Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff Christie
I sorta did that. I bought all the rest of the family out as I did not want to see the land get away. Impossible to get back once it is gone. I may someday see if the state is interested in it for Public Hunting. The first time the farmer says he is no longer interested in farming it I am seriously thinking about letting it return to natural cover.
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My grandfather had a nice piece about 20 miles south of Bucklin. He farmed about half of it and left the rest as is. There was a little draw that ran through it and water ran a bit. There was an dead cottonwood and you could see where there had been a soddy. A dimple in the hillside, a few smashed soldered tin cans, some square nails, a battered oil lamp. Ernie, my grandfather, said he knew the people who had lived there. My great grandmother, Eva, also lived in a soddy and she wasn't nostalgic about it one bit. She was born in 1887. Living in a soddy on that cold, wind blown prairie was not a piece of cake. They made them as cozy as they could. White washed walls and a window or two, life was hard. Eva said it drove her husband into an early grave. She lived to be four months shy of 100 in a little house on the north edge of town and raised chickens and had an egg route until a year or two before she died. Boy could she bake!
South Western Kansas was Indian Country, and in the 60's and 70's they were none too friendly. A hundred would pop up as if from no where. When you scanned the country, flat as a pancake, you wouldn't see a thing, but a slew of Indians could be hunkered down in a draw just 50 yrds away.
Lots of western Kansas towns are dead or dieing. Little Bucklin, a burg of about 700 is still hanging in there. They have the school. Kids from Ford and Fowler go to school in Bucklin. The place seems to be caught in a time warp. Little has changed since I lived there in the 50s and early 60s. Hays had a bit of a rennaisance, but I think it has died down again. Greensburg might as well be dead...it blew away like Dorothy's cabin in
The Wiz of Oz.
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