Inside Kansas

INSIDE KANSAS

You never know what you’ll find in the next town.

Travel around the Sunflower State slowly and deliberately and you will discover countless things that will fascinate and amaze you.

This is not a chain-store state; it’s a hometown state, with a million one-of-a kind offerings. That is the charm of Kansas.

However, because Kansas leans toward quiet treasures, it does help if you’re somewhat able to entertain yourself.

In the 365 days since Kansas Day 2007, I have visited, well, a whole bunch of places in this state, some of them with Dave along, some on my own.

One of the heart-stopping moments of the year occurred when I laid eyes on “Odyssey,” the Apollo 13 command module, in the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson. History, drama, a major motion picture – all came from that one tiny capsule.

Also in Hutch, you’ll find a half-mile-long grain elevator. It’s bigger than you think.

Far from the madding crowd, in Gove County, stands Monument Rocks, one of the state’s most impressive geological features. These odd chalk formations seem to be lost in time, alone and forgotten, out on the high plains.

In the Kansas Capitol, Larry Mills added music to a tour I took of the statehouse. While explaining history, he occasionally sang songs such as “John Brown’s Body (lies a-mouldering in the grave.)” And at one stop, he asked the tour group to sing “Home on the Range.”

Octave Chanute, a mentor to the Wright Brothers, is recognized with an up-in-the-air tribute in downtown Chanute.

In Stafford, a couple hundred jigsaw puzzles hang on the walls in the Curtis Café. These puzzles have been put together by diners and coffee drinkers.

Weir and Cherokee have brick water towers. The one in Cherokee is still in use. And painted on the water tower in Bucklin is the ace of hearts, the school mascot. “Not just any old aces – Red Aces,” Bucklin native Bryan Thompson informed me.

In this wheat state, Dave and I were surprised one November morning to find a frost-covered cotton field in McPherson County.

Kiowa County has a meteorite field and Meteorite Man Don Stimpson brought a couple 300-pound space rocks to Emporia State University for show and tell last March.

To help house Americans quickly after World War II, steel Lustron homes were constructed. Great Bend, the Lustron Capital of Kansas, still has 19 of them in use and another has been reconstructed at the Barton County Historical Museum.

A champion of the American bison, C. J. “Buffalo” Jones is remembered with a statue at the Finney County Courthouse.

Mullinville’s round barn is in excellent shape. Also at Mullinvile, for your entertainment, M.T. Liggett has painted, welded and posted political signs along the highway.

Quite a few communities still have soda fountains and we found a classic one at Clark Drug Store in Cimarron.

Route 66 nicks the southeast corner of Kansas; the famous roadway runs through Galena, Riverton and Baxter Springs.

Coronado Heights, a picnic area on a hill north of Lindsborg, has an ancient-looking, fort-like structure, built in 1936 by the Works Progress Administration.

It’s the Amelia Earhart Bridge that flies over the Missouri River at Atchison. Tile art decorates the exterior walls of a bank in Sabetha. A sign in Kinsley tells you you’re halfway between New York City and San Francisco (1,561 miles each way).

In Johnson City, an electronic bank sign scrolls the grain prices for the day. And in downtown Dodge City, there’s a Gunsmoke Street.

If you take the time to look, you’ll find something unexpected in every Kansas town, every single one of them.

You can’t help but love a place like this. Happy Kansas Day.

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Cheryl Unruh writes Flyover People, a column about Kansas topics, published every Tuesday in The Emporia Gazette. Copyright 2008 Cheryl Unruh.