By Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:
Mushroom Rock State Park, Ellsworth County
WESTBOUND, DAY ONE
This is a ol’ big state. During the first week of October, I traveled 1,080 miles and only saw a tiny bit of Kansas.
I spent five glorious days on the road, offering my “Flyover People” book to public libraries, museum gift stores, and other retail outlets.
While I had specific locations to aim for, enough to provide structure to the week, I left some room on my calendar, and on the map, to wander.
On Monday morning, I left Emporia and pointed my car west. At the I-135 rest stop between McPherson and Lindsborg, I noticed a worker at the flagpole and I paused to watch the ritual, the hooking on of the American flag, then the Kansas flag, and watched them rise against the rich blue sky.
Driving across the dam at Lake Kanopolis, I smiled as I remembered one particular Sunday drive that my family of origin had taken when I was a pipsqueak wearing pedal-pushers. Near this lake in the ‘60s was a small business called the Dam Sandwich Shop. And, as kids who weren’t allowed to cuss, my brother and I found a dozen or more ways to incorporate “Dam Sandwich Shop” into sentences. At that point our parents probably wanted to throw the (dam) kids out of the car.
I followed the sign to Mushroom Rock State Park. I hadn’t seen those stones since I was a child (it was probably on that same Dam-Sandwich-Shop-trip). As I turned a corner on the dirt road, a dozen quail flew from the ditch.
In Ellsworth, I dropped by to see some friends, Peg Britton and her daughter, Ally. Ally served a delicious potato soup with apple cobbler for dessert. After lunch, Peg gave me a driving tour of Ellsworth (pop. 2,881). It’s a pleasant community, one that is making the effort to stay current and viable.
After a stop at Wilson’s Kansas Originals Market, I followed the Post Rock Scenic Byway past Lake Wilson. Lucas is 18 miles from the main drag (I-70), but the community uses its eccentric art to bring travelers to town.
Lucas has created a fine reputation of procuring and displaying unusual art and this town is a popular tourist attraction in the state. Samuel P. Dinsmoor’s Garden of Eden started Lucas off with the tourist trade and they’ve built on that.
Two visitors from Colorado talk with Rosslyn Schultz about a tour.
I visited with Rosslyn Schultz at the Grassroots Arts Center about things that had been added since my last visit. I commented on the creativity of a woman, Kathy Ruth Neal, who had turned to woodcarving after her career as an airline stewardess.
Rosslyn smiled and agreed, “Our people, no, they do not lack imagination.”
She sent me down the street to check out the progress of Bowl Plaza. The community has had fun with their public restroom project and at one point solicited toilet seat art as a fund-raiser for the facility.
Eric Abraham
At the Flying Pig Studio and Gallery, Eric Abraham showed me one of the mosaic panels that will hang in the mens restroom at Bowl Plaza. In the mosaic, along with stones and a welder’s helmet, small toys are embedded around the mirror.
In Brant’s Meat Market, Doug Brant, third-generation owner, talked to me about his successful business. “We’ve been doing it for 88 years and are kind of getting the hang of it,” he said with a grin.
Two of his big sellers are homemade bologna and beef jerky. His specialty meat products help draw out-of-towners to Lucas. Brant said, “In a small town you have to have something a little different. If they can buy it in another place, there’s no point in them coming to see you.”
Doug Brant
Brant and I discussed the public restroom project down the street. He said the community had contacted Kohler, a company in Wisconsin that makes plumbing products, to see if they’d be willing to contribute to the town’s facilities.
Kohler complied, shipping commercial-quality stools and sinks to Lucas. And the town is very grateful. Brant said Kohler’s donation saved the community thousands of dollars.
“That was the best 44-cent stamp we ever used,” he said.
Copyright 2010 ~ Cheryl Unruh
One section of the mosaic that will be hung in Bowl Plaza
The Lucas dish at the bottom, I believe that was designed by Erika Nelson of “The World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things” fame.
She is now working very hard on a mural in Lucas and doing a fabulous job. She also just recently helped complete the new and fabulous and huge mural in Newton, KS.
The life size Carrie Nation as a which cracks me up.