What To Do On Friday Night

Landoll Lanes, Marysville, Kansas, on a Friday night. There is a lot of purple, maybe because it's the color of Kansas State University, which is not far down the road. No one is actually bowling, just eating and drinking. That's okay with me. Love the carpet.

The Pridefest Day Parade is today so there should be some fresh material. And NYC on Saturday.      

Games

Very late post today. There is entirely too much on my plate.

The economy of Marysville, Kansas, has been stabilized by the presence of Landoll Corporation, a manufacturer of farm machinery.  It provides a lot of jobs. It also created a social center, Landoll Lanes, with bowling, billiards, tabletop shuffleboard and a pretty good restaurant. It was quiet, though, on the night we ate there. 

Old Time Religion

Top: something else found in the Salty Dog Saloon. I'm sure Jesus loves everyone, even senators from Kentucky.

Bottom: a church in Marysville. What's with the quotation marks? The device is frequently misused in American English and, as loyal members of the language police, Mrs. C and I could not let this pass. What was the pastor trying to communicate?         

Prairie Storm

Looking north from the parking lot of our motel in Marysville, Kansas.  This can be a land of violent thunderstorms. The town lost power for about three hours Friday night and Saturday morning.      

Antique Tastes

One of Marysville's attractions is the Koester House, with its museum and somewhat strange gardens. German immigrant Charles (Karl?) Koester arrived in town in 1860 and soon made a name for himself. He ended up becoming the town banker, built a very fancy house by the standards of the day and filled the garden with reproductions of, I don't know, Greece-Roman-Renaissance-Baroque sculpture.  The garden isn't very big, the pieces seem thrown together in a crowded way, and yet it tells us something. What were the tastes of the well-to-do 150 years ago? The place seems very foreign in a prairie filled with corn fields.

Madeleine In Marysville Monday: 1 or 2?

1. Audition for a slasher movie, maybe. At breakfast at the Wagon Wheel Cafe. The knife wasn't very sharp.

2. A more traditional approach. She's been a good girl all year, mostly.         

Marysville, Kansas

I've been visiting here a time or two a year for more than 40 years. Mrs. C went to high school here and grew up on a farm 17 miles away. Marysville has about 3,300 people. The area is rolling prairie, not at all flat. Farmers grow corn, wheat, milo and alfalfa. Some raise cattle. When you drive down the gravel country roads the drivers of oncoming cars always wave hi as they pass.

This is small town America. Kansas has conservative booze laws and most bars can only serve beer with 3.2% alcohol, yet they are well-patronized. The main street appliance store survives despite the Walmart on the edge of town. Since I was here last summer, benches have sprung up all over town memorializing the deceased members of so many classes of Marysville High School. And why not paint a neo-primitive picture of the Wagon Wheel Cafe (where breakfast provides enough calories to last a week) on a circular saw blade?              

Surreal Kansas

A last photo from Kansas. There is a brand of gasoline, Sinclair, whose logo is a bright green brontosaurus. Appropriate for a fossil fuel. Still, it's a little disconcerting to drive off the prairie into town and be confronted by a prehistoric monster.

It reminds me of my first encounter with the mind blowing. I was on the debate team in high school. We once took a late bus from New York to Boston for a tournament. It was misty and foggy. I fitfully tried to sleep but was awakened by friend's a transistor radio, which for some unknowable reason was playing a Spanish-language cover of the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction. As I looked out the window into the darkness, a flatbed truck with a Sinclair dinosaur five times the size of this one rolled by. Boinkboinkboink...    

Two years later I was at Woodstock and this kind of thing seemed normal.       

Sorry

Highlight and shadow In Kansas. Older American motels, those not part of a chain, traditionally have a prominent sign that says either Vacancy or No Vacancy: we have available rooms or not. This is a variation. When we drove by Mrs. C and I wondered if the management was apologizing for something, like America's history of racism or Kansas' lunatic governor, Sam Brownback.

The bit on the letterboard about H   OOKUPS has nothing to do with one-night stands. The motel welcomes campers and motor homes. (I think they are called caravans in Europe.) Hookups means that water and electric lines are available to attach to the vehicle.

Taken on the western edge of Marysville.                

80th High School Class Reunion

Marysville, Kansas, High School, has an annual reunion for the classes with major graduation anniversaries, about 40 years and up. Mrs. C (Class of 1962) and I attended last night in honor of her mother, Elvira Kruse, the sole representative of the class of 1936. 80 years out of high school, 97 years of age and doing well, thank you. What a remarkable person.                 

Landscapes With Trains

Out here in Kansas you can photograph all the trains you want. Long haul trains, carrying coal and grain and every kind of freight. Just don't have bad timing while driving on a highway with a railroad crossing. You could wait a long time.

There is a Union Pacific line that runs along the west edge of Marysville. It has a freight siding maybe a dozen tracks wide. An overpass was built across it on US 36 a few years ago. Good thing. The trains crossing the highway could really slow down the trip from town to Mrs. C's family farm.

Home tonight but we'll run with this for a while.                

Thanksgiving In Marysville

Thanksgiving in Marysville, Kansas, at the home of my mother-in-law, Elvira Kruse. She lives on Keating Street, above, on the edge of the prairie. Elvira will be 96 on Saturday.                      

Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, all us Apple people brought in daughter Emily and Madeleine after dinner on Face Time. Son Andy and his wife, Claire, drove in from Chicago and made a fabulous meal. Below, Andy, sister-in-law Mary Lee, Mrs. C, Claire and Elvira gather around the TV and Andy's MacBook, sending greetings back to The Lou.

And, at the bottom, Madeleine takes her first steps! A day to remember.                     

 

Patriot Games

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!

Sir Walter Scott

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Samuel Johnson

 

This van was parked across the road from our motel in Marysville, Kansas, for the length of our stay. Never saw anyone in or around it. It reflects a common theme in some parts of American society. There are those who believe that our Declaration of Independence and Constitution were given to us by God and that military veterans of all kinds (ours, anyway) should be venerated. I'm not much into tear-shedding eagles but I'll let you judge for yourself.

My First Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving dinner at Elvira Kruse's Home in Marysville, Kansas. First, the star of our show, who has not decided it's time to wake up and smell the turkey.

Below, the family around the dinner table. From left to right, son-in-law Brian, daughter Emily, son Andy, prospective daughter-in-law Claire and Mrs. C (wearing her Calgary Stampede shirt). Bottom, sister-in-law Mary Lee and the birthday girl, my mother-in-law, 95 today and looking pretty good.         

After Thanksgiving Dinner In The Country

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We brought Thanksgiving dinner from St. Louis and did final assembly at Carolyn's mother's home. She lives in a new housing development for low income seniors. They are spacious apartments, two to a building, all ground level and accessible. Perfect for Elvira who will be 94 in a few days and can live by herself with some assistance.

So what to do later? No football fans in that place. I got out on the lane through the development a bit after sunset with my camera and tripod. The top picture looks back to the through road and has some wild spectral highlights from the street lamp just out of the picture. That's the entrance to Elvira's unit below, with a clear night, a waxing moon and some wacky color imbalance. Last, looking toward the edge of town from the end of the lane. That's the same water tower we saw a year ago through a longer lens. 

This morning is the annual not-at-all-serious pheasant hunt out in the farm fields. The running joke is that the Kruse guys all carry shotguns but I bring a Canon.

Downtown Marysville

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A final look around Marysville, Kansas, before we return to STL. These images are from around the town center. They illustrate the old and the new, the good and the bad. From top to bottom:

An out-of-business motel on U.S. Route 36. We usually stay at the bizarrely-named Surf Motel just down the road. The name has a complicated story.

The Pony Express statue. This may be unfamiliar to our international readers but it is an icon of American Western lore. It delivered mail and telegrams from St. Joseph, Missouri, northwest of Kansas City, to Sacramento, California, for a brief 18 months. Marysville was a principal station along the route.

The trailer of voter suppression. We have a trivial incidence of voter fraud in this country. Still, Republican state legislatures in several states, including Kansas. have recently required specific photo ID cards to vote. Lots of poor people don't have them, and don't have the money to get certified copies of birth certificates or a state-issued ID card. It is a blatant and shameful attempt to prevent low-income people, who tend to vote Democratic, from exercising their franchise. 

God, guts and guns in northeastern Kansas. Plus support for the local high school football team.

The door of the odd Dolls, Toys and Indian Artifacts Museum, open only by appointment. I've never made it in there.

Back to The Lou tomorrow.

The Union Pacific Depot

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A busy Union Pacific railroad line used to cut straight across the west side of Marysville, blocking traffic on U.S. Route 36 many times a day. A few years ago the tracks were moved further out of town and a bridge built to carry the highway across them.

There was a beautiful railroad depot that now sits empty along the old right of way. The Spanish Colonial architecture is striking. Some area residents would like to rehab it and use it for a community center and are trying to raise money. The U.P. has no use for it. If the funds are not available in the next couple of months the building will be demolished. But there is good news! On Tuesday night the city council decided to buy the building and then resell it to preservationists. An important part of Marysville's heritage will live on.