North by Northwest
Cheryl Unruh
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Eastern Kansas is what I see from my writing desk, so that’s the part of the state that you normally read about in this corner of The Gazette.
Except for a few columns, I’ve largely ignored the western half of the state.
In a weak attempt to remedy this attention deficit disorder toward Western Kansas, one Saturday morning in early October, Dave and I headed north and west on a weekend trip.
We had each selected a few sites that we wanted to capture on film, er …uh, digital memory card, but our plan was just to drive and let the places find us.
Now we didn’t make it to Arikaree Breaks along the Nebraska and Colorado borders, but we did head north and west. Dave and I basically followed U.S. Highway 36 to Phillipsburg and returned on U.S. 24.
Our tires rolled on pavement in 16 counties and we stopped to investigate more than 20 small towns.
Along the way to U.S. 36, we found Barnes (pop. 144). The Hometown Café makes pan-fried chicken, but you have to be there on a Wednesday for that.
A friendly waitress named Pat served us the roast beef meal which included mashed potatoes, gravy, carrots, rolls and tapioca pudding for $5.
“There’s usually five or six bachelors in here by now, but they had to go to a funeral today,” Pat said.
People watch out for one another here. When one of her elderly regulars didn’t show up for lunch recently, Pat worried. She told us, “I was going to call him and then he came in with his niece. ‘I forgot to tell you I had a dentist appointment,’ he said.”
Even though it’s a tiny town, Barnes has two nice eateries. Down the street is Our Daily Bread, a bakery and lunch spot.
As we entered Washington (pop. 1,168), Dave read the list of the town’s tourist attractions from Marci Penner’s “Guidebook for Kansas Explorers.” He gave me directions to Munchkinland.
On our way, we saw a 4-year-old boy with a bandana on his head romping around in a front yard.
“Look, there’s a munchkin,” Dave pointed. “We must be getting close.”
We did find Munchkinland, a delightful community-built playground which cost $90,000 and consumed 14,000 volunteer hours. Ignoring the flying monkeys, I climbed a ladder and whooshed down a slide.
The Oz theme comes from the Charlie Becker connection. Becker played the mayor of Munchkinland in The Wizard of Oz and lived in Washington with his wife Jessie, a native of nearby Mahaska. A sign at their former residence indicates that the small stucco house will become a museum.
Washington, the “Pie Capital of Kansas,” is home to Marcon pies — which, among other places, can be found in Emporia’s Reeble’s stores.
Following the trail in Penner’s Guidebook, it felt as if we were on a scavenger hunt. We claimed each place as a prize when we photographed it.
Haddam (pop. 160) has a park on the main drag and an empty school on the hill. Downtown, a café served lunch.
After he shut off his mower, I talked with a Haddam boy who earns (and saves) his money by cutting grass. With the school closed, he and his classmates have been split up and attend various schools in the area.
An exciting year in Haddam must have been 1901. Women did not have the right to vote, but somehow convinced the town’s men to elect an all-woman government.
And, as leaders of their community, the women constructed a jail “for the containment of Haddam’s unruly men.”
The women were voted out of office in 1902; the stone jail remains.
Coming Soon: The center of the United States.
“Flyover People” is online at www.flyoverpeople.net.
F Cheryl Unruh can be reached at cheryl@flyoverpeople.net.