#14 A trip out West.

A trip out West. Just a heads up, this is another non-sailing post. (I just don’t like posting on FB or any of the others. I’m a writer and I like my words to be in existence somewhere, not scrolled into oblivion right before a “sponsored” ad for the last thing I googled. Of course I like it better when I get paid for my words, but this is a close second.) So here ya go.

I capitalized “West” in the title because the West is a domain, a landscape all to itself, a realm of independence, hardship and vast skies. From the homesteaders who suffered through the dust storms to the farmers who scratch out a living on too-dry land with rapidly depleting resources, to the people who now live downwind from one of the vast feedlots, it’s a hard place to live. I remember the winters, digging out the hogs after a blizzard so they wouldn’t suffocate, and I remember working outside in the summer when you had to shade your tools or they would get too hot to pick up. And I remember when both of those might happen inside a week. I’m living in East Tennessee now, right up against the Smoky Mountains, where the locals grouse about the weather. Yeah right. It’s like 45 here in January, and 85 in August, for the most part. I don’t have to run my A/C but a few months of the year, same with the heat. About a third of the year the windows are open. Fall and spring sometimes last three months each. Oh yeah, I remember the West, which gives me a deep appreciation for living here. So it was a real treat and an adventure to head west again recently for my 50th high school reunion. I haven’t been to Dodge City for longer than I can remember, I suspect it was the 30th reunion in 2004. I missed the 40th, darn it. No way was I going to miss the 50, that’s a milestone that will never come again. Coming back to Tennessee I realized that a reunion is more than a mere gathering of people you used to know. It’s a life event that celebrates our youth, our formative years, and the people we shared that time with. So I haven’t talked to many of my classmates for 50 years. So what. There is still and always will be some kind of mysterious connection we share from living the zeitgeist of the 70’s, and that connection makes traveling to a reunion so worth it. It was obvious most of us felt that way. The room was full of conversations, hugs, and huge, huge smiles. And no doubt, we lived an era worth celebrating. Music being a good example of just one of the great aspects of our era. They’re still playing it on every golden-oldies station in the country. (And of course a few old goats who survive are still touring!) At the reunion dinners I heard conversations all evening about the exceptional parts of our teenage years; how good we had it, how much fun we had, how we lived in an era that will not be repeated. All true. I also heard a lot of “how the world today is not the same”, usually said with a negative connotation. In many respects that is also true, although there’s been a lot of positive and even astounding gains in the years since that I hope my classmates are aware of. But this was not a night for negative comparisons, it was a night for reliving those heady feelings we had back then, feelings we had no idea what to do with but man, did they make us feel alive. I think we all felt just a bit of that at the reunion.

I’m glad I went, and very glad that so many classmates took the time and trouble to make the journey as well. It was a hoot!

So here’s a few photos from the trip:

Ah man I miss that sky. Being able to see the entire sky for 360 degrees is what I’m used to, and I miss it. Tennessee is green, yeah, but you can’t see zip unless you climb a mountain, and even then the humidity prevents you from seeing for miles and miles and miles. And that reminds me of a story. It was the first time ever that I was on a big sailboat and sailed out of sight of land. Out on the sea, nothing but blue all around you, mother ocean underneath to the horizon and immaculate sky above; my overwhelming feeling was one of being home. The ocean feels like Kansas. I know, people laugh when I tell them this story, but that 360 degree sky is exactly the same sky as in Kansas. The feeling of immensity is the same. Sure, the ground in Kansas is brown while the sea is blue, but that sky is what you can’t stop looking at. You take a deep breath and feel like you’ve come back. This is why there’s now another boat in my life.

I got to re-remember these malevolent stickers, the ones that draw blood and flatten a bicycle tire, which I don’t miss at all.

The iconic south drive in! One of a few in the nation still open. I would like to apologize now to the owners for shooting fireworks at the screen and leaving black smudges on it. Wow did we have some adventures there! Amazingly, the small town I live in now also has one of the few drive-in survivors.

My working life started as a mechanic at Sperry New Holland, working on these things right out of high school. I was 19. It paid so good I stayed there something like ten years. Then I realized that this could be my whole life, so I ran away to Lawrence and the University of Kansas, where they kept giving me grants as long as I kept my grades up. Well, once you’ve changed the gearbox in one of these at night in the rain, getting good grades is a piece of cake. I thought about buying this one and restoring it, but common sense won out.

Oh yeah, I remember these. And the smell. There are a lot more of them around, and they’re far bigger, today. In fact I was surprised at the scale of everything in the West. That convention center south of town can probably be seen from space. Wait, that’s obsolete, after all a pencil on the sidewalk can be seen from space now. It’s big, period. The thousands of windmills we saw, the size of the tractors, I had forgotten how oversize everything is.

Dad’s old work place. That tower is going to be there forever.

My first house on Kelley St. Some memories there, I can tell you.

One of the highlights of the trip, dinner with Ron Albrecht, my old organic chemistry teacher. So glad to see him!

Sheesh these things are everywhere!

We took a side trip to Ashland to explore a bit. This is the creek my dad used to take us boys to dig clay, which we then cleaned and used to make pottery. Dad had a nice little pottery shop set up once upon a time. I still have a few pieces from this era.

Stopped by the Big Basin, to see St Jacobs Well, where I used to find arrowheads if you hiked far enough. Or rattlesnakes, if you picked up a rock.

And of course the Big Well in Greensburg. What a tragedy, the tornado of 2007. A beautiful town completely wiped out.

Sigh. I remember tubing down the river from about halfway to Cimarron. Grabbing huge catfish with our bare hands. I used to have a dozen mammoth teeth we’d dug out of the river banks. Next time I come out I’m buying a shovel and looking for more.

Ha! And of course the crazy M.T. Liggett, political artist of Mullinville.

And finally, the class of ’74, badasses all. I’d like to say thank you again to the committee who with all their work put this together. You may not realize how much we enjoyed this and how much it meant to many of us. For any of my classmates who’d like to stay in touch, please do. We may not have been in touch the last 50 years, but hey, there’s 50 more ahead. (Ok, so yeah, maybe not 50.)

Be well y’all, and wow, it was great to see you.