By Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette.
HEAVEN: CLOSER THAN WE THINK
Because my blog focuses on the Sunflower State, I receive emails not only from Kansans, but also from former residents who miss waking up to a good old Kansas sunrise.
And then every once in a while, I hear from a wannabe Kansan.
Terry Lessig, an audio book publisher from Arizona, recently sent me such an email. He wrote to see if I’d be interested in a review copy of an audio book he published, written and recorded by a Kansas centenarian, Waldo McBurney.
Lessig opened his letter by saying that he’d been reading my blog for some time and that “Kansas is my favorite state for many reasons, and I hope to be a resident one day.”
OK, I have to admit I don’t hear that very often. In subsequent messages, Lessig told me that he’s even found a small Kansas community where he’d like to make his home. I asked him not to tell me which town – I’d like to think that many Kansas communities are worthy of being considered someone’s dream town.
He also sent a copy of an essay he had written, “Why I Love Kansas.”
In the essay, Lessig tells about his first encounter with our state. It was 1967. He was 14. He and his mother were moving from Pennsylvania to Arizona in their VW Beetle. Near Joplin, on a hot summer afternoon, they lost their way and ended up in the southeastern corner of Kansas. They stopped at a small country store to ask directions.
Lessig wrote, “The store was attended by a young couple, possibly not out of their teens. (My mother and I) remarked for years afterward how kind and helpful they were to us, and that Kansas must be Heaven because our first contact there was with angels. I also remember that it was the first place I tasted Dr. Pepper.”
Yep, folks, that’s how we win ‘em over – with kindness. And Dr. Pepper.
But I think we’ve all had those times, haven’t we? One clear moment of authentic connection, when we feel like we truly belong to a place.
A magnetic first impression forever seals the deal. Whether or not we ever return, or whether or not we move there, the place has an eternal hold on us. As much as I love the open prairie, Colorado’s Rocky Mountains have given me spiritual moments that I’ll never forget. But there are also places in the Flint Hills and on the High Plains that hold pieces of my soul.
What brought Lessig back to Kansas was a 2006 CBS news story, a feature on Waldo McBurney of Quinter, Kansas, who, at 104, was profiled as the oldest working person in America.
The story of Waldo McBurney was more than simply being old and running a beekeeping business. At age 65, McBurney had taken up running. At 88, he began running competitively. When he was 100, he won four gold medals in an international competition in Puerto Rico.
The CBS story mentioned McBurney’s book “My First 100 Years: A Look Back from the Finish Line.” After reading that book, Lessig contacted the author to see if he would read and record his autobiography as an audio book.
McBurney agreed, and in 2007, forty years after his initial visit to Kansas, Lessig made a return trip.
“The moment I entered Kansas,” Lessig wrote, “my mind flashed back to that wonderful experience with helpful strangers all those years ago, and my soul felt strangely at home. Again, all that I met during my week in Quinter were as kind and caring as that young couple who helped us find our way. Oddly, I felt as though their hospitality had guided me back in some strange way.”
“In the few years since,” Lessig said, “McBurney has passed away, and I have been exploring Kansas several more times. I found a beautiful small town last Christmas that could soon become my home.
Lessig then quoted a passage from W. Somerset Maugham’s “The Moon and Sixpence”: “Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.”
“For me, that sums up Kansas,” Lessig said.
Copyright 2012 ~ Cheryl Unruh
To order Waldo McBurney’s audio book, “My First 100 Years,” visit AudioBookman.
To order an MP3 version, go here.
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A remarkably different column inspired by a reader is a good way to start 2012, Cheryl. Happy new year!
Beautiful, Cheryl. I read this with tears in my eyes…
Beautiful– but you know where we LOVE!!!!! 🙂
I wonder what this guy will think after a couple of good hot, dry Kansas summers and a couple of good cold, snowy, blowy Kansas winters? And a spring full of waiting with one eye on the sky for possible catastrophe?
If he still loves us after that, then it’s really love. 🙂
Nice! Very touching piece AND a new book to listen to. That might might get me a few rounds around that track at the gym.
He will, Kris. 🙂
As a schoolboy in upper Pennsylvania, I remember sitting near the steam register on cold winter mornings hoping to thaw out from my walk to school before it was lunchtime. As an adult, I spent summers in Phoenix, Arizona, where it sometimes reached 122, saw 100 days at a time without measurable rain. I also worked as a soundmixer for film, and as such, spent significant time in the Los Angeles area where the balmy weather never stops. That was my least favorite place of all.
Last winter I was in Kansas, where I shoveled three snowfalls, and saw temperatures and weather that rivaled my schoolboy years. I was home.
Beautiful!
“There are places that hold pieces of my soul.” You are absolutely right, Cheryl. I have been places, some only once, where I left a little of myself behind and took a little of them with me. Good luck in your new home, Terry.
@Weeta
Thank you, Weeta! The kindness of Kansans overwhelms me.
Terry,
With so many places to choose from, where did you finally settle down to enjoy Kansas?
@Carl Munger
Cheryl is still trying to guess, so I can’t say, just yet. 🙂
It’s OK, Terry. You can share if you wish.
I’m over my “need to not know” and am ready for the town to be named. 🙂
Cheryl is right. I could throw a dart at a Kansas map and be perfectly happy wherever it would take me. That said, choosing MY town wasn’t difficult. The graphic artist who designs my book covers introduced me to it more than 15 years ago, although I did not see it in person until last Christmas when I moved there for three months. In an odd turn of events, once I announced my intentions, she promptly moved to Virginia. I am now auditioning new deodorant to wear when I make my final move to… St. Marys, Kansas–home to the leafy lanes and wonderful people of my dreams.
Terry, maybe you will start a trend for folks who are tired of the major metro areas and can afford to move to Kansas to retire without the need to make a living. Or who can do so by being knowledge workers. I can think of many of those towns that have wonderful old buildsing, great park systems, dilgent town managers, good public school systems, etc… Maybe go full circle and see the beginning of growing population again, what, baby-boomers coming home? Enjoy your new home.
@Carl
My mother taught me to go my own way, not follow the crowd, so I do not. Conversely, crowds have never followed me, so do hold out hope that streams of cars will trail behind my Penske rental truck. I have seen the great old buildings, and have my eye on an upper floor of one for my office. Retire? I’ll have to look it up. As long as my brain works, so will I. Thanks for your good wishes.