Uncle Jay

While at Jay and Norma’s house the other day, I found a yearbook from the University of Arkansas School of Medicine. Here’s Jay’s photo. I don’t remember the year for certain… possibly 1968 or 1969.

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In 2003, I wrote a column about Jay. This column also aired on Kansas Public Radio:

A TALE OF TWO LANDSCAPES

My Uncle Jay is my topographical sparring partner.

We have a landscape rivalry, similar to arguing over who has the better football team.

It’s a good-natured volley between the Kansan and the Arkansan.

With his Arkansas drawl, Jay pokes fun at the flat land of Kansas and I tease him about the clutter of trees and the interference of hills in the Arkansas scenery.

My Aunt Norma, a one-time Kansas resident, referees. (Well, if you know Norma, you know that she sometimes she instigates things.)

A while back, Norma gave an oil painting to my mother that Norma had painted years before.

In the painting, an old converted, round-topped school bus sits near a tree. The remainder of the landscape is minimal: an electrical pole and line, the horizon, grass, sky.

Norma said, “Actually, Jay wanted me to get rid of the painting.”

“He thought it was too depressing. He thought it looked like…” She stopped and turned toward me. “Well… I don’t want to say it around you.”

But Norma grinned and continued, “Well, he thought it looked like Kansas.”

Jay explained, “It looks like people went out to pick wheat, their bus broke down, and they’ve lost all hope.”

See what I have to put up with?

Oh, well. We Kansans expect these jabs. That’s just part of our birthright.

Jay grew up in Arkansas and he practiced medicine in southern Missouri. Now he’s back in his home state along with Norma and my mother, all of whom are native Arkansans.

Seldom has Jay wandered across the Kansas border. For a short time their daughter lived in Hutchinson. Jay and Norma flew to visit her soon after Jay earned his pilot’s license.

Finally, Jay acknowledged one benefit to the flatness of Kansas. “Golly, the whole darned state is a landing field,” he said.

What Jay dislikes about Kansas is exactly what I love – the openness.

In the Arkansas hills, I feel confined. What I see are walls of trees. Ahead, trees. Around the curve, trees. Even at the top of a hill there’s no view—just more trees.

Now tell me, how do people who live in the hills make it through the day without a horizon? Aren’t they curious about sunrises and sunsets?

And just how do they measure time when they can’t follow a cloud all the way across the sky?

While visiting with my uncle one day, I described the book about Kansas that I’m writing and mentioned how many more pages I needed to complete it.

In a typical Jay response, he said, “If you want your book to really be like Kansas, you can just put in a lot of blank pages.”

How could I not love this guy?

Jay and I merely judge landscape on two different scales.

While I find the Arkansas hills to be claustrophobic and intimidating, to my uncle, they are comforting, they are home.

Maybe we don’t have a choice. Perhaps the land onto which we are born is as unshakable as our genes.

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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.