Too Long in the Wind

May 2011

Memorial Day plans

[May 27]   On Monday, Pawnee Rock will commemorate Memorial Day, beginning at 11 a.m. in the cemetery.

After that, many school alumni will attend the annual reunion at the old Santa Fe depot, which is now downtown and operated by the Lions Club. Lunch will be served and stories told.

Everybody drive safely, please.

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Photos of tornado damage

[May 27]   Larry Mix, who lives in St. John and watches over the Santa Fe Trail, set up some of his tornado-damage photos to share with us. They're from where Tuesday's twister approached U.S. 281 in Stafford County, just south of the Barton County line -- not far from our hometown.

The photos include a damaged farm, overturned irrigation equipment, and broken cottonwoods and cedars.

After you've considered the photos, I recommend browsing through the rest of Larry's site, too -- Santa Fe Trail Research. Larry and his wife, Carolyn, are good people. They participated in last summer's Pawnee Rock parade, and they've sent a number of photos to us over the years.

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Witness to the storm

[May 26]   If you're on Facebook, you might check out the account of Erlene (Chism) Halzle. The former Pawnee Rock resident was right behind the unfortunate mother and son who were killed by the tree south of Great Bend this week, and her own car was destroyed. Her description of the event and its aftermath gives us plenty to think about. (Link)

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The wedding party

Paul and Bernice Schmidt, with young Larry, on their farm in the early 1940s. They lived a half-mile west of where the salt plant once was. Barb Schmidt, their daughter, sent the photo.

[May 26]   Earlier this week I was going to send you the following snippet of "old news" from the Pawnee Rock of May 1941, but the terrible tornado news stretching from Joplin to St. John in May 2011 stopped me in my tracks. I now live in an emerald city more than a thousand miles from Kansas, but I've noticed my friends and neighbors here in the Pacific Northwest talking about this week's tornadoes and the video reports they've seen on TV or the Internet with a sense of terrifying awe and immediacy they've never felt before. Can you please explain what makes this particular round of twisters seem so much worse and more fearsome -- even for those of us watching safely from afar?

As for the "old news," I was just about to put it back in the drawer until next May, thinking it seemed too trivial at this somber time. But this evening I watched a network news report about a woman in Joplin sorting through the debris that had been her elderly mother's home. She was looking for anything she might salvage to give her mother comfort. What touched me was not the specific items (like a cup and an old doll) she pulled from the debris but the woman's love for her mother and her concern that the many fond memories that had been stored in that old house for decades would not be lost. So -- in a tiny salute to love and fond memories and recognizing that it may be nothing more than a slight diversion from today's news -- I decided to send you this happy bit of "old news" anyway:

Exactly 70 years ago, the Great Bend Tribune reported in late May 1941 that, following their afternoon wedding on Sunday, May 25, a "large group of friends and relatives of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Schmidt surprised them Sunday evening with a charivari. It was said to be the largest and noisiest one ever to be given in this community. It formed at the top of the Rock and at the Mennonite church. Several who were there estimated that there were over three hundred people present."

Many years later, my mom (the "Mrs." in the story) was still ticked off about the "shivaree" when she showed me the article and told me about her wedding night. She complained loudly that "all the so-called friends and relatives" banged pots and pans "and hooted and hollered." She named names (like Base & Deckert & Dirks & Smith & Wilson) and said that some of dad's old pals from PRHS "made fools of themselves" with their loud partying and noisemaking on all sides of the newlyweds' farmhouse, continuing on until well after dark. She said, "Your father thought it was very funny, but I didn't!"

However, when mom decided to leave the "city life" of Great Bend to marry into a Pawnee Rock farm family, perhaps she should have realized life would be a bit different when her soon-to-be mother-in-law gave her a container of lard as a bridal shower gift.

Attached is a photo of Paul & Bernice from the early 1940s, taken just a few years after their wedding and shivaree. Even though dad had a car, he still liked to hitch up horses to a wagon and take mom for a Sunday buggy ride . Mom's response was to wear a hat with the biggest brim she could find -- not to keep the sun off her face but to avoid being recognized. But the greater mom's embarrassment, the greater dad's glee.

Barb

PS:

As I wrote the above email, I glanced at a yellowed newspaper article reporting my parents' wedding and for the first time took a look at the news print on the back of that article. The back side must have been from the Tribune's front page because the main story is about Berlin "trying to do anything it can to becloud" President Roosevelt's fireside chat scheduled for the following night. That story and another story below it focused on Germany's efforts to stop the U.S. from sending naval convoys to escort British ships so that Adolf Hilter could more easily gain "control of the high seas of the world and other continents." Talk about "storm clouds brewing." ... And meanwhile, somewhere in Kansas, the local residents took a time-out from day-to-day worries to conduct a shivaree. If nothing else, life is ceaselessly amazing.

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Storm upon storm

At suppertime on Tuesday, a new wave of storms coalesced southwest of Pawnee Rock. These images were taken from Weather Underground's site.

When one band passed over the airport at Great Bend, the temperature fell from 80 degrees to 65 in less than an hour.

[May 25]   More tornadoes, more high winds -- Pawnee Rock's were reported at 70 mph -- and more angry red blurs on the weather radar, and it's just another May day east of the dry line. Spring on the plains and prairie now is measured not in tornadoes but in numbers of tornadoes in the swarms.

From the vantage point of a distant computer, I watched the storms erupt and work their way northeast, cell-tracking arrows pointing one way then the next but always onward toward a city, a town, a farm owned by someone we know.

The storms have a high cost. Who among us will drive south from Great Bend now and not think of the unfortunate two people whose van was crushed by a wind-driven tree? For years, we've passed through Hoisington and Andover and Oklahoma City and been able to follow the tornadoes' tracks through the housing developments; we've seen Greensburg die and be reborn; and now we have Joplin, a small city no one thought twice about until its disaster this week.

Dorothy Gale isn't as much fun as she used to be.

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Class of 1951, revised

More Class of 1951: John Woelk, Richard Spreier, Patricia Hays, and Jacepine Smith Myers.

[May 24]   The collection of 1951 graduates that appeared on yesterday's homepage and now in the gallery was missing a few students.

Roger Hanhardt wrote to say that the page with the four missing photos had inadvertently been omitted from the PRHS history book that I copied the images from. Roger had pasted the page in later in the 1961 section, and I just plain missed it. The four "missing" seniors are Patsy Hays, Jacepine Smith Myers, Richard Spreier, and John Woelk, and their faces appear above.

Leon Miller, who is a member of the Class of 1951, also wrote to point out the missing students. He said a couple of girls had gotten married before graduation and weren't allowed to be part of the group. "What a difference 60 years makes," he wrote.

"I know it's a little late to mention our 60th anniversary but I do plan on being in Pawnee Rock this coming Memorial Day and would like to see any of my classmates who are still around."

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Embrace your youth

[May 19]   Roger Hanhardt's message says a lot:

With all the graduations going on, it got me to thinking about my grad., and the first bunch of PRHS grads in 1914. I graduated in 1964, and we had those 1914 grads on stage with us that nite.

To put in relevance about how fast time goes, and how the generations are linked, think about this. Those first grads were just now completing their freshman year in 1911, and I knew some of them. Fanny Vassar was our school secretary, and at that time, little did I know she was Frances Bowman of the first class.

I knew Chester Unruh. I cut his hair at a barber shop in Larned in the late 1960s.

They would have been born about 1896, horse and buggy days, and would have lived into the 70s or 80s, so many people around Pawnee Rock, who are now 80 or as low as 45 could remember some of them.

And now we are in the class of 2011. And snap your fingers, and they will have their 25th and 50th reunions. 1911 sounds like an eternity ago, but it really wasn't. Embrace your youth, it doesn't last long.

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Basketball schedule, 1954

[May 17]   Ed Durall's article yesterday mentioned several schools that don't exist anymore. In fact, only one of the schools is still in operation -- Macksville. Several have merged -- Otis and Bison, Rozel and Burdett. Macksville swallowed up Radium, Trousdale, and Belpre. Larned inhaled Zook and Garfield.

Here's the schedule the Braves played in the 1953-1954 school year.

Like the photos on today's homepage, this image comes from the two-volume history of Pawnee Rock High School, which was compiled by Roger Hanhardt.

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A shot remembered for 57 years

Ed Durall shoots a free throw in the Pawnee Rock High School gym in 1954. The photo was made by his father.

[May 16]   Ed Durall has sent us a family treasure -- a photo of him playing basketball in the Pawnee Rock High gym.

This is the old gym, the one that was in the middle of the dark-brick high school that stood in the block east of where the most recent school is. The new school opened in 1956, and the centerpiece was the beautiful, spacious gym, which must have been the envy of schools in the South 50-6 League and even some of the larger districts.

Here is what Ed wrote:

This is for the people who never had the privilege of playing basketball in the gym inside the old high school.

Here is a picture of me shooting a free throw in 1954. Notice how small the floor was. In the lower left corner of the picture, you can see part of the center circle. Notice how close it is to the free throw circle. It didn't take us long to get back down floor after scoring a basket.

The floor was narrow enough that with three tall guys on the back side who could reach almost across the floor, you could play a wicked 2-3 zone. As a result, 40 or 45 points was a high-scoring game.

This picture was probably taken by my Dad, and he was standing under the balcony. You can see the underneath side of the balcony with a banner hanging from it. The balcony went around three sides. There was one row of chairs in the balcony on the left side of the picture, and two rows of chairs on the end behind the basket and the other side. There was a stage on the other end.

The players, coaches, scorers, and timekeeper sat on a bench up against the wall on the left side of the floor. There were two rows of bleacher seats on the end and the other side. We didn't have very big crowds.

Notice the big beam that ran overhead. There was another one in the middle and at the other end. They were so low that if the ball hit one of them, we just kept playing. When we played at Radium, Garfield, Burdette or Rozel, where there were high ceilings, our first few practice shots fell way short because we didn't have enough arch on them.

The opening under the basket was the stairs that went up to the front door to the building.

And would you believe the gym at Zook was even smaller than this one? Belpre and Trousdale also had interior gyms. At Trousdale, the stage was on the side and the front of it was curved, so the out-bounds-line on that side was also curved.

Basketball in the old South 50-6 League was an adventure.

Ed Durall, a senior in the 1954 Pawnee Rock High School yearbook.

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Reunion schedule, anyone?

[May 13]   Memorial Day is coming up on May 30, so it's also almost time for the annual gathering of Pawnee Rock graduates.

The ceremony at the cemetery will begin as usual at 11 a.m., followed by fried chicken and sandwiches at the depot downtown.

The annual golf fest and large reunion is scheduled for August 20. More information about the event will come later. Previous reunions have attracted more than 200 people.

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The unKansas tree

[May 11]   Think about the Rock, and what generally comes to mind?

Sandstone. It's rough and dirty.
Yucca. It's sharp.
Locust trees. They have thorns.
Goathead thorns. Sharp.
Cactus. Keep your distance.
Broken glass. Dangerous.
Dried-out grass. Crinkly underfoot.
Cedars. Scratchy park, pitch, needles.
Spiderwort. Sounds dangerous.
Touch-me-nots. Reclusive.
Wind. Pushy.
Sun. Oppressive.

As you can see, the Rock is a Garden of Eden of unpleasant sensations.

But on the southwest side are a half-dozen tall pines -- not from these parts -- with a different approach to life. The needles are long and supple, and not at all a pain to step on. The bark is long and smooth.

The more I think about the pines, the more I like them. Assuming you get along with the idea that all of the Rock's trees were planted where Nature didn't invite them, the pines might be the most interesting just because they're not the hardscrabble cedars that are native to our plains, or the elms and locusts that were brought in early in the 20th century when the town of Pawnee Rock was staking its claim to this spot of earth. They're exotic and virtually a postcard that says "head west to the mountains."

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Finding our way

[May 9]   The 727 -- a model not often seen in the United States anymore -- landed north to south on the Fairbanks runway and rolled out, its reverse thrusters shushing above the light breeze.

A little plane -- a Cessna 172, a four-seat Skyhawk -- sat like a puppy at the edge of the ramp, waiting its turn for a quick takeoff. Behind it was a twin-engine passenger plane, and a few minutes out was a 737.

It was a busy day of people going places, a supple spring day and an early Mother's Day. The airport has broad expanses of gray asphalt, but between the ramp and taxiway and runway the strips of turf were starting to show life.

We wore light jackets, as the temperature was in the upper 40s and there was the breeze. I thought of my mom -- Anita -- and how much she enjoys the return of warm weather and flowers, and I thought of how my parents used to take me to watch the rumbling propeller-driven DC-4s and DC-6s at Drake Field south of Fayetteville when we went to visit her parents in Arkansas.

It has been many years since I've seen my mom at Mother's Day. Now, it would require a flight from this airport to the one in Anchorage, and another to Seattle or Dallas, and another to Little Rock, and a drive after that. Not that that's an excuse, but it illustrates the distance between the spots where we've settled.

I think we're still close in other ways. She continues to support my wild ideas and adventures, like when I was a kid in Pawnee Rock and she listened to me practice earnest but half-baked speeches, and when she took me to Great Bend for Argonne Rebels practice, and all the million other things she did for me, including not let me go snorkeling in Ash Creek.

She could make my dreams soar. Things are possible, she would tell me. Practice and have a goal.

I have generally done my best, although anyone with a mother knows that it's impossible to live up to the dreams our mothers have for us. I do what I can for my sons, trying to pass along Mom's instructions for a happy life. I think the best I can do -- the best their own mother can do -- for the boys is open doors, and they will eventually choose the door that's right for them.

So there I was Sunday on the ramp of the Fairbanks airport, watching the Cessna 172 Skyhawk roll onto the runway and turn its nose into the wind. It roared with a sound far larger than its size, as small planes do, and sped away.

My just-turned-15 son, a fan of history and science and airplanes, pulled back on the yoke at 80 knots and the Skyhawk glided into the sky. It was his no-strings introductory lesson at a flight school, just Sam and the instructor up there in that little four-seater as it shrank into a glare-sparkled dot that finally disappeared in the distant southern sky.

Kids grow up and they go away, but they never forget who gave them wings.

Heather, the instructor, and Sam after the preflight inspection.

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Something to do

Grass from a ditch north of Pawnee Rock.

[May 4]   It won't be long until some guy leans back against his truck with one foot on the running board and chews absentmindedly on one of these grass stalks.

And Junior will be watching and he'll find his own grass, and the tradition will be passed along. It'll be one of his fondest memories, one he shares with his dad.

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Scissor-tails

[May 3]   The scissor-tail flycatchers of my youth always appeared in one place -- north of the Mull feedlot, close to the Dufford place. As I watched from the window of Dad's schoolbus or from the front seat of his even-then ancient and repainted pickup, the birds with the long split tail feathers would swoop out of the shelter belt in pursuit of insects.

Redwing blackbirds were my favorite birds year in and year out, perching on ditch cattails, and meadowlarks, bluejays, and orioles ranked right up there. But the scissor-tails were exotic. (I didn't know at the time that they were Oklahoma's state bird; Oklahoma was still a land of mystery.)

Nowadays, I look around at the birds in my neighborhood and think about how strange and beautiful they would be to someone from, say, Kansas. The eagles and ravens, the black-billed magpies, and the water ouzels are all fine species, but after a while I take them for granted.

Not one of them holds a candle to the beautifully painted flycatcher, a bird without peer.

Check this out: The Radium blog has a dandy photo of a scissor-tail.

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The world changes again

[May 2]   As a Mennonite boy during the Vietnam War, I was as a matter of upbringing against all killing, and a lot of what I see in our country and the world still turns my stomach. That said, as I've aged I've also decided that the religious instruction to turn the other cheek is not always the correct answer.

The bin Laden attacks of 9/11 came during our older son's second week of kindergarten. He turned 15 yesterday, blowing out his candles within an hour of President Obama's announcement in our time zone. The attacks by bin Laden and his henchmen, and the subsequent use of the attacks by the Bush administration and his party to stir up jingoism and fear, have cheated all of us out of a good measure of happiness for more than nine years.

My hat is off to the very dangerous men who attacked bin Laden's stronghold and killed him. It's not often -- maybe once a decade -- that I cheer for a death, and this is that occasion.

The war against al Qaida isn't over, but a living, taunting symbol of evil has been removed. Our understanding of the war and the world may change now that his face is no longer blocking the view.

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