A LITTLE IMAGINATION GOES A LONG WAY…

Kansas to Tulsa…

Corn, corn and more corn. Wheat, green, green grass. A few rolling hills. Walmart. That pretty much summed up our road trip through Kansas. I could see why Dorothy floated away to the land of Oz. Of course we were really just passing through. We stopped off in Wichita. I read about a place that makes home made pop tarts. Now who doesn’t love a pop tart? Yes please. I was hugely disappointed, they were incredibly sweet even more than  the processed ones I grew up with. 

We enjoyed driving around the neighborhoods and looking at property. Coming from California its so crazy the prices of houses. You can get yourself a very modest home in the middle of Kansas for about the price of my Prius I drive. In Wichita you can live in a huge lake front home for half a million. Half a million wont even get you a condo in Santa Cruz. One neighborhood in Kansas we drove through had a keep up with jones contest going on. Who can have the oldest ugliest old couch or chair on the front porch?  It reminded me of those ugly Christmas sweater contests but only with old chairs or couches. Don’t get me wrong the porch is a nice  gathering place to sit but does grandmas old couch really hold that much sentimentality. Go to Walmart and get those plastic chairs? I mean no disrespect to the people living there but it was just interesting because at least every third house had one. 

   We saw a sign for something called Rock city so we decided to go back and check it out. I am so glad we did. The craziest strangest rock formations I have ever seen. The sounds coming from the trees was mysterious and fascinating to me. The almost alien buzzing, humming sound of cicadas. Apparently it was a privilege to hear them as from what I understand they don’t appear every year. The sound is a hypnotic sci-if,  almost eerie but somehow pretty at the same time. The combo of this strange sound and these strange rocks make me think that surely there must have been some strange people who come here indulge in some strange mushrooms or other hallucinating plants and imagine they are abducted by aliens. 

  As we we drove through Nebraska and Kansas we decided to listen to a audio book on the history. We learned of the cowboys and Indians and farmers that once roamed and settled this land and in some very sad cases were drove from their very own land. The landscape didn’t change much for miles and miles. It reminded me of being a kid and making the never ending journey between the tiny town of Gold beach Oregon and Hayward Ca. My parents built the house when I was two. When I was eight they moved back to Hayward but their  heart was always at the house in Oregon. So that meant for me every school vacation every summer, the long drive on hwy 101. I swear I could still drive it in my sleep. I would pass the time by pretending I was on a horse. I would imagine myself galloping on whatever terrain was outside my window. 

  So when we drove through Nebraska and Kansas I did the same thing I looked out and saw the sea of Buffalo galloping across the prairies. I saw the Indians perched high on the hills bareback on their horses, long hair, braids war paint staring out at the cowboys driving their cattle, stomping miles of grass selfishly looting their land of the natural resources. The resilience of the wives who lived on the farms weathered from the hot summer winds and the freezing winters. I saw the Chinese who worked tirelessly on the railroads all the while suffering the racism that still rages on in this land and everywhere. 

  We crossed over into Alabama… time to change the story.. lets look at what history lies in the road ahead….