I Wish I Could Go Back to Kansas - Part 1

 Perhaps not a commonly voiced opinion...

In light of the stereotypical view of Kansas being flat and featureless, upon taking a closer look through literature and the internet, there is quite a lot to observe and learn about the "Sunflower State", in terms of history, ecosystems, geology, and such.

In this blog previously I wrote a bit about an in-progress writing project about a 1974 8800-mile Western road trip with my then-college roommate. After leaving Atlanta, I picked him up at his parents' home in St. Louis.  From there, westward we went to Denver, then Yellowstone, and beyond.  Part of the road trip was revisiting some of the places my family visited the year before on our longest family vacation.  The 1973 vacation and 1974 road trip were both "crossroads events", though I didn't see them that way, at the time.  

The 1973 trip was the last for our family with Dad, Mom, my sister, and me together.  I don't wish to over-dramatize things, it is just that by 1973, I had completed my first year of college and my sister had just completed her Junior year of high school.  As we didn't have time to visit Yellowstone in 1973, I began planning a 1974 road trip with my roommate, immediately.  With my sister entering college and my beginning my third year, in the Fall of 1974, after that, age, logistics, and other plans just didn't permit any more family vacations.  1973 was our last.  (I wonder if my parents ever got misty-eyed over that reminiscence?)

And the 1974 road trip was my first major excursion without my parents (aside from going off to college, about 200 miles from home, but still within the same state.)  The Western road trip helped me gain the self-confidence to move 1500 miles West, to El Paso for graduate school, in early-1977.  Which led to my meeting my first wife and adopting our daughter, the first of our two kids.  

By mid-2014, with the approach of the 40th anniversary of that 1974 road trip, the decline of my first wife's health, unwanted job changes, and an awareness of my own mortality, after rereading William Least Heat-Moon's monumental "Blue Highways", I wanted to at least produce a bound, written narrative to leave behind for my kids.  (Maybe it is to be an e-book if I am satisfied.)

The greatest challenge in writing about things that happened 45 - 46 years ago is obviously recovering memories.  As my roommate, Dave and I were both 20 and 1/2 years old, we didn't consider the importance of keeping a road log.  I managed to keep the AAA road maps (with the marked routes) until an episode of home renovation about 2011 when an over-zealous (but well-meaning) relative cleaned out a basement file cabinet and tossed "those old maps".

I am currently wrestling with how to write such a narrative (and make it interesting), as there are gaps in the details as to certain parts of the journey.  Did we spend 2 or 3 nights in Yellowstone?  Did we spend 2 or 3 nights in the Coloma, California area?  Or how long did we visit Dave's uncle and cousins in Fresno?   Will it be written as a modern-day retracing of the road trip, interspersed with memories and thoughts on "all that has happened" since then?  [Another major regret - besides the lack of a road log - was that we didn't have a decent camera with us.]   

Getting the "Kansas chapter" right is important as it was the first state on our road trip when we were both geographically "disconnected" from our parents, Dave's in St. Louis and mine in Atlanta.  I hope that I can set a "good tone", i.e., a good format to follow in subsequent chapters.

That particular youthful journey on I-70 across Missouri, Kansas, and eastern Colorado to Denver was my only "big bite" of the fascinating Great Plains.  Since then, my I-40 journeys across Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, and Eastern New Mexico comprise most of my exposures to the Great Plains. 

Part 2: Pertinent books and other resources.