Too Long in the Wind

November 2006

The speed of light

[November 30]   A long time ago, my dad must have felt a certain pride in aiming my head toward the heavens and pointing out the Big Dipper against the eternal black depth of the Kansas night.

The Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, the Milky Way, Orion's belt. That was pretty much the limit of what Dad remembered -- or, more likely, what he was able to teach me.

Last night, when I got home from work after dark, the northern lights were hanging around in a few greenish bands in the northern sky. We have seen few of them this winter, and there's talk among scientists that the shift in the magnetic pole will make them scarce over Alaska before long.

I dragged the boys into their coats and hats and we shivered there in 5-degree air watching the lights shimmer, when they erupted. Pulses of red flared over the mountains, and the formerly mild curtains surged and swooped back and forth. It was the best light show I've ever seen.

And our boys saw it too.

I pointed right, and left, and waved with both gloves as the colors swept before the Big Dipper with unimaginable speed. The joy of it all!

We were standing at the end of our driveway, but in part of my heart I was back on Grandma's driveway north of Pawnee Rock. Dad was standing beside me and his parked pickup, and we were looking north and far, far away.

Letter from 1962

[November 29]   They used to do things differently back in the day. Historical events were Events. A few dollars went a long way for souvenirs -- and the souvenirs went a long way. In fact, one of them made it from 1962 to 2006.

Here's an envelope printed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the dedication of Pawnee Rock State Park.

I wouldn't be surprised if my dad, Elgie, had a hand in this. He used to have boxes of Pawnee Rock letterhead paper and more than a few of these envelopes.

What souvenirs do we have today? Plastic cups? Or styrofoam cups?

The nice things about the envelopes are these: (1) They're easy to keep. (2) They're great for spreading the word -- a way to boost the town across the country.

Now, sadly, fewer people use the mail for casual correspondence and more rely on e-mail. I suppose it makes good sense in the pocketbook, but e-mail certainly is not as classy as a commemorative envelope.

I do take more than a little pleasure, though, in using the Web to brag about a 44-year-old Pawnee Rock State Park 50th anniversary envelope.

Cows and penguins

[November 28]   I had no idea where one used to find the Schultz Brown Swiss Dairy, even though PawneeRock.org had featured a pasteboard bottle cap from there on the homepage Monday. So, I did what anyone would do: I asked Mom.

Anita Byers, now living in Arkansas, said Dewey and Alice Schultz ran the dairy, and she remembered them as close neighbors of Kenneth (the photographer) and Glenna Showalter. So that would have been south of the Darceys' curve, but on the west side of the road, and a mile north of the O'Rourke Road.

Dewey, Mom wrote, was the son of Abe and Susie Schultz and a brother to Frank and Leslie (and others).

Thanks, Mom.

Snow far, snow good: I had just gotten home from taking our son Sam to see the penguin movie "Happy Feet" when I got an e-mail from our favorite resident of Ellsworth, Peg Britton.

The message was simple: Go to this link: http://www.star28.com/snow. I did. I typed in my name, waited a couple of seconds, and let the computer work its magic.

Penguins, at least in the movies and in computers, are such happy birds.

Five miles up

[November 27]   Last year I flew from Denver to Wichita on a route that took a little over an hour and passed slightly south of Pawnee Rock.

I hadn't flown that route before, so I had to transfer my view out the window to a map in my head before I could figure out where we were. It's a game I play on my flights; I imagine that we all do it.

Even after years of travel, I still tend to think of states and counties as being delineated by lines and bands of color. I somehow expect there to be more of a wow! factor when, for example, I drive from Kansas into Oklahoma.

But from five miles up, it all looks the same, right down to the crop circles. Eastern Colorado melts into western Kansas, western Kansas melts into the sprawl of Hutchinson-Wichita, that sprawl melts into Oklahoma.

It's hard to find a particular town, such as Pawnee Rock, unless one knows the surrounding geography too. So I look for highways and piece together the pattern of towns and junctions. Or I follow the big rivers and figure out which tree-covered town is Pawnee Rock if we just flew over a city with a feedlot near it and highways spreading out in certain directions. In other words, I have to figure out how Pawnee Rock is connected with its neighboring towns and the landscape.

What makes it tricky is the change in perspective. We spend most of our lives at street level, where the trees and elevators and even three-story buildings loom over us. But the view from five miles up flattens that perspective. And we take in more, too, maybe to a distance of 50 miles in a half-circle arc.

How do our small-view minds adjust to that? Mine can't. I have to pick out one spot amid those 3,000 square miles and work from there; I choose one pattern and follow it.

I know that's an analogy to life in general. But my real point is how interconnected Pawnee Rock is -- not just with Barton County, but with Pawnee and Stafford and Rush and Wallace and Kit Carson counties too.

Once I get past my provincial pride, I notice that a lot of towns are just like Pawnee Rock: a highway, a set of tracks, an elevator or two, a cluster of business buildings, fields of milo rising up at the very edge of town. Pawnee Rock is more like the other towns than we may let ourselves imagine.

School flashbacks

[November 25]   Sometimes you can't control what memories arise:

• Folding the lunchroom tables for dances, plays, and 4-H meetings.

• Washing dishes to pay for school lunches. Using the overhead sprayer to rinse the trays, putting them in the sanitizer and taking them out to a face full of steam, and carrying hot trays up to the serving line.

• Watching, from the east-facing windows, Mr. Blackwell and Mr. French raise the U.S. and Kansas flags. Walking out of the school in 1964 and seeing the flags at half-staff because President Hoover had died.

• Having the high honor of opening and closing the curtain for one Christmas musical show, then to my horror being told by my mom that she could see my yellow leather shoes under the curtain, and then realizing 35 years later at my own son's grade school how easy it is to see that kid's shoes.

• Practicing for disasters: Tornado drills -- walk in a single file to the basement behind the kitchen. Don't talk. Stand close to the civil defense barrels. Fire drills -- walk outside in a single file to the edge of the playground.

• Hearing the teachers' admonitions: Don't run in the lunch line; a kid fell once and you could hear his head pop like a melon. ... Boys who work on weights are wasting their time, because those muscles will all turn to fat. ... Bite the bubble and avoid germ trouble.

• Chanting with cheerleaders at basketball games: "Jump, Randy, jump way up there!" "Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate?" "Sink it, Leon, sink it!" (I was always pleased that the pretty girls knew my name, but I didn't need more eyes looking at me when I was shooting free throws. Still, it was part of the ritual: Walk to the line, get the ball, wait for the cheerleaders to finish, dribble twice, shoot.)

• Getting the chant of grade school girls learning the cheerleading cadence at recess outside the kindergarten room stuck in my head: "Rock 'em, sock 'em, beat Burdett!"

A photo I like: No. 12

[November 25]   One of the icons of 10th Street in Great Bend was the Jayhawker Motel.

Its red sign with the neon lamps always attracted my attention and in a lot of ways symbolized "old" Great Bend and highway travel along U.S. 56.

The landmark motel was bulldozed not long ago, but the sign was rescued and has a new home at the Barton County Historical Museum in Great Bend.

The KKK and the WCTU

[November 24]   Pawnee Rock State Park has long been the park of choice for family excursions and class picnics. Some of the park's visitors, however, have come from the national headlines.

Sheila Sutton Schmidt wrote about newsmakers in her 1986 book "Pawnee Rock: A Brief History of the Rock":

Ku-Klux Klan

"A Ku-Klux Klan group in the Golden Belt area met a few times on Pawnee Rock. Local residents were very much disturbed about that kind of group using The Rock. They made their displeasure known. The Ku-Klux Klan ceased meeting on The Rock."

Famous Visitor at Pawnee Rock

"Among the many famous persons who have visited The Rock during its long history was Carrie Nation."

There aren't any specifics about the dates of these events. I'd love to see how the city's residents "made their displeasure known" over the KKK. It might also be fun to learn how warmly Kansas' own queen of temperance was welcomed, although it can be pointed out that Pawnee Rock did have a chapter of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, according to old Pawnee Rock Heralds.

Thanksgiving

[November 23]   Hey, what are you doing here? You should be with your family and friends, watching football.

But since you are here, I'd like to thank you for visiting our site today.

It's Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for family and friends, health and wealth (such as it is). I'm thankful also for having this forum for writing about Pawnee Rock.

Over the 10 months that PawneeRock.org has been a living organism, I've gotten to know many new people and have become reacquainted with lots of old friends from Pawnee Rock. I can't begin to tell you how much I've learned about our hometown, and I've made it a point to share all I can.

I am grateful to everyone who has contributed to PawneeRock.org by sending photos, stories, ideas, and corrections, or simply by being one of our readers from across the country.

I'm writing this directly to you: Thanks.

Time on their hands

[November 22]   My dad, Elgie, has been an enthusiastic collector: stamps, iron wheels, snakeskins, license tags, padlocks, rocks, newspapers, barbed wire. When he and Betty moved to Great Bend, that all was sold or distributed to the family.

Dad wasn't the only collector in Pawnee Rock. His friend Chet Spreier was just like him.

Chet and his wife lived on the south edge of town just east of Centre Street. They had a white house with a chain-link fence and shrubs in a neat yard, and the free-standing garage had a carport.

My, what a treasure chest that garage was. Tables and desks were loaded with bowls, figurines, books, knives, pulleys, and whatever else was best kept indoors. From hooks under the carport roof hung chairs and planters.

I didn't know Chet very well. When Dad dropped by Chet's place (I think Dad did some carpentry for Chet), I would wander off to look at stuff while they talked. Chet seemed to like that.

To many folks, my Dad's shop and basement, and Chet's garage, might have looked like single-family junkyards. To a guy with a little time on his hands, however, these places were an unending source of "the way things used to be." Chet and my dad went through life doing what I suspect most of us wish we could -- pulling together the things that interested them.

Aside from whether any of it had money value, each bridle and bowl and chair was, in the right hands, a memory tool.

Ask my dad what it was like growing up on his farm, and he'll make a pretty bland answer. But when he picks up a gadget from those days, the stories flow like windmill water.

I appreciate the idea that a couple of guys thought enough of their journeys that they kept as many souvenirs as they could.

What's in your basement?

30 shopping days left: December 21 -- the best day of the year -- is dashing madly toward us. Sure, it's the shortest day of the year and often gets lost in the holiday rush. Every day after that for six months, however, is longer than the one before it.

Fists and Fords

Many of our grade-school fights were in this yard west of the Mennonite parsonage. A tall hedge next to the house used to give us privacy.

[November 21]   In my grade school class, there were three choices: Ford, Chevy, or Plymouth. You chose one and stuck with it, no matter who hit you.

Todd Bright picked Ford, because the Brights drove Fords. Tim Barker sided with Plymouth (his brother drove one), and I completed the triangle with Chevy (we had one).

I suppose it's how preteens test their antlers. Maybe we were looking for reasons to fight, and the irrational choice of auto manufacturer gave us our cause to rally around. If it hadn't been cars, it would have been something else.

The grades above ours had fistfighters, and they were a lot meaner than we were. Theirs were the fights held behind the school, far from the possible intervention of parents. My class -- especially Todd, Tim, Chuck Moore, Andrew Stimatze, DeWayne Davidson, and even I -- chose a more public arena: the vacant lot west of the Mennonite parsonage, less than a block from school.

I'd like to say, from the safe distance of a few decades, that everyone feared my cunning and bloodlust. Actually, I was at a loss at how to handle bullies and was often chased home with grass stains on my back.

But it's amazing how the shifting alliances of boyhood work. One afternoon Todd and I decided we'd pretend to split up our on-again friendship in an effort to hoodwink Andrew into going somewhere so we could beat him up. Starting in a couple of days -- and for several weeks -- Todd and Andrew ganged up on me instead.

And then one afternoon Todd and I were walking home together past the Rices' place, and Todd said something like, "Do you think we can call off our pretend war now?"

From then on to graduation, we were generally friends. To some degree, it may have been a matter of the lifelong Pawnee Rock kids hanging together; the ones who arrived in, say, second grade never really were let into the club. It's not something we agreed on, but it is something I recognize now.

All in all, we boys knocked off the fighting. There were better ways to impress girls. I assume that's true; something worked for the other guys.

The self-inflicted tension over cars, however, never really went away. When I was a junior in high school, Mom and Dad agreed to buy me (and ostensibly Cheryl) a new car. I wanted a Chevy, of course. Dad told me they were getting me a Mustang, the most Fordish Fix Or Repair Daily car of all. I know he saw my crestfallen face as I slunk down the stairs.

But then the folks surprised me.

They bought me a Plymouth.

Worth your time: Pawnee Rock's Cheryl Unruh has been honored by having a piano CD, Flyover People, named after her website. You can listen to the music, by Elizabeth Middleton, who is one of our occasional readers on PawneeRock.org.

Finding bits of history

[November 20]   Last summer Charlie Robison found an old store token in the ground -- a gift that may have lain underfoot in Pawnee Rock for 80 years.

I bet we all dream of discovering treasure of one kind or another; I certainly do. Up north, I look for the gleam of gold along the Eagle River; near Pawnee Rock, I'm always on the lookout for Kansas diamonds and petrified wood in the Arkansas River bed. On the farm, I watch for square nails. In boxes of old family goods, letters and special mementos are like gold.

Really, though, it doesn't have to be an object. Ask your 70-year-old neighbor what Pawnee Rock was like in the 1940s and 1950s:

• Where did she bank?
• What was on the grocery shelves?
• Where did the family buy gasoline?
• Who was the doctor?
• How were the school lunches downtown?

There are a hundred questions and a thousand answers. Those are the real gold of Pawnee Rock.

Charlie Robison's discovery of the D.R. Logan store token certainly was a bit of luck. But, you know, it happened because Charlie had his eyes open.

Red boots in the snow

[November 19]   When snow comes to Pawnee Rock, it rarely stays long -- but kids use every moment they can.

For me, going outside meant putting on a hat and coat and wedging my feet into red rubber boots. I think I wore my regular shoes inside the boots, but it may have just been my stocking feet. The boots had no clasps; instead, they had a small elastic loop that I pulled tight around a button on the outward side.

The snows back then were deeper and more frequent than they are now, and we kids didn't seem to mind too much if we got our jeans and socks wet when we sledded or built snow forts or threw snowballs. My boots rubbed my jeans or they rubbed my shins and calves, depending on how well my jeans stayed inside my boots. That spelled trouble before bedtime, when the hot bath water irritated my chafed legs so much that one night I locked the door and only pretended to get into the tub.

Today I have boots for every occasion: short and tall hiking boots, felt-lined boots for those minus-20 days, ski boots, bootlike indoor slippers, fishing boots, and possibly even still a pair of cowboy boots. But none of these boots make me feel as grown up as my first pair of heavy black galoshes with the metal fold-over clasps.

I don't think I'd ever want to wear anything like those red rubber boots again, but every winter I miss the innocent fun they represent.

Quarter update: Seven weeks ago, on October 1, I complained that Kansas quarters are hard to come by. I've made a game of it now. Sometimes I'll even run a $10 bill through the change dispenser at work just to see whether there's any good stuff amid the Colorados and Kentuckys. The payoff: I have gotten exactly one Kansas quarter.

Football: Having watched the play-by-play of the Kansas-Kansas State football game Saturday on my computer, I must say that we're lucky to have good football teams nearby. By that I mean Nebraska and Oklahoma.

A photo I like: No. 11

[November 18]   This dresser stood next to a north-facing window in my aunt's bedroom upstairs in Otis and Lena Unruh's farmhouse, built in 1906. The drawers were full of greeting cards, sewing notions, and women's clothing, and over the years the top accumulated a few Christmas decorations that never made it back into the big storeroom. When we cousins were young, we often spent the night in this room. I took this photo in 1974, when I was in high school and we rarely stayed at the farm anymore.

This shot appeals to me because, first of all, it's a documentary record of family furniture in a house that no longer exists. Second, the grievous overexposure I gave the shot suffuses it with the hazy look that so well suits long-ago memories.

How Pawnee Rock voted

[November 17]   I was looking up the Nov. 7 Pawnee Rock votes this week, with the help of Barton County clerk Donna Zimmerman, and discovered a few things.

But first the obvious: Dean Lakin swept to victory in the race for Pawnee Rock Township clerk. Congratulations, Dean.

I was surprised how closely Barton County's voting followed Pawnee Rock's. With the exception of the race for attorney general, where local voters went big for incumbent Phill Kline, results were fairly similar.

And if Bill Wolf wins the recount for the District 112 seat, he can thank Pawnee Rock voters. The township gave him a 37-vote margin.

Following are the results of the township clerk, statewide, and the House races. (I left out uncontested races for various court and county commission posts.) Within the next week or so, I'll also put these in the city government section of PawneeRock.org, where previous races already appear.

In addition to the Pawnee Rock vote totals and percentages, I added the results for all of Barton County, for our neighbor Pawnee County, and for all of Kansas. I hope you enjoy stats as much as I do.

PR Township Clerk	PR votes	PR %
Dean Lakin (Rep)	99	97.06
Write-in	3	2.94
Total	102
U.S. Representative	PR votes	PR %	Barton %	Pawnee %	Kansas %
John Doll (Dem)	26	23.64	17	16	20
Jerry Moran (Rep)	79	71.82	82	83	79
Sylvester Cain (Ref)	5	4.55	1	1	1
Total	110
Governor	PR votes	PR %	Barton %	Pawnee %	Kansas %
Kathleen Sebelius (Dem)	61	53.98	55	58	58
Jim Barnett (Rep)	50	44.25	44	41	41
Carl Kramer (Lib)	1	.88	1	1	1
Richard Lee Ranzau (Ref)	1	.88	1	0	1
Total	113
Secretary of State	PR votes	PR %	Barton %	Pawnee %	Kansas %
David Haley (Dem)	32	28.83	22	24	32
Ron Thornburg (Rep)	66	59.46	74	74	64
Rob Hodgkinson (Lib)	9	8.11	2	1	3
Joseph L. Martin (Ref)	4	3.60	2	1	2
Total	111
Attorney General	PR votes	PR %	Barton %	Pawnee %	Kansas %
Paul Morrison (Dem)	61	57.01	48	53	58
Phill Kline (Rep)	46	42.99	52	47	42
Total	107
Treasurer	PR votes	PR %	Barton %	Pawnee %	Kansas %
Larry Wilson (Dem)	38	33.93	26	27	36
Lynn Jenkins (Rep)	74	66.07	74	73	64
Total	112
Commissioner of Insurance	PR votes	PR %	Barton %	Pawnee %	Kansas %
Bonnie Sharp (Dem)	22	20.56	21	22	33
Sandy Praeger (Rep)	77	71.96	76	75	63
Patrick Wilbur (Lib)	8	7.48	3	3	4
Total	107
State Representative District 112	PR votes	PR %	Barton %	Pawnee %	Kansas %
Marty Keenan (Dem)	43	38.05	50		50
William M. Wolf (Rep)	70	61.95	50		50
Total	113
Board of Education	PR votes	PR %	Barton %	Pawnee %	Kansas %
Jack Wempe (Dem)   Seat 7	57	53.77	57		49
Ken R. Willard (Rep)   Seat 7	49	46.23	43		51
Tim Cruz (Dem)   Seat 5				34	36
Sally Cauble (Rep)   Seat 5				66	65

Ruby Wilson, 85

[November 16]   Many of us who lived in Pawnee Rock or went to school there -- more precisely, those who ate lunch in the cafeteria -- will remember the cheerful Ruby Wilson.

Ruby died Monday at a nursing home in Kingman. She was 85. She and Willard were the parents of Lynn, Faye, and Sharol. Willard, our town's welder, died in 1993. The family had lived in the square house -- painted an exotic pink -- a block east of the school.

Her funeral is at 10 a.m. Saturday at Beckwith Mortuary in Larned, and she'll be buried in the Pawnee Rock cemetery. Obituary

Give me no static

[November 16]   Kansas may well be part of the Great American Desert, but that's not because of summer. For pure humidity-sucking dryness, winter is where the action is.

Despite the hot winds from the southwest, western Kansas' summer air still packs a lot of humidity, relatively. Not too far to the east, the air on the other side of I-35 will leave you dripping.

In the winter, however, western Kansas' humorless air will parch anything left outdoors and half the things hiding indoors. It's the perfect atmosphere for drying floral arrangements and your nasal passages.

When I was in college in the late 1970s, I worked a set of summer and winter breaks for the paper in Hays. Sure, I flirted with heatstroke a couple of times in July (who doesn't?), but the following winter is what finally put the fear of nature in me. I pulled in to a filling station along 13th one windy January afternoon. When I began to unlock my gas cap, a spark jumped an inch from the key to the cap.

That's more static than I care to live with. I left Hays the next week, and I haven't been back in the winter since. Why tempt fate?

Clinging to the map

[November 15]   I was flipping through an atlas in search of something else when I started looking at the towns in Greater Pawnee Rock:

Dundee. Heizer. Timken. Sanford. Olmitz. Albert. Radium, Seward, and Hudson.

Those are the big towns, compared to:

Ray. Zook. Frizell. Schaffer. Dent. Dartmouth. Ash Valley. Vaughn.

Each town was founded with big hopes -- speculators seeking money, shopkeepers seeking trade, elevators seeking grain, families seeking companionship. We all know somebody from one of these towns, most of which are on the verge of disappearing.

It turned out, I guess, that most of the residents were like me and my atlas: Just stopped by on the way to somewhere else.

Class BB basketball: Speaking of towns that used to be, the Hutchinson News ran a story in Tuesday's paper about Class BB boys basketball.

In a story with the headline Glory Days, Amy Bickel of the News wrote: "Only a game? Maybe. But for these small towns -- many communities whose schools have long been closed and consolidated -- it was those Tuesday and Friday gym lights that brought residents together, said Steve Farney, who wrote the book Title Towns! Class BB Boys Basketball Champions of Kansas."

Farney, according to Bickel, played at Wilson and worked two years on his 100-page book: "Title Towns chronicles 17 championship teams during the Class BB era, from 1952 through 1968. It gives game-by-game summaries and the unusual events that surrounded the champions and their run for the title."

I haven't seen the book, but it sounds like a lot of fun and I'll have to scrounge up a copy. Pawnee Rock, as you remember, advanced to the semifinals in the 1967 Class BB tournament in Dodge City.

Janice Unruh Beougher: The Great Bend Tribune today reports the death of Janice Unruh Beougher, 71. She graduated from Pawnee Rock High School in the early 1950s and became a psychologist in Hutchinson. She was the daughter of the Rev. Galen and Doris Nairn Unruh; he was the minister of the New Jerusalem Church. Her funeral will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at the New Jerusalem Church in Pawnee Rock. Obituary

Listening to the river break

[November 14]   The last thing our Scout troop did before settling in for the night was raid the Slaviks' pasture for firewood.

We were camping on a sandbar immediately downstream of the Pawnee Rock Bridge two miles from town. It's not where we boys would have liked to camp -- too much traffic -- but we had a new scoutmaster and that's where he wanted to camp.

It was a January night, crystal clear and windless. We had spent the day skating in our black rubber boots on the layer of ice over the shallow Arkansas, and as the sky darkened we unrolled our cotton sleeping bags on the gravel for our first winter campout. This was before the days of miracle insulating fibers, practically before the days of nylon, and we were wearing cotton jeans and cotton socks and cotton gloves and cotton longjohns. But the temperature wasn't expected to get below 10, and we figured we'd tough it out.

The scoutmaster, though, was getting cold feet. So we conducted our tree raid, his bluff against the chill.

With our pickup load of cottonwood from the Slaviks' riverside pasture, we built raging bonfires and got ourselves heated before we slid into our cold bags. Doug Flick would make a joke, and the rest of us junior high kids would giggle because he was a lot braver with his language than we were. While we laughed ourselves warm, the scoutmaster and a couple of dads sat under the bridge by their own fire, talking and drinking coffee.

Sound on a winter night carries well, and we had a full symphony to carry us off to sleep. Farm dogs and coyotes barked and howled, 18-wheelers growled into Pawnee Rock and back out, and we especially heard the ice crackle as the river pushed and pulled at it.

Once I had identified every sound, I pulled my head into my sleeping bag. As the minutes slipped into the darkness, I fell asleep to the ticking of the Arkansas.

We dozed until midnight. Using some internal thermometer of his own, that's when our scoutmaster decided it was too cold for us. We had to get out of our bags -- hard enough to do in the morning -- and pack up with freezing fingers. We were dropped at our houses by 1 a.m., reeking of campfire smoke.

That was our scoutmaster's last camping trip with us.

Adults come and go, cottonwood branches burn to ashes, and now even the river is gone. The river ice, however, crackles as purely in my memory as it did along that sandbar 35 winters ago.

Kansas' Capitol: When's the last time you walked through the statehouse in Topeka? I bet it has been too long -- so take this tour with photographer Dave Leiker.

Pawnee Rock's first flag

[November 13]   OK, trivia fans. How many stars were on the first U.S. flag planted on Pawnee Rock?

The first flag -- and reportedly the second U.S. flag flown over Kansas Territory -- was left by Colonel Alexander Doniphan on July 13, 1846. Doniphan was on his way down the Santa Fe Trail to fight in the 1846-48 Mexican War, which was over Mexico's refusal to sell California and New Mexico to the United States. At the time, the Santa Fe trade route was only 25 years old.

There were 28 stars on that flag. The most recent star was for Texas, which had been absorbed in 1845.

A few days ago, we had a photo of a marker honoring one of Doniphan's soldiers who died on the Rock in 1846 and was buried nearby. It's in the gallery now.

Here's a bit more history, taken from "Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Embracing Events, Institutions, Industries, Counties, Cities, Towns, Prominent Persons, etc." The book was published in 1912, and you can find the following excerpt (and a lot more) on the Kansas State Library's wonderful Blue Skyways site.

Doniphan's Expedition. -- In May, 1846, Gov. Edwards of Missouri requested Col. Alexander W. Doniphan, a lawyer of Liberty, to assist him in raising troops in the western counties of the state for volunteer service in the war with Mexico, and he acceded to the request. The enthusiasm of the people was high and in a week or so the eight companies of men had volunteered, which, upon organization at Fort Leavenworth, formed the famous First Missouri mounted volunteers. This regiment formed a portion of the column known as the Army of the West, commanded by that chivalric soldier, Gen. Stephen W. Kearney. All of the troops rendezvoused at Fort Leavenworth. The volunteers having undergone a few weeks' drilling, the Army of the West commenced its march to Santa Fe on June 26, 1846, and on Aug. 18 following Gen. Kearney's army entered Santa Fe without firing a gun.

In November of the same year, Col. Doniphan was ordered with his regiment into the country of the Navajo Indians, on the western slope of the Rocky mountains, to overawe or chastise them. He completed this movement with great celerity. His soldiers toiled through snows three feet deep on the crests and eastern slope of the mountains. Having accomplished the object of the expedition by concluding a satisfactory treaty with the Indians, he returned to the Rio del Norte, and on the banks of that stream collected and refreshed his men, preparatory to effecting what was then intended to be a junction with Gen. Wool. He was here reinforced by two batteries of light artillery. In Dec., 1846, he turned his little column to the south and put it in motion towards Chihuahua. In quick succession followed his brilliant and decisive victories at Brazito and Sacramento, the capture of Chihuahua, the plunge of his little army into the unknown country between Chihuahua and Saltillo, and its emergence in triumph at the latter city. After his arrival at Saltillo, inasmuch as the period of enlistment of his men would soon expire, his regiment was ordered home. The march was continued to Matamoras, where the regiment embarked for New Orleans. The men were discharged at New Orleans and arrived at home about July 1, 1847.

The march of this regiment from Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fe, Chihuahua, Saltillo and Matamoras -- a distance of near 3,600 miles -- is called Doniphan's Expedition, and in a measure is germane to Kansas history. There was no road, not even a path, leading from Fort Leavenworth into the regular Santa Fe trail. The army, therefore, steered its course southwesterly, with the view of intersecting the main Santa Fe trail, at or near the Narrows, 65 miles west of Independence. In accomplishing this, many deep ravines and creeks with high and rugged banks were encountered. The heat was often excessive; the grass was tall and rank; the earth in many places so soft that the heavily loaded wagons would sink almost up to the axle upon the level prairie, and the men were frequently compelled to dismount and drag them from the mire with their hands. Hence the march was, of necessity, both slow and tedious.

About noon on June 30, they arrived upon the banks of the Kansas river, which they crossed in boats without loss or accident, and encamped for the night on the west bank among the friendly Shawnees. On July 1 the troops continued their march in a southwesterly direction, to intersect the road leading from Independence to Santa Fe. After a toilsome march of some 15 miles, without a guide, through the tall prairie grass and matted pea-vines, sometimes directing their course to the southward and sometimes to the westward, they at length struck upon the old Santa Fe trace, and encamped for the night near Black Jack, in what is now Douglas county. Provisions (chiefly bread-stuffs, salt, etc.) were conveyed in wagons, and beef-cattle driven along for the use of the men. The animals subsisted entirely by grazing. By July 5 the troops had reached Council Grove, now the county seat of Morris county, Kan., one of the most important stations on the old trail. Advancing about 16 miles further they encamped near the Diamond Springs.

On July 9, they arrived upon the banks of the Little Arkansas, in what is now Rice county. The evening of July 12 found them at Walnut creek, in what is now Barton county, and the following day brought them to the noted Pawnee rock, near which place they diverged from the main Santa Fe road and followed the Arkansas river to a point near the present city of Pueblo, Col., where they crossed into the enemy's country.

Then ensued what proved to be one of the most remarkable military campaigns in American history. The principal engagement was the battle of Sacramento, which one writer says "was the most wonderful ever fought by American arms." Col. Doniphan's men attacked a fortified position held by troops outnumbering them nearly five to one, and in speaking of their charge at that place the same writer says, "It has never been equaled in all the annals of the world's warfare." The State of Kansas has honored Col. Doniphan by naming a county and a town for him, and the State of Missouri named the seat of Ripley county in his honor.

Source: Pages 532-534 from volume I of Kansas: a cyclopedia of state history, embracing events, institutions, industries, counties, cities, towns, prominent persons, etc. ... / with a supplementary volume devoted to selected personal history and reminiscence. Standard Pub. Co. Chicago : 1912. 3 v. in 4. : front., ill., ports.; 28 cm. Vols. I-II edited by Frank W. Blackmar.

Gary Kroeker: The obituary for Pawnee Rock native Gary Kroeker, who was killed in a traffic accident last week near Wichita, appeared Sunday (November 12) in the Great Bend Tribune

Cliff Tarpy, write home

[November 12]   Who here knows Cliff Tarpy, the writer?

My wife dug up a copy of the September 1985 National Geographic, the one featuring "Home to Kansas." It had been saved by my dad, and somewhere along the line I had stuffed it into a box.

Dad also had tucked a newspaper clipping into the two-page spread where the story starts -- maybe you remember the magazine's photo of a lightning bolt striking behind a metal granary in a field of golden wheat. The clipping, from the Tribune, says Tarpy grew up in Pawnee Rock and quotes his aunt, Gladys Reeder Frey of 2017 Cleveland in Great Bend.

"Cliff's grandfather was a farmer, (but) he also wrote for the Great Bend paper and was a piano and organ teacher and technician. He tuned pianos for Great Bend concerts," Mrs. Frey said.

Tarpy's grandparents, Charles and Maude Reeder, are buried in the Pawnee Rock township cemetery.

Tarpy gets into the piece with three "why you should read this article" paragraphs and then lays out some of his Kansas credentials: "As a youth building grain silos, I was baked brown by the generous Kansas sunshine and whipped by the prairie winds. I've witnessed the grandeur of an afternoon storm, the sultry air hanging beneath a glowering purple sky that spits devil's forks of lightning, holds its breath, then sends its thunderous voice rolling over the plain."

It does sound like he knows the place, doesn't it.

The rest of the 32-page article lets other Kansans talk about their lives and the geography that affects them. The photos are by Cotton Coulson.

The old Tribune newspaper clipping says Tarpy got his journalism start at Wichita State University in the 1960s. WSU remembered him in 2000.

Cliff Tarpy, if you're out there, please send us a photo and a few paragraphs about your Pawnee Rock childhood.

A photo I like: No. 10

[November 11]   This is my impression of a perfect Kansas sunset scene, Monument Rocks south of Oakley. The colors are not exactly correct, but sometimes they feel this way. I made this photo on my driving trip from Pawnee Rock to Denver in August 2006.

Veterans Day: I was never able to reconcile how a pacifist church like the Mennonites could have men in the service, but we did. My grandpa, Otis Unruh, was in the Army in World War I and my Uncle Laramie served in the Korean War. There were many others from Pawnee Rock who put their lives on the line, and some who have done it recently in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As much as we'd like there to be peace, hard choices have to be made when the dogs of war have been loosed. So, to the men and women who have chosen this path of risk and sacrifice: Thank you.

Gary Kroeker, class of '69

[November 10]   Larry Smith wrote Thursday afternoon from Wichita with "a note of sadness."

One of Larry's classmates in the Pawnee Rock High School class of '69, Gary Kroeker, was killed about 5 p.m. Wednesday in a motorcycle/car accident. A 16-year-old pulled out into traffic and Gary's motorcycle struck the vehicle, the police said.

Gary was 55 and lived in Towanda.

A short story on the Wichita Eagle's website said the accident occurred at K-254 and Rock Road, on the northeast side of Wichita.

With his younger siblings, Craig and Karen, Gary grew up on their well-kept farm a mile and half west of the salt plant. Their parents are the late Marvin and Evelyn Kroeker.

The Kroekers were mainstays in the Pawnee Rockers 4-H club. I remember Gary as one of the athletic "big kids" who was always kind to us younger students.

(I thank my sister, Cheryl, for scanning Gary's 1969 yearbook photo and sending it to us.)

Aroma therapy

[November 9]   My sons asked me what a skunk smells like.

We were reading "Hatchet," Gary Paulsen's tale about Brian, a 13-year-old New York boy who survives a small-plane crash in the Canadian woods and makes do with his wits and his sole possession, a hatchet.

One night a skunk crept into Brian's shelter and dug up his cache of turtle eggs. Brian threw sand at the skunk and was predictably rewarded:

"In the tiny confines of the shelter the effect was devastating. The thick sulfurous rotten odor filled the small room, heavy, ugly, and stinking. The corrosive spray that hit his face seared into his lungs and eyes, blinding him."

That description mostly satisfied the boys, who have never savored a skunk because there aren't any where we live. Until you've smelled one yourself, it's impossible to understand the horror skunks bring to any encounter. The oppressive, hateful yet fascinating stench is unlike any other aroma in nature. It's more cloying than used disposable diapers baking in a ditch in summer. It's more powerful than a pig farm, more penetrating than ammonia.

There's simply nothing good about a skunk. Ask any farm dog.

The next time I have the boys in Kansas, we're not going to leave until their curiosity is satisfied. I just hope they never need to buy tomato juice by the case.

Running with Jim Ryun

[November 8]   When I was a grade-schooler, I wanted to be as good as Jim Ryun. This was back in 1967 and '68, and he had recently set his second world record in the mile run.

In our around-the-block relay races over by the Brights' house I tried to imitate the way I had seen him run in photos in the Hutch News' sports section. My friends -- the Bright kids, the Bowmans, Virgil Ritchie, Ray Tutak, and others -- shouted at me to straighten up and run right and above all run faster.

But Ryun did OK with his wild-arm style. He was the first high-schooler to break 4 minutes in the mile, he set two world records -- including 3:51.1 in 1967 -- and he ran in the Olympics. He was the pride of Wichita East High School, and more than any other person he shaped my athletic years.

(Let us not forget Wes Santee, the remarkable KU and 1952 Olympic runner from Ashland. But he was before my time.)

When I was a KU sophomore and the campus sports correspondent for the Topeka Capital-Journal, I was introduced to Ryun in the Capital's darkroom, where he was chatting with Rich Clarkson, a world-famous photographer who worked there. Ryun was tall and handsome and graceful -- everything you'd want in a childhood idol.

Can you imagine going through your adult life, as he has, always being pointed at as the guy who was once the world's fastest miler? Is it a burden, or is it a joy, to be known for something you never will do that well again? What do you do next? Obviously, Ryun kept running, lately against people with increasingly sharp elbows.

As you all have heard, Congressman Jim Ryun lost his race for re-election yesterday. I know he wasn't everybody's cup of tea and I don't think he and I would agree on many issues, but I was a little sad to see the results.

I'm going to remember instead how he inspired me to run mile after mile, and how one afternoon thirty years ago my hero shook my hand and wished me success.

Hometown news, 1920s

[November 7]   It was news in the mid-1920s, according to various editions of the Pawnee Rock Herald:

"Mrs. Earl Logan has been suffering from a very severe attack of hay fever the past few weeks."

The Pawnee Rock State Bank showed a balance sheet total of $240,790. Its own building was valued at $7,000, and the bank owned $23,516.80 of other real estate.

Mrs. L.L. Gilbert lost two children -- Lois Joyce and Keith -- in 10 days to "infection dirrhoea."

In baseball, Pawnee Rock beat Ray 6 to 3. (For those who have forgotten Ray, it was 6 miles south and 1 east of Pawnee Rock, or 4 miles west of Radium.)

The Herald, with L.G. Hixon at the helm, cost $2 per year and was published every Thursday. The preceding owner was Grant Lippincott, and in his years the paper charged $1.50 a year or $1 if you paid in advance.

"The Ed Knocke family north of town are kept pretty closely at home these days with the measles, according to reports."

The City Drug Store, phone 55, advertised Sweeney's Poison Wheat to dispatch rats, mice, gophers, and other pests: "No matter what else you may have tried, be sure to try a box of 'Sweeney's Poison Wheat' and you will be delighted with the results. It is not harmful to children."

Paul Gilbert Investments and Insurance: "Kansas Grows the Best Wheat in the World. Are we not in the heart of Kansas?"

J.L. Morris' store, phone 37: Printed fabric. Canned fruits and vegetables, 10 cents.

"Insurance. Fire, hail, wind, lightning, tornado, & etc. All the best policies written in companies of highest standing and years of experience. Your business solicited. N.N. Converse, Agent. Pawnee Rock, Kansas."

"Crab apples at $1 per bushel. Call Frank T. Dirks, phone 1064, Pawnee Rock."

Say the truth

[November 6]   I was introduced, at a distance, to Richard Nixon in 1968. Robert Kennedy had been assassinated in June, and our sixth-grade class was sorting out the candidates we'd vote for in our straw poll that November.

"Now that Bobby Kennedy is dead," our reasoning went, "Nixon's the one we should vote for." Our grade-school understanding of politics was limited to name recognition, and we in bedrock Kansas were unlikely to vote for someone named "Hubert" or for George Wallace, whom even we recognized as a racist.

Well, Nixon was the one that November and again on November 7, 1972, and without him I wouldn't have been able to learn about political intrigue by sitting at the gas station with June McFann and watching hours of Watergate hearings. As a student at Macksville High, I annoyed my classmates and teachers with my lonely yet repetitious declarations that Nixon had broken laws and should be removed from the presidency.

On a sunny day in June 1974 I attended the dedication of the Santa Fe Trail Center west of Larned. Representative Keith Sebelius made a speech. Wally Hickel -- Claflin native, former and future Alaska governor, and Nixon's first Interior secretary -- also spoke, as did our first-term senator, Bob Dole.

Hickel was especially famous for being fired for having suggested that Nixon listen to young people after the Kent State shootings. Dole, having been the chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1971 to 1973, was as close to Nixon as you could get and not be his underling or financier.

Pawnee Rock's mayor, Dorothy Bowman, was at the ceremony as a reporter for the Great Bend Tribune. She took a photo of me thanking Dole for attending a concert in which I had played the day before in Topeka. He in his suit and I in my shirtsleeves chatted pleasantly, and the senator went off to shake other hands.

A few minutes later, I worked up my courage and approached him again. I caught his eye, squared my shoulders, and said: "Senator, President Nixon should be impeached."

I like to think that the senator did not expect to hear that in Pawnee County. His face showed it.

"Don't you think we should hear all of the facts first?" the senator asked.

Nixon told his version for two more months, and then he resigned. Two years later, Bob Dole became the Republican vice presidential nominee. Because he heard me out, I voted for him in 1976 and have remained his fan.

Once I started my journalism career in 1975, I gave up many of my rights of free speech. That's part of our tradition of appearing to be the equal-handed purveyors of the facts. In all honesty, I have opinions. I do my best, nevertheless, to present a balanced report with the selection of stories I put in the newspaper.

But in 1974, I could still publicly speak my conscience. I am proud that on June 2 I stood before one of the most powerful men in America and said the truth.

Tomorrow, you and I and everyone else can say what needs to be said. If enough of us vote, they'll listen.

Made in Kansas

[November 5]   Like all good Kansans living away, I'm partial to products made in the Sunflower State.

What would a camping trip be without a Gott cooler, with burgers cooked on a two-burner Coleman stove? Without Gott and Coleman, I might as well drive downtown and eat at Pizza Hut.

If I ate at home, it would be under a Dala horse from Lindsborg. Then I might go out in the garage and admire our pop-up camper, which carries the Coleman insignia (but was made in Pennsylvania).

When I fly to remote lakes, I travel in float-equipped Cessnas. When I fly to the Lower 48, it's usually in a 737 partly put together in Wichita. I fill my car with gas that comes out of Alaska's North Slope and is turned into fuel at a refinery owned by Flint Hills Resources of Wichita.

Those products are all dandy. But this winter, I'm giving a real test to a product made in Kansas. It's the Falcon brush/scraper with "push-pull scraping action," manufactured by Hopkins Mfg. Corp. in Emporia.

As you can imagine, a guy in Alaska gets to know his scraper pretty well over the five or six months of winter. I'm putting a lot of trust in this red and black plastic tool, and I'll let you know in a month or two whether it gets the Alaskansan stamp of approval.

Or you might test it for yourself, in case it's ever frosty where you live. My wife bought mine at Wal-Mart.

I need the scraper to perform well: in the morning on the way to work, in the evening when I get off work, and tonight when I'm headed to Pizza Hut.

Follow the money: One of my favorite websites is opensecrets.org. It tracks donations given to candidates and political action committees.

For example: Curious about where Jerry Moran gets his money? Once you have this page, click on the links on the left side of his page to sort his donations by category.

There are a few donors from Pawnee Rock and Larned, and a bundle from Great Bend. Click on the "Who Gives" tab and then "Donor Lookup" and see how much people you know have donated.

A photo I like: No. 9

[November 4]   The La Crosse Drive-In movie screen has beaten the elements along U.S. 183 for maybe 50 years. When I worked in Hays in the 1970s and drove past here a lot, I could still tell where the parking and projection house/concession stand had been, but now that's all gone with the wind. The perfect movie to watch here would have been "Paper Moon," a black-and-white film that was filmed nearby in the early 1970s.

Revival politics

[November 3]   The candidates lean over their lecterns, warning of eternal terror and lakes of fire for our country if we don't hew to their political scripture. They demand that their listeners come forward to save the soul of the party and that they bring money.

It reminds me of the religious revivals I went to as a youth.

The city auditorium in Great Bend, and once in Larned, was on these occasions full of fire and brimstone, no nay-sayers allowed. After the sermon, the itinerant preacher called for all who hadn't been born again to come forward, and every kid went forward because each of us was genuinely either a new believer or afraid of what would be said about us in church if we didn't go. Given the highly emotional and sweaty atmosphere, maybe even the hesitant half-believed the preacher was right.

I was converted at the first revival I went to. The second and third didn't do any good at all, and I was back where I started.

As I watch political speeches in these closing days before the election, I have been both afraid and amused. As with the preachers and their here-tonight, gone-tomorrow wrath, I'll leave it this way: I'm amused that I was afraid.

In the end, fear is all those preachers were selling. Not hope, not peace, but fear.

In faith and in government, we can do better.

The garden's secrets

The rock garden in our yard

[November 2]   I had a hard time understanding what "The Secret Garden" was all about. Supposedly this book was loved by kids the world over, and it was OK to read, but to me its deeper meanings were obsured by the fact that any garden I'd ever been in was open and full of light.

But then, I grew up in Pawnee Rock instead of England. We were borne of airy lightness, not maritime gloom.

Our double lot in the middle of Pawnee Rock once had been part of the Zieber family nursery, and when Dad and Mom bought the property in the early 1950s they kept the land lush.

We had pampas grass, bamboo, lilies, lilacs, forsythia, two kinds of roses, elderberries, cherries, peaches, Kentucky coffee beans, grapes, a maple, elms, cedars, peonies, elephant ears, strawberries, irises, Virginia creeper, honeysuckle, hyacynths, tulips, and there must be some that I'm not remembering. We had a vegetable garden, too.

It was our oasis.

Here we were safe from the world. The wire and picket fences kept the back yard free of dogs, the uninvited and unwanted, and casual visitors. Shrubs and grasses created a green wall of privacy, which encouraged uninhibited play and kept Cheryl and me from wandering off.

The highlight of this landscape was a rock garden cobbled together with limestone, sandstone, river rock from Arkansas, and chunks of whatever stone Dad and Mom found on our Sunday drives. There was a homemade fountain atop it, made of clay sewer pipe, a bird bath bowl (made, I think, from one end of a steel tank), and a three- or four-armed lawn sprinkler that rotated.

Planted in this garden of Eden were yucca, prickly pears, spiderwort, daisies, and other examples of Kansas' wild flora, all plucked from ditches and fields.

Some kids had the zoo. Cheryl and I had the garden. It was alive with beetles and spiders, toads and snakes, birds and bees. I'm not saying we were geologists or entomologists or botanists, but I do think that having this world at our fingertips every afternoon and twice on Saturdays gave us a deeper understanding of our central Kansas ecology. The natural world seemed natural to us.

Perhaps we all have our secret gardens, and I wouldn't be surprised if we all need them. They may vex our spirits when the bugs get too plentiful, but gardens also restore our souls. I think my pulse slows down when I remember how I used to sit beside the rock garden with the morning sun at my back and the dense scent of bamboo in the air, using my fourth-grade imagination to explore the "caves" behind the sandstone rocks.

When I was a child, I didn't understand why it was so important to my parents to create this garden and spend so many hours tending it. Of course, I see now that they were raising vegetables, raising flowers, and raising Cheryl and me.

Halloween, and Bobby Ross' school days

[November 1]   Happy November, everyone. I hope you all made it through the night of Harry Potters, fifth-grade queens, and black-lipped Wal-Mart associates.

It was a slow night for Halloween, as silent as a cemetery, you might say. I guess it's hard to get excited about free candy on a foggy Tuesday with snow on the ground, as it was where we live. We had exactly 20 kids come calling, and two of those were our own Sam (Dracula) and Nik (Pizza Hut delivery guy). There was so little competition for candy on our big block that they each brought home between 5 and 6 pounds of candy; it was so much that we just had to weigh it.

I had decided not to be too ghoulish, so I didn't paint my face. I did, however, have a screeching, motion-detecting pumpkin on the porch, which startled most of the kids, and I stuffed a really ugly mask and suspended it from the ceiling with fishing line so that when I opened the door it would look kids in the face. The boys who said "That's not scary" felt the biggest surge of adrenaline, I think. One little bunny rabbit stood there the whole time with her pink-gloved paw spread over her open mouth. I hope she doesn't have nightmares, but she probably will if she eats all the extra candy I gave her.

Well, now that's behind us. There are 54 days of Christmas advertising ahead of us.

Bobby Ross takes us back to school: Bobby Ross has a lot of good memories about growing up in Pawnee Rock. He lived in the first Centre Street house directly north of the tennis court. And he remembers the red and green cardboard bricks in kindergarten, which makes him OK in my book.

I thought you all would enjoy reading some of his thoughts. He gave me permission to post an excerpt from his e-mail:

I lived in Pawnee Rock from the time of birth (November 19, 1973) until leaving for college in 1994. I now live in Moberly, Missouri, with my wife and three children. My parents, Fred and Joann Ross, still live in the same house I grew up in at 610 Centre Street, Pawnee Rock, Kansas.

I read that the Pawnee Rock School is for sale. That is disheartening. I grew up in the generation of Mickey Smith, Mikey Jacobs, Toby Bright, Amy Strobel, Tina Blair, and a few others that came and went. Those are the core people that I remember attending Kindergarten through 8th grade with.

I have a lot of fond memories of the school. I'm sure every class remembers the old boat that was in the Kindergarten classroom. I was the biggest of the crew so I had the privilege of pushing Mikey, Mickey, and Toby around in the thing. The girls would build their little buildings out of the green and red cardboard bricks and we would knock them down with the boat. The boat was taken away a lot because of this.

At recess we would play four square; tag on the monkey bars; soccer on the old baseball field; and run around acting like we where motorcycles. Man, what an imagination we had as youth.

In junior high, we had drafting, woodworking, sewing, cooking, band, and choir. In computer lab, the big thing was to see who could score the highest on the games Driver and Cosmic Fighter. Those were played on our new Radio Shack Tandy computers. In Science we all built model rockets; played with the static balls; and watched our instructor create fire as he poured glycerin on potassium permanganate.

Then there was football, basketball, and track. Our mascot was The Warrior. I can still remember the smell of popcorn at home basketball and football games. We played eight-man football because we didn't have enough players for eleven man. Mikey Jacobs was a speed demon. If he got to the outside he was a sure touchdown. That dude could fly. Every time I see Toby Bright he reminds me of the play where he pitched me the football and I dropped it. I thought the play was over so I reached down and picked the football up. I looked up just in time to see the other team running full speed at me, OUCH!!!

At the end of 8th grade, Toby Bright and Amy Strobel carried on their family tradition and went to Macksville High School. Mikey, Mickey, Tina, and I went on to Larned High School. We all graduated in the Class of 1992.

I came home a couple years ago to visit and walked through the empty halls of the school. I was saddened to see a pillar of my youth sitting empty. I went into the library and looked at the piles of books on the floor. I opened some up and pulled out the signature cards. I saw the names of some people I had long since forgotten and the names of others that attended the school long before me. I put the cards back in the books, closed them, and as I set them back on the floor I felt as if a huge part of my life would soon be lost.

I went into another room, and there sitting on the floor, was that old boat from my kindergarten year. Tears welled up in my eyes. My wife and then two kids looked at me and knew that the boat must have held some significant memory for me. It was so much smaller than I remembered. It's funny how things in our memories grow as we grow. I expected that boat to be 20 feet long. However, there it set no longer than maybe 4 to 5 feet and no wider than a few feet. And yet, as small as that thing was it made this 6' 7", 290 lb man tear up.

I wouldn't trade my memories of Pawnee Rock School for anything. What a blessing it would be for the school to be filled with youth again, however, I fear this will never come to pass.

I just wanted to write and share some experiences that our generation had. I think writing you was a blessing in and of itself. I remembered so many other things about Pawnee Rock School that I had forgotten. Keep up the excellent work on the website.

Sell it

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

Or tell someone happy birthday.