peculiarities and oddities

Anyone moving from coast to coast across America by air has no idea of the peculiarities and oddities of small towns.  Furthermore, people crossing this country by car via the interstate system give Kansas and the states of the Great Plains a bad rap.  There are definitely long stretches of fairly flat grassland.  But get off the beaten path, and this country is full of surprises.

This year, I was determined to find more interesting hotels than the cookie-cutter chains that are at every exit of I-70 across rural Missouri and Kansas.  I knew of one called the Hotel Frederick in Boonville, Missouri.  But I needed another about five hours from there to give our cross-country trek a more leisurely pace.  I found it in Wilson, Kansas.

The Midland Railroad Hotel was built around 1905 during a boom in the town that produced many two-story buildings constructed from greenhorn limestone, quarried from local quarries.   The hotel and the main street in town were used as some of the filming locations for 1973’s “Paper Moon” with Ryan and Tatum O’Neal.  The town of Wilson was also the destination for many Bohemian and Moravian immigrants from Czechoslovakia in the 1870s.  They celebrate their Czech heritage with the world’s largest Czech egg, full of symbolism for the Czech people, particularly after emerging from Communism in the 1990s.

But the oddest of oddities is about eighteen miles from Wilson in the town of Lucas, Kansas.  Here you can find the Garden of Eden.  Samuel Perry Dinsmoor was a Civil War veteran, farmer and teacher. Upon retirement at the age of 64, in 1907, he began his magnum opus.  For 22 years he fashioned 113 tons of cement into his faux log cabin and surrounding sculptures, communicating his faith and political viewpoints.  He led tours of the property until shortly before his death in 1932.

I don’t know about you, but if I built such an installation at my house, my neighbors would be calling City Hall and asking to have the zoning commission compel me to cease and desist.  But the little town of Lucas, Kansas has embraced Mr. Dinsmoor’s work.  It has even inspired a burgeoning Grassroots Art movement in the town.  Grassroots Art is also known as Primitive Americana Art or Folk Art, and this town is full of it, including a whimsical public restroom shaped like a toilet tank, with curved benches in the shape of the toilet seat.  And right next door to the Garden of Eden, Roy and Clara Miller built a tiny village of miniature buildings out of rocks and shells that they collected on their travels. 

As Dr. Suess wrote, “From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.”  Do you suppose Dr. Suess ever went to Lucas?

Love, Liz