Birding and Driving. Yes, that will be the story for two weeks
Monday, April 16, 2007Ate pineapple for breakfast. Saw a cardinal and a downy woodpecker.
Noted the mileage: 85104
Birded Cheyenne Bottoms this morning. Saw about 30 birds, including American coots displaying their white butt sacs. Didn't go all the way around the auto tour but enjoyed watching the shovelers and redheads and ruddy ducks and yellow-headed blackbirds especially.
Great Bend and McPherson, KS, remind me of Grand Junction—the buildings in the downtown look similar. Great Bend had “Please Go Away” tours company. Later I saw Marmie's Ford and Kiowa Kitchen, a Mexican restaurant, and Rickabaugh's Auto Market. Many of the towns in KS have a list of churches on the entrance to the town. 
I wonder if that's some kind of code. A lot of them also seem to have automotive businesses along the main highway—no surprise there.
On the way east on 56 (parts are on the Santa Fe Trail), saw lots and lots of turkey vultures but very few hawks. There were even three turkey vultures circling over what looked like an abandoned barn at the intersection of 2 highways. I wasn't fast enough to get a picture. I wish I had gone and looked in the barn to see what birds were in it—the place looked like no one lived there.
In McPherson, I went to Java John's and got a latte and biscotti. I talked quite a bit to the woman who made my coffee and the man there. He said the town had about 13,000 people. She said she was from a really really small town in Indiana. I was reading an article in a magazine that mentioned Lake of Fire, an abortion documentary by Tony Kaye.
Central Kansas is as flat as the San Luis Valley in parts—much of it used to be wetlands. Then you get into the Flint Hills. There were cuts in the road where swallows were nesting, but I didn't stop. At one point I stopped to take pictures of a fire some farmer had lit in a field. I crossed the highway, but I don't think the shot was any better from that side than from the other side.
It took about 5 or 6 hours to get to KC, and I didn't arrive until 4. Russ was at Dor's house repairing a towel rack for Dorothy.
Dor and Dad and Don and Matt and Russ and I went to Jack Stack's BBQ. I had burnt ends but they weren't burnt enough. I was expecting something like french fries, really crunchy and carcinogenic on the outside and soft and squishy with fat on the inside. I don't really like BBQ all that much, I guess.
I asked Matt where I could find information about Shannon and other 1930s political bosses in KC, and he suggested some unusual sources—which I guess he must have read himself—the Payne papers in the Black Archives at the Main Library on 18th street; a dissertation on Shannon at Downtown Public Library—5th floor, mostly letters; and stuff on Pendergast at the Truman Library. Matt said a book writen by a KC Star editor was biased because it was written to make Truman lose the election (in 1948?).
Then we went home and hung out as we always do, talking about the past. Russ looked at a road atlas. I asked him how many states he had been to, and he said “Ten.” I showed Dad where I was going to go on the road atlases. Matt walked around and outside the house. Donald told stories about all the people he knew. He met someone he knew at Jack Stacks and said, “Hi, Grandpa.” Apparently the man's son knew Matt in college or sometime.
At the end of the night, I showed Dad the information I had on my grandfather Marvin's service in WWI and suggested I could write to the Defense Department and get papers, if there were any. I told Dad I thought part of Marvin's life would make a good story. He got a funny look on his face and said all the kids thought Marvin was a "blowhard." He said he'd never taken him seriously, but as he got older, people would tell him about all the things Marvin had done for them. As a minor political boss, Marvin could hand out favors or food or coal and get people to support the Southside Democrats.
Dad said he never wanted to be like his father. And I think he succeeded in that.
posted by Price of Silence @ 10:06 PM
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