Under the auspices of looking for butter, I headed south west from the family kitchen where I had sat for the better part of an hour talking about my next fencing job, my past (as little as I could reveal) and hunting. I headed south west as opposed to north West based on nothing more than trying to do a rough count of lights on the horizons (more lights, greater likelihood of butter). Additionally, I think it may have also have been more downhill (actually true, but an after the fact clarification).
It's strange coming into these small towns scattered throughout the high plains (and I'm certain, much of rural America), where a sign “Would the last person leaving, please turn out the lights!” should be prominently hanging somewhere on the outskirts. I always feel a prickly sensation on the back of my neck – probably because I watch the 60's (or was it 70's) version of “The Andromeda Strain” and wonder if the whole town population just disappeared into the belly of the beast (alien spacecraft). There is always one or two beautiful examples of turn of the century architecture in the form of banks and/or hardware stores – two stories, name and year craved in cornerstones or archways. I can see the counters, wooden floors scuffed from years of hob-nail boots and sensible shoes – why did everyone leave and where did they go? I know the answers to most of this: the dust and the snow grew tiresome, work dried up, after college things looked better in the cities, ya da ya da ya – but did they? Are they?
From my perspective - (one that's touched by the reality that I'm not getting butter) – they haven't and didn't. And the fortunate reality out here, is that if I peak around the edges of the town I see life. The coo-op is bursting at the seams with this years corn harvest, blowers running full out and the un-swept remnants of the days harvest scattered under the lights. In the houses that ring the town square there are lights in the windows, pumpkins on porches, the obligatory scarecrow standing watch at more than one households front walk. There is life, by golly – the only folks that seem to have given up and moved on, just moved up the hill a bit and are under 6 feet of Kansas dirt and clay.
and yes it was Kansas that sang "dust in the wind". Apropo me thinks...
