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The Fictional Town in Kansas Literature The fictional Kansas town is born of idealism (Beecher) and its opposite, speculation (Pinkerton and Jericho). It is both the picture of normalcy (Midlin) and of hidden decadence (Fork City and Epic). It is ethnically segregated (Rattlebone) or full of racial divides (Cherokee Flats). Most of all, the Kansas town is a force: young people want to flee it (Kerrville and Fox Creek), are seduced by its pedestrian charms (Fallon), find it a magnet for homecoming (Small Plains). In most of Kansas Literature, towns (like landscape) not only have character, but are characters. They can be adversary (Glasgow) or friend (Freedom). They can be depressing (Belleplain) or inspiring (Sycamore Ridge and Brittsville). They represent our need to reconcile with the past (New Boston) and our need to start all over in new communities (Tarrent). Above all, they are real places (Hood County) that test a character's sense of reality (Melville), Often, writers use the real towns in which they grew up, simply changing names, such as Langston Hughes' Stanton/Lawrence or C. Robert Haywood's Dalton/Meade. Sometimes, the freedom to re-name is the freedom to criticize (see the work of Julia Ferguson Siebel). Most often, the creation of the fictional town gives the writer freedom to be located without being slave to particular place, the freedom to create a Kansas that, even though it does not exist, often seems as real, as believable, as essential and true as Kansas itself.
Glasgow, Thomas Fox Averill (Scottish Lindsborg, see Averill page), The Slow Air of Ewan MacPherson Just after Thanksgiving, Ewan and Shirley and Cork began their plans for the next Burns Night ceilidh. Not even Christmas was more important to Glasgow. To best the year before, they raised enough funds to bring a contemporary Scottish poet to Kansas, to flavor their celebration of the past with a little of now. The poet scandalized the Glaswegians by not rhyming. (pp. 113-114) Return to Top of Page Midlin, Thomas Fox Averill (Little River - see Averill page), Leaving Midlin, Kansas Approach any central Kansas town and you see the grain elevator, water tower, church steeple, the vaulting county courthouse: anything trying to find sky. Say you're traveling west on Highway 52, toward Midlin, population 2,789, Home of the Midlin Lions. Farthest south in your gaze, just above the geen fuzz of elm trees - carefully planted and watered in the last century - is the cylindrical landmark of the Farmer's Co-op and Magnusen's Mill and Elevator. Then, as though marching toward the highway to intersect your drive, the flag-mounted cupola of the Chichkawh County Courthouse, the Midlin Water Tower, and the bell tower and steeple of the St. Cloud Church. (p. 5) Return to Top of Page Rattlebone, Maxine Clair (Argentine area of Kansas City), Rattlebone The Saturday-morning-only milkman who brought the new, homogenized bottles from Armourdale. The here-he-comes whose only name was Insurance Man, except for that one time on Mr. Mozelle's porch when he said something that made Mr. Mozelle draw back his fist before Mrs. Mozelle could stop him. Doll leaning on the register at Doll's Market, taking our pennies for B-B Bats and baloney by the slice. Mr. always-quiet Heltzberg bent in a stout C and carrying his stained leather satchel - thick with sheet music - on the shelf of his back every Wednesday afternoon by bus from way out in doo-waditty to Wanda's house and back to the bus stop. In the Rattlebone end of Kansas City, those were our white people. (p. 23) Return to Top of Page Beecher, Kenneth S. Davis (Manhattan), The Year of the Pilgrimage Of all such forgotten villages - barely
recognized by the branch line of a railroad, snubbed entirely by major
highways - the town of Beecher might, in late August of 1946, be taken
as example. To reach it by automobile the traveler must turn southward
from the Kansas River into a dusty graveled side road off the paved main
highway from Kansas City. At first he sees, beyond the motor hood, no
town at all. On either hand the fields lie level across the rich bottomland,
while straight ahead lie limestone hills. Return to Top of Page New Boston, Kenneth S. Davis (Manhattan), Morning in Kansas Viewed from above ... the town, topped
by the leafy crowns of trees, appeared to be virtually all of a piece.
Only the business district at the Eastern edge of the town and the State
College's buildings of limestone on a long sloping hill at the western
edge must stand out, from the tower, as nakedly distinctive features. Return to Top of Page Fallon, Emanuel & Marcet Haldeman-Julius (Girard), Dust and Short Works ... but in Fallon, Kansas,
a job was waiting for him on the Middle West's most popular weekly. In
fact, between unfinished novels, Gordon had made his living for several
years by writing many of this paper's editorials, for which he received
five dollars a column (set in eight-point solid, eighteen ems wide), and
he had frequent invitations to come to Fallon for steady work at thirty
dollars a week, with - important item - traveling expenses included. Return to Top of Page Dalton, C. Robert Haywood (Meade), The Preacher's Kid Mom told us we would be living in a
town called Dalton, located southwest of Dodge City and about twenty miles
from Jericho. She said the District Superintendent had told Dad right
in front of the Dalton folks that it was "not an easy assignment."
Dalton had had six preachers in the last five years. So we were all going
to have to work hard to help those people "see the light" -
and, of course, to help keep Dad in a job. Return to Top of Page Ditch Valley, Daryl Henderson (Ashland), Ditch Valley The town where my mother and father were together is bordered on the north and east by a small creek that branches off from the Big Sand. It rose high enough in the spring rains to cover the crossing down by our house. In the summer it ran so dry that you could follow it up past the grain elevator to the Shoemaker place in the park. When my sister and I were playing in the yard we could hear the cars and trucks ease over the crossing and slowly grind up the hill. At the time this story takes place, the sunflowers in the ditches were so tall that we could hardly see the road or who was coming until they were almost upon us. (p. 12) Return to Top of Page Pinkerton, Charlotte Hinger (Hoxie), Come Spring Pinkerton sponsored a celebration to
attract homesteaders and other potential customers to the auction of lots.
Graham wandered down the main street and studied the changes that had
occurred since he first stepped off the stage. The street was faced with
buildings - a new hotel, a saloon, a blacksmith shop, a dry goods and
general store, a drug store, and a combination barber and bath house,
along with fifteen rental houses. Return to Top of Page Stanton, Langston Hughes (Lawrence), Not Without Laughter Colored men couldn't get many jobs
in Stanton, and foreigners were coming in, taking away what little work
they did have. No wonder he didn't stay home. Hadn't Anjee's father been
in Stanton forty years and hadn't he died with Aunt Hager still taking
in washings to help keep up the house? ... Return to Top of Page Freedom, William Inge (Independence), My Son is a Splendid Driver Our home now was in Freedom, a small, prosperous town in the southeastern part of Kansas where the geography was nothing like that of the flat, dry western half of the state where Mother and Father had met. ... As a child, I could not imagine my parents had ever lived anywhere except in the pretty and prosperous town that was now our home, with its spacious houses and wide green lawns, all tented over by the heavy foliage of great elm trees and maples, where the surrounding country was verdant and hilly. (pp. 9-10) Return to Top of Page Tarrent, Michael Grant Jaffe (Auburn), Dance Real Slow At 41,094, Tarent, Kansas, is the seventh largest city in the state - just ahead of Hutchinson and behind Salina. Tarent is twenty-two miles west of Lawrence, where the University of Kansas is located, and about sixty miles east of Kansas State, which is in Manhattan. The route to either is easy. Manhattan is 70 West into Topeka, then switch over to 50. Lawrence is 50 East all the way. I drive to one of the schools weekly to use the law library. Tarent's public library is small, and most of its legal section concerns itself only with basics. (p. 12) Return to Top of Page Melville, Richard Jennings (WaKeeney), The Great Whale of Kansas If America were a dart board and your dart landed on Melville, you'd be the winner, hands down. That's becuase Melville is smack dab in the middle of the United States, exactly halfway between the great Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, a place with no coastline, no beach, and no blue ocean views. (p. 4) Return to Top of Page Kerrville, Laura Moriarty (Yates Center), The Center of Everything My mother works at Peterson's Pet Food,
right across from the slaughterhouse on Highway 59. Return to Top of Page Fox Creek, Edwin Moses (Harper), One Smart Kid Also, we're both stuck in the middle of nowhere. If you had a monster map of the United States, big enough to cover the whole floor of a schoolroom, in the middle of it would be a good-sized dot, which is Wichita. A little way northwest is a small dot which is Hutchinson. Then quite a long way west and a little more north is a tiny dot for Remington. Finally, if you looked a few inches farther west yet, I mean about thirty miles, you'd see something you'd think was a speck of dust. But when you went to wipe it off you wouldn't be able to, becuase it would be Fox Creek, Kansas, population 492, one of which ever since I was born has been me. As soon as I'm grown up, or sooner than that if I can't stand it any longer, it's going to be 491 again. (p. 4) Return to Top of Page Cherokee Flats, Gordon Parks (Fort Scott), The Learning Tree ..the contours of the village resembled
those of an egg, the broader top half representing where the most well-to-do
resided, and the lower half being where the poor and the near-poor lived.
The Frisco tracks, running north and south across the lower section, drew
the social and economic line between the six thousand residents who made
up the village. There were no well-to-do blacks . . . but there were poor
whites who shared, to a certain degree, the status of their dark neighbors
east of the tracks. ... Return to Top of Page Fork City, Joseph Stanley Pennell (Junction City), The History of Rome Hanks and Kindred Matters But what sort of people squatted in Fork City anyway? They all sold each other wheat and bacon and corn and beef and farm machinery and squeaky shoes; they all talked in the same Goddamned flat, nasal voice about the same Goddamned trivial things day-in-day-out year-after-year - eating sleeping and growing more rustic and pompous and proverbial (as if the secrets of Life with a capital L were to be found in the saws mouthed over a corner rail or a gutter: You kin ketch more flies with molasses than you kin with vinegar. Where there's that much smoke, there must be some far. First ketch your rabbit. Time is money.) They begat their kind, hating each other because of the no-privacy of the place, stunned because of the dullness of the virtues they felt obliged to wear, beckoned at and tempted by the rich vices that each kept each from enjoying except in deep, painful secret. (p. 3) Return to Top of Page Hood County, Nancy Pickard (Wabaunsee County), Bum Steer For the next hour, we flew on instruments
at 8,000 feet over landscape that all looked the same to me when I got
glimpses of it through the clouds: flat, gray, and wet. But then the weather
and the land both began to change: we passed the back edge of the front,
so so speak, and the sun appeared, shining down on rolling terrain. On
top of the hills, there were gray circles that looked like salt on the
rim of enormous margaritas. When I asked the pilot what they were, he
said, "Limestone." Ah. Gray rocks. In Flint Hills. I saw brown
dots that I assumed to be cows. No trees. Or, practically no trees. Water
holes. In fact, lots of water standing in pastures where the rain had
passed through. A barn here and there. Even fewer houses. As we descended,
I saw long, long fence lines. Return to Top of Page Small Plains, Nancy Pickard (Alta Vista), The Virgin of Small Plains More than halfway, actually, since he stood at the intersection of I-70 and Highway 177. To the north was Manhattan, to the west lay Denver, and toward the east was Kansas City, where he had lived for the past seven years. Small Plains was straight south from where he stood. If he remembered correctly, the cemetery was on 177 north of town. He could run in, take a look, and then get right back in his car and head home without even having to drive through Small Plains. (p. 107) Return to Top of Page Brittsville, Laura K. Reiter (Beloit), One Was Annie Brittsville had the advantage of being laid out in the Solomon valley, surrounded by bottomland along the good-sized river which flowed into the big Saline. The water, wood, and rich earth available there under the Homestead Act coupled with the three hundred and twenty acres the Britts and their co-investors were ready to divide into lots made the place very attractive to settlers. Still, it was remote, not yet a railroad stop, and it had, in 1865, only twenty-two permanent familes. . . . In truth, the hasty eye could not find much to rest on. The model windmill for the agricultural implement company didn't arrive until the mid-eighties, so nothing yet rose above the single-storied bildings - except, on a couple of them, a false front built five feet high or so above the actual roof line. The Hardware and Stove Store, the General Mercantile, and Britt's Land Agency had slanted porch roofs supported by poles, but horses as well as people could get under them. (p. 188) Return to Top of Page
The town was Belleplain, the county
seat of Sutton County, planned and laid out thirty years before by the
railroad, its streets crosshatched square with the compass on a sweep
of the tilted plains. Central Street was a line strung north and south
between the railroad's passenger station and the freight spur a half-mile
away. The six or eight residential streets all hung westward off that
line, like streamers blown out by an east wind, or as if the westbound
momentum of the first comers had carried them on across Central Street
before they could stop and look around for a good lot to build on. Return to Top of Page Ludlow, Julia Ferguson Siebel (Colby), For the Time Being To the north the town of Ludlow, in the state of Kansas, stretched along its length of railroad track from the grain elevator, which showed as a flat dark oblong below Cassiopeia in the east, to the two church steeples pricking the sky toward the dipper in the west. Between lay the flickering lights and trees of the body of the town, too low to cover any stars. The undulant treeless plains spread out from there everywhere to the full curve of the horizon. (pp. 4-5) Return to Top of Page Jericho, Paul Wellman (Cimarron), The Bowl of Brass For a time Archelaus sat still in his
office gazing out of his window at the broiling street. Familiar business
signs caught his eye: General Store, Cox & McCluggage, Proprietors.
The Acme Lumber, Feed & Supply Co. Hippocrates Morse, M.D. Exchange
State Bank. Bon Ton Restaurant, Meals Family Style or Short Order. The
New York Store, Dry Goods & Notions. Return to Top of Page Sycamore Ridge, William Allen White (Emporia), A Certain Rich Man He pointed the way and she turned into it, and the band followed. They crossed the ford, climbed the steep red clay bank of the creek, and filed up the hill into the unpainted group of cabins and shanties cluttered around a well that men, in 1857, knew as Sycamore Ridge. The Indians filled the dusty area between the two rows of gray houses on either side of the street, and the town flocked from its ten front doors... (p.3) Return to Top of Page Epic, Max Yoho (Southeast Kansas town), Revival and The Moon Butter Route After belaboring us with what must have
been every case of drunkenness and every puddle of vomit in the whole
Bible, Reverend Willyard set about to give us an equal dose of the phenomena
of the "miracle." That was important because he figured it would
take a miracle of about eight hundred cubits - squared - to even give
the citizens of Epic, Kansas a chance. Return to Top of Page
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