Homeward - Last Night in Kansas

The land across Kansas seems frozen and silent except for the steel pump jacks that bend toward the earth in prayer. An old tugboat sits north of the highway on a sea of shallow snow, an aging fish out of water on the arid prairie. Silver grain towers stretch up toward the sun, wide, conceited and defiant, while a flock of geese soars against blue sky and jet contrails.

We pass old roadside Stuckeys, once a beacon on the highway, now abandoned in haste, others replaced by Dairy Queens, and I mourn the mountains of pecan rolls lost to the ear bud generation, glued to the DVD player, no time to count road kill. The land is in conflict. Billboards remind drivers that abortion stops a beating heart. Adult superstores entice travelers to their icy parking lots filled with hybrids and pickups.

West of Topeka we can almost taste the Rockies and a voice instructs us to stick to the highway with warnings of sleet and wind and danger. But experience tempts us north, so we divert the car toward the town of Wamego, home of the Oz museum and the deli that sells Boss Hog hoagies stuffed with spicy pork, swaddled by white bread, a treat for the man whose appetite went missing for nearly a week back in Kentucky. We remark at how great it’d be to bicycle through this town and I smile knowing that the dream to peddle our way across the frontier will never die.

We drive on and listen as Russian phrases whisper softly through the Subaru’s speakers. Zaftara. Tomorrow. Seechas. Now. It’s a luxury, learning a language of no practical value, but an irresistible one, like a soaring campfire in the desert. Kansas is my Siberia by proxy and until the Little One can peddle it must do.

Photo: Casey and Eli, after having exploded into our final hotel room.