I don't understand. I just wrote it. SM

Whats the name of the small town is KS Steve?

Bucklin, 27 miles ESE of Dodge City.

Not sure what you mean here Grantham, but if you think you saw my piece in an anthology edited by Ed Gray, then I am flattered! It squirted out my fingers just a few days ago. Here is some more:

One of the most memorable things about Western Kansas to me, was to stand in a wheat field and turn and look around and as far as you could see you were the tallest thing in sight....The peak of one's straw hat reached above everything else.

There was a special smell to the wheat as it rippled in the constantly blowing, searing wind. It baked your face nut brown and brought crows feet to the corners of your eyes, even when you were sixteen. It felt as hot as the surface of the sun, but as hot and humid as it was, one did not sweat. There were no dark brown stains in the middle of your work shirt, like they show in the movies. The sweat, which must have been on the surface of your skin evaporated immediately. Sometimes it left a thin white salt stain on your skin and maybe around the brim of your hat. My God it was hot and dry!

Alone for twelve hours a day, going round and round in the shimmering field of wheat on a puffing red painted tractor would have been lonely if one did not have ones self to comensurate with. If you weren't before, you became friends with yourself on that tractor. You and yourself would have long conversations and learn all kinds of things. From time to time you had to stop to pull weeds from the round, razor sharp blades of the oneway or grease the bearings with that tool they named a machine gun after. You'd pump the handle and sqeeze the black goo into the grease zirk until it bubbled out of the bearing like some science fiction monster. Daydreaming, however; was dangerous. Several times a season some farmer would fall asleep and tumble off of the tractor and be run over by the plow.

Sometimes a baby rabbit, or pheasant would run into the furrow in front of your right front tire. Seldom did it jump to the right and safety, even when I shouted at it to do so. I would watch as he stumbled and tired. Eventually I'd have to slow down or even stop so that the little critter could get away. I never ran over one. We were friends, after all and we shared the experience of the hot summer day in that dusty wheat field.

nicely said steve...i bet calvin can relate to this storey.... charlie

The "Prairie Queen" was wriiten about 1977
 

Steve, did I understand you correctly in your post? You recently wrote about your growing up in Kansas? The Prairie Queen was the name of the church, the area was settled by Swedes and Norwegians, Haavik, Skofer, Eggebrotten- it was all the same in "The Prairie Queen". I'm not critic, but I think Jack Curtis captured the rural American farmer spirit very well in his writing-- "Ya, we get the Monkey Ward Catalog, and when it shows- Good, Better, best- we always order best-- Nice gun, have to watch that safety though- me, I just got an old Nitro Marvel, but they all shoot the birds-- lines like that paint a picture of Sivert Haavik like Van Gogh did with "The Starry night"- IMO anyway. Like to see your story, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Montana, Idaho-- truly our "Heartland" even if you are not a hunter!

I'm certain of it Charlie. He couldn't be any closer to the earth.

Whew! Grantham, I didn't even have to duck and you just went way over my head! There was a nice little book entitled Byrd, or Bird; Kansas. It captured the unique qualities of growing up in those dusty little farm towns. The town I grew up in, Bucklin, Kansas, was the birthplace of both of my parents, so their parents, my grandparents, lived there too and I was related to a bunch of the folks who lived in that little burg.

I did not spend most of my youth there, but living there made the biggest impact upon me and I recall the experience as the most important and memorable of my young life. I also adored my grandparents.

There were many Swedes in Kansas. Tall blond haired farm boys. We lived on Pawnee land and my grandfather showed me Indian camp sites and the hollows left by collapsed pioneer dugouts. I met men who had known Bat Masterson, who was the Ford County sheriff for a term, leaving there after Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday left. Bat did show up in Tombstone, but he didn't stay long. I also knew men who had lived in Dodge in the 1870's and not a single one of them recalled either the Earps or Holliday. Come to find out Doc Holliday was only in town for three months and Wyatt spent most of his time in dives and saloons. He didn't come in contact with the "normal" people in town. Wyatt was in his late 20's and didn't show up in Tombstone until he turned 31.

My great grandmother lived in a little farmhouse on the north edge of town. Here name was Eva. She kept chickens and still had an egg business and she made cakes and pies for the hotel (it burned) until she went to the "Hill House" when she was 97. She made a grape pie! She was born in 1887 and in 1900 lived with my great grandfather in a dugout on the prairie. She was bitter about how hard they worked and suffered and chagrined that her husband died so young, at 63. She lived to 99.

LOL; just re-read this post and NOW I understand it. Oh, well; too many martini's I guess.

Of course we all had the Monkey Wards Catalogue, and the Herter's one too. I used to love paging through it dreaming of owning the guns, but I never bought one. Lee Harvey Oswald put them out of business.

An Amazing thing about Bucklin was that while it only housed about 800 souls it sported a complex social structure, with well established cliques that did not talk. Oh, the men did, but the women pretty much kept to their own group. And gossip! The people in that town took it to a high order! My wife tells the story of sitting in those iron chairs on the front porch along with my grandmother, mother, aunt and cousin, all women. Pat didn't say a word, she just sat amazed at the skill and depth of the gossip. y grandmother was 90 and my cousin 25, but that did not matter. They were equals on that gossipy front porch. There were no secrets in that little town.

In the 50's after we returned home after a trip my other grandmother would pick up the phone, there was no dial; the operator would answer, (she worked at the telephone switchboard just down the street), and say, "Hi Melinda, say I've been gone for two weeks (Melinda already knew this.) and was wondering what is going on in town?" Melinda would fill her in. Nope, no secrets at all.

The town was located where it was because of an artesian well. They used to have a water trough right in the middle of main street. The city fathers decided to provide water to the citizens for free. The result was the place looked like a little oasis with large emerald green lawns, mature cottonwoods and spritely flowers, all this surrounded by the vast, empty prairie.

I believe Oswald got his shootin' iron from Klien's of Chicago, the same place I got a Webley .455 with case of ammo for $12 when I was 14.