Kansas

With temperatures from 104-112, we have been sweating our way through two remodelings and needed a break. So I suggested we take the back roads to Coffeyville just to see the country. We found the most amazing antique shop/restaurant/western clothing/ junk shop on the outskirts of Tyro. Coffeyville looks really tired these days. It was discouraging. They had a downtown renewal going with high hopes 25 years ago but now that is in struggling condition. But mostly we love seeing the country.

While at Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago, I noticed that they are still selling copies of Frank's "What's The Matter With Kansas?". It is a political book and I like to read both conservative and liberal ideas. This one won rave reviews by the New York Times and I decided on that basis to get a copy. The guy is a native Kansas Citian who, unlike most Dems around this area, is not the least bit moderate. He begins with a chapter on Emporia. He said the town has gone downhill and all the businesses are boarded up and it has lost population. It was so alarming, that I was reading excerpts to Miss Shirley who was also expressing her shocked alarm at the text. It made us jump in the car and head to Emporia by the back roads to see what had happened. You see, I grew up 35 miles from Emporia and went shopping there every two weeks for the first 30 years of my life. And she got her master's degree in library science there.

What we found was Not Much Had Changed. The town wasn't doing any big growth like Manhattan or Stillwater or Edmond. But it was hanging in there. Downtown wasn't dying. Businesses hadn't been boarded up. We laughed all the way home about how this ninny had hoodwinked us in his book. So I began to read farther and he covered other cities, the booming Garden City whose meat packing industry has fueled growth, Kansas City, KS which has become the distribution center for the center of America and is booming as well. The Johnson county suburb of Olathe has gone from about 10,000 when I was in high school to 217,000 today.

Frank hates it vicerally. Garden City exploits hispanics. Hey! I said, my best Mex workers in our hotel were all from Garden City. One woman told about their sad life in Chihuahua, got the opportunity to legally emigrate through Catholic Church and her dad is now supervisor at a plant. Frank Really hates KC. His dad owned a humble ranch house in Overland Park, one of the richest suburbs in USA. The mansions went up around poor old papa Frank and he loathed them all. Finally he sold out at a king's ransom and the ranch house was torn down the day they signed the papers. Frank calls KC 'cupcakeland' because so many malls and chain stores have established themselves. Hunh? Doesn't that happen in all urban areas? Not by Frank's utopian vision. He wants the inner city to move out from downtown complete with graffitti artists and night life. And as for small town Americans, he wants them storm the Bastille, that is the local bankers house and come out with heads carried on pikes. At the least he doesn't understand why rural USA doesn't join the gravy train of government programs and is ticked because farmers no longer vote for the party of FDR. Whatever happened to Eugene Debs and his socialists? Whatever happened to radical farmers and Mary Yellin' of the Grange?

What amazes me more than the fibs he tells about Kansas is that he gets away with telling this to a gullible secular progressive Eastern media. The Times ate it up, thinking his book profound and captivating. It made me laugh and shake my head in wonder. And by the way, Bluestem farm and ranch supply is still there in Emporia. So is Kansas State Teachers College.