‘What Kansas Means to Me’

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:

Barton County

‘WHAT KANSAS MEANS TO ME’

Tom Averill knows Kansas inside and out. He knows it and he loves it.

Averill writes about our state, teaches Kansas literature, and tells stories on the radio about small town life. He’s a Kansan, one of us, now and forever, amen.

In the introduction to “What Kansas Means to me,” Averill writes, “This feeling about Kansas, this affection, this sense that Kansas represents a state of mind is an affliction I share with many Kansans.”

Averill came to Kansas as a youngster when his family moved from California in 1953. In the book’s introduction he mentioned that in those new-to-Kansas days, his family took weekend trips around the area. For me, too, and likely for others, Sunday drives were our first focused exposure to the Kansas landscape.

I’m sure many of you are familiar with Tom Averill as a writer, or perhaps with his alter ego, William Jennings Bryan Oleander. For years, Averill’s commentaries about Kansas have aired on Kansas Public Radio. He is writer-in-residence and professor of English at Washburn University.

In 1990, Averill edited “What Kansas Means to Me: Twentieth Century Writers on the Sunflower State.” After 20 years, the book remains a treasured collection of Kansas literature. It’s something I turn to time and again.

“What Kansas Means to Me” is this year’s Kansas Reads selection. Each year, a book is chosen for statewide reading and discussion. The program is sponsored by the Kansas Center for the Book and the Kansas State Library.

And for the sesquicentennial year, I can’t imagine a more appropriate book than this collection of Kansas essays, poems and illustrations.

The Emporia Public Library participates in the Kansas Reads program and will host a discussion Jan. 12 at 6:30 p.m. A limited number of copies are available at the reference desk for check-out. But even if you don’t have a chance to read the book first, this would still be a fun sesquicentennial event to attend.

The book is full of great writing. I laugh while reading William Least Heat-Moon’s essay, “The Great Kansas Passage,” in which he tells about Pennsylvania folks visiting Kansas City in 1947 — and the preparations they made for a nighttime crossing through the never-ending desolate landscape of our state.

And my favorite Denise Low essay is in the book. In “Touching the Sky,” Low writes, “The unspeakable scale of distance — as far as the eye can see and then farther still — challenges the utmost abilities of the mind.”

“Kansas: A Puritan Survival” is a piece written in 1922 by William Allen White. Milton Eisenhower, one-time president of Kansas State University and brother of Dwight D. Eisenhower, wrote “The Strength of Kansas.”

In his essay titled, “Kansas,” Carl Becker talks about the tough times in the state, saying that “Until 1895 the whole history of the state was a series of disasters, and always something new, extreme, bizarre…”

“Yet there were some who never gave up,” Becker wrote. “They stuck it out. They endured all that even Kansas could inflict.”

Peg Wherry tells about “Straight Roads” in southwestern Kansas. “The blinking red stoplight at the junction of U.S. highways 56 and 83 in Sublette — the only stop sign in 65 miles — can be seen from over six miles to the north. I always stop at this one, because I’ve been looking at it for so long it would be rude not to.”

In “A Level Land,” Independence playwright William Inge explains why he preferred to say that the land in Kansas was level, rather than flat.

And there’s a piece by Zula Bennington Greene in the book. Greene, who moved to Kansas in her 20s, lived near Bazaar for a few years and wrote for the Chase County Leader-News.

When she moved to Topeka, she wrote for the Topeka Daily Capital, later the Capital-Journal, as “Peggy of the Flint Hills.” Greene is one of my column-writing heroes. She wrote six columns a week. For 50 years. That just blurs my brain.

“What Kansas Means to Me” is the perfect book to kick off our state’s 150th year. Tom Averill will lead the book discussion at the Emporia Public Library on Wed. Jan. 12, at 6:30 p.m.

Copyright 2011 ~ Cheryl Unruh

Ford County