the way, I have sometimes wondered what other people were using Miracle Whip for in the '60s and '70s. My mom used it for 3 things:

(1) summertime sandwiches made only of white Rainbow bread, Miracle Whip, baloney & iceberg lettuce (they tasted best sitting in dad's pickup in a wheatfield during harvest, pointed away from the afternoon sun and with both doors wide open, a hot breeze wafting through, some static-ky pop music from Hutchinson or Wichita on the AM-radio and a glass of Kool-Aid in hand;

(2) as a topping on lime or lemon jello with pears in it, then with grated American cheese atop the Miracle Whip; and

(3) as dip for Lays potato chips (rarely eaten in our house except after 10:30 p.m. Friday nights while watching Johnny Carson or an old B&W movie).

I'm not sure why, but Miracle Whip seemed so much more "modern" than plain old mayonnaise. Plus the Miracle Whip jars (especially the smallest ones) were perfect for a kid to store things in like coins, marbles, ladybugs or even a goldfish while our tiny fishbowl (never heard of an "aquarium" when I was a kid!) was being cleaned.

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Pawnee Rock friends

[October 20]   Greg Manka sent this photo of a group of guys who grew up in Pawnee Rock who now do what a bunch of us as kids wished we could do -- gather in Kansas City each fall for a Chiefs game.

Some years are better than others for the Chiefs, and this isn't one of the good seasons. Judging from the photo, though, it looks like it's still a good year for friendship.

Here's what impresses me most:

When we were kids, we had no choice about who our friends were -- they were the people in our class or who lived near us. Period. As we got older, the rope loosened a little bit, but our friends were still those we had to be near. The same goes for us adults with our careers.

Now that these guys have spread themselves around the Midwest, they could fill their calendars with other choices and nobody would give it a second thought. But they have chosen to remain friends and to make that one trip a year that cements their Pawnee Rock bond.

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No miracles here

[October 19]   This is a photo of my sister's cat with its head stuck in a Miracle Whip jar. I didn't particularly like the cat, so you can imagine my pleasure in taking the picture.

As I was chuckling away yesterday, however, my vision drifted beyond the cat in the jar and what I saw was my past.

There is the white lineoleum floor with the chunks of color -- were they turquoise and gold? -- on which our kitchen chairs sat. There is my plastic chair, probably a 1970s replacement for the wooden one I leaned back in and wore out. There is Dad's chair, chipped of its white paint because I used it for a footstool. There is the linoleum on the wall to which our shelf-like half-table was affixed.

There is the jamb of the back door, which opened onto the screen door on which Cheryl's cat climbed and meowed while I sat there.

As a young child I was fascinated by rocks and so spent hours on my stomach looking at the chunks in the floor. Were the patterns repeated? Could I find real rocks like these? I drove my little metal cars -- the ones that preceded Matchbox's version -- around the "rocks" until Mom chased me out from underfoot.

It occurs to me now, as I look at the photo, that this is the kitchen floor of a family that didn't have much wealth no matter how hard Mom and Dad worked. Still, we did have food on the table, a new $3,000 car for me, musical instruments and lessons for Cheryl and me, and all the books we could read. I don't know whether we were better or worse off than our friends, but it never occurred to me to be anything but proud of our home.

The mists of time have obscured how we got the head of Cheryl's unfortunate cat out of that jar. Perhaps we shattered the jar with a hammer, or maybe one of us held the cat and the other one held the jar and we pulled in opposite directions. I can imagine the cat's shame -- being helpless in the presence of humans. I've been there.

Our home didn't produce any miracles. We were what we were, which was good people who ate in a kitchen where life was scuffed around the edges.

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Saving the Onions

[October 18]   Virgil Smith was inspired by the tale of Dad's incineration of his family's outhouse to send this story he had written for his family. Virgil grew up on the farm northwest of the farm on which Dad was raised.

Saving the Onions

During World War II, the Great Bend Air Base was built to accommodate the training of B-17 bomber crews. We would hear and see them flying overhead often during the day. Sometimes there would be several in a formation and there would be a loud roar of the motors as they passed overhead.

One day my brother, Charles, was out in our field and found a string of ammunition. I don't know what caliber it was, but the shells were quite large. We figured some B-17 gunner must have somehow dropped them from his turret while training for his duty overseas. Charles brought them home to show us and hung them in the barn.

We had quite a milking operation going and the barn had a room for the cream separator and a tub to wash up the milking equipment. There was a kerosene heater that was used to heat the water for the clean up. Usually, it was lit and given time for the water to get warm.

One morning we were sitting at the table eating and someone noticed flames and smoke coming from the barn. A call was put in to the Pawnee Rock Fire Dept. and we rushed out to see what we could do. It became apparent that we would not be able to extinguish the fire, so we concentrated on saving what we could. Since the fire seemed to have started in the area of the clean-up room, we figured that the heater had somehow over heated and started the fire.

There was a lean-to shed on the end of the barn that was used as a garage for the car and maybe a truck. They were the first priority and successfully saved. Then, we looked for other things of value to save and made a pile in the yard away from the barn. We were accumulating quite a bit and I was becoming panicky as to what to try to rescue.

About this time the string of ammo that Charles had brought home began exploding. In my mind I imagined that it was like someone strafing the area with a machine gun and ran for the other side of the house to escape the bullets. Of course, they only blew apart and we really weren't in any danger.

After the fire was burned out, we examined what we had saved and considered what we had lost. Among the items saved was a box of onions that had been dug from the garden and placed in the barn to cure. Charles about cracked up when he saw them and wondered who had gotten them and why they would have been picked to be saved. I had to admit that I had saved them because they had been such nice onions.

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Boys, fire, and an outhouse

[October 18]   Nothing stirs up the embers of great memories like the story of an outhouse afire. I heard from Leon Miller and Ray Randolph, who had read about my Dad's misadventure.

Leon:

I never spent much time in an outhouse but when I was around 15, Rod Quincy who was my next door neighbor and I, built a tree house on some property immediately to the north of their house. This wasn't any ordinary tree house but elaborately layed out (perhaps my initial inspiration to eventually become an architect), with all the latest trappings, i.e. insulated floors (with hay), balconies and "built-in cupboards." The structure was between 20' and 25' off the ground and served as our private space.

We had begun to experiment with cigarettes and kept a pack of Wings or Old Gold cigarettes up in the house and would go up after school or on weekends and "light up." One night I had gone downtown to Brazda's Cafe when I suddenly heard the town fire siren go off. I saw the fire truck go by heading south on Centre Street. Knowing there weren't too many houses down there besides my own I was scared that our house was on fire. I raced out of the cafe and followed in the direction of the fire truck and suddenly realized after following it about a block that the source of the fire was our TREEHOUSE!

Apparantely, Rod had lit up a cigarette and dropped the match in the hay, setting off the fire which burned up our treehouse. We were the talk of the town for several days, as well as learning a lesson not to play with matches or light up cigarettes around combustible materials.

Ray:

Good photo, better story. Not many of us have had the experience of using the outdoor "facility."

Reminds me of the guy who came upon a boy about to drop a dollar bill into the outhouse opening. "What you doing that for?" he asked the boy. "Well, I lost a quarter down there and I sure ain't gonna go down there for just a quarter."

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The outhouse out back

Grandma's outhouse in 1981, when the farm was still inhabited. The outhouse was on its second set of shingles.

[October 17]   One of our dad's favorite tales from his childhood is how he was playing with matches and burned down the family's outhouse. It's easy to imagine his excitement at sneaking out to play with fire -- most of us have done that -- and then his abject horror at the disaster that followed.

Not only would you be caught -- it's impossible to blame jackrabbits or the herefords for that pile of charred wood -- but you've also managed to inconvenience your family in the most embarrassing way. Because it happened on a Mennonite farm during the Depression, Dad must have had a lot of chores added to his day because very little could have been taken from him. Except his pride. And even then, he ended up with a story he can keep telling for the rest of his life.

So it was with historical interest that three decades later when I was an adolescent I began to visit the "new" outhouse behind Grandpa and Grandma Unruh's farmhouse. Yes, there was an indoor toilet, but the pipes froze a lot and sometimes the plumbing in the 1906-built house simply didn't work. So I followed the trail back to the unpainted building tucked into the shelterbelt and had my moment with nature.

This outhouse had the expected aromas, but it also smelled of dry pine wood and dust and whatever flowers were blooming in the yard. The roll of undistinguished toilet paper stored in a coffee can added a tissue-y scent, and the Montgomery Ward catalog pages were crinkly and musty. There was a can of lime, too, but we were warned away from that.

A child never is sure how about to use an outhouse, because none of the indoor rules apply. I was convinced that the only way to avoid falling to my doom was to keep one hand braced against the shelf the hole was cut through. Also, I would be dishonest if I pretended that I didn't spend a few moments admiring the subterranean mountain when I was done, out of pride but also curiosity. Enough light came in between the wall boards and at the base of the outhouse to make that examination possible even when the door hook was latched.

Because of the frozen pipes, we used the outhouse mostly during the winter. There was no dawdling in December. Or at midnight, when the coyotes and badgers and escapees from the mental hospital would be out. There was also no secrecy at night, what with creeping down the steep and cluttered stairs past Grandma's room, opening and closing the kitchen door, talking to Shep, and then doing it all in reverse on the way back to the blankets.

I suppose we washed our hands. Sooner or later.

On the farm, the tap water temperature matched the seasons, so we were most likely to wash in the summer. Winter water was no fun, and Grandma begrudged us the draining of too much hot water because the heater pulled a lot of propane out of the silvery tank in a distant corner of the yard.

Now, I often wonder how Dad managed to ignite the outhouse. Were they paper or stick matches? Did he catch some grass on fire first, or was he seeing how hot he could get the wood before it burned? I suppose it doesn't matter much. The story stuck with us because it was funny-serious -- the outhouse burned but it could have been the farmhouse or the barn.

As far as I know, not one member of our family so much as lit a match in the outhouse after that day.

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What do you do with a skunk?

[October 16]   Anybody who has driven in Kansas or who has been familiar with a farm dog knows the scent of a recently annoyed skunk. In fact, were it not for breakfast and the bloody mary and red beer market, tomato juice's most determined buyers must be people who need to cleanse themselves or Shep of the penetrating aroma of Pepe le Pew.

Once in a while skunks stick their noses into our world. We didn't have a lot of that in Pawnee Rock -- evidence to the contrary being the number of skunk pancakes along the paved roads -- but I think we all knew somebody or their cousin who had to deal with a skunk firsthand.

And that brings us to yesterday's post from Leon Miller, who regaled us with a story from his days as a trapper. Kay Steed of eastern Kansas responded with a pertinent question:

"OK, Leon, I for one would like to know what you did with the skunk you trapped as a kid????

"We had a skunk 'adopt' us about a year ago and was determined to make our home, his home, much to the disagreement of our noses. He (or she) would dig under our sidewalk and hide under our deck, even run out from under during the day when we were outside, but it never sprayed then. We were contemplaing trying to trap it and someone told us if you threw a cover over the trap then the skunk wouldn't spray, but I didn't have much faith in that technique.

"So, I'm wondering what you did with your skunk, if it was a live trap you used. Just curious in case we have the problem again. Kay"

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Albert "Buck" Unruh has died

[October 15]   Albert "Buck" Unruh Sr., who was born in Barton County in 1928 and who grew up north of Pawnee Rock before moving to Great Bend, has died. He was 80 years old and died in a nursing home in Springhill in eastern Kansas.

He was in the Army during the Korean War, a rig operator in the oilfields, and later a maintenance man for True Value Hardware.

He was the son of Benjamin H. and Carrie M. Unruh. His brothers were Elmer and Ben (who survive) and Victor; his half-brothers were Alvin, Paul, and Sylvester Unruh; and his half-sisters were Frieda Collins, Gertrude Van Cleave, Ruth Lembecker, and Augusta Unruh. One of his nephews is Leonard Unruh.

Mr. Unruh will be buried Thursday morning in Hillcrest Memorial Park in Great Bend. (Obituary)

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A whiff of profit

[October 15]   Leon Miller knows that some childhood memories smell better than others:

"Rick Clawson writes about a child growing up in Pawnee Rock being resourceful, in today's column. I remember one winter I was going to make some money trapping mink along Ash Creek. I didn't know anything about trapping but I struck out on my own. I was able to acquire or borrow maybe a half dozen traps and headed down to the creek about a mile south of our house.

"I placed the traps where I imagined mink would be travelling and every morning for several weeks would get up at 5:30 to "run my traps." I never caught a mink but one morning I noticed something in one of the traps and with great anticipation scurried to see what my reward was. Alas, to my chagrin it was a skunk!"

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"The treasure of my life"

[October 14]   Over the past couple of months, Rick Clawson has written notes about growing up in Pawnee Rock. He and his energetic siblings lived at the intersection of Flora and Houck streets, and now he lives in Las Vegas. Here are excerpts from his e-mails:

Your 11 October post brought me back home to PR for a time. Makes me really appreciate the goodness of our lives 3 decades and some ago. I have to be honest to say that when looking at other people I often ask myself, "How is it that I was so lucky and they were not?" Yes, lucky for me I grew up in a small town with nothing to do, but in turn I found out there was a lot out there to be discovered. We just had to open our eyes. As Cheryl [Unruh, a classmate] said, "We learned how to be resourceful."

Gosh, I miss jumping in a pile of leaves, of course raked up by my mom. . . .

If we only had the foresight to realize how valuable our memories of our childhood would be. To me, excluding my kids, my childhood is the treasure of my life. Perhaps that's the way most people see their childhood, but we had the freedom to roam and explore, like the shelterbelt across the street from your house. It was kind of creepy, but it was neat to explore.

But really, the most important factor was the kids we grew up with, and our sometimes silly experiences together.

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The old crops

[October 13]   Leon Miller, a 1951 graduate of Pawnee Rock High, wrote about Jim Dye's corn photos on the homepage this weekend:

"Today's pictures were a strange sight to me. Growing up in Pawnee Rock I never saw anything but wheat. Some farmers raised sorghum or feed crops for their cattle operations but the only corn I remember was what we planted in a garden along with the radishes, onions and potatoes."

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Photos come out of the dark

[October 13]   This past weekend my wife handed down to me a computer she no longer wanted. It's better than my old one, which I handed down to our 12-year-old. She and I do this every three years or so when she gets a fancier machine for her work.

One of the nice things about my (new) computer is that it comes with a scanner that reads film. I have lots of slides and negatives I took in Pawnee Rock when I lived there and visited later, and many of them date to the 1970s. I made this tornado photo, for example, on the Friday before Labor Day 1974 from the T-corner north of town.

I've given up hope of ever printing those negatives. There's no room for a darkroom in our house, and I don't care to dip my hands in those chemicals again beyond someday showing the boys how darkroom magic works. But now I can bring my old photos to life, and I am happy about that.

As I sprinkle the shots onto the homepage over the coming months, I hope you'll find yourself or people or places you know well. I myself am looking forward to seeing old things in a new light. This is a journey of rediscovery for me as well.

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Just enough wind

[October 11]   A stiff wind blew through my adopted town early today. At midnight, as I walked the beagle in the side yard, the wind moaned against the mountains, just like Maria in "Paint Your Wagon." Near my home, the gusts were measured at just over 60 mph, and on the higher elevations in the big city the gusts were over 80 and may have been close to 100 mph. Trees fell and shingles took off like Frisbees. Later in the day, the breeze settled down to 15 mph, and we consider that a lot of wind in these parts.

I enjoyed listened to the wind and counting the fallen birches later. But for the sheer joy and fright of nature's everyday power, nothing beats a day 30 years when I sat in a car on Broadway at K-96 in Great Bend and watching the old TG&Y sign swing back and forth like a mortuary fan in a summer church service.

It's one thing to live in a forest in a mountain valley, where the wind is guided by the geology. Under Kansas' half-sphere sky, it's different. The wind is the master, and it comes from places I can't see and goes to places . . . well, I just don't care once it's past me.

Growing up, I never really thought about how such an ocean of air moved; it was as much a part of our environment as a river's current is to a catfish. I suppose I should write that I miss that unceasing, unthinking, purifying, desiccating wind, yet in truth I don't miss it very much.

I keep the the wind in my soul, however, because it is so much of our Kansas.

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A novel in the making

[October 10]   Sure, you'd have to change the names and the setting, and maybe you'd have to twist the details so nobody could prove in court that they had been defamed. When you were done being inspired by some folks in Ness City, however, you'd have one heck of a novel.

You remember the woman who stayed in her trailer's bathroom for two years and her boyfriend who didn't do anything about it. She was taken to the hospital to have the seat removed, and he was convicted of mistreating an adult dependent.

But some things went his way, if what I read in the Hutch News and the online comments are true (the veracity of comments is always a toss-up). A tabloid paid him $100,000 for his story, and now he has won a second $20,000 lottery payout this year. One comment says the tickets were bought at a store where his brother works. Another says he's still on welfare.

Mark Twain was quoted as saying, "Interesting, if true. ... And interesting anyway." I believe that fits this situation.

Now, I'm not suggesting that you spend your next month in any particular way, but I would like to point out that November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. It's never too early to start your research and deep thinking.

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Gas price comes down

[October 10]   Jim Dye noticed that gas prices are lower than they were in early April, so he sent proof. Actually, the April photo doesn't do the matter justice -- the price in Great Bend was $3.99 in July.

Anyway, earlier this week the price for unleaded was $2.88 in Pawnee Rock at Farmer's Grain.

Jim's photo coincides with a gas-price story by Chuck Smith in the Great Bend Tribune. The story points out how prices for unleaded have fallen as low as $2.82, and that's considerably lower than the national average.

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Why I'm going to enjoy Target

[October 9]   A new Target store -- one of the first two in our adopted state -- opened yesterday, and I dropped by after work to celebrate the moment with 2,000 other drivers and their entourages. New stores like that are a big thing here.

I wanted to buy something so I'd have a receipt from opening day, so I went to look for a completely useless item -- a bag of peanut-butter-and-fudge eyeballs. (Believe me, there's a lot of useless material in that garish four-acre store.)

I wandered back and forth in the three Halloween -- alas, no aisles for the coming Columbus Day, Navy Day, Bosses' Day, Sweetest Day, or Mother-in-Law's Day -- candy aisles and finally lassoed a worker to help me.

"I've been working here four days," he said, and he still didn't know where everything in his area sat. Finally he stopped randomly and looked at the stuff at the level of his head. I found the eyeballs at his stomach level. He was genuinely happy for me.

Just by reflex, he said: "Good eye."

Now, here's a treat for you -- the gift of humor from the 1946 joke book I grew up with in Pawnee Rock, back in the days before there were foil-wrapped candy eyeballs.

"Farm products cost more than they used to."

"Yes," replied Bill Perkins. "When a farmer is supposed to know the botanical name of the what he's raisin' an' the zoological name of the insect that eats it, and the chemical name of what will kill it, somebody's got to pay."

The wife of a small farmer sold her surplus butter to a grocer in a near-by town. On one occasion the grocer said, "Your butter was underweight last week."

"Now, fancy that," said Mrs. Farmer. "Baby mislaid my weight that day, so I used the pound of sugar you sold me."

And, for better or worse, I never have been able to look at a flock or herd without thinking of this joke. It's not especially funny, but it appeals to my inner desire to do things the fun way:

Farmer (showing friend over the farm) -- "How many sheep would you guess were in that flock?"

Visitor (considers a moment and ventures) -- "About five hundred."

"Absolutely correct! How did you guess it?"

"Waal, I jest counted the legs, and divided the number by four."

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Deer Pawnee Rock

[October 8]   Pawnee Rock folks of a certain age may remember rabbits not as fluffy little pets but as packs of crop-eating pests. We've all seen old photos of grinning grownups and kids surrounding a pile of jacks they have encircled and beaten to death, and Ethel Harkness commemorated such an occasion in Rabbit Drive.

I understand that white-tail deer are just as annoying as jackrabbits to many farm families. Deer eat the bark off trees, they eat crops, they eat gardens, and they have sharp hooves and leave big dead-deer dents in a truck's grill.

Nevertheless, I do get excited when I see a few deer in the morning's rising mist among the Arkansas River cottonwoods.

I'm not a Bambi hugger, and I'm not a guy who packs a .30-30 just in case I see meat on the hoof. I'm just a guy who remembers the days when deer were nearly absent from the intensely farmed lands of central Kansas. Now the deer have come back, slipping in and out of the shadows and the fields and, as Jim Dye's photo shows us, the gentle pools of the Arkansas River.

One day the deer may be as plentiful and annoying as the rabbits of a century ago, but there likely are too many people with weapons and trophy lust to let that happen. And venison does taste good, and not like chicken.

In the meantime, I look forward to the day when white-tail deer are as common in the Kansas grasslands as antelope are on the steppes of eastern Colorado.

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Major Tom and his tin can

[October 7]   I was a junior high kid when the song about Major Tom, "Space Oddity," hit the airwaves. It was during the height of the space race and the piece was sung by David Bowie, who as far as we Kansans knew was himself from a distant galaxy.

We were the last generation that looked at the stars more than we looked at TV, and for us the song was catchy, softly triumphant, and soothing, and it spoke to our sense of adventure. We could easily daydream ourselves into being Major Tom:

Ground Control to Major Tom
Ground Control to Major Tom
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on

Ground Control to Major Tom
Commencing countdown, engines on
Check ignition and may God's love be with you

You probably can sing along. In fact, the tune and lyrics are so Muzak-friendly that they have been rented by Lincoln -- the maker of your grandfather's automobile -- to peddle one of the company's new models. Here is more of the song played in the commercial:

This is Ground Control to Major Tom
You've really made the grade
And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear
Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare

But, like the Ronald Reagan campaign advisers who linked their candidate to Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." until somebody read them the lyrics, Lincoln is making an odd choice -- or betting that no one knows the rest of Major Tom's tragic elegy.

Bowie's lyrics continue:

For here
Am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do

Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles
I'm feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much (she knows!)
Ground Control to Major Tom
Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you hear....

A couple of years after "Space Oddity" came out, I got my driver's license and spent as much time as possible in my tin can. Occasionally I'd be out at Grandma Unruh's farm at night, and when I left for home I'd park at the end of the driveway and turn off my lights. I'd wait long enough to see a satellite slide overhead, and it would make me think of Major Tom on his endless journey.

Now, of course, space travel is a military-industrial business and there's probably not more than one or two kids on my block who dream of going where no one has gone before. Our own childhood craving for space travel, while bolstered by Hubble, has been seasoned by Challenger and Columbia. But I, and perhaps you, have Major Tom's melody and it brings back the mystery of the heavens and the thrill of learning to drive during the era of galactic adventure.

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Otto Byers, railroad man

[October 6]   I was curious about the Anthony and Northern Railroad mentioned in the Ash Valley history published by the Larned Tiller and Toiler, so I snooped around the Kansas state online library of old history books.

Otto Byers, who started the railroad (as well as the Hutchinson and Southern railroads), was profiled in "A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans," written and compiled by William E. Connelley in 1918.

Down below, I've pasted the relevant part of Mr. Byers' biography. In addition, I wonder whether the town of Byers was named for Otto.

The town of Byers is one of the small towns -- Byers, Hopewell, Trousdale, Fellsburg, Centerview -- on a string between Pratt and Kinsley. The Anthony and Northern ran between Pratt and Kinsley, starting in about 1911 as mechanical wheat harvesting came into its own and there was a need to get the wheat to the mills. A spur ran from Trousdale to Belpre and then up what is now K-19 to Larned and beyond to Ash Valley in northern Pawnee County.

Historian Connelley wrote:

Otto Philip Byers began his serious career when most boys are at home and in school. He was only two years of age when his mother died. His early education was acquired in the public schools of Indiana, but he left school at fourteen and spent the following year working in the timber woods of Indiana.

On August 29, 1878, at the age of fifteen, Mr. Byers arrived in Kansas, landing at Brookville, where he soon found employment as a section hand with the old Kansas Pacific, now the Union Pacific. Later he went into the train service on Smoky Hill and Denver divisions, was also a station agent, and was employed by the Union Pacific at various places along the route until July 23, 1887.

His next railroad connection was with the Rock Island, and he was telegraph operator with a track laying outfit that constructed the Salina branch and the California line to Liberal, Kansas. Later he was Rock Island agent at Hutchinson. On January 1, 1901, he was promoted to division freight agent, with headquarters at Hutchinson, and filled that post until January 1, 1906.

Leaving railroad work temporarily, Mr. Byers engaged in the wholesale coal business at Hutchinson until December, 1911. About that time he took the lead in that group of men who began the construction of the Anthony and Northern Railroad. This is one of the important feeder lines in West Central Kansas and has done much to open a rich and prosperous section of county. It runs for a distance of 100 miles from Pratt to Kinsley, and from Truesdale to the north line of Pawnee County. The railroad company's general offices are in the Hoke Building, Hutchinson, occupying all the second floor. The executive officers are: Otto P. Byers, president; J. E. Conklin, assistant to the president; F. C. French, vice president; T. A. Fry, treasurer; and E. M. Vetter, secretary.

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O little town of Ash Valley

[October 5]   All I knew about Ash Valley was what I had read in the newspaper -- specifically, the Ash Valley news written by a Larned Tiller and Toiler correspondent in the mid-1970s. Although the town was much smaller than Pawnee Rock, there were still people visiting relatives for pie, church clubs meeting for lunch, and the arrival and departure of souls.

But it was all distant. Even though Ash Valley is northwest of Larned and only 13 or 14 miles west of Pawnee Rock, I don't know that I've ever been there more than once.

So you can imagine why I was so glad that Gary Trotnic sent an image of a treasure he found at an auction in Larned. It was the first part of a Tiller story about the hamlet's rise and fall. I'm guessing that the full headline says something like "Ash Valley, Once Promising Town, Vanishes." (To see the big image at full size, you may need to click on the clipping to enlarge it.)

The details are an eye opener. Ash Valley, for example, was founded as Ely. Apparently it changed its name to something more suitable to the boosters who wanted more people to settle there, and where it nestled in a bend of our own Ash Creek.

The fact that Ely/Ash Valley was on a railroad was also a surprise. How I missed out -- even when I worked in Larned -- on learning of the Anthony & Northern Railroad, I don't know, but my folks never mentioned it and the subject never came up in Kansas history at Pawnee Rock Grade School.

Pawnee Rock is more fortunate than Ash Valley, in that our settlement was along a major railroad, which brought a major highway between nearby county seats, and we had a state park to keep our hometown on the map. It's easy to empathize with Ash Valley's descendants, though, because we all know people who came from towns that have collapsed (Ray) or that hang by a thread (Radium).

All around Barton, Rush, Pawnee and Stafford counties, we find vestiges of towns that once intended to thrive forever. Some had a real chance at it, and some towns were nothing but dreams. Look through your old photos and see whether you have scenes from Zook or Dundee or Ray or Ash Valley. Scan them and share them with your friends and family, because this is the way we will keep those towns on our map.

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Gospel Sings Concert scheduled

[October 4]   The annual Fall Gospel Sings Concert is scheduled for October 25 -- three weeks from today -- in Great Bend.

The bill features eight acts:

• Larry DeLawder (Barney Fife impersonator and harmonica player), from Branson, MO
• Praises to Him, from Paris, MO
• Three In Harmony, from Haysville
• Ed Huffman and his Sanctified Sax, from Maize
• The Toneys, from Gallatin, MO
• McClellan Singing Sisters, from Adams, NE
• 4 Told quartet, from Russell
• Don Paden & Johnnie, from Great Bend

The eight-hour affair, from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m., will be in the fine arts auditorium at Barton County Community College. Admission is free, although a freewill offering will be taken.

For more information, call Lynn or Mary (the daughter of Julietha Fox and granddaughter of Otis and Lena Unruh) at 620-792-7664. The sponsors suggest calling before you travel a great distance. The lineup of performers is subject to change.

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Volunteer services

[October 3]   Students need money, which has always made them easy pickings for Pawnee Rock farmers who want cheap labor when the crops need intensive work. In my time, we bucked bales, drove trucks, detassled corn, and chopped down misfit milo stalks.

Those of us to who have moved into nonfarm careers now may treasure those moments more than our tractor-owning classmates, but it was hard and often unpleasant work while it lasted. Still, we came away with certain kinds of knowledge.

City kids don't know what a sickle or corn knife is, for example. And anybody who has gone into the milo fields no doubt noticed right away that Jim Dye's milo photo on today's homepage (now in the gallery) reveals the farmer's bane -- tall, inefficient volunteer stalks.

Each year around Labor Day a farmer would put out a call -- many calls -- to round up a bunch of kids who had reputations for being good workers. On the appointed mornings, he or a town parent would pick us up and deliver us by the pickup load to his 40 acres of chest-high milo.

Our flock, armed with sickles or corn knives, would start at the road and move slowly into the furrows, instructed to bend down and cut the offending stalks off around our ankles. By the end of the first pass, we were looking around to see whether the farmer had seen us cut the stalks at waist level.

The farmers always knew what we were pulling -- I suppose it was easy to see a trail of hacked green stalks -- and a couple of good churchmen were blunt in their instructions to do the job their way. But the work was hot and hard, and the dust got into our collars and the rough grassy leaves scratched our faces and and wrists and the sweat got into the cuts. Our only consolation -- really, the pay was lousy -- was the Coleman jugs of ice water waiting at the end of a trip up and back.

Now we kids are older and wiser and maybe we wish we could trade a day at the desk for a day in the fields. Most of all, I suppose, we wish our kids could have that pleasure.

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Familiar faces

Children of Samuel P. Smith and Maria Boese Smith: (left to right, standing) Clarence, Ben, Elrick, Lena May, and Leo; (seated) Max, Luella, Susie, and Bertha.

[October 2]   When I first looked at the photo of the children of Samuel and Maria Smith, I thought "I know those people." (See the photo in the gallery; thanks to Bob Delaplane for sending it.)

I didn't know them, of course, although I probably would have recognized Elrick when I saw him in church. Rather, I know these folks because of their clothing, their sunburned faces, their way of standing and sitting, and even their wallpaper.

They're someone else's family, but they could just as easily be my grandparents and great-uncles and great-aunts, seated at the dining room table with the door open to the summer evening. They're my kind of people.

(You can read more about the Smith brothers in a remembrance by Virgil Smith, who is a son of Elrick's.)

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A cave in Pawnee Rock?

[October 1]   It was always a bit of town lore that there was a cave in our Pawnee Rock. I found a few crevices that were child-scale caves, but there was nothing on the order of Tom Sawyer's cave, which he explored with Becky Thatcher.

As an older kid and then as adult, I always look for the cave that I know isn't there. It's such a fond dream from my childhood that I hope that one day it'll be true.

Now, before the Rock was torn down, it was more rugged and was fronted by a big tower of sandstone behind which Indians and Santa Fe Trail travelers hid when they had killing on their minds. Maybe it's a kind of haunted place that makes kids "remember" a cave.

And that brings us to Clint Schmidt, who sent an e-mail yesterday on the subject of a cave.

"When I was a young kid dad used to take us to Pawnee Rock and we went to an old cave with a waterfall. Is this still there?"

Does anyone know of this cave? Did there used to be cave? Or a waterfall? Maybe the cave is nearby -- any ideas?

Clint also is looking for information about relatives who might be buried near Pawnee Rock -- Benjamin P. Schmidt, born 1819 and died 1889, and his wife Anna or Eva.

No sweaters: Yesterday's posting was a lament about the impending end of warm weather in Pawnee Rock's climate zone. Joan and Virgil Smith, who grew up and lived in Pawnee Rock for so long, must have had a good laugh in their home in the Phoenix area.

Joan wrote: "We have not lost hope for short sleeve weather. It's still 100 degrees here. We're looking forward to planting our 'winter' flowers. Ah relief!"

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