We awoke this morning in Stockton and rode 32 miles into a nasty headwind that beat us up good and limited us to 45 miles on the day. We are at the Wagon Wheel Motel, a series of small cabins along Hwy. 24 near the small town of Downs, with possibly 1000 people total. Around 7 pm another bad thunderstorm rolled in with high winds. There are large tree branches down all over this town from last night's storm and tonight's could be as bad. In fact, last night as we
were having dinner in the VFW Hall in Stockton, a terrible hailstorm rolled through. The tornado sirens went off twice and we were told that a tornado had touched down two miles west of town. At one point, Gabriela stood up to move down to the basement, but our food hadn't arrived yet and I was terribly hungry...................and also was dying to watch the storm. There is something about the ferocity and strength of a plains storm that awes me and awakens me. When I was a young child, I used to scream for my mother during nights when bad storms passed through and now as an adult there is nothing I love more than that rare raging thunderstorm in Denver. Here in the Great Plains, it's incredible to watch the swirling clouds, some with a green tint to them, changing directions. For the last two days, the wind came out of the east strongly, only to shift around 5 pm when the storm systems begin to move in. These last two days have been a study in plains weather. Over the last two days, we have stopped in each of the numerous small towns that are more frequent now that we are in central Kansas. These are towns with between 30-500 residents and no more functioning cafes, hotels, or restaurants. They sit silently along the main roads, in the shadows of enormous grain elevators, next to the railroad tracks where they once unloaded their bounty. The streets are empty and old businesses are boarded up. Gabriela walked the length of Alton today searching for a house where we could fill our water bottles. Each of these towns has a kind of rest stop along the road with an historical marker placed there by the state perhaps a decade ago. The markers tell the history of the town, of its once thriving businesses and bustling population. The markers also mention that the town is in decline. We have come to see these ubiquitous town markers as a kind of gravestone for the town, and the Great Plains as a cemetary for once-booming small communities. The markers tell of the towns' founder, it's main industry, some of its eccentric residents and colorful traditions. Alton used to have an annual "passion parade" around Easter, one of the largest such parades in northern Kansas. Downs once had a college. Osbourne, the birthplace of Russell Stover, still has a Chocolate Festival to honor Stover. Today, the missing feature in each community is young people, most of whom leave for surrounding urban areas.
Here in Downs, we have been received with great warmth by the owners of the Wagon Wheel. They fed us, allowed us use of their laptop for me to write this, and even picked us up in town when the weather turned bad. As we sat at their dinner table today enjoying conversation,
I noticed that the family's matriarch and grandmother, who had just served us our food, was sitting in the other room by herself because there were no more chairs for her to join us around the table. This kind of selflessness and hospitality also defines this region, people bending over backwards to help others. Rural areas such as this may be lacking in access to major news sources and quality food and cultural diversity, but the people here have something important to teach us urban dwellers, who keep our neighbors at arms length and lock every door that we can.We had a great night with Gramma Billie before leaving Quinter on Friday. We watched an old video of an interview that Gabriela's family did with Billie's mother Edna in 1996, when she was 95 years old. The video, which Natasha apparently put together, included stories about Edna's youth, her Aunt Maude, her teaching career, and the experience of losing her mother at a young age. The video also included footage of Edna's funeral, and a short piece showing Leonard showing off his vintage cars with his grandchildren. The experience was wonderful and a little emotional. Seeing Edna and hearing her stories helped me to understand how Billie became the person that she is. At her funeral, when people were standing up to share stories, rose to remind everyone that before her mother died, she said that she hoped that there wouldn't be any war, that she had seen enough of that in her life. She died just a couple of months after the 9/11 attacks. After this video ended, we watched a PBS piece on the hidden history of Kansas along I-70. We all broke into song at one point, "Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play............." Was a beautiful way to spend an evening.
Tomorrow we are off to Clay Center, Kansas and Manhattan after that. A few more days on the bicycle and we'll begin making our way back to Denver and parenthood. Two people today wished me a happy father's day. It felt very strange. I feel blessed to have a good 11 day tour before it all happens. We met a man today in his early 50s bicycling from San Francisco to New Jersey shore. He grew up near Philly. After talking a bit and sharing stories, I said to him, "you were a wrestler, weren't you?" His face lit up. "How did you know, do I give it away?"
"No, I can spot a Pennsylvania wrestler anywhere." They all have the same stocky, gritty look, with the firey personality, carrying their grandfathers' metal lunch pails to Colorado or California in hopes of escaping Andrew Carnegie.
We also saw some wheat fields devastated by hail today. I was imagining the owners reactions, losing their crops so close to harvest. This life is one big gamble. On the drive from Quinter to Wakeeny, where Billie dropped us off to bicycle, she was staring at the wheat crops along the side of the road.
"Gramma, did you ever lose a wheat crop to hail?" I asked her.
"Why, of course"
"What was it like?"
"Well, what do you think it would be like working all that time and losing everything?"
Wheat here is king and this time of year everyone looks at the wheat fields like a parent does a newborn, with admiration and trepidation.
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