Americana Travels,
Pt 7: Wichita to Lawrence
May 18th, 2012 – Let’s see how many Wizard of Oz
references we can make while we’re here in beautiful, scenic Kansas. Every dog
was referred to as Toto, which then got me thinking about the rains in Africa.
Every little old lady was named Auntie Em, which then had me craving M&M’s
in all of their chocolate-y goodness. In all, there’s not whole lot to Kansas.
We got on the road fairly early by our standards; I think I
glanced at the clock at around 10:30am. That means that we had eaten breakfast,
showered, finished our last minute packing, and checked out within an hour and
a half. Not too shabby. As our norm, we fueled up on both caffeine and petrol
as we were making our way out of town. Mrs. Pope plotted the course from
Wichita to Lawrence, Kansas, with our various stops along the way. Today was
supposed to be one of the more grueling treks despite our shaving three or four
hours off of it the day before and with the added stay in Wichita. Physically,
I was drained and sore in places, mentally; I was geared up and ready to do this
thing, even though I started off the day by walking into more than one wall
and/or door jam.
We connected with the I-135 headed north through the heart
of Kansas. Today’s main site was the center point and original inspiration for
this trip in the first place . . . Cawker City and the World’s Largest Ball of
Twine (Not String).Cawker City is located in downtown Nowhere. It’s the Center
of the Universe of Nothing. The wild thing, though, is that there are roads
that lead to Nowhere. Despite the severe wind warning that was in effect and
Mrs. Pope’s research on tornado possibilities, we cruised up the I-135 for
about an hour and a half, then cut west for about another forty minutes along
highway 18. This stretch of road was just a swathe across farmland. There was
barely any civilization, unless you count the herds of cattle that wandered
along the pastures. It was, however, beautiful and serene. We listened to one
of the books on CD, The Innocent by David Baldacci, and while I followed the
story of the characters I watched the wind gust over the fields of grain on
either side of the road. The way the fields rippled, it actually took on the
appearance of water flowing across the great expanse. I finally got a better
understanding of the lyric, “ambers waves of grain”. Wheat having that amber
hue to it, rippling in the wind like waves of an ocean, and grain being what it
was . . . that lyricist was a frickin’ genius.
About forty minutes along the 18, we found one of the sites
that we had been talking about finding . . . a bunch of farm equipment that the
land owner turned into dragons and other wild creatures. The site description
sounded way too cool to miss out on, so we added this site on the way to see
the Ball of Twine. As we pulled around a corner of the highway, navigator Jack
informed us that our site was to the right, and it was . . . but nowhere near
as cool as we were hoping it would be, nor as it was described. The original
description was of a sixty foot dragon . . . the creature we saw and snapped a
photo of was maybe sixteen feet, at most. It was still pretty cool looking and
a creative outlet for the outskirts of Nowhere U.S.A., so we’ll give this guy a
nod of appreciation.
We continued down highway 18 and a few miles later, we
turned north on highway 14 and were pretty much the only vehicle along this
stretch of lonely road. Farms and ranches on either side of us, rolling hills,
more waves of grain, cows looking up at us with barely an ounce of interest as
we passed by . . . it was all good. This was probably my favorite stretch of
road through Kansas. We eventually came to the town of Beloit where we had to
slow the vehicle practically to a crawl due to the posted speed limit, and we
inched along the sleepy streets of this non-descript Midwest town. We stopped
to top off the tank and use the restrooms, and it was here that I had my first
flash of being an outsider in a small town. I got a vibe from one of the other
motorists who was fueling up, not the typical friendly banter that we’d
experienced in other parts of the country. This guy barely acknowledged my
existence, and then I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the gas pump
. . . sunglasses, unshaven face, long hair blowing around all crazy under my
fishing hat with rock n’ roll pins and patches on it . . . yeah, fuckin’
California hippies were invading the Heartland and preparing to ruin everyone’s
family values, or some discriminatory thought like that. Then, I saw a cop
drive up. I just had images of Footloose strobing through my skull, so I
quickly bee-lined my way to the restroom, did my business, and returned to the
outside world with my hair pulled back. I don’t mind attention, just not THAT
kind of attention. In fact, I passed the cop as I was exiting the building and
he greeted me with a friendly “Hello”, but I still wasn’t gonna take any
chances. Time to beat feet and get to Cawker City.
We traveled on the 24 west for about half an hour and
eventually pulled into the one horse town of Cawker City. Actually, that’s not
totally fair to the horse coz we never saw one and the town probably couldn’t
have managed one anyway. The wind was kicking up at something like forty miles
per hour, the nearby lake had white caps breaking across the water’s surface,
and the temperature was hovering around ninety degrees. We found the Ball of
Twine camped out underneath an awning; actually, it had its own little home.
There were dedicated benches to it on four sides of the ball and we snapped a
few photos of the piece of Americana that brought us half way across our
nation. We reflected on the shabby state of the town, the lack of life, and
wondered just how vibrant life had been in Cawker City in the first place. It
looked like it might have been something special thirty, forty years ago, but
now, the sidewalks are crumbling, the yards are growing more weeds than grass,
a lot of the buildings appeared to be boarded up and vacant. Without seeing any
of the residents of the town, it was hard to judge what exactly kept the bills
paid. But, the Ball of Twine was really cool to see.
We got back in the rig and drove east towards Manhattan,
Kansas where we were to visit with the statue of Jonny Kaw. I fought the wind
for another eighty plus miles across the plains and pastures of Kansas, passing
herds of cows that looked like they were huddled up to battle the wind. We
continued listening to the adventures of Will and Julie in The Innocent, and it
helped distract us from the repetition of pasture, pasture, cow, farm house,
pasture, pasture. We pulled into the Little Apple (Manhattan, Kansas) near 4:00pm
and found a parking lot right next to the towering behemoth of Jonny Kaw. The
legend of Jonny Kaw is very similar to that of Paul Bunyan, in that Kaw was a
created character who was said to have created the Kansas geography with a giant
scythe instead of wielding a lumberjack’s ax. I found this big dude to be
another great piece of Americana, and I had never heard of him before we
started planning this trip . . . of course, if we hadn’t planned on coming to
Kansas, I probably still wouldn’t know this character existed.
From Manhattan we traveled to the Kansas state capital,
Topeka. It was about a forty minute trek east of Manhattan, and when we pulled
into Topeka, we found our final site of the day’s adventures. Truckhenge!
Truckhenge had the potential of being so much cooler than it was, and the back
story of this place has a rather fascinating bend to it, but when we arrived,
the place was fenced off and we could only see a few pieces of this odd and
bizarre lawn art. Apparently, the guy who owns the land of Truckhenge is a
little left of center, as so many of the great artistic types can be, and much
of the message of the site is a giant middle finger aimed in the direction of
the Shawnee County Government. I can appreciate that. Gotta love the rebel when he’s
fighting for his freedom of expression . . . especially on his own land.
Anyway, I was able to rattle a couple of descent photos of the site through the
chain link fence, and as it turns out, we could have called the owner and odds
are he would have rushed over, let us walk through, and talked our ears off . .
. in fact, we’d probably still be there and you wouldn’t be reading this at
all. One thing of note was that this place was off on a dusty old dirt road
lined with trees and tucked far enough off the main road that if we had
disappeared, we would never, absolutely never been found. I was actually
expecting to walk around the car and have some dude in an old school hockey
mask chopping me into jerky with a chain saw. Fortunately, that didn’t happen
and we were able to continue this epic road trip.
We pulled into Lawrence, Kansas, home of the University of
Kansas, and checked into our hotel with the sun still up and dinner
possibilities aplenty. We spread our stuff throughout the room and then found a
burger joint that was super all natural and even had gluten-free buns for Mrs.
Pope. This was one of my contributions to the day coz, and yes, I’m taking full
credit, I found the place while searching for our night’s dinner possibilities.
We ate and then decided to walk through the downtown area, which happened to be
a block over on Massachusetts Street. Folks, this was a cool and hep street!
Very college oriented and fun. Good places to eat, drink, shop, and well . . .
be a kid! Mrs. Pope found a cupcake store called Billy Vanilly’s and I used my
record store app that my brethren, Racer X, turned me on to called The Vinyl
District. This little app led me to a store called Love Garden Sounds and yes .
. . they had tons of vinyl LP’s . . . more than CD’s and some quality titles that
I hadn’t seen in a long time, or if I had, the prices were through the roof.
The prices at this joint were fair and I walked out with a bag while my patient
wife texted Racer to get me out of there. Yeah . . . like a little text would
really help in that situation.
From there, we walked back to our hotel room and we kicked
back at a reasonable hour for once. I wrote all of these neat words that you’ve
been so kind to take the time to read, and Mrs. Pope researched more stuff for
us to tackle along our trip. Now . . . well now, my friends, I’m calling it. I
have a few moments before it’s time to turn in and may do some reading . . . or
possibly drooling over my new vinyl finds!
‘night!
Pope
Quote of the Day: “Hey . . . did you know that May is the
worst month for tornadoes in the Plain States?”
-- Mrs. Pope
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