|
|
KANSAS COLLECTION ARTICLES
|
|
|
I had long thought of writing a poem about Kansas, That lively centenarian, "The exact geographical center of the United States" And, as it sometimes has seemed, the psychic center too, The vortex where all our clashing cultures met. Yes, about old Kansas that once stretched westward right up the long slope to the horizon where the Rockies slice off the sky. Whose motto was, and is: "To the Stars, Through Difficulties," Or, as we say it nowadays, "To Boom, Through Bust." I thought this project over for years. But how do you bring the realities of the sodhouse, sunbonnet civilization, Of people living apart and always alone on the limit- less prairie, with the heat-waves writhing against the far horizon in endless obeisance to the over- lord unforgiving sun; How can you bring such scenes To the beneficiaries of the air-conditioned plexiglass patio, And the three-car garage? How do you bring home to these latter the reality of the hells of separate loneliness In which so many Kansans lived until they cracked, especially farm wives with none to whom to talk all through the eternity of days, with the sun and the prairie and the overarching sky watching, watching, always watching through the windows? How do you tell about this to a generation that in five minutes can get New York on the telephone from any Kansas farmhouse, or vice versa? Or has but to snap on the TV to be in instantaneous touch with the world, at least with the world as fashioned on Madison Avenue or Wilshire Boulevard, That world which, regardless of merit or the lack of it, seems to be the people's choice? How can you tell of the endless alternation of cloud- burst and of drouth, as if God were fatigue-testing the tough mettle of these people even to the breaking- point and beyond? Though even the thunderstorms brought something at least to talk about, So that Kansans boasted pridefully of such blue-black bellowing sockdolagers as were never seen any- where else on earth, With lightning that seemed to split your shrinking soul to its very center. An old-timer told of sitting in his homestead shack And hearing the dry lightning hit his just-strung fence outside, Traveling the barbed-wire, and exploding the posts successively, Sending the splinters zinging like deadly arrows. He said he thought first: "It's my turn next"; and sec- ond, that this was why Eastern Kansans fenced with osage-orange hedges, (Though it wasn't; they just didn't have anything else to fence with.) Such storms grew often into tornadoes So that every shack or sodhouse had its cyclone cellar near. And afterward little rain-lakes might twinkle briefly on the bosom of the blossoming prairie, loud with the cheerful piping of the frogs that appeared miraculously from nowhere, as if set down there by God's own hand, While the prairie-larks sang His praises. In such a time The sod roofs bloomed as gaily, too As slanting flower-beds, And had to be patched and repatched against the leaks until they grew so thick That it wouldn't rain in the house the same day of rain, but dripped all next day. How the good land would produce in this good season! But the next year, or even the late summer, might bring a hell during which the prairie lay lifeless under relentless blazing sun and sky, when the grass- hopper devoured what the drouth might have left, even as the drouth itself devoured desire and will and ambition out of a man, leaving only his dried- out lifeless husk. (Entries in an Iowa diary, 1852: "Wendell and Susy were married today, and set out for Kansas to make their fortune." Four months later; "Wendell and Susy got back from Kansas today. They say that it is a territory which will never be con- quered by the white man.") To a woman who told how her father laid tarpaper over the sheathing, then covered all with sod against the wind, An old-timer courteously replied: "Lady, your folks must have been late, and rich. We went to the draw and cut willows by the bundle, And spread them side by side across the poles we had for rafters, Then laid our sod on them, grass side down. Folks who were particular, or who had money enough Tacked muslin to the underside for a ceiling, For others, the willows had to do." Kansans once survived by endless slavery to the horse Or rather, horse and man survived alike by endless slavery to the plow, One hitched to it at one end, and the other at the other, The only difference being that the one pushed and the other pulled, as it were. But how are you going to tell about that to a genera- tion that sits on a cushioned tractor-seat under a parasol against the sun; and, to alleviate the monotony, tunes in dance-music from Long Island; Then turns on the floodlight to bed the tractor down in the machine-shop and to check the REA-pow- ered electric pump, Dreaming the while of the movie later, with Marilyn or Grace, And never sees a horse, save when the TV carries The Derby or the Preakness? Why, did you see that Ward's Doesn't even carry work-harness any more in its gen- eral catalog? Then there was the reiterated flashing of the corn- knife in the sun And the tickle of sweat always in the eyes as you stag- gered to the shock with your rustling recurrent burden, And the maddening itch of the tassels sifting down your back, Inevitably in a place you couldn't reach to scratch, Or, if you could, there was another and unreachable itch the next minute. How do you tell about that, though, to a generation that sits on a marching machine which chomps into silage two rows of corn at a time, its steel jaws chewing with the strength of forty horses? Then there was the hay-wagon receiving the bundles of wheat tossed up by sweating, ever-moving human arms that were still, as from history's dawn, the most essential part of the machinery of harvest, The bundles had to be tossed again to the platform to be stuffed by other human arms into the wide roaring mouth of the red threshing-machine, Powered by the old steam traction-engine attached to the thresher by the ever-moving, over-and-under umbilical belt; But how can those imagine this, who sit on the cush- ioned quarter-deck of a combine that moves as majestically as a ship through the waving golden sea and devours an acre of wheat every few min- utes, flowing the grain in a pale-golden stream into the pacing trucks, and scattering the blond straw to the hot winds again?  Once Kansans ate pie-melon pies at their church soci- ables, because apples would not grow in the sum- mer's heat and dust, and the Arctic cold of winter; yet the people were too poor to buy apples from far away. But how do you tell about that, to a generation which has only to pop a frozen bakery pie from the cold- box into the oven, and withdraw it half an hour later with the hot juices bubbling out of the brown crust? (Not as good as a pie-melon pie, say the old-timers; but how are their descendants to know?) That lady there, shopping in the air-conditioned five- and-ten for pastel rolls that won't clash with the colors in her bathroom, Do you think she'd be interested in hearing how the Sears-Sawbuck catalogue served her great-grand- mother's family for light reading all winter, until the next one came, And then performed its last, humblest, but necessary function, Giving up its substance leaf by leaf, Hanging to a string in the backhouse? ("The second year on the homestead Our entire crop consisted of 33 bushels of wheat, and one baby.") And how did they cook without wood, and keep warm throughout the blizzards? Well, there were millions of buffalo-chips and cow- chips all over the prairie; Sun-dried, it seemed they lasted forever. It was part of prairie boyhood, and of prairie girlhood, too To gather these into piles, handy for Pa to come along with the farm-wagon and the big scoop. I heard a lady from Kansas say once, Ignoring her city-bred granddaughter's slightly queasy look: "I have never since eaten a cake as good as those my mother baked With a cow-chip fire, in the old cast-iron range on the farm." ("My mother and I stood all night under the ridge-log, the one dry spot in the house. I remember that finally the cow-chips stacked by the stove began to float one by one toward the door, like a flotilla of black turtles.") And once there was a Kansas of prairie villages, Each grown gaunt and shabby before its time like the prairie wives; each shrinking against its lofty grain- elevator like a huddle of chicks against the mother, shrinking from the endless inimical silence and the space. The roads were bottomless mud or choking dust by turns. The train that grew once daily out of the prairie and was swallowed up receding remotely into it, was the only link with the world beyond, if indeed there was a world beyond, which to the village people did not seem likely, Their only contact with that world the weekly Star picked up at the village postoffice before R.F.D. Now all these villages, those that are left, have grown their own shade in which the air-conditioned houses hide from the sun, So that you might as well live in New England, save perhaps in the deep summer, And the people can hop into their convertibles after the heat of the day, and within the hour be among the multitudinous neon signs, flashing dizzily on and off, Advertising beer, genuine Chicago steaks, Marilyn Monroe, and all the other evidences and embellish- ments of a high civilization. (. . . I remember playing hide-and-seek in the tall grass, then the frightening smell of smoke on the wind. Mother came running and herded us into the cyclone- cellar, as frantic as the hen brooding her chicks at sight of the hawk; Then the scared team lunging against the bit, as Father plowed a firebreak around and around the cabin . . .") And how do you tell this generation of the gaunt- cheeked brush-arbor preacher, his eyes blazing with sure foreknowledge of the wrath to come for these sinful before him; with his authentic inside infor- mation of the hatred his God bore for the sin and for the sinner alike, With his electric and communicated half-horror, half- fascination for the hell that will blaze alway, crackling the flesh of sinners for all eternity? Yet from out there beyond the rim of the arbor, in the dark, Came stifled giggles and whisperings punctuating his most passionate periods, his thundering denuncia- tions of the flesh and the Devil, his appeals to flee from the wrath of a jealous God and seek salva- tion ere it became forever too late; So that cynics said there were more souls made around camp meetings than were ever saved there-- But how to you make all that convincing Now that Kansas preachers run as plump, placid and social-minded as preachers anywhere? ("None of us had much, and some had nothing But what we had, we shared. No door was ever locked. We banded together against loneliness, we few lost in that vast land. Oh, what good times we had!") And how can you convince this generation, whose children ride in neat swift punctual buses to mil- lion-dollar consolidated schools. Of the reality of the shabby little schoolhouses, some with sod roofs, that once stood so far out there alone on the wide prairie, (Shabby, but they meant more sacrifice by the peo- ple than all the million-dollar beauties of today) Choking hot in spring and in fall, closed for planting and for harvest so that the children might help out at home, Freezing cold in winter for those left outside the narrow circle around the little stove whose pot- belly glowed cherry-red, And even those inside the circle toasted on one side, froze on the other; With the desks carved and re-carved by the jack- knives from Sears or Monkey Ward, In the hands of succeeding generations of farm boys seeking in vain to avoid the boredom of learning. Where the young schoolmarm, prepared for her high and holy task by a high-school diploma and three months at Normal Struggled with the relentless dust, stirring it around each morning in a sort of futile fury, And struggled day-long with the relentless innocent bumptious ignorance of seven grades of prairie children, Waiting at last only to get married, even to a widower with four of his own, (And there were always plenty of those about, look- ing for fresh strong young wives); Willing to undertake the struggle to bring up four children and those not her own, though her own always came along, Just to get away from the everlasting demands of forty? ("Though a woman can starve for lack of a flower, even though bread be plenty; And a woman can starve for lack of a word, even though there be love.") And how do you tell of the old Kansas character, with its long molding between the opposed hammer and anvil of hard reality and of ruth, Divided against itself from birth, and sometimes, it seemed, even before, Which could always be induced to contribute willingly to foreign missions even from its own scant store, so induced by the unbearable thought of the heath- en sitting in darkness and despair, and doomed if only through ignorance, to Hell, Far from the bright reality of the Kansas faith? How do you convince these moderns that they are Kansans only because their great-grandfathers were too contrary to quit, and much too stubborn to take advice, Or, in some instances, unable to go back whence they came? A man once told how, back in Indiana when he was thinking of homesteading it on the far frontier, He talked to a fellow who'd tried it, but was now back for good, Tucking his feet under his mammy's table three times a day And waiting to succeed to the farm. "Kansas, eh?" the fellow said. "All you really need to take along to Kansas Is a lookin' glass and a rockin'-chair. Then you can set and rock, and watch yourself starve to death." The man added thoughtfully: "Pretty good advice, too; maybe the best I ever got." But I took notice that he was still in Kansas, And not exactly starving to death, either. ("Our home was dug so deeply into the side of a bank That most of our roof was the top of the bank. When dirt began to sift down on the floor in the house, my mother would say to me: 'Clarence, go out and chase the cows off the roof.'") That Kansas character fought a small but bloody civil war of its own, long before the big one, Led by the burning-eyed old John Brown, a prophet straight from the Old Testament; But now it rests in triumph, seeing almost nowhere in the state where a man's race or religion really handicap him, Save perhaps in getting into the more expensive sub- divisions, and the better hotels and clubs; and maybe into some of the higher-class movies, motels and churches, Or in its remote southern villages, where no one ever goes anyway.  It seemed that Kansans had to be larger and stronger than life, even to survive in that old Kansas, Let alone to subdue it. So that they put on pride like an overcoat that is donned to hide the patches beneath. As when the haughty princess asked Dorothy in Oz: "Are you of royal blood, by any chance?" Dorothy tilted her small snub nose just one tilt higher than the princess', Her sonsy face glowing with honest pride, And answered in her forthright prairie twang: "Better than that, Ma'am! I come from Kansas!" And so the state grew characters, as well as character: John Brown, Jim Lane, John J. Ingalls who once called Kansas the navel of the nation; Sockless Jerry Simpson, Edmund G. Ross, Carry Na- tion, Victor Murdock, Arthur Capper, Charley Curtis; Mary Elizabeth Lease, she who adjured Kansans to raise more hell and less corn; And William Allen White, Bill White of Emporia, Who began by demanding that Kansas raise more corn and less hell, but ended by raising more and hotter hell than anybody. Kansas has, however, lost so many of her sons and daughters, There used to be a saying in California and Colorado That the smartest people come from Kansas--fast. One such said: "I came from Illinois with my seed- corn in a pouch And seedcorn was precious in those days; I chopped holes with an axe in the dry sod, planted my corn, and waited for rain. Come fall, and it hadn't rained yet, Nary drop. So I dug up my seedcorn, not a kernel sprouted, And put it back in the pouch And headed back to Illinois." ("I had ridden to town to take my eighth-grade exam- ination. The Northern Lights cast a silent shimmering curtain Through which the stars shown down; There was no sound save the clop-clop of my horse's hooves upon the road. We took comfort in each other's company For we might have been the only living things upon the planet Save that far away shone a warm yellow star, the light of home . . .") But how do you tell today of those old-time Kansans So flint-jawed against wrong as they saw it, and so strong for the right, again as they saw it; So willing to sacrifice the heathen's body to save his soul, In the true old Puritanic tradition And often even willing to sacrifice their own? What do you tell of them? Or even relate convincingly how they once went Popul- ist almost to the last man and woman. Finally goaded beyond endurance by the Four Horse- men of old Kansas: Drouth, Grasshoppers, Rail- roads and Bankers? (Let us ignore, as general aberrations shared by others than Kansans, the way they smeared with yellow paint the homes of people with Germanic names in World War I; and the Klan madness of the 20's.) For on the modern Kansan's neck the fiery Populist glow has subsided long since to the well-barbered rosy pink of prosperity. And he basks in the supreme belief that all is right with Kansas and the world As long as the right party controls Congress and the Legislature in Topeka, And as long as the dust bowl can always be recon- quered again, and again and again, By simply using a little more caution the next time the rains come and you can plow it up, Even if it does seem each time that the desert has gnawed a little farther into Kansas' living flank Like a coyote working on a trapped heifer. For, friend, are you for progress around here, or ain't you? And as long as there's a big payroll at Wichita Turning out bombers to convert the modern heathen to the American way, the Kansas way, If they finally show they won't be converted by any other means. How are you going to do all this? I think the most impossible part would be To explain convincingly the way the eyes of old gaffers from Kansas light up when they meet each other, and invariably begin: "Those were the good days--remember . . . ?" And continue, Of the silent immense night so full of stars; Of the dawn-lit prairie where the sunflowers stand on tiptoe looking toward the East, their golden heads worshipfully bowed for the rising of their Lord; Of sloshing dusty and burning feet in the cool stock- tank to the creaking rhythm of the windmill above, as its vanes slat and careen in the hot breeze; Of that bright fish, the big one, dashing out at last from the deep water under the cutbank like a bit of sun glinting through the clear stream, to take your hook; Of the sudden commotion above and behind the muslin ceiling, and the astonished bullsnake fall- ing thump! onto the dinner table amid the clatter- ing dishes . . . And so on and on, While their non-Kansan descendants or relatives yawn, and glance significantly by vainly at the clock Getting on for midnight. For we all of us as we grow older, become emigrants or exiles from the past as from another country, now islanded in time and forever receding, And today's children are as impatient of hearing about lost and long-gone days and ways As America's children tire of hearing the homesick old-country tales told by their grandparents who came from another land. So for all these reasons here given, which seem to me much more than sufficient, I have finally given up my project of writing a poem about Kansas, Old Kansas, that once stretched to that farthest blue rim where the Rockies saw off the sky. |
Born in South Dakota in 1895,