a kansas treasure

This is a big, beautiful country.  Last week I complained about western Kansas.  I’m sure that for the people born and raised there, even that broad expanse of flat grassland has a mesmerizing beauty.  When we moved back to the Midwest from California in the 1980s, I didn’t miss the mountains or ocean at all.  I was thrilled by the cornfields of my youth.  Whatever the geography where we’ve been raised, it penetrates our psyches at the deepest level.  Anthony Doerr wrote in “About Grace” that he “wondered if such things were born into people.  If perhaps we cannot alter who we are—if the place we come from dictates the place we will end up.” 

So, out of respect for my beloved Kansans, I’m willing to give Kansas its due.  The great plains of Nebraska, the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and the badlands of South Dakota can feel just as relentless to an outsider.  You have to tackle one of them when driving from the West Coast to the Midwest.

I chose the route through Kansas for a very specific purpose.  As many of you know, my paternal grandmother was an Orphan Train rider.  There is a museum complex dedicated to the Orphan Train history in Concordia, Kansas.  Because I usually fly over Kansas, this seemed like it might be my one opportunity to visit.  I should seize the moment.

My little grandsons have a fascination with trains, but not history.  I left them at the pool of the Holiday Inn Express with their mother while I made a quick visit.  Kansas was the destination for many of the adoptees, and the museum does a nice job telling the story of the squalid conditions that they left in New York and other eastern cities and their arduous journeys with nothing but a small suitcase.  No mementos of their former lives allowed.  

Nana was featured in the first volume of stories collected about Orphan Train riders.  But in the ensuing years since its publication, my late Aunt Martha had done extensive work on the genealogies of her mother’s adoptive and biological families.  And I had done more research on the actual experience of little Mary Ring upon her arrival in Kokomo.  I turned both into electronically produced photo albums, and I took copies to the museum director who was delighted to add them to their archives.  Mission accomplished.

While Kansas was a long slog, I’m so glad that my patient passengers allowed me to make that stop.  

Love, Liz