Too Long in the Wind

September 2009

The music makers

[September 30]   Even the most obtuse of us students could tell that Pawnee Rock's music instructors bore a heavy burden when concerts approached.

This was when a year's worth of instruction was put on display for the parents and the school board. The music had to be played and sung well, and the performers had to show some poise -- and getting all those things to happen at the same time was something of a miracle.

The teachers must have lived in fear of the unexpected, which, as this message from our mystery correspondent suggests, was never far away:

Music in the air, birds all atwitter, and a young man's fancy turns to love! It was time for the first Spring Concert at Pawnee Rock High in the new building. The concert band had practiced for months. The evening of the concert, the curtain was still closed, all the band members were seated, awaiting the band director's command to tune up. The audience was all seated, patiently waiting for the raising of the curtain.

The director gave the signal, and all the players checked the tuning of their instruments; all that is, except for the sousaphone player (you know, the large tuba). He blew, and nothing came out; no sound. He blew harder; nothing! In desperation, he got up and started tipping his horn upside down. Wow! Out plopped a dead jack-rabbit!

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Hello, Gary Harms

[September 29]   Gary Harms, the grandson of a Dundee settler, sends greetings from Leavenworth. He attended school in Great Bend, but some of his cousins and the children of his sister -- Lila Harms Rogers Fuller -- attended grade school in Pawnee Rock in the early and mid-1950s. They are Jim Rogers, Paula Rogers, Rod Rogers and Linnette Rogers.

Gary asked to be listed in Friends of Pawnee Rock.

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Virgil Smith's beautiful rocks

[September 25]   Virgil Smith, who drove so many miles delivering mail in the greater Pawnee Rock metro area, put on a few miles outside our ZIP code as well. One of those trips was to western Kansas, that wonderfully arid region where limestone castles rise into the sky above yuccas and brush.

Virgil, who now lives in the Phoenix area, sent these photos of one of his trips. The goats, he said, may have been from a farm or were feral. Wouldn't that be wild? A herd of goats living on their own where the deer and the antelope play.

Pawnee Rock is in a fortunate location: rolling hills to the north and east, river lowlands and sandhills to the south, humid prairie to the east, and the great expanse of near-desert stretching from Pawnee Rock to the Rockies. I'm glad Virgil took his camera when he went exploring.

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Before NASCAR?

[September 24]   Our mystery correspondent remembers fun on one of the Pawnee Rock school buses. Maybe you shared a bus with him -- you'd no doubt remember it.

Here's what he wrote:

Long before NASCAR, Pawnee Rock had NASBUS; the people just didn't realize it yet. Everyone knew that the Pawnee Rock School bus drivers were the fastest in the West! Nobody, but nooobody, could beat that North route bus driver. He was the first out & the first in, always.

Before our elementary minds were exposed to: Statics & Dynamics; coefficients of friction; moments of inertia; and radius of gyration; we students had a basic understanding of the same. You see, the South route bus driver was no sloth.

There was this beautifully graveled driveway with a gentle left-hand curve, which opened into a meticulous farm yard; just a half mile NE of Pawnee Rock, south off the highway. Somehow, the school bus driver managed to never skid off of the curve, although a roll-over was always impending. This curve had a bar ditch on the outside arc, sloping from the roadbed downward to about 18" or 24" depth; then a vertical dirt wall, back to the normal grade of the land.

The more mature students on the bus knew this was a dangerous state of affairs. So, they decided to take matters in their own hands! In secrecy, they decided that on any given day, when the bus was speeding around the curve, and with a predetermined queue, everyone on the left side of the bus would rush to the right side of the bus.

Well, that day finally came around. It was an hot afternoon; all of the bus windows were open for ventilation. The bus was less than half full. Sure enough, the bus began speeding around the curve, the queue was given, and in less than a heartbeat, all the left-hand side riders shifted to the right-hand side. Just as fast, the bus skidded down the ditch, against the vertical dirt wall of the ditch, while moving forward! Gritty dust filled the inside of the bus as it was skidding along the dirt wall of the ditch, at about a 20 degree angle from vertical. We came to a stop in the yard, quickly! No one was injured, the bus wasn't damaged; it just had these dirty lines horizontally, across the right-hand side of the bus.

Whew! What a tongue-lashing the crimson-faced bus driver delivered! We never sped around that corner anymore. NASCAR: eat your heart out! That was truly a NASBUS moment!

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Shiver our timbers

[September 23]   A friend in central Oklahoma told me that he had to dig out his windbreaker yesterday because a cold front had come sweepin' down the plain.

The temp in Pawnee Rock topped out at 64, about 20 degrees below the 30-year average.

And here in the northland, with summer still warm in its grave, we had rain mixed with big slushy snowflakes.

Granted, it's football season and college basketball practice begins in less than a month, but is everybody ready for full-blown autumn?

When I lived in Pawnee Rock, I enjoyed the serious reminders that that the winter solstice was the next pagan holiday we would celebrate. I liked it when the leaves went yellow and came down, and I didn't mind too much when the fluffy clouds scudded away toward Texas and we were left with a flat gray sky. All the colors are changing: The pastures around Pawnee Rock may have a little green left, but red grasses soon will be the most cheerful vegetation standing in a sea of tan.

Before long, ducks and geese will settle into ponds and milo fields and Cheyenne Bottoms, and mums will be appear on homecoming candidates. Have you laid in your Indian corn and candy corn yet?

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Ladies of the Deckert family

Anna, Minnie, and Tilda Deckert -- daughters of the Andrew Deckert family -- posed genteely in the early 20th century. Gary Eitel sent this photo.

[September 22]   Gary Eitel, who is related to an old Pawnee Rock family, sent a charming photo of three young women and a bit of perspective about them.

Here is his note:

Phyllis Deckert alerted me to your Pawnee Rock webpage -- it looks great. I have an interest in the area as my grandmother Minnie Deckert originated in the area of the Bergthal Mennonite church and supposedly was the first organ player there when the present building was constructed.

Many thanks go to Leslie Deckert who was keeper of the genealogy of the "Deckert" and other related families of the area. I have many pages of his work along that line.

Am sending a picture of three Deckert young ladies from a hundred? or so years ago. It is of Anna, Minnie and Tilda Deckert -- all young ladies of the Andrew Deckert family.

Gary sent another note later:

Maybe you already know this -- the picture of the books on the PR website September area -- the book "Fabrics and Patterns" has pictures on the front. The picture of the couple in the lower left corner is of Rev. Peter Dirks and his wife, Susanna Schmidt Dirks. Susanna is my great-great-grandmother.

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The plat thickens

[September 21]   The historical burrowers at KansasMemory.com have found a copy of the 1902 Barton County plat book and have reproduced it online. It's not in living color, as ours is, but it was scanned in better and shows more detail. (B&W version) I also encourage you to look at page 35 of the B&W plat book; this page shows our hometown in a much larger scale.

My sharp-eyed sister, Cheryl, pointed it out for us.

You'll see: the old school, the opera house, the lumber yard, the livery stable, the Rock Hotel, the post office, the doctor's office (just west of the opera house), several elevators that aren't there anymore, the Methodist Church, and the Christian Church when it lived on the south side of town. (Color versions in Pawnee Rock's Big Picture gallery)

The road that became the highway to Larned and Great Bend is identified as Rail Road Avenue. Notice that it doesn't go all the way through town. When it eventually was extended, the road created the familiar triangular corner at Flora and Rock.

When you look closely at the site of Pawnee Rock, you'll notice a location marked "skimming station" next to the northeast corner of the city limits -- basically, where the big ditch protects the northern edge of town. Can anyone tell us what the skimming station did?

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Glory days of September

[September 18]   Our mysterious correspondent has sent another bundle of memories about Pawnee Rock:

Ahhhhh . . . September. FOOTBALL WEATHER! Who could forget the glory days of Pawnee Rock High and the ole South Fifty Six League? Let's see, there was: Belpre, Garfield, Pawnee Rock, Radium Trousdale, and Zook. Before electric lighted fields, some of the games ended in the twilight, or dark, with cars lined up on the sidelines with their headlights on.

Remember "Wrong Way" Corrigan? Well, we had a star Pawnee Rock football player run the wrong way for a touchdown at an afternoon game at Zook! Of course the touchdown counted for them, and Zook beat Pawnee Rock!

Then, way back there, some odd sixty years ago (give or take a decade), occasionally a Pawnee Rock opposition football player would come to the sidelines wiping his face. Oh no! Was that fresh chewin' tobacco juice being wiped from his face?

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Under the steeple

[September 17]   No matter what you think about Lutheran churches -- or religion in general -- there's something relaxing about old houses of worship. This is the sanctuary of St. Paul Lutheran Church on the grounds of the Barton County Historical Society Museum.

With its frame construction, it is of the generation before the brick and metal churches of our time. It is austere yet warm, and for that reason alone it seems to be closer to the idea of God on the plains.

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Wish you were here

[September 16]   We're all fortunate to have Pawnee Rock in our lives, not just for the fellowship of the town but also for the virtue of living on the plains with a historical landmark protecting us (sort of) from the north wind. The sweeping heavens, the determined river that makes its way down from Colorado, the wheat that's green and then gold, and the happiness we feel when the weather turns a little chilly and we put on our jackets and rake leaves.

But once in a while we who live away from Pawnee Rock must look around and marvel at the situation we find ourselves in. A few of us live in Colorado, some in Washington, California, Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida, New York, Missouri, Texas, and two dozen other states, and we all have scenery to celebrate. I'd guess that for the most part, we live where we do because we enjoy that environment, and we think no less of Pawnee Rock for not having beaches or mountains or skyscrapers.

Pawnee Rock is what it is. And the rest of the world is what makes travel exciting.

This past weekend I was on the road quite a bit, and it was one of those times when I had to wonder what I had done right in my life to be right here right now.

Here are a couple of scenes that I, as a kid in Pawnee Rock, had no way of imagining.

Driving into rain on Alaska Highway 3 near Fairbanks.

An Alaska Railroad bridge crosses Riley Creek in Denali National Park.

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Hello, Linda and Andy Deckert

[September 15]   Linda Smith Deckert is stirring up interest in a reunion of the Class of 1960. If my figuring is correct, this would have the first class to have spent all four years in the new high school. (The class photos that used to be in the school hallway are on today's homepage.)

Also, the Deckerts have put their names in Friends of Pawnee Rock.

Here's her note.

Hi, Leon, Linda and Andy Deckert here. Our class of 1960 will have been out of high school for 50 years next summer! It's impossible!

Andy was our class president, and I'm married to him now . . . so I'm doing his work. He didn't have as pleasant an experience in high school as I had . . . poor thing. I think we picked on him because he was a little younger. Or, his memory is better than mine . . . which is true! Anyway growing up is a hard thing to do . . . and I hope we've all matured in some good ways since then.

I was wondering who you have on your lists from the class of 1960? I'd like to get in touch with them to see if any of them want to get together again. Thanks. Linda Smith Kruckenberg Deckert (and Andy)

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Ethel Schmidt has died

[September 14]   Ethel Schmidt, who lived near Pawnee Rock for more than 45 years, died September 10 in Newton. She was 89 years old.

She was married to Roland, and they lived on a farm north of Dundee until 1989. They raised sons David, Steven, and Don and daughters Meribeth and Susan.

Mrs. Schmidt was a substitute teacher in the Pawnee Rock schools and a busy member of the Bergthal Mennonite Church, a leader in the 4-H club, and a volunteer at Larned State Hospital.

Her funeral will be this afternoon in Newton. (Full obituary)

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The gears of education

A 1942 McCormick harvester was a hands-off, but eyes-on, machine.

[September 14]   It struck me the other day as I toured an exhibit of farm equipment that there's a good reason that lots of farmers had fewer fingers than they were born with. Gears, chains, belts, augers, and teeth used to be exposed on tractors and harvesting machinery, just begging the curious and thoughtless to stick their digits where they don't belong.

I thought back to a threshing demonstration that my dad took me to in Valley Center back in the 1970s. Men with pitchforks tossed wheat on the stalk into the threshing machine, which was connected to its power source -- a steam tractor -- by a long belt. I don't have a photo of that event, but I can offer a photo of a tractor using a belt to drive a pump that is pulling water from a flooded basement.

Nowadays, dangerous parts of equipment is covered by hoods and and sheet metal and protecting by signs that warn of pinching, crushing, and electrocuting dangers. That's good, I suppose, but it's a good way to discourage interest in what goes on behind the metal curtain.

Put yourself in the skin of a kid who doesn't see the gears move and doesn't learn how machines work. It all seems to be part of a shift toward not learning things. Kids of my generation used to take apart and repair lawn mowers and bicycles; it was standard for kids to try to create bikes out of spare parts. Now such kids are remarked upon for their unusual aptitude.

I suppose I am overgeneralizing about what I think of as a lack of homegrown mechanical education. Like you all, I am glad that fewer farm families have a kid nicknamed Stump.

A tractor drives a belt that drives a water pump after a flood in downtown Pawnee Rock early in the 20th century.

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Speaking of September

September 11   A mysterious correspondent sent a message about something that happened in our hometown's misty past. Perhaps it rings a bell:

"It was a September Morn (print from painting, that is), hung with great care, in the front entrance of the early Pawnee Rock High School, that got some Pawnee Rock High School boys a much longer summer vacation!"

(Pawnee Rock isn't the only place Matinee de Septembre has raised a stink.)

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Diamond anniversary

September 10   I don't know how I missed these items in the Great Bend Tribune, but I did.

60 years of marriage: Dwayne and Janis Deckert celebrated their 60th anniversary on August 22 with a reception at the First United Methodist Church in Great Bend.

Dwayne married Janis Dierking on August 24, 1949, in Stafford. They farmed north of Pawnee Rock and now live in Great Bend.

No longer breaking news, but still interesting: Someone stole the radio out of Pawnee Rock's fire tanker in July. The truck was parked at the fire station, which sits downtown across from the post office. In addition, the criminal also sprayed a fire extinguisher into the truck's cab and tried to smash the windows on the rescue car.

The report in the Tribune was followed by several reader comments; some are helpful and some are not. (Full story)

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Oh gently blow

[September 9]   There are times when Barton County is timeless. The crisp morning after a big snowfall, when all the world is silent and bright. A May afternoon, when the wheat is green and the mounting rainclouds beyond it are blue. A late-summer evening, when the air is weightless and the breeze so gentle that it is a kiss.

When I came across this northeast-facing scene between Albert and Pawnee Rock after driving in from Denver, I realized how it symbolized Kansas to me in the same way that the Rockies and tall trees symbolize most of Colorado. But it's not the barbed wire or the humble post rock that does the trick -- it's the sky and ground stretching to Hudson Bay and the air sweeping ceaselessly over the plains.

As for the post rock, well, that's art.

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Tracking the white-tailed dear

[September 8]   What boy or girl hasn't imagined himself or herself to be a tracker of wild animals?

You and I tracked the family dog around the yard, and we could tell which way the cat walked across the hood, roof, and trunk of our Chevy. In the muddy flats of the Arkansas River, we followed the dainty hoofprints of white-tailed deer until they disappeared into the river or onto the hard planks of quartz cobbles.

Boy Scout handbooks used to dedicate several pages to tracking animals; I don't know whether kids are encouraged to track animals anymore. It's not like the old days, when more than half the kids lived on farms or in small towns and could reasonably expect to follow rabbit prints through a pasture and know which prints were a badger's and which were a skunk's.

Except for a hunter following the spilled blood of a wounded white-tail deer or police making a desperate search for a missing child, you rarely hear the word "tracking" these days in the context of the outdoors.

Once in a while, however, a grown-up gets to use the principles he learned in the loam and sandy of Pawnee Rock. In my case, I try to lengthen my life by watching for moose and bear tracks every time I walk the dog down a halfway wooded trail.

This past weekend, as I was chatting with my landlord at some cabins he's building near the one I rent, a teen-age girl stepped up out of the bog and, as soon as he greeted her, fainted onto the gravel. She had been walking through the trees and muck for a long time, she said after she came to, and her long white shorts and black top were quite soiled.

She had run away from home and wanted to make her way to a grocery store about seven miles distant so she could call her cousin, although she didn't have a number that she could have called on my landlord's cellphone. She may have been a sweetheart under good conditions, but now she had no sparkle whatsoever in her eyes. She refused to drink a Pepsi or water, and she had no taste for a crisp apple. She said she had been abused by her mother and was almost eighteen.

My landlord and I talked it over, and he called the troopers. As he did, she stood shakily and slipped back into the woods in the direction of cabins rented by me and others, disappearing within forty-five seconds. We thought that she might faint again and that could lead to trouble for her, so we took two angles and headed into the woods after her. She obviously had no idea where she was, and even for a runaway she had failed to put any commonsense thought into survival.

I followed her trail of footprints and bent grass, but that faded soon as she crossed trails created by foxes and hares. As I pushed spruce and willow branches aside, I scanned the woods for her white rump, her shorts being the only part of her clothing that would easily be seen against nature's greens and browns. I listened.

The troopers arrived, and the landlord and I led a real police search. The girl had fled before us, though, and was found on the next road. One trooper said she had run away because her mother confiscated a contraband cellphone with which she was sending risque photos of herself to her adult boyfriend.

I remember the days when I enjoyed dreaming about running away and I know how much I would have hated it -- I think -- had someone I asked for help instead called the sheriff's department. But in an energy-sapping lowland where four-legged danger is afoot, the best choice was clearly to extract this particular runaway from terrain she had no business being in.

I enjoyed the thrill of the hunt. It was Boy Scout learning being put to good use far from the banks of the gentle Arkansas River.

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Calendar alert

[September 8]   Check your calendars and synchronize your watches, and in each of our time zones Wednesday let us toast the instant of the ninth second of the ninth hour of the ninth day of the ninth month of the ninth year of this century.

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Tornado day

[September 7]   June McFann remembers the day of the tornadoes as well and places the most distant about 20 miles away from Pawnee Rock -- which makes their size even more impressive.

Here is June's note:

8-) Yes remember that day well. Last day of Aug. There was a total of 13 twisters. They were on a line from north east of Olmitz, and the last one to pop up was the one at Pawnee Rock. I saw ten. They would pop up and didn't seem to move. What a sight. June McFann

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The barn razing

Bob, Larry, and Barb Schmidt atop the family's barn after it was destroyed by a tornado in 1952. Paul Schmidt made this photo.

[September 7]   The 1974 tornado that I mistakenly thought was threatening the Paul Schmidt farm was a year late for it to do any harm to the Schmidts. But the farm nevertheless was familiar with whirling winds.

Here is Barb's tale of how one Kansas family handled a moment that would strain the sanity of most folks:

Fortunately, my parents sold our farm in fall 1973 so they were gone when those August 30, 1974, twisters roared by "the old Paul Schmidt farm." But, even though I was living in California at the time, I remember hearing about that patch of twisters as multiple friends and relatives in the PR area made sure my family knew all about it.

A curious quirk of fate is that the only building still standing today on the "old Paul Schmidt farm" was built because of a tornado. If you ever drive by there, take a look at the big metal barn. Until the summer of 1952, there was a big wooden barn standing on that exact spot. Then a twister struck the farm in the middle of the night, destroyed the wooden barn and played twister games with some farm implements stored inside. It also shattered the windows in my bedroom and sprayed my crib with shards of glass.

Luckily, our family was not at home. It was shortly after harvest and, with a little extra cash in his pocket, my dad had driven the family to Washington, DC, to "see the sights" and visit East Coast relatives. Not long after we got to DC, dad started getting phone calls from multiple friends and relatives in the PR area making sure he knew about the tornado. My dad decided it was too late to rush home to save the barn, so we finished our vacation as scheduled.

When we got home, about the first thing dad did was grab his camera and have my brothers, Bob and Larry, climb atop the collapsed barn to have their picture taken for posterity. Poor Larry even had to haul me up there in my diapers -- yes, that's me, squirming in the semi-nude for the history books.

Dad wasted no time, though, and soon the debris was cleared and the "new" metal barn was erected. Today it looks a bit rusty and worn -- but after 57 years, so do I.

Pawnee Rockers surely have kahzillions of tornado-related photos in their family albums and great storm stories to tell. I hope some will send you more good stuff to share. Does anyone remember the house somewhere south of the river that, in the late 1950s or 1960s, "disappeared" in a tornado but left its full basement intact? I remember going there with hordes of other Sunday gawkers and seeing the wide open basement absolutely untouched, with towels still hanging in the basement bathroom. Wish I had a picture of that one!

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Twist and shout

A twister goes through its life cycle north of Pawnee Rock on August 30, 1974. I took these while standing at the T-corner north of Pawnee Rock.

[September 4]   On the Friday before Labor Day 1974 -- it was an early one that year -- we had a new president, Gerald Ford. Football season was at hand. Milo was ripening. And a storm cell was pushing its way across the heated plains north of Pawnee Rock.

My dad and I were on the way to Pawnee Rock State Park, where I needed to do some mowing on behalf of the Lions Club, but we were distracted when we saw a herd of pickups at the top of the hill, up by Galen Unruh's house.

A few years earlier I had watched these same men stand at the edge of the overflowing Arkansas River, as amazed as children as the floodwaters inched toward their work shoes. Now, on this Friday evening, the men were agape at tornadoes.

Slender, unbalanced, spinning like a top getting ready to fall over and then righting themselves, the tornadoes hung one and two at a time from a cloud a few miles north. I listened for the freight train; the air was still but for the meadowlarks.

Half a dozen tornadoes formed in that hour, a gallery of amusement for us who had no farmhouses in their path. I suppose the tornadoes were up along Walnut Creek, but they could have been only three miles north, in line with the Mennonite Church -- a brick building whose limestone ancestor had been destroyed by a tornado near Dundee in the 1950s.

When the show was over, Dad and I adjourned to the Rock. We lifted the big Lions Club self-propelled mower out of his pickup bed, and I mowed the downslope east side while he fiddled around. Neither one of us paid attention to the sky -- until I was finished and we rounded the pavilion and headed down the exit to the park road (this was when you could drive around the pavilion). There, before us, spinning on a scale too big to understand, was a tornado.

The tornado looked like it was a half-mile wide at the base; in truth, it was probably only a quarter-mile wide there but a half-mile across at the top. The National Weather Service later said it was a F3, but at the time it looked like the sister of the tornado that the previous April had destroyed Xenia, Ohio.

I took three photos and then Dad and I hustled into town, which was by now green with tornado light. I told Mom and Cheryl that we were probably doomed and headed into the basement, maybe alone. There was no doubt in my mind that I would emerge to find Pawnee Rock in tatters.

We soon learned that the twister had gone a few miles west of Pawnee Rock. It didn't last long as it moved south, but it did blow over a barn and some trees in the sparse farmland of eastern Pawnee County.

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Two worlds, two books

[September 3]   I'm one of those people with lots of ideas that could become a book -- a novel, a history, a travel guide -- if only I could find the time. Some Pawnee Rock natives have moved beyond the dream-about-it stage and have actually produced books.

For example, there was the recipe collection, titled "Stone Soup," I believe, and the churches have produced a credible amount of historical literature.

Barb Schmidt tells us about two other books with Pawnee Rock ties. I suspect that many of you know about Esther Sayler's book, but the other one may be something of a surprise:

In early February this year, you brought to our attention a couple books with strong ties to the Pawnee Rock area [Finding Old Books]. Here are two more PR-related books worth recommending:

The first is Esther (Deckert) Sayler's "Fabric & Patterns: Portraits of Some Rural Kansas Mennonite Women" published in 1993. The book includes photos by Esther and her brother, Warren Deckert. Both PRHS alums, Esther graduated in 1966 and Warren in 1971. Esther's book is for sale through www.mennolink.org and used copies occasionally pop up for sale on www.amazon.com.

The second is Phillip Naugle and Cheryl (Behrens) Naugle's "Happy Valley: Murder, Mafia, Mormons and More!" published in 2004. Cheryl graduated from PRHS in 1969, and her husband, Phil, grew up in the Larned area. New and used copies of their book can be found through www.amazon.com or www.barnesandnoble.com [Amazon's page; click on the book's cover to read a few pages].

These two books are as unlike each other as noon is to midnight.

Esther's book is warm and nostalgic as she recounts her visits with PR area women who we should all be lucky enough to have as neighbors. Here is an excerpt from page 62: "She stood talking and ironing. Every movement was careful and symmetrical -- first the collar, then yoke, then sleeves. From each crumpled bundle, a shirt came to life, smooth and softly shining, reflecting in the late morning sun. If you didn't know how to iron, watching Maxlyn would have taught you well. Lesson One: How to Iron."

Phil and Cheryl's book is suspenseful and deeply disturbing in its tale of modern day corruption in Utah and its effect on the Naugles and their community. For example, on page 148, Cheryl writes: "On February 2, 1989 at approximately 9:10 a.m., I walked into my [home] office to see individuals dressed in army camouflage gear complete with guns and hoods jumping over our 6 ft. chain link fence. They seemed to be coming over in droves. They approached the house as if they were after an escaped convict or something. Their guns were drawn."

When I received these books (Esther's years ago, Cheryl's in just the past year), I read each from cover to cover in a single sitting. Not just because once upon a time these authors-to-be were my schoolmates but, more importantly, because both books are terrific.

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The nature of boys and firepower

[September 2]   I wasn't much of a hunter as a kid in Pawnee Rock. I loved to shoot, but I had not a killer instinct, nor the urge to go outside when it was windy, wet and cold, nor the money to buy ammunition when I could buy film instead. Furthermore, it would have been unseemly for me to admit that I was fascinated by firearms and their physics, and so I didn't; I was a good Mennonite boy.

I still enjoy the thrill, however, of making a small piece of dense metal travel a certain distance and punch a hole in paper. In the years since I left Pawnee Rock, I've shot a .22 rifle occasionally, a shotgun now and then, and a .44 handgun when I thought it would be a good bear deterrent.

One of my favorite parts of going to a shooting range has been listening to the gunfire and watching the muzzle blasts and the shooters' reaction. There's the firecracker sound of the .22, the punch-punch-punch of a handgun, the long-distance deadliness of a big rifle, the loudness of a 12-gauge. The most impressive, and frightening, of all is the .44 handgun.

The .44 revolver, which gained modern fame as Dirty Harry's weapon, is an aggressive beast. It fears nothing. It is a predator. When it is fired, people standing off to the side feel a shockwave push on their chests. About 15 years ago I thought I should see how loud a .44 is without protecting my ears with muffs. The .44 kicked upward against my two-handed grip, and the explosion instantly punched me in the ears. My head ached shrilly for hours, and I was almost physically ill.

Dirty Harry, and every gun-totin' hero of the Old West, would have been stone deaf.

If nothing else, the episode taught me a great deal about the power of firearms in a way that firing my .22 into a honey locust stump on Grandma's farm never did.

In Pawnee Rock, there was never a reason for anyone to have a .44; a deer rifle was as manly a tool as a sane man needed. So what we did with what we had was learn the rules of shooting and the explanation of why it worked. In all that open country, we experimented with the physics -- and with stop signs in some cases.

Have I ever thought about hunting again? Of course. A guy doesn't live in Kansas, Texas, and Alaska without having that temptation laid before him every month of the year.

Take yesterday morning, for example. At 6:30 a.m., two minutes before dawn on September 1. Ten seconds after my alarm clock buzzed. That's when the first shots of duck season were punched into the sky over the wildlife refuge that is my back yard.

So all day, I've been thinking about hip waders and shotguns and matching the trajectory of ducks against the trajectory of steel pellets. I doubt that I'll go hunting (this year, at least), but I know I'll head to the shooting range this week and see whether I can still put .22 long-rifle bullets through a small paper circle.

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Living with a tree

[September 2]   A tree is a wonderful yardstick, so to speak, when we're measuring the passage of time. Jared Smith, who grew up on the northwest corner of Houck and Cuniffe, recalls an old friend:

Just wanted to write and let you know about a favorite tree while growing up in PR. Our grandmother, Mildred Spreier, brought the blue spruce tree on the east side of our old home in PR back from a trip to Colorado in the mid 1950s. According to our folks, it was just a few feet tall at the time.

Although I haven't seen it in many years, it was pretty cool to watch it grow as I was growing up. The last time I did see it, I was amazed at how big it had gotten.

I also remember spending a lot of time climbing in the big trees in the lot just east of the school. Jared

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Lots of alumni

[September 1]   Sandy Haun and Dave Hiebert have sent their large collections of alumni photos from the recent Pawnee Rock school reunion. The shots are in the Reunions section.

I am grateful for the photos. Speaking on behalf of those who weren't there, I'm glad to see that so many people from long ago have turned out so well. The photos show many happy folks.

See the photos.

And if you know the names of the people in the photos, please send them to me so I can post the identifications. I recognize -- or think I recognize -- many of the people, but I'd prefer that someone really knows them supplies the IDs. If you send in IDs, please include the number of the photo(s) that you're describing. Thanks. (Send IDs)

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Sell it

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

Or tell someone happy birthday.