Great Road Trip

Hey, thanks for stopping by today. Pull up a chair and sit down, I’ve got a story to tell you about a trip my wife and I made earlier this week. It was a trip that started in the present, went into the past, and on the last leg of our journey we were propelled into the future.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t that dramatic. Still a pretty cool though. We left Topeka early Sunday morning headed to Greensburg. Because of my job, I’ve been able to go through there probably 10 or 12 times since last years tornado. But this was the first time my wife’s had the chance to see how much our little home town has changed since we left there almost 19 years ago.
We spent about an hour just driving around town. We found the places we used to live. For a while we rented a house across the street from the Big Well. The only thing left is the sidewalk, the basement, and that big old tree in the back yard. The house was gone. So was the house next door, and the one next to it. And the one across the street is gone too. In fact, it was all gone.
They’re rebuilding though. I’d guess that so far they’ve built a couple hundred houses or so. The school is up and running. Churches are rebuilding. They’re going to be the “greenest” city in the world I guess. I’ve poked a lot of fun at the ’Greenies.” And I’m really tired of everything “green.” But you know what? I’m not convinced it’s really such a bad thing. How about naming it something else though? How about just calling it “energy efficient?” But hey, if calling it green helps Greensburg rebuild their town, go for it.
We left Greensburg to meet up with our friends, Eric and Ronni, who because of the tornado now live in Haviland. Eric took my wife and I back down to devils corral. My wife wanted to see the initials we carved in the rocks I told you about a few weeks ago. We headed southeast from there across the Anchor-D, Longhorn Ranch, toward Belvidere. We stopped by the old abandoned school house I’ve talked about. It was built sometime in the 1880’s, and I have no idea how long ago it was abandoned, but it’s such a cool place. Like most country schools, this one consisted of one classroom. And like classrooms even today it had a blackboard on each end of the room. There’s no more chalk or erasers, the blackboards themselves are both long gone, but both frames are completely intact and in pretty good shape. If you stood there long enough you could almost make out a young kid named Johnny writing something over and over again.
We had to leave before we got Johnny into more trouble with his teacher so we headed towards the big hill behind Belvidere. From the top of this hill you can see for miles and miles. On a clear night you can see the lights from Medicine Lodge, Pratt, Greensburg, and even Dodge City. I remember one night after consuming 25 or 30 beers I even saw Denver. We spent a little time there just looking and remembering some of the earlier trips we’ve taken to that same spot. But it was time to go. We headed back to Eric and Ronni’s place for supper, then headed out for Pratt for the night.
We left Pratt the next morning intending to head northwest toward Larned because we both wanted to visit “Fort Larned” but we hadn’t decided on any particular route to take and decided to see if we could make the entire 60 mile trip using only county roads. So off we went. Most of the roads were paved and in pretty good shape. Others weren’t. It took us a little more than 2 hours to make the trip but was well worth the effort. We got to see things we’d have never seen from the highway. Things like 20 or 30 pheasants, 2 snakes, it seemed like we had hawks watching us the whole way. Outside one town we saw 6 or 7 buzzards eating something. We saw several roads that had had water over them in the last few days. We passed a lot of small, family farms long the way. If someone was outside they were quick to smile and wave. A lot of these farms had an American flag flying in the front yards. We saw a crew setting up a rig to drill for oil.
We finally got to Fort Larned and yes, it was everything we’d hoped it would be. But time was running short and we had to get going. It was time to hurry up. Time to head toward Ellsworth so we could catch I-70 and hurry on home.
We had just reached I-70 when I realized we’d been propelled into the future. There’s a wind farm along I-70 a little west of Salina. These windmills are the real thing too. They’re huge and there must be a couple hundred of them. If you get the chance, you ought to drive out there to see them for yourself. Very cool.
Looks like the Governor has decided we don’t need any more coal-fired power plants in Kansas and that our future is blowing in the wind. Governor, I just hope you’re right.
Kevin McGinty can be reached at: kevinmcginty@sbcglobal.net