Road Trip, Part II.

A lot of the interesting things on the Turnpike happened on the "Hoot Owl" [the night shift] but there was one day shift that stands out in my feeble memory. The names have been changed to protect the, uh, perpetrators which I understand are still living.

Only on a few occasions did my 19-year-old self enjoy a solid week of 8-to-4, working days like a real person and able to visit evenings with friends. And remember this was a summer job, not a career, so I treasured these day shifts. One beautiful summer morning I reported to the gate at El Dorado to relieve the "Hoot Owl" man. It was the morning after a storm had powered through, clearing the skies, lowering the humidity and refreshing all with a cool breeze. Truly a magnificent specimen of a day. Into this idyllic setting drove one Fred Grimes, Kansas State Representative for Butler County, Democrat, and lawyer from nearby Augusta.

I had heard of Grimes and seen his pictures around for years. He represented the whole county and had served for some years. Dad knew him slightly through the county Bar Association but we'd never met in person and I'd never given it a thought at all. Until that beautiful morning.

He drove in to my gate to exit from the Turnpike, and handed me his ticket. [The way it worked was you entered the Turnpike at a toll booth, and the attendant would hand you a stiff card with your vehicle class, the name of the point of entry, the time and date, and a chart with the tolls to all the other exits from that one. You would surrender it at the point of exit so the collector would know where you came from and thus how much to charge--it still works like that to this day.] As I recall, he paid the toll from Topeka where he had entered, and then said, "Can I ask you something?" [These conversations are as accurate as I can recall, having occurred almost forty years ago.]

"Sure, what can I help you with?" I replied.

"Can I keep that ticket?"

No one had ever asked me that before. I thought he would be seeking directions to something. I shook my head. "I have to turn it in. It's part of the accounting. It has to stay here so I'll balance with the bank." I wasn't kidding. The auditors checked every collector each day for cash errors and those tickets were part of the audit. I studied his young/old face. "Why do you want it?"

At this point the honorable legislator squirmed uncomfortably behind the wheel. He paused, and I could see he was choosing his words carefully. "It's for my wife."

That really confused me. But he continued, "I'm Fred Grimes. I'm the state representative for this district." He stuck his hand out the window of his car. I gave it a shake. The warm morning sun was in his face and he was squinting to get a good look at me and measure me up. "I worked late last night at the Capitol and started out for home, but I was just too tired to drive all the way back home so I stopped and slept a few hours at the rest area by Emporia. I've been gone all night and should have been home hours ago. My wife is never going to believe me, that I was sleeping in the car."

Aha! Suddenly he looked familiar. Indeed he needed a shave and to run a comb through his hair, and his shirt was rumpled, so his predicament seemed genuine. "But why do you want this?" I asked, waving the treasured ticket. I also wanted to ask him what he had done previously to earn the wife's suspicion, but for once I kept my big mouth shut.

"That has the time printed on it when I entered the turnpike, doesn't it? Look on there, you can see when I went through the gate last night." And sure enough, atop the little card in familiar blue ink, his entry had been preserved for all eternity by Topeka's entry machine at 12:30 AM. "That will prove to her that I was on my way home on the highway, and that I wasn't still in Topeka."

This was my first encounter with an adult who would openly discuss marital problems with me, and it was really more than I wanted to know. And, my training reminded me that the ticket had to be turned in. It was the state's ticket, not mine to give away.

"Oh, I see," was about all I could think to say. I really didn't care to see his marriage suffer, but then automation took over. "I'd like to help but they are clear that I have to turn this in. I don't have the option to let it go."

I glanced behind him, and around to the entry lane behind me. Fortunately no other cars were waiting during this prolonged encounter. He said, "Well how about this: when do you go off duty?"

"At four." Here we go, I thought. He's estimated my character; now he's making a deal.

"If you let me take the card home with me I will bring it back to you before you leave this afternoon." I must have grimaced, because he went on: "Look, I am an elected official and you can trust me to do that. I give you my word you'll have it back before you go home." He was nodding as he spoke, and had the slightest touch of urgency in his voice.

Mr. Grimes had found a chink in my armor. He knew I wanted to help. And I was a little concerned about not helping since he was a state official and I worked for a semi-governmental entity. If I didn't go along with this character could he cause a problem for someone at the Turnpike Authority? His marriage obviously had trust issues; how angry would he be if they were complicated by some college kid following bureaucratic rules? Who did he know at the Turnpike Authority?

So I said, "OK, if you promise to get this back to me before I close out to go home I guess I can trust you." Then I thought to add, "But if I don't get it back I will have a variance and be in all kinds of trouble--so help me out." I reluctantly handed him the card, hoping he would understand that if he crossed me lots of people would hear about this little encounter.

He took the card and asked my name. When I told him he perked up a little because he was acquainted with Dad, and he asked about the family. He once again presented his hand, saying, "Thank you, thank you very much. I will have this back to you before four, I promise." We shook hands again and Fred Grimes, Kansas State Representative for Butler County, Democrat, and lawyer from nearby Augusta, drove out of my life.

By lunchtime the sun had thoroughly warmed everything and the freshness of the early hour was gone. And I had seen nothing of the Representative or his turnpike ticket. "You dummy," I admonished myself. He isn't going to make a 20-mile round trip to give that stupid card back and now you are going to have a variance." I am sure my pulse was up all day in anticipation of my cash drawer not balancing. What bothered me the most was that up until that day I had very few cash variances. That three-dollar toll would stand out like a red-headed stepchild. Talk about trust--I wondered if my employers would trust me after that. Three bucks was a lot to be out of balance back then, and the turnpike people were strict.

One o'clock, two o'clock, two-thirty all dragged by and no one showed. I had resigned myself to having been duped by a minor politician. Finally, at three, an old pickup truck drove up and an even older man, lean and wiry, got out. He wore a western shirt and blue jeans. I can still see him in the mind's eye, walking up toward me, leaning slightly forward as he walked. He had a weathered, deeply lined face. In his hand was the card. The pressure that had built all day vanished. I stepped out of my booth to meet him.

"You the one lookin' for this?" he asked, jabbing the card out at me. I had no idea who he was but at that point I really didn't care. I was just glad that Rep. Grimes had kept his word. And he had.

I took it. "Yes, thank you very much. I'm sure glad to see this."

"Fred said you wanted it." Apparently satisfied his duty was done he began to turn away.

Then curiosity got the better of me. "Hey!" I yelled. "Did it do him any good?"

The old fellow turned all the way around and faced me with his eyebrows raised in shock, apparently surprised that I knew the real reason for the transaction. Then his face melted into a shrewd, wily grin. He shook his head slightly saying, "I don't think so, the poor sonuvabitch!"

He walked away cackling with an emphysematic laugh. I slipped the rumpled toll ticket back into the card bin where it belonged and watched him drive away wondering what kind of day old Fred must have had.

Road trip.

For five summers after I graduated from high school I worked for the Kansas Turnpike Authority as a relief toll collector. Mostly the job was to fill in for the veteran collectors who were on vacation, and also to provide additional help for the summer traffic increase. I worked four different stations, three in Wichita and one in El Dorado. It was interesting work, sometimes. Dealings with the public are always that way. The summer before I graduated I also worked for the KTA, but that time as a guard-rail painter. That was a whole lot less interesting but it was nice to be outside. At least I got a nice tan out of it.

But in the toll booth it was a bit more demanding. You had to know the tolls, of course. And you had to know how to 'class' vehicles as they approached, always by axle count which was checked by a treadle in the lane next to the booth where the car or truck passed. Also you had to be good at handling cash, and a lot of it. Not huge amounts of money--although some days the take was pretty good--but always a weighty volume of coins and one-dollar bills. I spent many afternoons and evenings rolling quarters to send to the bank. And then, you had to be conversant in directions, mileages to everywhere and where to get a good meal.

There were lots of characters out there, besides just the travelling public. The very head of the KTA, the Chief Engineer-Manager, was a tall, grey-haired, distinguished-looking man by the name of L. W. Newcomer, a man with political connections, savvy, and a fierce loyalty to his alma mater, Kansas State University. It was no accident that many of my fellow guard-rail painters were high school kids who had athletic ability and had expressed an interest in K-State. Bill Fitzgerald and I were the lone KU enrollees. I guess L. W.'s savvy was so tuned that he would not discriminate, even against Jayhawks.

Mr. Newcomer often told this story which happened late one hot, still summer night. Much of it unfolded on the highway patrol radios which were also used to communicate to each toll booth. I was not on duty that night but I really wished I had been there to hear it unroll: In the wee hours, a middle-aged couple drove south from Kansas City toward the Oklahoma border. It was learned later that the wife was napping in the back seat. Needing to refuel, they stopped at the Belle Plaine service area a short distance south of Wichita. When the gentleman went into the service station office to pay for the gas, his wife apparently woke up, crawled out of the car and went in a different entrance to the service station to find the ladies' room.

So, yeah, the fellow paid his bill, went back out to his car and drove away. Shortly after the lady comes back out to find her husband and car both gone. She panics a little, and the attendants reassure her that they can call the highway patrol dispatcher and he can radio ahead to the South Haven toll gate to watch for her car. South Haven is the southern terminal and all traffic stops there to pay tolls before heading on into Oklahoma. They tell her the men at the toll gate will advise the husband that she is not sleeping in the back seat and to return to pick her up.

And as good as their word, armed with her description of the car the toll collector at South Haven spots the car in short order. "Hey," he tells the driver, "you left your wife back at the rest area when you got gas."

The man looked up and leveled his eyes at the collector. He said, "Hell, don't you think I know that?" and drove off into the night.

No, we never found out what happened after that, but it was old L. W.'s favorite story. I have no reason to doubt it actually happened because some people do very strange things. This certainly qualifies, and we will revisit the good old KTA another time as we are always looking for something strange to communicate!

Kid Stuff, Part II

Steve and his mom.

I didn't mean to let almost 10 days to go by between posts. It was a real mess at work and frankly doesn't show any sign of improving soon. But again it is Steve, my grandson, who forces me back to the keyboard. Some things must be shared.

Yesterday my wife went to visit at Liz's house. Steve was out in the driveway with a couple of the neighbor kids, and as Mary Ann approached he yelled to her "Grammy don't walk where it's wet. I peed there."

Mary Ann paused; on occasion, his parents have had to direct him to relieve himself indoors--not outside. So she said, "Stevie, why did you pee out here?"

He didn't miss a beat. "Because we needed a starting line for our race."

Apparently urinating on the driveway is more efficient than going to look for the chalk. OK. Good thinking, Steve. But as you get older please ask your Dad to leave some tape handy in the garage.

Wash your hands.

This has been bothering me; if people are ostensibly infected with"Swine Flu" then are hogs that have become ill said to have "People Flu?"

The porcine has unfairly been saddled with the responsibility for our misfortunes. We don't get Swine Flu directly from porkers, or from consuming pork products. Yet there was ABC News in Mexico last week with cameras, standing at the gate of a large swine feed lot claiming that this was where the current round of influenza was born. They interviewed people in the village nearby who had been sick. They gave the name of the evil giant American conglomerate who owned the feed lot, inferring that evil American businessmen and greedy American stockholders were responsible somehow for the conditions here which clearly caused hundreds of Mexican deaths and the world to be held in the grip of a plague. "See! See!" they shout into their microphones, "Selfish rich Americans caused poor exploited Mexicans to die! It's Bush's fault! It's Bush's fault! Bush lied!!"

To know what is occurring is a good thing. To be cautious is wise as well; forewarned is forearmed. Unfortunately ABC and the other mainstream media outlets are almost demanding that we panic. They dash from CDC officials to Washington pols looking for sound bites, the next more ominous than the one before. They look sternly into the cameras and proclaim the uncertainty of public administrators to contain the raging virus. They recall influenza epidemics of bygone decades, with reminders that during one such onslaught more people died of flu than of the Black Plague in the Dark Ages. They counsel us to wash our hands and hopelessly profess beyond that there is little we can do. Some take it up a notch and tell us to stay home, avoid crowds and report to the hospital at the first signs of illness.

Just what the ER doctors want to hear: the Dark Ages media sending every nervous citizen with real or imagined symptoms in to be treated. Other than chicken soup, there really isn't much of a flu treatment. Flu shots are very strain-specific, and even so only work to prevent the flu; once you come down with a case you are on your own. You ride it out at home. Only the more severe cases would require hospitalization. Every ten-year-old knows to drink lots of fluids and rest.

Day after day the news outlets have led with dire predictions of pandemic flu. In Mexico, yes, they are having a rough Spring. Some Americans have developed flu but Great Caesar's Ghost, how many people have the flu at any one time anyway? It seems like drug crime is a much more pervasive threat in Mexico (and here as well) than sickness.

Reporting the news is the media's job. The prudent reaction to the threat of large-scale illness is up to the government but ultimately to each of us. We don't need self-righteous journalism grads out there, steering us idiots through life's maze to good health. We also don't need them attempting to be judge and jury, looking to hang someone for starting the whole thing. The whole drive-by media (look, shoot, drive on) loves a crisis they can use to find additional fault with America in the theatre of the world. Please, why all the guilt? Just report the news.

You want to know what the worst threat is? Network TV reporters and producers, who whip up unnecessary fear and concern. I am all in favor of changing the name of this influenza in honor of them. How about "Katy Couric Flu?" Or, "The ABC World News Flu with Charles Gibson?"

In the end, it seems like the whole thing is an insult to pigs.

Go inside.

If it isn't too much trouble, could we all practice some courtesy at drive-through places? I mean, some people turn into narcissistic wackos when they roll up to the speaker at McDonalds--which translates into rude. The lesser among us will sense not just rudeness but disdain and disrespect which will lead to rage, and on to violence, then murder, general disorder, world domination by thugs, anarchy, armageddon...OK, maybe I got carried away there but consider a few basic rules when you drive-thru the bank or Hardees:

1. Keep it simple. If you have a huge complicated order with special requests, like "no onions" or "medium rare" could you park your car and drag your fat butt inside and not clog up the traffic in the drive-thru while you spell all this out? They are going to get it wrong anyway and you know that. Go inside!

2. The car that beats me to the speaker every time is driven by a person who doesn't have a clue what he wants (I said "he" but really this is not a gender-specific issue) and as a result 10 cars wait while he weighs the qualities of the grilled chicken versus the Quarter-pounder with cheese. Then there are always fries to consider.

Often this is a matter of being completely uninformed. ("Does that come with mayo? Is it on bread or a bun? How many fat grams in that?") If you are considering an unfamiliar item--GO INSIDE and look at the menu. Chat with the counter help; there is never anyone in there. They are all behind YOU outdoors in the drive up lane.

3. At the bank, would you please not try to negotiate a loan in the drive up lane or at the ATM? Again, GO IN! Why would you try to solve an overdraft problem through a bad two-way speaker and two-inch thick bulletproof glass? I have seen this done. Please don't make the clerk tell you this is something to resolve with an assistant manager in the office. Just keep it down to deposits, withdrawls and paying your bank box rent or car payment.

4. Be ready! Be ready with your food order. Have your money out and ready to pay. Have your deposit ready. Have your ATM card out, ready to go in the slot. Act like you know what your are doing, even if it is an act.

5. Please don't sit at the pickup window and unwrap every sandwich to make sure they didn't put pickles on your burger. Pull up out of the way and let the traffic move. Keep doing this and I swear someday you will be followed home and--if you are lucky--only your car will be damaged.

6. At the ATM, it is OK to take your card, money and receipt and pull forward to count your withdrawl, put everything back in your purse or wallet, readjust your mirrors, change radio stations or CD's, etc. It is actually preferable to do that in order for the car waiting patiently behind you to pull up and conduct ATM business. If you continue to rudely make others wait, you may find yourself being shoved out into the street before you are completely prepared by the woman in line behind you with PMS who really doesn't care what the front of her car will look like. Being shoved might be the least that will happen if you are fortunate.

OK, enough. Just a few rules. Gas is expensive, and fast food isn't very fast these days and many of us are in a hurry, uninterested in your dietary concerns. We can't control that the bank has only one of their 8 drive-thrus open or that the kid at Taco Bell got your order wrong. Don't make the rest of us pay. Put some social back in society.

A moment to remember.

This quiet scene could be the entrance to any suburban high school. But it isn't. It is the main entrance to Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado; not just a school but a memorial as well.

Columbine is grimly etched in the memory of everyone alive to hear the news back on April 20, 1999. No one could contemplate what would drive two boys to do what they did that day. So this is just a reminder: yesterday was April 20, unofficially known as "Columbine Day." For whatever reasons those boys had, they changed this country forever and not in a good way. Perhaps they were out to "get even" with classmates who they perceived--or in fact--had wronged them. Maybe they were crazy. Something pushed them outside the box, far enough out to where this all looked achievable and worthwhile to them.

This picture was taken on April 18, 2005, six years almost to the day after the massacre. The students who were there in Spring, 1999, were gone; the ones who were freshmen were two years into college, and the seniors were out starting their careers. Fourteen of them were not in careers or higher education though: the 12 who were murdered, and a teacher; and the two perpetrators themselves. Six years later on a quiet Monday afternoon, there was no sign of the violence--just a bus waiting at the door and a few cheerleaders grouped on the walk.

Life is a delicate balance of order and chaos, one only a few steps from the other. It was good yesterday, ten years after, to remember those who were caught when life was out of balance.

.

Steam

Early in 2004 (and a couple of times since) the Union Pacific Railroad brought one of their two operational steam locomotives to Kansas City for a short visit. These pictures were taken in January, on a cold but sunny morning at Union Station.

Number 3985 is a Challenger, named for a landmark canyon along the UP in Wyoming. Steam engines are classified by the type and order of their wheels; this wheel arrangement is 4-6-6-4 (four pilot wheels; two sets of six linked driving wheels, each functioning as a separate engine; and four trailing or truck wheels under the cab and firebox), suitable for use in both passenger and freight service. She is a monster of a machine.

The 3900's were built in the early 1940's to help with wartime traffic. Diesel locomotives were already very much in use but not approved for manufacture because of war priorities. The government did approve some production of heavy steam locomotives for several roads and thus 3985 was assembled in 1943. If they were trying to save on steel, you have to believe they failed for there is a lot of metal in this old girl.Originally built to burn coal, many of these engines were converted to oil. The oil most railroads used was a thick, gel-like substance also used by the Navy in firing boilers for warships called "Number 6" or "6 Bunker" oil. More remarkable was the amount of water they consumed.

Wherever she goes, she totes along extra water and fuel, and a tool car in case there are mechanical issues. UP actually maintains a small steam department for 3985 and the 844, a wartime Northern (4-8-4) that also survived the scrap line. The men who are the steam department not only run these locomotives, but maintain them as well having learned to fabricate their own spare parts and diagnose problems which skilled craftsmen are no longer available to do.

The silver-painted area is the firebox, in which a large fire burned underneath part of the boiler to convert water into steam. Fireboxes on these larger engines were as big as small rooms. Steam crews probably liked the fireboxes' radiant heat in the fall and winter but oh, how they must have roasted on warm, humid summer days crossing Nebraska.

The modern diesel-electric locomotives are cleaner, more efficient and more colorful, better to such a degree that they quickly killed off steam for good once World War II was over. But they lack the fierceness, the moving parts, the smoke, noise and personalities that steamers had. I only remember them for a few short years when I was very young, seeing Santa Fe steam pass by on the main freight line in El Dorado. But I sure miss watching those big wheels and rods work together, hearing the hiss of one passing at speed, and the drama of a Santa Fe 2-10-4 starting a heavy train when a signal cleared. Fun times.

He took my career.

The man with the best job in the world is a TV host/chef/restauranteur by the name of Guy Fieri. He does not claim the best job in the world by simply appearing on TV. Nor is being a chef or owning and operating a restaurant the best job in the world. My grandfather did that; it is hard work with long hours. Fieri has the best job in the world because as the host of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on the Food Network, he gets to go around to really good places all over the U.S.A. and eat what appears to be great food--on someone else's nickle. I think I was supposed to do that.

Is there a better job?

I don't think so. Some of the diners he spotlights are not simply breakfast and burger places, but places run by men and women with food training and vision far beyond that of a fry cook. These people are awesome.

Consider Bobo's Drive-in 80 minutes west of here in Topeka. Good burgers and fries and onion rings, like you would expect. But they also serve fresh apple pie, homemade daily right there in the drive-in. They will serve it ala mode if you like, in your car. Not standard drive-in food for Sonic or McDonald's. (No, that isn't a slam on those fine restaurants.)

How about Bert's Burger Bowl in Santa Fe? Cheeseburgers there are topped out with fresh New Mexico green chile salsa. If you want to try something even more unusual, they make a lamb-burger. They have been in business selling food like that for generations, and it looks fabulous seen through my non-hi definition analog TV screen. I can only imagine how it looks in the flesh and if it tastes half that good, it is worth a ride down there.

Another Santa Fe place is the Tecolote Cafe. Watching folks crowd in to eat blue-corn pancakes with pine nuts or huevos rancheros was just killing me, again with the New Mexico chile salsa, this time green or red: your choice. Again, made fresh daily.

I am a sucker for thin-crust pizza, and Fieri found one at Louie's in Dallas. Outside Louie's looks like an old filling station. Inside the two Chicago-area brothers that run the place are making mouth-watering thin crust pizza, similar to what you get at the Pizza Man in Overland Park. But they also do bar food and cook a mean burger, just beautifully done, with a secret soy marinade.

These are the kinds of places Guy showcases. He gives you the story of the place, what the special twist is that makes it different, and then tortures you by showing how the food comes together. Then with the audience (read: me) in virtual starvation, he samples the finished products just to twist the knife a little deeper. ("Oh, yeah!" he will say. "You would like this!") Bastard.

This is the job I know I was meant to have except for my utter lack of formal food training, my absence of having a TV (or any) personality and the need to lose 55 pounds. Except for those few minor, really meaningless details, Guy Fieri stole this career right out from underneath me.

It isn't all exceptional burgers and pizzas. He has hit places that serve lamb shank, German specialites, amazing Italian food (one place in Omaha, family run, even makes their own mozzarella.) One diner in Georgia serves it all: Greek, Italian, American--it's all there, and nearly all of it done from scratch. The patrons interviewed there at the Marietta Diner, many as they were eating, looked to me like they wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

I cannot do this kind of work; Guy is already doing it. Al Roker has a similar show. The demand has been met. Thus I will have to be prepared to go to these places and pay for my own food. I fully intend to do just that, because I have to know for myself.

I have a list.

Tough kid.

Today Annie tried a swan dive off her diaper changer-table and hit the floor. There was a great amount of crying and consoling, followed by much examining of body parts. There were hurried phone calls and a fast trip to the ER. Annie was in a bit of shock immediately after the main event and was acting sluggishly but once in the hospital for a while she got her game back. After being scrutinized all afternoon she is officially just fine.

Liz had turned away only for a second when Annie stood up and instantly went over the side. She is convinced her flash of inattention makes her the worst mother ever, obviously having forgotten about Octo-Mom and perhaps Joan Crawford. But Liz has taken two antsy boys through their diaper part of life somehow managed to prevent either of them from leaping off the tall furniture. The little creatures will do unfortunate things very much on their own and that is why God makes them tough. Yes, there are conditions for which they are simply not a match. But maybe God stuck his hand out there and cushioned her fall a bit.

No mother in the world can cover every possible situation. What will Liz do when Annie is in high school playing basketball and runs into a wall at sub-warp speed, clocking herself? Liz did that to us, and all we could do is watch helplessly from the bleachers while the coaches and officials made sure she was OK. In high school, Liz's mother hurt her back cheerleading at a football game. That time, no one was there to watch and worry about her but God made them all durable for most things just the same. Mothering is a partnership with the Almighty and sometimes He picks up the slack when mom hits a rough spotl That will have to be good enough for us.

Feeding on the forest floor.

I think they are trying to kill me at work. The boss is gone on a special assignment and they have appointed me to direct our activities. I really didn't want this. I have been in charge before, for most of my career. That was enough. The last six years as an hourly employee have been pretty decent because I could leave it all at the door every night.

Of course my brief freedom has been reflected in a reduction of earnings but I guess that's OK; I never really made much money no matter what I did. It was nice to have weekends off for a while but all glory is fleeting. Being in charge has required a shift to salary from hourly, actually a pay reduction as there is no more overtime.

Now I have the burden of leadership, no weekends and no money. The dreaded management trifecta. Charter business has exploded this week with baseball season opening and military moves. I would be tempted to seek other employment but it seems that few are hiring and even fewer seem to treasure the skills I have acquired at the airport. I considered retiring but the wife preempted those thoughts as she is still working and will be for a little longer. She has almost no interest in being the only one of us gainfully employed. Retirement is also another victim of the recession: the position is available but the pay has sharply fallen off. So for now I must celebrate just being employed. The prospect of longer hours and harder work holds little except the pay check itself.

When I can stand it no longer, maybe I will go get a job as a car rental garageman. They spend their days driving, refueling, vacuuming and washing new cars. Corporate controllers in far away cities do not call garagemen and demand to be informed about details of the inventory, food cost, manpower reports or profit and loss. Garagemen are not concerned with covering vacations or hearing the complaints of those who have sensed themselves wronged by the corporate structure. Garagemen are not awakened at unreasonable hours because an inconsiderate employee, ravaged by strong drink, failed to report for work. Yes. I want to be a garageman.

For now I will have to see it through as I have the past thirty years, laboring far too hard for far too little. Garagemen don't earn much, but they do leave it at the door.
My kids are grown and gone. Our home's mortgage has been satisfied. Mark my words, let Lufthansa make one small error--just one--and I am getting on the waiting list at Avis!

It's how we roll.

Many people have cars that like spouses, just look like they belong with each other. William Conrad, who portrayed private investigator Frank Cannon on the old Cannon TV series absolutely had a kinship to his Lincoln Continental Mark VI. My younger daughter Katie looks like her Saturn Aura was modeled and built specially for her.

Yesterday I was waiting at the bottom of the I-29 exit ramp to 72nd street and found myself behind an aging Ford Festiva occupied by a large curly-headed Seth Rogen-looking kid wearing a T-shirt that said only "CLOWN." As we all waited for the light and the other six million cars to clear, he alternated between sitting bolt upright and dropping the seat back into full recline position all the while talking on his cell phone. "He's a clown, all right," I thought. His buddy sat next to him, a little skinny guy with a white rag tied around his head. He had a scrubby beard and never moved so much as a muscle. "Those guys are perfect for that car," I continued to muse, observing its faded red paint and hearing its rumbling (yes, it really rumbled) exhaust. They were perfect for it: not at all polished, loud and goofy, very casual.

Pretty teenaged girls are meant to drive Mazda Miata convertibles, preferably red ones. They may continue to do so until in their mid-twenties by which time they really need to trade for a Mustang convertible. Incidentally, no man should ever be seen driving a Miata. Most men have the top of the windshield obscuring their vision and are so ill-fitted in this vehicle that they look like Shriners heading to a parade; Miata is for girls only.

When I used to pick up my kids after school I got a good education in car-driver agreement. I sat there in my Ranger, one of the rare trucks in the parking lot, watching the mini-vans roll in. All of the thirty-something moms parked, got out and had mini-conferences in twos and threes gassing about who knows what. In their nylon jogging suits and mom jeans they all appeared to be a good fit with their Voyagers and Caravans, a sea of which spanned the lot by the time the kids charged in from school. I would venture that mini-vans are the jogging suits of the automobile kingdom. Ten years before, the mini-van--or its older brother the venerable station wagon--would have caused these same women to recoil in horror and run screaming back to their Mustangs. Now they had sliding doors, cup holders and even televisions in the back to entertain restless urchins.

Boys are more complicated, and have to have a gimmick. Even before high school they emerge with car personalities. There are always a few who think they have to have the speediest car and only look at ease in a Corvette. Some prefer an old Firebird, which always seems to be black or have no paint whatsoever. A lot of teens abandoned the muscle car and express themselves now with pickup trucks and vie to have the largest, loudest and highest off the ground. This is the 2009 equivalent of fully-extended peacock feathers, replacing those bygone but equally loud big-block Plymouths and SS396 Chevelles. The vast majority of boys however will just settle for what they can afford, sliding into hand-me-down family cars or perhaps an aging SUV. Reflecting their individuality, boys will turn them into neat, shiny jewels or let them deteriorate into something like the Festiva, maintaining it only to the extent that it will qualify for a state license.

In some communities your car is a statement of who you are, not unlike your clothes or hobbies or even your home itself. My buddy Norton, from Garden City, bought his first car when we were in college. He selected a 1967 RS Camaro, which like Norton himself, was small, quick, sporty and agile. If Norton was not "sporty," he at least liked sports. It was a good pick. They looked like each other. Now, later in life, he has an Acura sedan. Just conservative enough, and just edgy enough for a busy internist.

Some men go into a midlife crisis and opt for Corvettes, Mustang V-8's, or exotic roadsters from overseas. Like the crisis, these cars fail to reflect the true nature of their owners, as very few men in their fifties have anything in common with high-powered, sexy, low-slung automobiles with low profile tires. These men would normally drive Buicks or Mercurys. I really don't know what makes them do that.

The one thing you can count on is guys who wear their hair long or shaggy and have a beard are almost obligated to drive a four-wheel-drive truck. The more full the beard, the bigger the truck. Even if they don't need a truck, that is how they roll. This is a way of life. Sometimes the more disheveled they personally look, the dirtier the truck stays. It has nothing to do with their work and everything to do with how much a bad-boy they want you to believe they are. I have known men who do construction for a living and drive trucks but you would need to look long and hard to find any dirt on the ones they drive.

Then there are the celebrities. Britney Spears is a match for her white Mercedes, but she should be denied a driver's license. Her driving--like the rest of her life--is a mess, thoroughly documented in endless magazines and on TMZ. Another mess, Lindsey Lohan, just this week was given a $130,000 Maserati by an adult movie producer so I guess that's a pretty good match too, for a variety of reasons. The best match ever? Sean Connery as James Bond in Goldfinger with the legendary Aston-Martin DB5. A sleek, fast car for a similar international spy-playboy.

This isn't an exact science but consider your friends and the cars they drive. As people and their spouses grow to look like each other, don't people and their cars somehow wind up as mirrors of each other? I think they do. Folks want to project an image of who they are if they can afford to do it. So check out their cars, and then lets have a look at their pets...

Where's all the failure?

Great Caesar's Ghost! I have been looking around at other blogs. There's an education. What in the world am I doing in here with these people?

Most everything I have seen is either artsy-craftsy or foreign. By foreign I mean literally not in English. Many in Spanish, a few in Greek, one in Arabic, others in languages I was unable to identify. But even the non-English blogs were artsy in nature; lots of dramatic photos (closeups of flowers, men staring blankly at unseen women, a vase on a shelf).

The ones that I could read and weren't overly arty were either commercial, blatently advertising a product or service; or incredibly detailed documentaries of intricate hobbies. There are a lot of amateur food critics out there, and also a wealth of gardening enthusists. Along with them are the Renaissence people that describe themselves as celebrants of nearly everything: politics, architecture, geneology, medicine, literature, theatre; you name it, they have an opinion on it. Blogging must be the greatest thing in the world for university professors and some of their graduate assistants--a bullhorn through which they can blat their massive knowledge to the world.

Just a handful are by moms about their families, sort of a diary written for the ages in cyberspace. Everything else is the pretentious, artsy type of blog with lots of photos, incredibly busy desktops crowded with country-inspired print designs, and a paragraph about the flower that was examined that day. Some are maintained by actors or others with theatrical bones. And a few are into their careers as authors, people required to travel the world, chefs and so on.

What seems lacking are garden-variety people writing about their lives and how the events of the day affect them. Bloggers seem to be a gifted, successful group. Where are all the divorced men lamenting about their wives who soaked them in the settlement? Does a lineman for Power & LIght ever write about how a freak storm in Louisiana took him away from his family for a month? I keep hearing about the legions of workers laid off daily by cold, uncaring--hateful, actually--employers concerned only about maintaining double-digit bottom lines. Where are those blogs? Does a medical student, an engineer, an under-employed lawyer ever write about daily doings?

It just seems like there should be some failure out there, and someone to document it. People just barely hanging on to jobs, perhaps jobs they don't really care for but need. I guess that is what I am here to do, represent the undistinguished Philistines in the middle-class. Obviously, I will never be confused with anything more highbrow than Cousin Eddie. But count on me pretty much always writing in English.

Kid Stuff

So we all were eating dinner last night, a big one for Katie's birthday, when Steve, a 4-year-old, announces with a concerned look on his face, "I have to go pee!"

His mom said, "Well, go ahead and go," as he was getting up to leave.

His five-year-old brother Robbie said, "Stevie, you should say 'I have to go to the bathroom.'"

Steve made no comment. I am unsure if this suggestion will make him any more refined as a person, as he generally has disdain for any kind of correction made to his behavior or his life whatsoever. Even stranger is the extent to which Robbie has become so polite. I am stunned! I had no idea he was that genteel because up until now one his greatest joys is to fart while sitting on your lap.

Now I will have to take my own game up a notch, just to keep from being embarrassed.

In like a lion, out like a -- lion.

Today has been a little like November or December. They have been forecasting snow for a week. It has been overcast, cold and windy, On the radio, announcers are using the words "Winter Strom Warning." Denver has been on its knees because of a snowstorm which is now bearing down slowly on us here in Kansas City.

Usually the amount of hype is inversely proportional to the amount of snow, and the week-long drumbeat has been for somewhere between none and twelve inches. By now it should all be about Spring, the first cutting of grass, planting things, fertilizer, etc., and here we are still dealing with snow, ice, sandbags in the truck and the ineffable "wintry mix" that the weather bureau calls frozen rain and sleet, perhaps in an effort to make it seem more civilized. (It does not.)

The good news is that after we get the six inches planned for tomorrow (Saturday), it will warm into the 50's on Sunday. Go figure. Anyway, it still seems tonight as though winter were just starting and we should be planning for Thanksgiving. Just eight more month and we will be.

By the way, tomorrow in Miami it will be 90 degrees.

Utter Incompetence

The Kansas City, Missouri, City Council majestically passed their budget last night as the deadline for doing so rapidly closed in. Ignoring recommendations from both their adversary, the mayor, and their fair-haired city manager they cut the police department's budget by 12 million dollars.

Lord knows Mayor Funkhauser has made his share of mistakes, but they usually have been fouls away from the ball, most having to do with the antics of his wife. He otherwise is knowledgeable and competent about the city in stark contrast with the bulk of the Council. Many Councilmen / women seem to lack any real-world experience. Incredible, given that KC is--depending on which poll you care to cite--the 18th most dangerous city in the country. Regardless of what else may be happening here, with crime that significant does it really make sense to cut the police budget? Another poll, faithful readers will recall, recently ranked KC as the 46th-least desirable city out of 50 to which people living elsewhere might choose to move.

The mayor and City Manager Wayne Cauthen are not exactly close friends. They don't 'complement' each other. But even Mr. Cauthen seems to feel the Council reduced the police budget too severely. Always on the fence, he won't say so himself but allowed his 'Chief of Staff' to express that thought to the Mayor last night. (And does anyone besides me doubt the city manager needs a chief of staff? There is a city job ripe for the scrap heap. Teach Mr. Cauthen to use Outlook. He already has Assistant City Managers. Chief of Staff? Get real.)

So in this time of murders, theft, assaults, property crimes and infestation of drugs and drug gangs the Council not only will not maintain the police budget but gouges it deeply. In doing so they proudly are able to avoid reducing codes administration inspectors and maintain cutting weeds for property owners who should be cutting their own damned weeds anyway. Our elected representatives in the high crime districts should go outside once in a while and hear the gun shots. They should drop by the ER at Truman Medical Center at 2:00 on a Saturday morning. Maybe they should ride along with a cop and see if they really should be reducing police funds.

Now the Council claims that even with these reductions the police won't have to change the number of cops on the streets. ("Oh, " they say. "We are just looking to reduce the civilian staff at the Police Headquarters. It won't affect the patrols.") The Chief of Police isn't so sure. With neighborhood 'activists' as our elected representatives we seem to lack the common sense approach to governing that a printer, an auto worker or a business owner (someone with a real job) might bring to the table. Why put the Chief in that position? Give him the tools for which he asks. This isn't a little crime-free town in the Nebraska panhandle. This is an urban drug center with the turf wars, gang violence and creeping street crime to prove it. New York City is safer by the numbers.

Sorry, but we have a dreadful city council. Their chief accomplishments have been the abolition of smoking almost anywhere in the city and the banishment of the mayor's wife from city hall. (There's a record to run on next election.) Now add to that a public goring of the police department. They skipped an entire week of city business so they all could go to the Democratic National Convention in Denver last summer. They don't seem to get that the citizens here want to feel safe in their homes and don't mind moving to Johnson County to do so. With every move the tax base takes a hit, and in KC south of the river, there is block after block of virtually worthless property with microscopic tax value. Left behind in part because no one felt safe living there. So definitely cut the budget for law enforcement.

One of our little whiney-assed 'activist' council-persons must have got a traffic ticket one time; maybe the officer was uncompromisingly firm about it. So now we are stuck with city fathers who have the old 'flower child' mentality. "Let's just be nice to each other!" So you be nice to the nine-year-old with the AK-47 who is stealing your car.

Maybe the City Council can get the Democrats to hold the convention here in 2012. By then, if the Council has its way, we will have just six or eight cops left. The Bloods and Crips and MS-13 will provide contract security and direct traffic. They may be running the City Council by then as well.

Oh Give Me a Home...

After looking around at some of the other blogs, I feel really inadequate. There are people writing these things that discuss current events, their successful careers, detailed home decorating and deep philosophical topics. Some blogs concern puzzles, challenges or maybe very exacting hobbies. Deeper still, some are penned by disabled people who share that perspective on life.

I, in turn, write about trains and the weather.

So in this humble moment, I submit a few observations on the state of our country.

I have to agree, this is not a "run of the mill recession," as the President recently said. The failure of the credit sector distinguishes it from the '70's recession and those before. But the President, unchallenged by a friendly press, continues to mislead an uniformed public that this is all somehow a product of Republican mismanagement and Wall Street greed. He continues to stress that he didn't cause this mess; he is simply the one who has to clean it up.

Wait a minute.

There is, as the pundits say, plenty of blame to go around. Usually the press and Obama administration lackeys spread it around as far as, again, Republicans and Wall Street. Well, Wall Street certainly is culpable. Some of the firms there looked the other way as they bundled up packages of loans so toxic that they glowed in the dark. They were not totally ignorant of the mounting crisis-to-come. And as President Clinton said last fall, Republicans in the last Congress were negligent for failure to protest more loudly and longer what had become obvious blundering of the government's role in private lending through Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac.

But what about the Democrats? Were they just victims of all this greed and mismanagement, utterly shocked like the rest of us when the housing market crashed? Were they the voices of reason and alarm in 2005, '06, and '07? I don't think so. Although given a free ride by the press--and thus absolved by the great unwashed, who obsequiously swept a load of Democrats into office in November--I think the truth would reveal they shouldn't have been stunned because they and their policies over the last ten years didn't contribute to the crash. They caused it.

Fannie, Freddy and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 are all creatures of the past Democratic administrations. Fannie and Freddy, both government agencies designed to make home loans available to a variety of Americans, are administered largely by President Clinton staffers. Under Clinton sponsorship, the CRA was used to justify forcing individual private banks, through various methods, to make shaky home loans at low interest--often with little or no down payment--to those who could least afford them. Having created this atmosphere of "loan to the little, poor guy or else" Congress congratulated itself for doing good, for getting the hard-working poor man into a home of his own and living the American Dream. But the ball kept rolling and the loans kept going out to people who were buying up beyond their means. As usual, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

As the demand for homes became greater with the government meddling in the home loan industry, home prices escalated far beyond what the market could eventually bear. It was particularly bad in California, Nevada and other rapidly growing parts of the USA.

One of the few voices to warn of the impending disaster was one George W. Bush, who in 2003 and again in 2005, called for Congress to oversee more closely what Fannie and Freddy were doing to the housing industry and credit market. Democrats in Congress (read, "Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.) blocked any action on supervision of what Congress was allowing to occur. The press--by now routinely dismissing the President as a buffoon--granted him no coverage or magnification of his warnings. The stage was set for disaster.

Once the housing and credit sectors failed and the layoffs began last year, banks just froze up. Each bank now had no idea of what the other was worth becasue so many banks had bad loans out--now in the hundreds of thousands across the country. As banks refused to make loans to anyone, business began to contract, layoffs mounted, car sales tanked and here we are in a recession. No one can say we would not have had this recession without the credit failure--it might have happened anyway--but we might not have had one as deep, or perhaps at all.

My point in this very condensed description of our situation is that we can't buy what Obama, Dodd, Frank, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, NBC, CBS, ABC, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and every two-bit state and local politician are selling. We don't dare. Wall Street is guilty, yes. The Republicans, who rarely raise their voices even to defend themselves, should have loudly protested what they saw happening. But the Democrats are standing by indignantly criticizing everyone else, as if they were just casual observers of what went on in the last few months and years. I believe that they are actually stunned by what happened but I also believe that the truth is they caused much of what happened.

Don't buy into their professed role as the homeowner who returns home to find the house rifled, drawers emptied on the floor and furniture overturned, with all the jewelry stolen. They aren't victims any more than the rest of us. Their fingerprints are all over this recession, this credit crisis and the housing debacle. Democrats are quite guilty. "But," they say, "we had to try to make home ownership available to everyone. It's the American Dream, and everyone has a right to it." We may be all equal in rights, and under the law, but that is all the Congress needs to assure. The American Dream of owning a home isn't for everyone and the government sure doesn't need to try to hand it out. Ask yourself what has the government ever done so efficiently that it has proven itself to qualify now as a mortgage banker?

Everyone has a right to dream, that's true. But The Dream has to come from hard work, and sacrifice, and good citizenship. The opportunity is there for all, and the dream is there for those who go work for it. Just don't get suckered in to thinking that liberal Democrats didn't have a huge role in this, as they manipulated the CRA ultimately to buy votes from the folks they unwittingly installed in homes that were wrong for them at the wrong time.

This information is all out there. Thomas Jefferson knew that only through an informed electorate would this government be successful. So, come on, America. Look beyond the "mainstream press" and get some other perspectives on how you have been deceived. It is not too late. And you have been deceived.

My way, take the highway that's the best.

Old US 66, westbound at Hooker's Cut, Missouri, Sept. 2007

I don't have a car. I have a truck, a 2002 Ford F-150. Before this one I had two other trucks, both Ford Rangers; a '98 with air conditioning and my first truck, a '94 without. They both were 4-cylinder powered and got very good gas mileage. The F-150 has a bigger engine, a big V-6, which probably gets about the same mileage a small V-8 would. So the gas consumption is a little disappointing but I have had 7 years to get used to it.

So in spite of the mileage, a couple of times a year I get in the truck and head off down a highway in search of old railway depots to photograph, or to revisit places I have not seen since childhood. It is just therapeutic to get out and see some of the country from time to time. One thing I would love to do has little in common with the other topics I have discussed in this blog--I'd love to take the old truck up to Chicago and drive out to California as much as possible on old original Route 66.

It is still out there, a lot of it. It exists as state highways, city streets, county roads and farm-to-market routes. I know this, I have been on a lot of it in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Sadly in some places it exists only as grass-covered rights of way, or just faint memories. Still, most of it is there in fact if not in name. Route 66, the fabled highway from Chicago's lake front to the Santa Monica Pier, was truncated some on both ends in the '70's and finally decommissioned altogether in 1984. Much of the original road was bypassed by the Interstates. The businesses along the route suffered greatly as each new segment of 4-lane opened, withering and dying, sadly, because they were family-owned restaurants, service stations and motels. Each had it's own local flair and personality, keeping individuals employed and involved in the community. Travellers began to value conformity, or at least they sure settled for it. Identical fast-food outlets and boxy little motels with inside hallways popped up everywhere having little to distinguish them from each other.

What I like to see is what remains. So sometime I think it would be a kick to drive as much of the old road as possible, beginning to end. It is fun to look at an old restaurant or abandoned gas station on a run-down street, identify how they fit in with adjacent establishments and picture in your mind's eye how busy it all must have been in 1956. Sometimes you look at a strip mall and it hits you, "Hey, that is an old motel," and you realize you're driving what once was the life line of a community. Just a little detective work reveals the vitality that 66 meant in a burg. Before the Interstates, highways took you through the heart of a city or town. You saw the city hall, the county courthouse, the best cafe they had, their banks and homes, and stopped at their stop lights (an irritant which probably popularized the interstates). Then, back at home, you could really say, "Amarillo is actually a nice town," or "Gallup has a beautiful city park," because you had if fact been there and seen for yourself. Now you only see the exit signs and the McDonald's and the Holiday Inn Express unless you make it a point to go a little deeper and visit what's left.

Old 66 follows railway lines across the country: the Illinois Central between Chicago and St. Louis, the Frisco on west to Oklahoma City, the Rock Island from Oklahoma City to Santa Rosa, then after a short gap to Albuquerque, the Santa Fe all the way to Los Angeles. That last part was a fun part. I have been on a lot of it in New Mexico and Arizona; we passed through when I was 13 and probably drove my Dad nuts wanting to stop in every town to watch a train go by at the local depot.

And there were signs out there--posted mile after mile in advance--that proclaimed the "last gas before the desert" at Whiting Brothers stations. After passing one, the next "last gas" outlet would be instantly touted by the next chain of signs, this in force all the way across the desert. There never really was any "last gas," just last gas signs and a wealth of gas stations.

A small economy based on "Trading Posts" also existed on US66 in those same two states. They advertised hundreds of miles in advance, touting buck knives, moccasins, curios, postcards, cold drinks and Indian souvenirs. They were interesting places crowded with Virginians and Ohioans who found themselves face-to-face with the Old West, marveling at caged rattlesnakes and rubber daggers. I can remember kids occasionally browsing in their pajamas, attesting to the high-speed, long-riding "gotta make time" attitude of their parents. They'd cast quick glances at the cash register to see if Dad was ready reload the car lest they get left behind. I wonder how many of them wet their pants or had to pee out the window because the old man wanted to make 600 miles that day. Pure Route 66.

Good restaurants, all one-of-a-kind owner-operated, were in every town. They were usually open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but not often 24 hour places unless signed as truck stops. Most had a counter with stools backed by an endless row of stainless-steel milk dispensers, refrigerators full of cream pies viewed by me through their sliding glass doors, giant coffee makers, Hamilton-Beach malt mixers, racks of individual cereal boxes, and sometimes a grill with a big exhaust hood. There would be booths and tables for four, often as not with linen tablecloths. Many places had all of this in the front and a second dining room in the rear, or next door. The extra room was usually just open in the evenings. Some owners hired an organist or piano player, even in small towns. And the food was always good. Not as many choices as you might have today, but always first rate. Fried chicken, steaks, fried shrimp, halibut, chef salads and roast beef were standard fare. Motel owners and filling station attendants would never steer you to a hash house. They wanted your business when you came through the next time. Nothing--except maybe an orange grove--ever smelled better than the aroma of breakfast in those eateries as you entered from the dim coolness of an early morning. Bacon, toast, coffee, maple syrup--that all gives off a comforting smell. When you went back out to the car after a nice breakfast, the sun was up, warm on your face and you were ready to travel.

Route 66 had good owner-managed motels for travelling families, and did land-office business during the summer months. I liked to walk through the parking lot and see where the license plates - and the cars attached to them - were from. Usually you would get a very diverse sampling of America. Usually the pool was busy on a hot afternoon. Usually the grass on the lawns was cool on bare feet and very green, even in Winslow, Arizona or Tucumcari, New Mexico. Usually we found clean rooms with crisp clean sheets on the beds. Usually you could park right in front of the door to your room. Usually strangers easily struck up conversations as they loaded their cars in the mornings, willing to inform each other how far they might get that day or what they hoped to see. Times were a little different then.

None of this was exclusive to 66; just typical of it.

I know you can't go home again. I would still like to go find the old route through the small towns and cities that so many of us used in the years when 66 was Main Street for the Southwest. I'd like to see what became of the attractions along the road: Yellowhorse Trading Post, Twin Arrows, the Cozy Dog, the Blue Swallow Motel and others. I know some are gone outright. But Route 66 has tried to mount a comeback in recent years, trading on its history and nostalgia. Many come from Europe to explore the old road, and there are books galore and a magazine all about it. It has experienced a rebirth and there is a even a grass-roots movement to recertify old 66. She will never again be the romantic "Mother Road" which carried so many Dust Bowl-ers from Oklahoma and Kansas to work in California, and eventually back to the Midwest. It's no longer a through highway built for speed. Still, it retains its heritage, song, architecture and some day I hope to go check it out. And get a piece of that pie.

Changing of the Guard

Wow, I have been lazy. I haven't posted a blog in over a week. I had kinda-sorta resolved to at least put up one entry a week if not more, but this was my wife's "Annual Appeal" week at work. During that early March week I am usually enlisted to help stuff envelopes, record pledges and assist with the mailing. She is a fund-raiser, and they need all the help they can get. Thus I have had to use my blog time to turn the wheels of charity.

We had the time change a week ago. It has always been a milestone in the year, along with Annual Appeal time. The days are getting longer anyway but with Daylight Time once again in force, the extra light in the afternoon is welcome. It signals the switch from winter to summer, dark to light, cold to warm, even though it is still obviously winter, pretty much dark and often cold. Twilight at 7:00 PM is just a reminder that the climate soon will be much more forgiving if I am patient.

When I was little, I remember seeing the crocus shoots pushing up through the cold March soil, frequently covered with a thin layer of snow. That was a sign that things were going to start happening, because shortly after the tulips would begin to grow as well. As the frosts fell away in a rapid succession of weakening winter days, my dad's petunias, pansys and roses would begin to make their colorful appearances in his flower bed below our front porch. That was a hundred or so miles south of here where the climate is not different in a dramatic way, but March is the moment when life seems to renew. Here in northern Missouri, there are some warm days and the wonderful twilight even beyond the dinner hour. Even so Spring will start in earnest next month.

With all of this comes the lack of necessity for a heavy jacket and the real necessity of mowing the lawn. And also along with this is the dreaded tornado season; that time of year which has single-handedly caused New Yorkers and Californians alike to wonder what in the world would tempt rational human beings to live in this belt of torn trees, homes without roofs, hail, and those ominous break-in television bulletins warning of impending doom. They look at us and ask how we can stand living with that kind of implied violence just as we wonder how they can live anticipating earthquakes and terrorist attacks.

Those of us from Kansas recognize Tornado Season as a kind of fifth season separate from the other four. It is one part horror movie, one part science and two parts wild imagination. Spring days are warm, sunny days with a healthy singing of birds. Tornado season days are hot humid affairs with towering thunderheads blotting out the sun, changing from cotton-white to a sick greenish-black. Nothing can chill your blood on those afternoons like a chorus of sirens rising all over town to alert you to a storm lurking unseen in the distance with a hungry eye on your house. Especially after you have already witnessed the unthinkable done to your fellow citizens.

It is part of the arrangement we have around here. Occasionally a high price will be paid by some. You just try not to imagine that it will ever be you, your family, your home that is called on to write that check.

The hard cold armor of winter now has a chink which we all can see. In the days ahead the nights will be less frosty and the days will cast that welcome warmth on our faces. People will appear wearing shorts and T-shirts at the earliest possibility, only to have to wear jeans and a heavy coat the next day. But yes, my friends, we have turned a corner.

Wichita County

The picture at the top of the page, if you are interested, was taken on October 1, 2008, at approximately one PM. The location is near the Logan/Wichita county line, in western Kansas. So much western that in 30 more miles you are in eastern Colorado.

You are looking west-southwest, from the shoulder of highway K-25. I stopped to take this picture on the Oakley-Leoti leg of my most recent photo-journey which looped through this part of the state. There are no towns nearby. Oakley and I-70 are 25 or 30 miles behind. Leoti, the seat of Wichita County, is 15 another fifteen miles in the distance. The emptiness is broken only by Russell Springs, the abandoned Logan County seat which is almost a ghost town. A few die-hard residents remain; the county maintains shops, and there is damned little else.

Several ranchers around here have homes close enough to the highway that you can see them, countable on just one hand. Even glimpsing a full-growth tree is an event. It was a nice day, however, and I liked this view; the line of trees in the distance forming the windbreak, and the vast blue sky--so I digitalized it for immortality. Maybe someone's home is engulfed by that vegetation, it's hard to say with certainty. What appears to be an old road, or maybe someone's private landing strip, trails away from the roadside.

Not visible here but just to the right, out of the frame, are "breaks" where the underlying sandstone has been uncovered. Looking barren to the untrained eye, under this grassland is a magnificent aquifer stretching from the Dakotas to Texas. From it water is pumped for homes, for irrigation and for livestock giving life to what Zebulon Pike called the "Great American Desert."

Folks who call this lonesome part of the state home are the ones who grow our wheat and raise our beef. Far from being isolated bumpkins, they are savvy businessmen and -women running multi-million dollar operations. Where there is a town, it is often neat, clean, and prosperous. Private aircraft are more of a necessity than luxury to many people here.

The sky and landscape are empty on this warm, early autumn afternoon but don't make the mistake of thinking there is nothing "out there" and that only loners and simpletons can be found west of Overland Park. Or New York, for that matter.

Good day.

Paul Harvey is dead. I have lost a friend.

I never met or even saw Paul Harvey, never shook his hand or wrote him a letter. But he was part of my day--six days a week--for years, since I was eleven. Over those years I came to feel he was one of the family.

I always thought he was talking right to me. He delivered the news with common sense in plain language; conservative and no nonsense but not confrontational. And not without humor or a personal touch. It was the delivery itself that set him apart, with staccato bursts of his sentences, dramatic pauses and vocal inflections. (HELLO Americans! This is Paul Harvey. Stand by for NEWS!) He was one of a kind. You heard each carefully chosen word clearly and distinctly. No one else could do it. No one else tried.

In the summer of 1962, KAKE radio in Wichita began to advertise on its sister TV station that they would be an ABC radio affiliate on August 1st. They extolled the benefits of ABC network news, a program with a lot of tradition called Don McNeill's Breakfast Club, and Paul Harvey news. My old 1958 Philco clock radio was set on KAKE (AM, of course, because in those days only universities operated low-powered FM stations with classical music and boring academic discussions on philosophy) so for the remainder of my summer I was waking up to "Paul Harvey News and Comment."

The bond was immediate. Mr. Harvey, a staple in Chicago since 1951, read news headlines but for the first time I heard commentary along with it. And I liked it. His crisp voice, with that remarkable delivery, captured my imagination. His first daily broadcast was at 7:55, just before the regular news at eight, Monday through Friday. He had an expanded fifteen-minute report at 12:05 which ran Saturdays as well. I listened to those broadcasts from then until just a few years ago when WDAF no longer aired Paul Harvey in Kansas City. My family never missed an opportunity to tease me about religiously trying to tune in, especially on vacation, but I noticed they listened too.

As I said, Paul Harvey took a conservative, common sense approach, much like my dad. Perhaps that was a contributing factor to the bond. I heard his displeasure when criminals were set free on technicalities or when politicians misbehaved. I heard him cheer and felt his happiness when the USA achieved a victory in the Cold War, in the Olympics, in Congress, in the world arena. There was never a doubt of his love of country in contrast with so many celebrities, news makers and even newsreaders of today who are often competing to be the first in line to find fault with the United States on any subject, as publicly as possible. I think he personally mourned each soldier who died in Viet Nam and each victim of a cold-blooded murder about which he reported.

Paul Harvey also had a little fun with us. He solicited the names of and identified couples all across the country as "champion lovers" who had been married the longest, occasionally finding people with 70-plus years "on their way to together forever." He would read a story in which some publicity-seeking scoundrel had behaved outrageously, often criminally, and then state: "Of course, he would want us to mention his name." There would be a pause, then he would move on to the next story with at least one news outlet denying a fool his reward. And he had special broadcasts for special days. Every year, on Saturdays before Easter, Father's Day and Independence Day, I made it a point to hear his radio essays on those subjects. They were simple but he so filled them with the essence of the day that each was very moving. I have missed them and will continue to do so. They should be heard by every American every year.

Being in Chicago, Paul often would begin a Saturday piece with "This is Chicago..." and paint a word picture of the state of Chicago urban politics, a city of rich heritage--if not tainted with incredible scandal and corruption. He would take Mayor Daley to task, or the council, or Chicagoans themselves. But he had a great love for his adopted hometown which I could feel six hundred miles away in his words. I shared it, because Chicago was the foremost rail hub in the nation, the city where my beloved Santa Fe trains began and ended their runs. And I shared it more because Chicago is the unofficial capital of the Midwest, my part of the country. It was as though Paul Harvey stood atop the Prudential Building on Michigan Avenue, with his booming voice heard all across Chicago, across Illinois and Iowa prairie farmland to the southwest, across the golden wheat, cattle and oil country where I lived and deep into Oklahoma and Texas.

But of course he spoke not just to us here in the Midwest but to all Americans. Paul Harvey always supported the efforts and sacrifices of the US military, and his reports aired on the overseas Armed Forces Radio network as well. Even after he came to oppose the Viet Nam war he never failed to praise the men and women who were in it, and he never failed to remember our veterans.

Paul Harvey wasn't perfect; he probably stayed on the air too long. His memory confounded him in later years. On one live broadcast I remember a painful pause as he struggled to remember the name of a product as he live-read one of his commercial endorsements. He was slightly of the opinion that women should be kept on pedestals; his notions of what was "lady-like" failed to keep pace with changing culture. He attempted to start a traditional children's broadcast on Christmas Eve, interviewing Santa at the North Pole as he prepared to start his annual trip delivering toys, but it never captured a wide audience or long run.

He always described himself as a "professional parade watcher," letting us know his passion for getting up at 3:30 AM at his home in River Forest and hurrying to the studio in downtown Chicago to get the news of the day together. I don't think he could have retired. How great it must be to enjoy one's work that much. His work was rivaled only by his love of his wife, "Angel," who died last May. Somehow I just knew after that, Paul wasn't far behind.

So good-bye for now, Paul Harvey. I hope we meet up again in the great beyond. I would like to tell you how I loved to hear you, and I want you to know how you helped me form opinions and see things for what they are. Until then, old friend, Good Day!