Too Long in the Wind

March 2009

Betty Crosby dies

In the northern end of the center section of the Pawnee Rock Cemetery are the graves of Betty Crosby's husband, Jack; her parents, George and Edna Batman Hill; and her brother-in-law, Woody Wilhite. (More about the Batman family)

[March 31]   Betty Crosby, who was 87 years old, died March 28. She was born in Pawnee Rock and grew up on a farm southwest of town, and she graduated from high school in 1939.

Mrs. Crosby had just passed what would have been her 53rd wedding anniversary with H.E. "Jack" Crosby. Her survivors include sons Don of Mississippi, Ed of Pawnee Rock, Steve of California, Larry of Colorado, and H.E. of Florida; daughters Jackie Reed and Sherry Peschka, both of Great Bend; and sister Mary Louise Wilhite of Larned.

Her daughter Kathryn Wilson died earlier.

Mrs. Crosby moved to Great Bend in 1964. She was a secretary for Walnut Creek Mill, Western Union, and the Probate Court, and she was a legal secretary for a law firm.

Mrs. Crosby's funeral will be Thursday morning at Bryant Funeral Home in Great Bend, and her burial will be in the Pawnee Rock Cemetery. (Full obituary)

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John Schmidt makes the news

[March 30]   Kay Steed of snowy Edgerton found a mention of Pawnee Rock in Saturday's Kansas City Star. John Schmidt performed heroics to warm up a calf, and now his resourcefulness is recognized statewide.

The item seems to have been picked up from a story written by Becky Tanner of the Wichita Eagle. (Eagle story. Star story)

Here's what Kay wrote:

As you know, most of Kansas had quite a snowstorm on Sat. March 28. I'm quoting from the Kansas City Star newspaper:

"John Schmidt, a Pawnee Rock farmer and rancher, was getting around on a tractor, feeding cattle. His cows were calving. One born Friday morning was covered in icicles as it tried to nurse for the first time.

"Schmidt took the calf to a barn and used a blow dryer on it."

On a more personal note, here in rural Edgerton, Ks. we did not have it quite so bad. We mostly got freezing rain and about an inch of snow, but in our little corner of the world, the power went off at noon on Sat. and remained off until Sun. morning. The Yahtzee and Skip Bo games were very popular at our house until we gave up and went to spend the night at our daughters' home, where it was nice and toasty warm. We feel very fortunate because alot of Kansas is under many inches of snow and will be digging out for quite some time. Hoping for a better spring soon, Kay.

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Snow day

Drifts make travel an adventure at Houck and Flora in Pawnee Rock. Jim Dye made this photo on March 28.

[March 29]   I looked at the snow photos sent by Jim Dye and shuddered.

I remember that snow. I shoveled that snow as a kid. I got stuck in that snow. And, to be fair, I blasted through snowdrifts like that much faster than I should have.

To people in the lower latitudes, maybe that just looks like snow surrounded by cold. But it's spring, and the light is bright. The snow is a blessing, a slight inconvenience, and soon a memory.

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The freshest dust in the world

[March 29]   Yesterday Redoubt volcano, which dresses up the landscape where I live now, erupted into winds blowing the right direction, and a big cloud of ash moved over our town.

It reminded me of the dust storms we know from the plains -- except this one smelled of sulfur. As we stood on the side of a mountain to watch the cloud's arrival, I told son Sam about how sulfur and the underworld are connected, and it was a real-world lesson I think he'll remember.

Underground fires aside, it would be wrong to think of this ash in the way we think of burned wood. There's nothing burned about it. It's stone.

You know how when you shake up a Coke and open it, it sprays kazillions of tiny drops of Coke all over? Same thing with a volcano. The molten rock is under a great deal of pressure until it reaches the surface and explodes into the atmosphere -- and that makes kazillions of tiny drops of rock. Thus, we have an Earth fizz.

The photo here looks like snow falling, but it's really volcanic ash. We got enough to make a very thin layer atop the snow and cars. It's the freshest dust in the world.

I posted some of my photos of the ash cloud on another site. Also, here's a short video of the volcano erupting (scroll down for the lightning show), taken by a fellow who lives much closer to the volcano.

When I was in grade school, waterfalls and volcanoes were so exotic that I never thought I'd see either. It turns out that they're both better than I imagined.

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Goodnight, Kansas Jayhawks

[March 29]   The Jayhawks' loss to Michigan State on Friday brought out the poet in Central Kansas expatriate Ray Randolph in Indianapolis. (Earlier poem)

The Morning After the Night Before

By Ray A. Randolph

Saw the date
Tempted fate
Stayed up late
Watched KU
And Michigan State

Shut my door
To hold my roar
Paced the floor
Nervous to the core
Now a throat that's sore

Today no tear
Also no fear
Just pack the gear
We're outta here
Wait til next year

ROCK CHALK
JAYHAWK, KU

Freshman legs: Leon Miller of Dallas also wrote:

Sadly, I watched as the freshman legs and discipline came off the wagon as a more experienced Michigan State team took it to the Jayhawks in the last minute of the game. If the Jayhawks can continue what they start early in the game for the full 40 minutes they'll be impossible to stop. If they don't the other team can figure out what they're doing, catch up to them and beat them. But I enjoyed the ride.

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Waving next season's wheat

[March 28]   Fargo is hiding behind dikes as an icy river four stories deep passes through the city. The largest city in Alaska is shut off from air traffic because no one wants to fly through volcanic ash. And Pawnee Rock, the most feared spot on the Santa Fe Trail, went to bed last night socked in by howling winds and drifting snow, joining towns in Wyoming, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas. There are forces bigger than anything we can comprehend, and we can never defeat Mother Nature.

But we are optimists. We hope for better weather, and we hope for the Kansas Jayhawks to win in the NCAA tournament.

We'll find out in a day or two whether Fargo will remain in North Dakota or end up in Canada. The volcano will eventually stop burping, and Pawnee Rock's snow will melt and be good for the wheat. And next season, the Jayhawks will have a team that is smarter and stronger and still together.

That alone helps the sun rise in the morning.

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Telephony in Pawnee Rock

For a time, the telephone office was in the one-story brick building on the south side of Cunnife Avenue.

[March 27]   Ed Durall mentioned crank telephones in an earlier e-mail and expands on their history in Pawnee Rock here.

This ought to bring back a few memories. Let's all listen in:

As I looked through the galleries of Pawnee Rock pictures, the pictures of the old telephone office building and the first phone book of the dial-phone era brought back many memories of the way we used to communicate. It was light years away from the always connected you have to stay in touch 24/7 cell phone world we live in today. What I describe here is the way it was before dial phones were installed. As you will see, we led simple lives in those days.

Each home had one phone and one phone only. Why in the world would we ever need more than one phone? It was a wooden box that was attached to the wall at some convenient place in the house, usually in the kitchen. A mouthpiece that you spoke into was fixed to the front, and an earpiece that was connected to the box by a short cable hung on a cradle on the left. There was a handle on the right side of the box. When you wanted to make a call, you first picked up the earpiece and listened to see if anyone else was on the line. Nobody had a private line; we were all on a party line with several other people and you had to take turns using the phone. If nobody was on the line, you turned the handle a couple of revolutions, and that sent a signal to the switchboard in the telephone building.

The Bright family ran the switchboard, and Melba was the chief operator. The operator would say "Number, please" and she would connect you to the person you were calling. Because of the party-line system, everyone had to have a unique ring. The operator had kind of a buzzer device that she could use to make long rings and short rings. So your number was a combination of long and short rings. Our number was two longs and two shorts.

So the operator would ring the person you were calling. Everybody on that party line could hear that ring, and they could listen in if they wanted to. You had to be careful what you said. Also, you didn't call anybody to just chit-chat for an hour or two either, because someone else may want to use the line.

Now here's something else the cell-phone addicts are going to find hard to believe: they shut down the switchboard at 9:00 p.m.! After all, what could you possibly have to talk about after 9 at night that couldn't wait until the next morning? The switchboard took only emergency calls after 9:00 p.m. In addition, unless there was a life-or-death situation, people rarely made long-distance calls. It was too expensive. We wrote letters instead. When the rotary dial system was installed in the early 1950s, the manual switchboard wasnÕt needed anymore. Everyone had a black phone, their own number, and a private line. That was quite a change.

But I still didn't know anyone who needed more than one phone in their house.

Ed Durall

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Hello, Woody Kasselman

[March 26]   Willard "Woody" Kasselman wrote yesterday from Olsburg, a town inside the big bend of Tuttle Creek Reservoir, to ask for everyone's help in finding two classmates from the Class of 1959.

Woody is organizing a class reunion and would like to add Donna Meier and Joan Everett to the list.

If you know where they are, contact Woody at PR-woodyk@twinvalley.net (delete the "PR-" from the address before pushing Send).

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That old house, those old courts

[March 26]   Lynn Darcey of Newton recognized this abandoned house, which was on yesterday's homepage.

Here's what he wrote:

I'm 90% sure this is the house once occupied by John Wedel in River Township. The house was located 200-300 yards east of the Pawnee Rock bridge on the Arkansas River. The picture is taken on the southeast side of the house. That house went through the flood that washed out the old bridge. I think John Wedel stayed through it all.

Concerning the old gyms. The Trousdale gym was the one I beleive that had the one side as the stage, I think it had a little curve. The floor was tile. As a side note. I can remember as a young kid going to the ball games in the old Pawnee Rock High School gym. I can remember players such as Ralph Fry, Lynn Welch, Don Ross. You could get a good view of the action from the balcony. When I was 5-7 years old I went on the bleachers on the south side of the gym, I can rember one game sitting close to the sideline. The Pawnee Rock defense had an opponent trapped in the southwest corner of the gym where I was sitting. My only reaction was to knock the ball away from him as he was dribbling and looking for somewhere to pass, the ball rolled out-of-bounds. Pawnee Rock got the ball. I think those were the days when the home court advantage was real.

Another gym I rember as a young was when I was teaching and coaching at Sylvia High School. We had a game at Byers, north of Pratt. I think that was the smallest gym I remember. The floor under the balcony about six feet wide was part of the court. Many times in that game players were called out-of-bounds by raising the ball over their head and touching the bottom of the balcony.

I think you had in one of your articles about Pawnee Rock playing Sylvia High School. I think you were asking if anyone knew of a real good player Sylvia had at that time. I think his name was "Bud" Meokel. He grew up on the 4th street road that went into Hutchinson about 9 or 10 miles North of Sylvia in Reno County.

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Thoughts from a relative of Mrs. Unruh

[March 26]   My name is Dan Hasch and I am from Lovie's hometown in Ohio. Lovie was the niece of my grandmother, Lavern (Shoemaker) Hasch. She was a sister to Lovie's mother. I was able to visit Lovie in 2007 when she celebrated her 100th birthday. I was notified of Lovie's passing on Monday, I only meet her once, that I remember, but seemed very nice.

I'm not sure of your relation to Lovie, I'm sure it is some. You are from a small town and if it is anything like Sherwood, Ohio almost everyone is related.

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Little gyms

[March 25]   Ed Durall, who recently sent us the yearbook photo of the rural high school, tells us about the gyms that Pawnee Rock students played in. He mentions the South 50-6 League, which was named for a half-dozen schools roughly along old U.S. 50 and for a while was even the South 50-7 League.

I played in the Radium gym as a junior high kid, but by the time I got old enough the schools in Belpre, Zook, Garfield and Trousdale were closed. Zook and Garfield had been absorbed by Larned High, and kids from Radium, Belpre, and Trousdale generally went to Macksville. Pawnee Rock remained a stalwart of the league, but its other members increasingly came from western Kansas. I think Haviland, Hanston, Mullinville, McCracken, Lewis, and even Healy were members at times. (If you can list the members, please write with them.)

I couldn't find a photo of a trophy won by PRHS during the South 50-6 days when the team played in the old school, but this is the next best thing: First place in the 1926-27 Barton County Tournament.

Here's what Ed wrote:

Scanning the picture of the old high school with its "crackerbox" gym got me to thinking about the old South 50-6 league that existed in those days and the gyms we played in.

The league consisted of Pawnee Rock, Radium, Zook, Garfield, Belpre, and Trousdale. The schools at Zook, Belpre, and Trousdale were built on the same general style as Pawnee Rock's and had the crackerbox gym inside the building. Radium and Garfield had "real" gyms that were separate buildings with high ceilings. Our ceiling was low and there were two big beams we had to avoid. When we played at Radium and Garfield, our first few practice shots were too flat and fell short of the rim. It took us a little while to get used to the high ceiling and to get some arch on our shots. Needless to say, we didn't score very well in those games.

Belpre or Trousdale, I can't remember which, had a tile floor like a kitchen, and our shoes squeaked every time we made a move. That floor was harder than a wood floor, and we came away from those games with shin splints.

In the gyms at Pawnee Rock, Belpre, and Zook, the stage was at one end of the court. At Trousdale, the stage was along one side of the court. The front of the stage was curved, so the sideline of the basketball court was also curved on that side.

One thing about those gyms, the spectators were certainly close to the action. In ours there were two or three rows of bleachers on one side and one end of the floor. The stage was at the other end. On the other side were the scorer's table and one row of benches for the teams. When we sat on the bench, our knees almost reached the sideline. The court was so short the center circle was only about a foot from the free throw circles. Except for the stage end, all the bleachers and benches were under a balcony.

Most of the adults who came to the games sat in the balcony. The balcony was on the two sides and the end opposite the stage. There were one or two rows of folding chairs on the balcony, but the balcony railing was a solid wall about three feet high. Consequently, the only ones in the balcony who could really see anything were the ones sitting in the front row. If you had to stand in the balcony, you could see only about half of the court.

With the unfortunate demise of so many high schools in Kansas (about 400 since 1950), most of the crackerbox gyms are gone. Several years ago Brian Stucky of Buhler traveled the state and found 25 of them still in use, but not for competitive high school basketball games. His 2003 book entitled "Hallowed Hardwood: Vintage Basketball Courts of Kansas" is interesting reading.

Our vintage court wasn't much and it was small, but it was all we had and we had fun there.

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Fire department battles burning grass

[March 24]   Monday's 50-mph windy weather was perfect for fires -- and the Pawnee Rock fire department helped put one out.

The Great Bend Tribune has an account of how the department joined the Great Bend and Albert crews in attacking a grass fire four miles west of 10th and Patton. Pawnee Rock sent two trucks, one of which is pictured in the Tribune.

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Love Unruh's funeral is Thursday

[March 24]   The funeral for Love Unruh, who died Saturday, will be at 10:30 Thursday morning at the New Jerusalem Church in Pawnee Rock. Her burial will follow at the cemetery.

Mrs. Unruh, who was born in Ohio and lived to be 101 years old, had been a grade school teacher. She was a member of the New Jerusalem Church, the Ladies Service Alliance, and the 20th Century Club.

Mrs. Unruh's survivors include son Roger L. of Milford and daughters Sylvia Nelson of Urbandale, Illinois, and Eileen Simpson of Albuquerque. Two children died earlier: Roland and Addie. Her husband, Roger, died in 1989. They had been married 58 years.

Her complete obituary, with a photo, is at the website of the Morrell Funeral Home.

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Love Unruh dies

[March 23]   Beulah Love Unruh, who was 101 years old, died Saturday at the Great Bend Health and Rehabilitation Center. She was the widow of Roger Unruh, the longtime postmaster. They lived in a white house a mile east of Pawnee Rock, just south of U.S. 56.

Mrs. Unruh, who went by Love -- pronounced Lovie -- was born November 20, 1907.

An obituary hasn't been published as this is written, but one might be posted during the day on the website of the Morell Funeral Home, which is handling the funeral.

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Catching up with Doyle Mayse

[March 22]   A few weeks ago in a piece about Larned I mentioned KANS Radio's intrepid reporter, Doyle Mayse. Doyle himself sent this note a couple of days ago:

I accidentally ran across your web site about this area "Pawnee Rock.Org." I am enjoying reading it. I ran across your story about KANS and myself from years ago, my head swelled a little. I am trying to remember you but not getting anywhere, you mentioned you worked at the Tiller and Toiler back then. A lot of water under the bridge since the early 70's.

I got out of the radio business, can't make any money and the dawn of automation, satellites and computers did away with the local DJ's. Gaylen Pankratz and I have coffee and regularly talk about 'the good old days" of radio, it was a good place to be from.

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Inside the previous high school

[March 22]   Ed Durall found this photo of the Pawnee Rock High School that once sat in the middle of the block now occupied by the bus barn, just east of the most recent school.

Ed said he couldn't find a photo of the school in the gallery, and I'm stunned. We've had several photos of the building, but maybe they've all been in this column instead of the gallery. Anyway, I'm grateful that Ed went to the trouble of scanning in this shot and sending it to us. It's on the homepage today and will be in the gallery tomorrow.

Here's Ed's note:

I went through the picture galleries and saw a couple of pictures of the old grade school, but no pictures of the old high school.

I can't believe we actually played basketball inside that building. The gym was really small with the balcony on three sides and the stage at one end. There were two big ceiling beams. The floor was narrow and the free throw circles were about a foot from the center circle. If there were 75 or 80 people in there it was a big crowd.

Don Ross sent a photo some time ago of the gym inside the old high school. This is from 1921, when the school was new.

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Hello, Corey Clawson

[March 21]   Corey Clawson, a Pawnee Rock native who is serving in the Air Force, writes from Suwon Air Base in South Korea. I've put his information also in the Friends of Pawnee Rock section.

Corey writes:

I grew up in PR and lived there until I was 9 years old (1979-1989). My older sister, Jamie Clawson, also attended school there. My father, Jim Clawson, worked at the Co-op doing vehicle maintenance. He passed away in 1989. His good friend was Boe Levingston (which I saw someone in this post who had connections to). Thus, my good friend was his son, Jason, who I have never run in to in all the times I've gone back to visit my family. I have seen his sister, Robin, a couple times on my travels back to Great Bend. My grandfather, is AB Clawson, who ran the Pawnee Garage.

It always amazes me to go back to PR and see how much it has changed. Each time Ive gone back, I see less and less people out and about. I remember as a kid, there were always lots of us running around town, and I have some great memories from those times. I moved to Texas with my mother after my father passed away.

I joined the Air Force in 1999, and have lived in Korea (3 times now), Japan, multiple places in the states, and I'll be heading to Italy in a few months. Feel free to drop me a line. It was great to see all the posts, especially the ones from people I remember.

E-mail: PR-Weaponzfu2@Yahoo.com (Delete "PR-" when typing in the address).

Mailing: Det 2 607 MMS, Unit 2119 Box 1458
APO, AP 96275

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Happy 61st, Earl and Janice

[March 20]   I would like to wish my parents, Earl & Janice Schmidt, a very Happy Anniversary!

They have been married 61 years.

Brenda Schmidt Girard

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Virgil Schraeder dies

[March 20]   Virgil Schraeder, who lived for two dozen years at the intersection of Santa Fe Avenue and Houck Street, died yesterday in Larned. He was 93 years old.

Mr. Schraeder and his wife, Helen, had two children who went to Pawnee Rock schools: Jay Dee and Rita. Mrs. Schraeder died in 1974, and 28 years ago next Thursday (in 1981) he married Beth Handley and acquired a larger family.

The funeral is Monday afternoon at Beckwith's in Larned, and the funeral will follow in the Pawnee Rock Cemetery. The gravestone with his and Helen's names is in the northwest section.

His obituary in the Hutch News mentions "a special K-9 friend, Emmie Lou." The Schraeders gave our family a dog when I was a small boy, and I have always thought fondly of them. (Obituary)

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Seeking Maudie Glover

Detail of the Pawnee Rock Cemetery register, prepared by Steve Hetzke.

[March 19]   Sometimes I can help, and sometimes I hope others can help. Here's an e-mail that arrived Wednesday from Kathleen Dever, and I hope someone can help.

"My great-great-grandparents, Albert and Flora S. Glover, lived in Pawnee and their child Maud(ie) is supposed to be buried in Pawnee Rock Cemetery. She would have been two years old and may have been alive in the 1880s or early 1890s. Does the Pawnee Rock Cemetery have an office that I can contact to find out if Maudie's headstone is still there and her exact date of birth and death?

"Thank you for your time and any help you can give me.

"Kathleen Dever

"P.S. I was born in Emporia while my father attended college but have lived in California most of my life."

Well, I couldn't find Maudie Glover's name on the register of folks in the cemetery, so there's a good chance that the child is in an unregistered grave or simply was buried elsewhere. But maybe Steve Hetzke, who created the list, can help.

Maybe Kathleen has another Pawnee Rock connection. If Flora Glover lived here when Pawnee Rock was a fledgling town (early and mid-1870s), perhaps Flora Avenue is named for her.

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Glory days

[March 18]   We're smack-dab in the middle of the best sports week of the year: the first rounds of the NCAA and NIT basketball tournaments. It's nonstop college games from here through Sunday.

I know we're all cheering for Kansas (NCAA) or K-State (NIT), but I bet most of us follow second and third teams. The son of one of my friends goes to Arizona, an old buddy went to Penn State, and a coworker graduated from Missouri -- I'll track them all.

Amid this ocean of games, the one thing I miss is going out into my boyhood backyard in Pawnee Rock and shooting hoops just before supper. Alone with my rooty, rocky dirt court and goal attached to the swingset, I was a star. No one beat me at HORSE, although sometimes my imaginary playmates came close. No one laughed when my dribbles went sideways, and the crowd cheered when my layups came oh-so-close to being dunks on the seven-foot netless rim. The ball bounced poorly in the chilly air and my hands were cold, but my CPO jacket was my uniform and I played until Mom called.

Even though I went on to play high school basketball and to cover the Jayhawks as a reporter, I gathered my real glory days under our elms on Santa Fe Avenue.

I like to think that a lot of kids on the college courts this weekend played the same game I did in their own backyards. I concede that they played it better -- but my fun was as good as their fun.

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Very best of fresh and salt meats

Corned beef and cabbage is available at this fun site about Jiggs.

March 17]   It's St. Patrick's Day, a day of four-leaf clovers and the annual retelling of the myth of how Ireland lost its snakes. It is also a day when we can remember corned beef and cabbage.

Now, I don't know whether corned beef is popular in Ireland or whether it just got its start in the United States as a way to preserve brisket with corns of salt and spices. Wherever it came from, I'm glad it's here now.

For much of my childhood in Pawnee Rock, I didn't really know what corned beef was. My first exposure to the food came from the Bringing Up Father comic strip, which had a fascination with the subject. (I was flummoxed by "corned," because I never saw any corn with the meat, and what kid understands that salt can be corn?) The strip must have appeared in the Hutch News or Great Bend Tribune, and for a 1960s plains kid it was a great introduction to rich people in 1930s Irish-oriented New York City.

It wasn't until about six months ago that I cooked up my own corned beef for the first time after watching it be made on the Food Channel's "Good Eats" show. I could have eaten the whole brisket myself, but my boys were too quick with their forks.

So, on this day, I'd like to ignore the leprechauns and drunks and clover leaves. Instead, let's lift our glasses of iced tea to corned beef and cabbage -- and to old comic strips.

Also, to reveal our hometown's long heritage with preserved meats, here's a short piece about one of Pawnee Rock's early butchers. It comes from "The Biographical History of Pawnee Rock, Kansas," which was published in 1912.

William T. Warner

William T. Warner was born in Ohio March 22, 1859 and came to Pawnee Rock when he was twenty-one years of age. This was in 1881 and since that time he has been one of the best known men in that part of Barton County. He first worked for the Santa Fe Railroad and for twenty-four years was foreman of the section in which Pawnee Rock is located.

Mr. Warner was married in 1880 to Miss Martha Booze in Ohio and they are the parents of seven children: Bertha, 32 years of age is now Mrs. A. M. Thomas and lives in Colorado; Lena, 28 years of age is now Mrs. W. H. Franklin of Pawnee Rock; Eva, 26 years of age, is now Mrs. I. S. Brady residing two miles east of Pawnee Rock; Geo. L. is employed as traveling representative of the Merritt-Schwier Creamery Company; Everettt E., 20 years of age, is in the produce business in Pawnee Rock; Wm. J., Jr., 16 years of age and Herold, 13 years of age, are living at home with their parents.

Last April Mr. Warner opened a modern meat market in Pawnee Rock and since the beginning it has enjoyed a good trade. He handles only the very best of fresh and salt meats and has his shop equipped for the proper handling and keeping of meats of all kinds.

Mr. Warner owns a fine modern residence in Pawnee Rock. It consists of six rooms and is located on two acres of land. During Mr. Warner's residence in Pawnee Rock he has taken an active part in the affairs of the community and has held the office of mayor, has been a member of the city council and has also held township offices at different times. He is an enterprising and progressive citizen and enjoys a wide acquaintance in all parts of Pawnee Rock and Barton County.

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The day the earth didn't stand still

Redoubt volcano, a hundred miles away, sends up a plume of ash and steam. The lights of Anchorage are in the foreground, and the bright light next to Redoubt is a jetliner coming to land.

[March 16]   My folks used to take Cheryl and me to see things they thought were important because of where we lived. We went to Fort Larned, Fort Zarah, Fort Dodge (well, Dodge City), Harold Warp's Pioneer Village in Minden, the Big Well in Greensburg, the Garden of Eden, and the petroglyphs at Kanopolis Reservoir. We went out to see flowers, thunderstorms, harvest, and fires -- and tornadoes, of course.

Where we live now, we don't have the same kinds of things that central Kansas offers, and I suspect that it's that way where most of us live. So we use what we have to make the kids' book-learnin' come to life.

Last night, I used a volcano.

The boys long ago made vinegar-and-baking soda volcanoes. They've been in the Tsunami Warning Center when the alarms went off, and Sam has been to the Volcano Observatory in Anchorage. We've felt many quakes. But they've never seen a volcano come to life.

The boys have heard the story from my wife and me about how a big ash cloud moved over us one afternoon before they were born. It was like a Kansas thunderhead moving in from the west: a dark curtain of gray-blue from north to south, too broad to comprehend, and there was no escape. The cloud sucked all the sound out of the air until millions of minute pieces of rock began to fall on roofs and cars.

Last night, I was walking the dog at sunset when I saw a plume coming from Redoubt volcano, which is about a hundred miles southwest of here and had been rumbling for a few weeks. I got the boys, a camera, and binoculars and drove to higher ground so we could be witnesses in case there was a Mount St. Helens-style eruption. Sam and Nik expected Armageddon (they watch a lot of Discovery Channel shows), and I think they were relieved that it didn't happen.

Up on the mountainside, it occurred to me that I was reliving my Pawnee Rock experiences. What did we do when we knew a big storm was coming? We drove up to the Rock and watched the lighting stab the ground again and again. Before last night, I had never felt that particular connection between my home and my hometown. But in the final crepuscular minutes of the day, watching the biggest geological event the boys had ever seen, I think I felt like my own dad and mom must have when they stood beside me on the Rock and the storm marched ever closer.

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The news revolution

Pawnee Rock Informer, February 1971. How will news be presented in the future?

[March 15]   For four of my young years (fifth through eighth grade) I wrote and delivered my own real weekly/biweekly mimeographed newspaper, the Pawnee Rock Informer. I reported and photographed my way through high school and college, and since 1979 I've paid my way through life with checks signed by newspaper publishers.

And now that sometimes-honorable, always-entertaining way of earning a living appears to be dwindling to a conclusion.

These days, it's hard to turn around without reading about newspaper layoffs and closures, and it's because fewer people and companies are paying to advertise in the papers. I wish it were different, because newspapers in general have served me -- and our nation -- well.

It is clear to me and my colleagues that we're near the end of an era. Our industry's dismissals do not appear to be layoffs in the same way that cyclical business swings idle Barton County roughnecks or Wichita aircraft machinists. There's no indication that the people running the newspaper factories have any idea what to do next, because they haven't shown any ability to get ahead of the digital changes that have occurred so far. There's no promise that shrunken newspapers will grow back.

So maybe this is the final hour of big newspapers on paper. Hereafter, most journalism likely will be performed digitally, and in different ways by hundreds of operators. I have this vague vision of journalism lying shattered like a broken mirror, and when the time is right some magnetic force will pull the million shards into a new kind of looking-glass that will better reflect the needs and abilities of the public.

Versions of the new journalism will be awkward and self-serving at first, and I hope they will keep watch on the government and the institutions and still tell us about lost dogs that find their way home and potatoes that look like the president. We'll vote with our keyboards; the kinds of journalism that thrive will be what you and I -- people in the market for news -- show that we want.

Now and then I'm asked to advise college seniors about what awaits them in the real world of journalism. Be digital, I have said, but lately I have stopped giving advice altogether because I don't want to steer anyone toward a print newspaper. What most newspapers are doing -- republishing their stories online or starting a dozen blogs or adding videos -- doesn't show much innovative thinking and doesn't seem to be winning back the market. Few advertisers will pay print-advertising rates for electronic eyeballs no matter how loudly the newspaper says its website is the most popular in the whole state.

Maybe it will make economic sense for clumps of journalists -- especially recent graduates who are unfettered by newspaper mannerisms -- to simply start their own fact-finding publications, their own news websites. Their chances of success are as good as anyone's, as long as they remember the cardinal rule: Don't be boring.

The old saying is that freedom of the press belongs to anyone who owns a press. Now, everyone who is online owns a press. A fifth-grader in Pawnee Rock or a college junior in Manhattan can report not just to family friends but also to everyone in Barton and Pawnee counties and around the world. It'll be storytellers who grow up in the digital world who will make the future, and I am betting on a bunch of today's curious kids to develop the new journalism.

In the meantime, we newspaper people will bring you the news the best we can for as long as we can. A lot of us are eager to help create what's next.

Thinking the unthinkable: Here's a piece that addresses how the newspaper industry got to this breaking point. Read it, and I'm pretty sure you'll look at newspapers -- and history -- in a new way.

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Pawnee Rock organizations, 1990

[March 14]   The Pawnee Rock Ministerial Alliance included an overview of clubs, organizations, and a commodities distribution program in the Community Directory it produced in May 1990.

Phone numbers were listed for most of the following folks, but I removed them for this post because they're not relevant now. (1990 churches, city officials, utilities)

Senior Center
Noon meals, transportation, and activities. Monday thru Friday at the Pawnee Rock Depot. Donna Mickle, Manager. Joe Tucker, President.

U.S. Government Commodities Distribution
Announced periodically. Carol Gray.

American Legion
Meets the first Monday of the month. Fred Ross, Commander.

Legion Auxiliary
Meets the first Thursday. 7:30 p.m. Dorothy Bowman, contact.

Lions Club
Meets 2nd & 4th Mon. 7 p.m. at the Depot. Arthur Sayler, President.

Half Century EHU
Meets 4th Tue. at 1:30 p.m. Marian Mull, contact.

PRIDE
Chuck Phemister, contact.

Cub Scouts
Pack 122 meets Mondays, Wilbur Russell, Cubmaster.

4-H
Pawnee Rock Panthers. LouAnna Hanes, contact.

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Pluto's lucky day

[March 13]   Today is Friday the 13th again. I hope you'll all join me in making sure we don't have $13 in our pockets or 13 pieces of mail or 13 chews on a bite of food. This posting will be checked to ensure that it doesn't have a multiple of 13 words.

But today isn't unlucky everywhere in the solar system.

Take Pluto, for example. Pluto lost its status as a planet until 2006 and now is considered a dwarf planet. But starting tonight, Pluto becomes a full-blown planet every time it crosses over the Land of Lincoln. I don't know how exactly that's determined, but it's a nice thought. (Read the Illinois Senate resolution.)

As we learned in grade school, Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh, who graduated from school in Burdett (tour Burdett) and did his professional astronomy in Arizona. Before Burdett, he and his family came from Streator, Illinois, and Illinois has staked a big claim on him.

Tombaugh also discovered at least 14 asteroids and named one for Burdett, a singular honor he did not confer on Streator.

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Mum, Evening in Paris, and a Coke

Pawnee Rock post office and the former drugstore on the west and north sides of the post office in 2006.

[March 12]   I asked Ruth Breeding, whose Maupin family once ran Pawnee Rock's drugstore, for more details about the store -- for example, what kinds of goods the store carried, what it was like to work there, whether credit was offered, and what the store itself was like. (Previous posts here and here)

Ruth, a charming writer, sent these paragraphs:

In answering the above question, I want to remind you that I was probably about 13 when we no longer ran the drugstore so what memories are conjured result from a young girl's rembrance and I wouldn't count on the accuracy.

#1 item would probably be the soda fountain. A very popular place for kids after school and the locals to gather. The round soda tables with their wrought iron chairs made comfortable conversation places while enjoying the soda fountain treats. [On this Gallery page, find a photo of Stan Tutak running the soda fountain years later.]

#2 item would be the pharmacy, a small area cradled in privacy close to the soda fountain. The shelves of the pharmacy were lined with apothecary jars with different medicines that were used at that time, before the day of penicillin and modern medicines. My dad would grind up what was prescribed to make the medical mixture to help heal. I remember that for many years there was no doctor in Pawnee Rock so his expert advice was sought.

#3 item would be the rest of the merchandise placed inside the glass showcases with the glass tops. Merchandise like cigars, cigarettes, candy, cosmetics, men's and women's toiletries, writing supplies, tonics for healing, what we would call "over the counter" medical aids and items placed on shelves on the wall behind the glass showcases. Very little was left on top of the showcases to be handled by the customers. Being a woman, two of the most remembered were the deodorant, Mum, which was a cream in a jar, and Evening in Paris cologne in a slim blue bottle with a blue tassle on the lid. I somehow think "Mum" was probably the first deodorant introduced to society. It makes you wonder how the world "smelled" prior to Mum.

The drug store had wooden floors, I think oil was put on them periodically. There was a large floor furnace and my dad would leave the house early in the morning and usually walk to the drug store to fire up the furnace so it would be warm inside for the first customers to arrive. A lot of Pawnee Rock citizenry toasted their feet over that furnace. My memory isn't really vivid as to the ceiling, but I think the tin tile ceiling is correct. As I stated previously the post office was also housed in the building, making it an "L" which made it a business within a business drawing a variety of people, many just to visit while drinking a "Coke" or their favorite fountain drink.

The time span would have been between 1932 and 1941 and I would imagine during those hard times credit was extended to those who needed to charge items. Basically everyone was in the same boat and honesty was a virtue held in great esteem.

Growing up in a drug store was a "gift" as I knew practically everyone, which meant there were hardly any strangers in my life. We kept the drug store open from early in the morning until probably 9 or 10:00 o'clock at night seven days a week. It was fun for me, but hard work for my parents. The only time we sat down at a meal as a family was on the holidays, as someone had to man the drug store. Sometimes, I will admit, it felt like the drug store ran us instead of us running the drug store. The memories are good, some are faded, but I wouldn't trade any of them. Thanks for the journey.

Ruth (Maupin) Betsworth-Breeding

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PR Community Directory, 1990

[March 11]   In May 1990 the good folks of the Pawnee Rock Ministerial Alliance put together a directory of our hometown. What follows is information from the first three pages of it. I'll post more later.

These folks are no longer in these positions, and some are no longer with us (in town or in life), but I'm sure they are all well remembered for their hard work.

First, however, I'm putting the credits. This paragraph appeared modestly on the inside back cover, but these folks did a lot of work and deserve recognition.

Here we go:

This brochure has been prepared as a community service by the Pawnee Rock Ministerial Alliance -- Rev. Rollin & Rev. Sara Dillinger, Rev. & Mrs. John Bennett, Rev. Perry & Rev. Eleanor Beachy, Rev. & Mrs. Wade Russell. We want to thank those who helped with the survey, Bessie French, Katie Bauer, Berdene Russell, Helen Deckert, Vivian Bright, Tonya Patterson, Brenda Gross. Of invaluable assistance was Brenda Gross in providing information, checking for accuracy. While an effort was made for accuracy, we regret any errors that may be found, or any inconvenience. Cover design by Rev. Sara Dillinger. Changes will be published in the Pawnee Rock Community News.

The Churches of Pawnee Rock Welcome You!

This brochure has been prepared as a service to all in the Pawnee Rock Community. Any of the groups and organizations would welcome new members and/or volunteers and leaders. We hope you will find the information helpful and interesting.

City Government

Mayor: Howard W. Bowman
Council Members: Lloyd Basgall, Bill Cavalier, Henry Kurtz, Jack Link.
City Clerk: Brenda Gross
Marshal: Thomas Hoge
Utilities and Streets: Roger Johnson
Fire Chief: Jack Link
Fire Siren: Test at noon, Monday thru Saturday.
Weather Siren: Continuous blast

Utility Services

Gas: City of Pawnee Rock
Trash: City of Pawnee Rock, pickup on Tuesdays
Electricity: KP&L, Kinsley
Water: City of Pawnee Rock
Telephone: Southwestern Bell
Cable TV: Midway Cablevision, Hays
Library: Located in the Pawnee Rock Depot, 410 Centre, open 3-5 p.m., Monday thru Friday, Alice Ingram, librarian.
Newpapers: The Tribune, 2012 Forest, Great Bend, KS 67530. Local carrier, Melissa Chapman. The Larned Tiller & Toiler, 115 W. 5th Larned, KS. 67550

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The waitress was Shirley McCord

[March 10]   Susan Vondracek wrote to identify the waitress at the Pawnee Inn in the long-ago mid-1970s. It is Shirley McCord Flick.

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Meeting Mr. Flipo again

[March 10]   Isn't that a great photo of the Pawnee Rock High School Class of 1962 on the homepage? Lynn Darcey added a bit of information about the owner, who -- as you can guess from the "It's Fun to Square Dance!" sign -- was a booster of the activity.

Here's what Lynn wrote:

The owner and recreation director's name was "Flipo." I thought it was a nickname. In about 1995 or '96 my wife and I were at a square dance and Marshall Flipo was the caller. I asked him if he ever heard of Kirkwood Lodge. He said he owned it. He is now about 81 years old and lives in Arizona. He is a national square dance caller. Still active. Very good sense of humor. Amazing the associations made over the years.

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Inside the Maupin house

[March 10]   After Ruth Breeding wrote last week about the Maupin drugstore, I sent her a few questions about life in Pawnee Rock in those days and what it was like to run the store. Also, I wanted to confirm that a certain house that I had heard was the Maupin home (at Houck and Flora) really had been hers. She lived in Bucklin briefly, so I mentioned that Pawnee Rock had played football there one year when I was in grade school and how Bucklin seemed so very far away.

Here's what Ruth wrote:

Yes, that is the picture of our house. The reason it looks different is that it used to have two front doors. I remember that so well because in the summertime when it was too hot to sleep in the upstairs bedroom, my sister, Jackie, and I would bring a blanket and pillow and sleep in front of the two open doors so we could feel some breeze. Also, the "oldies" would remember it as a white house with a blue roof and blue shutters. Even the out-house was painted white with a blue roof. My mother was a fixer-upper and I remember she constructed the shutters herself, painted them and had the house painted white with the blue roof. After that "make-over" the kids at school kidded me and called me "blue-top."

When we moved back to Pawnee Rock, after living in Bucklin for 3 months, my mother and I tried to run the drugstore as most of the merchandise was still in it. We found that not having a pharmacist, as my dad was ill, we just couldn't swing it. I don't remember how long we tried to run it, but I don't think it was very long. All of that episode was a very traumatic event in my life and to be truthful a lot I have forgotten. They sold the contents, which included merchandise and fixtures, to Vin Houdyshell. In reading some of the info it sounded like they ran it for a while, but I'm not certain. I don't think my parents owned the building. When I saw the picture of Stanley Tutak serving fellows I remember, I would say he ran it next in line, but I'm not certain so don't quote me on that.

Sometime soon I'll try to sit down and write a few lines in reference to the questions you asked concerning the drug store itself. I always get so carried away, but I'll try to make it as concise as possible.

Yes, Bucklin would have been quite a distance to travel, even in the '60s. Hugoton plays Pratt, I have a great-grandson that plays football and basketball. We live so far from some of the schools that are in the same league as we are. Makes a long trip home, especially if you lose.I thought when I moved to Hugoton 62 years ago I was at the end of the earth. I still feel that way sometimes, but it is home. So is Pawnee Rock . . . thanks for reviving the memories.

Until next time . . .

Ruth Breeding

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Connie (Epperson) Zimmerman has died

[March 9]   Connie J. (Epperson) Zimmerman, a member of the Class of 1972, died March 6 in Pawnee Rock. She was 55.

Connie had a number of siblings who also attended Pawnee Rock schools. (Obituary)

I'm hardly the right one to say a few words at her passing. Dozens of people knew her better than I did. I knew Connie mostly as the older sister of my classmate, Carl Epperson. He and she always seemed to be good friends, and I judged her by that standard. The several times we spoke, she was kind and funny, which is all a freshman could hope to receive.

I had the 1972 yearbook at hand, so I flipped through it to see what she had been involved in as a senior. She was on the staff of the Brave yearbook and the Chieftan newspaper, and she sang in the chorus and the glee club. She was one of four candidates for football homecoming queen. She was classmates with, among others, Jan Clawson, Jeanine Mull, Brenda Smith, Kent Tutak, and Randy Wilson.

I hadn't seen Connie since high school, but that's not an unusual circumstance. We all fall into the trap of never again seeing many of our schoolmates or coworkers from a previous job. That is not to say we forget them or were not influenced during our life's course.

What Connie's life was like after high school, I'm sorry to say, I haven't a clue. But others who were important to her do know and will always remember, and that's as it should be. I know from her obituary that she had a son and two daughters, 14 brothers and sisters, and four grandchildren. She was a certified nurses aide. Her father died in January, and her sister Vonda, who many of us know from school, has also died.

I wish her well in her rest, and I wish her family well on their journey from this point.

Connie and Vonda Epperson, side by side center and right in the front row, were in the Pawnee Rock High School chorus.

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June: From Marsha

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Hello, Ruth (Maupin) Betsworth-Breeding

[March 8]   We've had several mentions of the Maupin family, which owned the drugstore that once was wrapped around the present post office. I can't tell you how happy I was to get this e-mail yesterday from Ruth (Maupin) Betsworth-Breeding, who lives in Hugoton.

Here's what Ruth had to say:

First, I want to say "hats off" to you Leon for the fantastic "blog" you have provided for all of us to use and enjoy to catch up on memories, friends of the past and present, and be able to stroll down memory lane of our beloved fair city of Pawnee Rock. I haven't lived there since 1945 but always when I am in the area the "Rock" is visited and as I look at the beautiful view the thought comes home that having access to that unique scenic view when I was young was worth more than money could ever buy.

As stated above, I am Ruth (Maupin) Betsworth-Breeding. My parents, Bill and Veda Maupin, moved to Pawnee Rock probably around 1931-32. My dad was a pharmacist and owned and ran the drug store. The names Ed Houdyshell and Raymond Houdyshell ring a bell for me. Ed was the postmaster and the post office was part of the drug store building and Raymond, his son, worked for my dad in the drug store. Memories come to the surface recalling those who streamed into the drug store on a hot summer night after watching the outdoor movie shown on the wall of the lumber yard building across from the drug store. I know my dad appreciated the business.

We moved to Bucklin in l941, but moved back to Pawnee Rock in l942, due to my dad's ill health. My mother and I tried to run the drug store but weren't successful. We moved to Holyrood the year I was a senior and I graduated from Holyrood high school in l946. In l947 we moved to Hugoton, Kansas, where my father was a pharmacist for Bloodhart Drug. He passed away in l955 from a massive heart attack and my mother passed away 4 years later. Morgan Orville Betsworth was an outstanding young man of the community and he and I were married and we had three sons, Mike, Bill and Brent. My husband passed away of a massive heart attack in l987 and I married Charles Breeding in 1989. Charles passed away in 1999 and my son, Mike, passed away in 2000 at the age of 51. My sister, Jackie, passed away in 1977. As you can see I still reside in Hugoton, have a carload of wonderful grandchildren, great-grandchildren, step-grandchildren and step-great-grandchildren. My sons, Bill and Brent Betsworth, and their wives live in Hugoton. One granddaughter and her family also live here.

I noticed that Earl Schmidt celebrated his 80th birthday several months ago . . . we were in the same class in school. Happy belated birthday Earl!!! It's great to be "80" . . . right?? My family helped me celebrate mine with a wonderful "birthday bash."

I attended the 2008 Pawnee Rock Alumni luncheon and reunion at the Depot with my old friends, June (Gilbert) McConnaughhay and Glendora Schmidt and saw several people I knew, also a lot that I didn't know. It was fun hearing the interest and observing the loyalty felt towards Pawnee Rock High School by those present. Leon Miller remarked he remembered my dad.

Many people I want to say "hi" to, including your dad Leon. I just hope by giving this lengthy autobiography it will help open up e-mail doors and I will be hearing from old friends from one of my favorite spots in the world . . . Pawnee Rock. Recently e-mail contact was made with classmate friend, Joan (Sprier) and her husband, Virgil Smith. That was fun and interesting. I would welcome anyone who is traveling through our wonderful, wild west, to stop in for a visit. [Leon's note: Write to Ruth at PR-rucha@pld.com. Delete the "PR-" when you write her address.]

My favorite quote of late is "Live well, laugh often and love much". How great it would be if we could all put this wisdom to practice.

Again, "thanks" for giving me this opportunity to share.

Ruth Breeding

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Susan Vondracek names those players

[March 7]   Susan Vondracek writes with some IDs for the young football team. Thanks, Susan!

Year -- fall 1975 (best guess)

Front row, left to right: Lonnie Houck, Larry Smith, Jon Blake, Johnny Hill, Robert Levingston, Jim Manka, ???.

Middle row: Wade Wilson, Howard Johnson, Kris Myers, Terry Stiles, Rick Lohr, ???, Kevin Boese, Tommy Claphan.

Back row: Coach Mike Simmons, Tommy Unruh, ???, Frank Symack, ????, Kenny Marbut, Kurtis Schmidt.

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"Winter is over"

[March 7]   Kay Steed celebates the outburst of summer in from eastern Kansas:

Yes, yesterday was a treat for us in Kansas. The shorts were pulled out of the drawer and the ceiling fans were switched on for the first time in several months. The temp. was 83 outside of my house. The Iris bed was begging to be raked and cleaned out after a long winters' nap. The wind whipped everything up and away, not always where I wanted it to go, a lot in my face. The cat plopped down right where I was working, just like a child begging for attention. I felt like shouting, YAY, winter is over and everything and everyone is coming back to life. Have a glorious day, Kay

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Subtropical heat wave

This photo was made outside P. Lee's Antiques in August 2006, rather than in March 2009, but a warm day such as Pawnee Rock's deserves the smell of tomatoes on the vine.

[March 6]   Those of us who now live in more northern climates or at higher altitudes may have felt a twinge of jealousy yesterday when we saw that Pawnee Rock had an afternoon temperature in the 80s. I don't know what it's like in your house, but we can't make our place that warm even with the furnace on full blast. (Not that we'd want to, but you know what I mean.)

Those way-out-of-season days are a treat found only on the plains, where vast masses of air sometimes tear loose from their subtropical verandas and take a road trip north when you least expect them. Just as there's nothing between Pawnee Rock and Calgary but a few fenceposts, there's nothing between Pawnee Rock and the desert but oil wells; in other words, there's nothing to stop the free flow of air. At midafternoon, it was 80 degrees with southerly gusts of 35 mph. Late in the day, the wind shifted to the north and cooler weather now prevails.

I have always thought one of the great things about living in central Kansas is having a front-row seat for meteorological shoving matches.

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Hello, Bill Haislip

[March 5]   An e-mail arrived last night from my old friend Bill Haislip. He is a graduate of Pawnee Rock High and worked there for at least a year as a custodian before going on to work in Great Bend.

Bill also was a cameraman at the Pawnee Rock football and basketball games. Here's his story. The photos are from the 1972 Brave yearbook.

Bill Haislip

I'm Bill Haislip, class of 71. I have been following your blog for a couple of years since the council upset. I work as a Natural Gas Pipeline Safety Inspector for the Kansas Corporation Commission enforcing Federal pipeline safety laws on natural gas distribution companies and municipalities and intrastate transmission pipeline companies.

Because of my Pawnee Rock connection, I was assigned to do inspections for gas safety of the Pawnee Rock gas distribution system. I was in the area the day after the new council was to have been sworn in and assisted the city and Midwest Energy in the transition to Midwest Energy contracting to maintain the gas system and later purchasing the system from the city.

I can at least partially answer the questions about the filming of games. I believe Earl Alvin Schmidt (8th grade teacher) was the original person to film the games. The Great Bend TV station provided the film and the developing then. When I got in high school, I was chosen to be Earl's assistant and then did all the filming of the football games. We had four rolls of film and would use one during each quarter. I believe each roll would film approximately 8 minutes of the game. Coach Romeiser would get the film to the TV station and get it picked by Monday after school so the team could review it. I also filmed some away games standing on the bus. We also did most home basketball games. If anyone remembers the scaffolding that was set up in the southwest corner of the gym, that was where I filmed the basketball games from atop.

I can't answer who has the films now but in 1985 or 1986 I believe, there was something being held in Great Bend and Coach Romeiser was there. A group of previous students had "acquired" the films in the high school's final days and they were watching the films and invited me to take part in the session.

For an update of my history after high school, I attended Barton County College and received an Associate's Degree in Drafting Technology. I worked at Great Bend Manufacturing for a few years before the poor agricultural economy took the job in 1977. I did a few months stint and Fuller Brush and in 1978 took a job as pipe designer for the Northern Gas Products, part of Northern Natural Gas and later a part of the Enron company. In 1994, I left Great Bend and Enron to move to Topeka and my present job. I've been married for almost 34 years and have 1 son. He is married living in Sabetha, KS, just over an hour drive north of Topeka. He has a son and daughter, ages 7 and 9.

I do enjoy reading your blog because it brings back memories. I don't know if you remember the Boy Scout badge you were working toward by riding your bike 50 miles in one day and you, Dwight Dirks, and I took off in a rain storm to ride to Great Bend, Cheyene Bottoms, Fort Zarah and back to Pawnee Rock. I was riding a "high" bike on the trip. When I read about you and your sons riding across Kansas, it always brings to mind that story.

Since I travel so much and have good email access through work, it is easier for me. It is PR-b.haislip@kcc.ks.gov and anyone can email me.

[From Leon: To distract the spambots, I inserted "PR-" before Bill's real address. Delete the PR- when you e-mail him.]

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Lions' noodle dinner is Saturday

[March 5]   The Pawnee Rock Lions Club will have homemade noodles with chicken or beef this Saturday, serving from 11 a.m. till 2 p.m. in the depot.

There will be a drawing for prizes: $25.00 cash, $25.00 Wal-Mart card, oil changes, fleece throws, and more. $6.00 adults, $4.00 children under 4 years.

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Old news is good news

[March 4]   The Hutchinson News, which has been our friend for many decades, has a feature called Yesterday's News. On February 23, these items from central and western Kansas were included:

1909

Near Inman, two monster raccoons were shot from a large elm tree after they caused considerable damage on a farm. Two men following barking dogs shot one coon, which fell into the river and drowned a valuable spaniel before it expired. The second coon weighed 78 pounds.

Two Nebraska men went to jail in McPherson for violating the pure food law, selling a mix of glucose, soap bark, citric acid and synthetic honey flavor -- colored to look like honey. They were marketing it for 15 cents a pound, making a 300 percent profit.

Friends of Miss Cora Brooker in Hutchinson honored her with a postal card shower before her move to Mullinville, where she had accepted a position in a bank.

1934

The state B basketball division was set for "red hot" competition in Sterling. Undefeated teams were getting their perfect marks smeared. Buhler, the previous year's runner-up, was toppled by Salina Sacred Heart. Lakin and Sublette, both undefeated, would meet, with one to fall. Ransom and Tribune were unbeaten in the Western Kansas Educational league. Other strong teams: Mullinville, Pawnee Rock, Macksville, Belpre and Nickerson. Ellinwood suffered after Coach Joe Bronson "fired" three players for breaking training.

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Football films

[March 3]   Barb Schmidt of Seattle wrote:

In the caption to your football bleachers photo, you referred to games being filmed. Do you know anything more about that? Or know who might know?

For example, was the filming done by an employee of the school? If not, who did the filming? During what years? Was any of the film kept? If so, where is it?

And I'd have similar questions about PR basketball games and/or track meets being filmed.

I am guessing none of the film survived since the school has been closed over 30 years. But you never know what someone might have stored away somewhere.

Barb, I'm proud to say that I was the movie maker during the last year of PRHS' existence. I stood up there with a brown wind-up 8mm camera and recorded the exertions of Our Heroes. Right after the game, the film went to the coach, Gary Romeiser. I imagine that he drove it the next day to Hays, where a company processed a lot of athletic film and had it back in time for viewing early the next week.

I don't know where any of the old movies are now. I don't remember filming basketball, but someone may have done so.

Were any movies saved? When the school was cleaned out a couple of years ago, did anyone notice reels of 8mm film?

Could there be a few reels in City Hall or in someone's home? Maybe Coach Romeiser, who I think recently retired as principal in Hartford, could help us track down the footage.

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Kansas brain drain

[March 3]   It was a busy Monday. First, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius was finally announced as President Obama's nominee for secretary of health and human services. And then it was revealed that scientists in France had determined that the oldest fossilized brain of a fish had once thrived in what is now Kansas.

So, the state's most agile political brain is pulled off to Washington, D.C., and our oldest fish brain is now sitting in France.

More about the fish brain is found in Scientific American and on the Live Science site.

Perhaps it will be revealed where the fish fossil was found; my money is on the flatlands out west. Wouldn't it be fun if such a fossil had been found in the limestone in the rolling land north of Pawnee Rock? Maybe the next great discovery is out there waiting for someone to stumble across it in a gully.

Here are a few sentences from Monday's Associated Press story about our fish:

"A 300-million-year-old fossilized brain has been discovered by researchers studying a type of fish that once lived in what is now Kansas and Oklahoma.

"'Fossilized brains are unusual, and this is by far the oldest known example,' said John Maisey, curator in the division of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

"Maisey and co-authors report in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science that the brain was discovered in a fossilized iniopterygian from Kansas, which they had sent for scanning at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France.

"Iniopterygians are extinct relatives of modern ratfishes, also known as ghost sharks."

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A light left on for us

[March 2]   The light in the house means that Mom is home from work. Supper is almost ready.

Patches, my dog, is sleeping under the living-room counter on the spot of floor above the furnace.

Sister Cheryl may be in her room in the basement. That's the room with the furnace. I had the room with the clothes dryer, and the washing machine was in the kitchen.

Fluorescent bulbs stretched across the paneled wall in the living room, providing indirect light bounced off the ceiling. Other lights were on a floor fixture near the white couch, and I liked to stretch out and read in that cone of illumination.

When I was a young boy, I drove my little cars and airplanes on the windowsill. It was warm there because of a furnace outlet. Usually Mom pulled a set of sheer curtains across the windows so that it would be harder for passers-by to see in and we would have a bit of privacy. At night, a set of impervious curtains would be drawn and the only light to escape would come through the window slits in the door.

This house happens to be the house where I grew up. But your house welcomed you too, late on those winter days. As the sunlight waned, our houses gave us what we needed -- warmth, food, and light under which we read, watched TV, and talked.

The light in the house is why we came home.

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Forward, March!

[March 1]   Jerry Allen says that the woman in the photo of the scale at the Farmers Grain office -- yesterday's homepage photo -- is Vera Schmidt, the daughter-in-law of longtime elevator manager Fred Schmidt and his wife, Velma.

Leon Miller wrote from Dallas: "Growing up in Pawnee Rock I remember EVERY year when basketball tournament season came around we would ALWAYS have what seemed to be a record snowfall during the first or second week of March. Did that ever occur when you lived there?"

I don't remember basketball-season snows as much as I do big snowfalls during the early part of track season, but does anyone else remember the weather that Leon does? I suspect that Kansas had a lot worse storms during the 1940s and 1950s than it did later.

One day up north: February went out like a king at our house. It all started when I discovered early Saturday morning that son Nik had recorded the ESPN replay of the 1988 college basketball championship game (upstart Kansas beat Oklahoma) and left it for me.

Early in the afternoon, we went to the Fur Rendezvous festival in Anchorage, where we watched model trains in the Alaska Railroad depot, stood by as carvers worked on their snow statues, walked through a carnival, and sneaked in at the finish line of the world championship sprint-dog races (short YouTube video). We ate hamburgers at a restaurant overlooking a frozen-over creek, and we drove home on a snow-slick six-lane highway where a car spun out at 50 mph right in front of us and slid broadside into a median deep with snow. Just as we pulled into our driveway, my wife pointed out a moose down the block, so we motored down and took photos of it. Then I shoveled our driveway and the one of the for-sale house next door.

To quote the "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip, we sucked the marrow out of the day. I hope March is as much fun.

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