Plains Truth Journal

This is the prettiest winter we’ve experienced since we moved to Emporia. We closed on our house in February of 1999, so it will be twenty years next month and we have never seen the snow more beautiful. A lot of that has to do with the fact that the sun has not shone since it snowed last weekend. Grey skies make the snow seem all the whiter. The trees and bushes are still covered in snow. There is no sunshine to melt the snow and create a dirty, slushy mess. Because the weather before the snow was warm, there was no need for the snow plows to plow the streets. For the most part, it is still a pristine white world. Winter is as it should be.

Of course that’s easy to say while we’re sitting here in our warm house with all the heat and electricity that we need. The heavy snow can be quite hazardous to electrical lines, so our comfort is dependent on the sturdiness of the surrounding trees. We were fortunate here in Emporia that we only got four to five inches of snow. Those to our north, in Kansas City where they received up to 10 inches of snow, are feeling the heat or lack thereof. Ten inches of snow such as they received can easily break tree branches and create power outages.

That’s the kind of snow I used to pray for as a schoolgirl, snow that would make it impossible for school to be held. When I became old enough to drive to school I wanted it to stay away. The first time I drove in the snow was during a drivers’ ed class. I will never understand why the instructor let me drive out of the school parking lot. It was early in the semester and he hadn’t yet realized what I poor learner I would be. He gave me instructions on how to operate the manual transmission in order to navigate the slight incline out of the parking lot, but failed to tell me to turn the wheel back after completing the turn onto the street. I gunned it and careened out of the drive into a three foot deep pile of packed snow left behind by the snow plow. There we sat, completely submerged in the snow, while everyone watched from the classrooms facing the street. We had to abandon the car and call for a tow to get the car unstuck; it was rammed in so deep.

If you are familiar with Kansas City, Kansas, you know that some of the hills can be quite steep. Our house was at the bottom of a dead end street that forked off of another dead end street that led down an even steeper hill where it met the main road at an angle of less than 45 degrees if you were coming from the west. There was no way to pick up enough speed to climb the hill unless you drove past that street, turned around and approached the hill at breakneck speed from the other direction, hoping you had enough inertia to make it up the two block long hill with enough traction remaining to make the turn onto our street. It was not unusual for several of the neighbor’s cars to be parked on the main road waiting for the spring thaw so they could make it safely to their driveway.

My driving got better and so did my navigation during snow. I became quite proud that my yellow Volkswagen convertible could pass cars slip-sliding away as they tried to climb hills I conquered with ease.

We think we have difficulties now when it snows. but what we really have is a lot of inexperienced drivers. The struggles driving in the snow as I was growing up made me a better driver. When I moved to Missouri after college, I elected to take the my drivers license test on a day with ten inches of snow on the ground. Not confident in my ability to parallel park, I hoped the examiner would be more lenient because of the snow. I was right. The patrolman came back accompanied by the woman taking the test before me. Her car remained in the ditch from her effort to parallel park. He didn’t ask me to try.

Snow filled days bring back many memories: riding sleds down the hill and jumping off just before we hit the creek, making donuts in the snow at the intersection of 10th and Mechanic, getting stranded in New Mexico by a September snow storm with only sandals for shoes. Snow is one of those things that is definitely for the young. Now we complain and worry when we should be making snow angels.

A few months ago, we left our dog, Ranger, with a friend while we were on vacation.  Ranger always enjoys stays at her house where he can hang out with her dog, Ramsey.  One morning when she went to let him in after a few minutes in the back yard he was not there.  In a panic she searched the neighborhood, then jumped in her car to extend her search.  Eventually, she drove down our street and there he was, sitting on our front porch.

Ranger was not always such a homebody.  Shortly after we got him from the animal shelter, Thom, the Vietnamese student living with us at the time, tripped on her way out the door to take him for a walk and he bolted.  Being a Sheltie, he was faster than any of us and we found ourselves chasing him throughout the neighborhood until a good Samaritan caught and held him until we could catch up.

After those early years, Ranger settled into life at our house.  When our side fence blew down in a fierce storm, he wasn’t tempted to leave the yard and for the last few years he has joined us on the front porch, content to sit beside us without a leash.  

As it’s more than a few blocks from our friends house to ours,  some instinct must have propelled him home.  It’s a little scary, because he has become stone deaf in his old age, but I can visualize him trotting down the street, eyes focused on the traffic, even crossing 12th street on his determined way home.  

Home, whether we realize it or not, is where we all want to be for the important dates:  birthdays, graduations, weddings, all kinds of celebrations including holidays.  That’s especially true this time of year as recognized by so many composers during the 40’s.  “I’ll be Home for Christmas”, “There’s no Place Like Home for the Holidays”, or “I’ll have a Blue Christmas Without You”. 

When we first moved to New Jersey, we spent the holidays with new friends, neighbors and acquaintances.  We had some memorable Thanksgivings and Christmases, but the longer we were there, the more we realized what we were missing and the more we were drawn towards home.   The experiences we were having in a different place:  the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade, the tree in Rockefeller center, and the excitement being close to New York City provided,  paled in comparison with what we were missing back home.  We  heard stories of the cooking disasters and the escapades of some of the more ‘different’ ones in our family and realized that something was lost in the telling.  We were missing out on seeing the little ones grow up.  We were missing out on the waning years of the older generation.  Hearing stories is not the same as being part of them.

Fortunately, my husband’s family lived in Boston and we frequently made the trek there, but that was not really home.  Eventually, we joined the throngs heading home for the holidays; we fought the crowds at the airports along with all of the others with the same longing for home.  When we moved to Memphis, it was the same.  We made that eight hour plus drive so often that the stretch between here and St. Louis is still familiar all these years later.  We gave up two days of our life traveling to enjoy one meal with family, but it was worth it.

After we moved to Emporia, we were able once more to enjoy the holidays with those we love most.  We have loaded up our memory bank with those shared meals: the argument between a friend and one aunt over whether Martha Stewart was the arbiter of good taste, waiting for the cousin who is always late to arrive, playing Mexican Train until it grew dark, missing first one of my mother’s sisters, then another, until their generation was all gone.  These are the memories we have made, the memories we go home for.

I realize that not everyone grows up in a safe, supportive family, but for those of us who did, we need that homecoming.  In a world that seems increasingly hostile, we all need to be reminded that there are those who accept and love us as we are and that they can be found at home.  That should be enough to enable us to share that love with those less fortunate.

So I close with the words from the song from the 1943 movie, “Meet Me in St. Louis” written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane:   Through the years we all will be together if the fates allow. Hang a shining star upon the highest bough and have yourself a merry little Christmas now.“

Wednesday was a day of mourning for former President George H. W. Bush.  It also should have been a day of mourning for the loss of dignity and decorum, not just in the presidency but throughout all of our government.  I’m sorry, but we have to admit that politics has become trashy and anyone who is attracted to it becomes trashy in the process.

It didn’t use to be that way.  In the past, those who chose to go into politics, those who chose to represent us in governance,  knew what was appropriate and what was not.  Not only did they know how to represent the people in public,  they knew what was expected of them in private.  Even if they were not the most modest examples of paragons of virtue, their private philandering was kept private.  Their private affairs and even their health was not a matter for public consumption.  It would be a while before most of the nation was aware that Franklin  Roosevelt suffered from the effects of polio and even longer before they knew that FDR and Eleanor led primarily separate lives.

JFK was privately known as a philanderer, but what the public saw was a loving father and charming family man.  What the public knows now about about him increasing the presence of the US in Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba and taking us close to  nuclear  with the Soviets, was largely kept out of public view during his presidency.

It wasn’t just the presidents who came from an elite background who knew how to behave.  Harry Truman kept his private life so separate that he still called Independence, Missouri home during his years in the White House.  He, like other presidents, knew that the office of the presidency was not his persona.  He did not see himself as a public celebrity but as a public servant. Their private lives did not take away or diminish the office of the president  because they dealt with the rest of the government and the public with respect.

Strangely enough, the most morally upright and honorable of presidents were not the best at governance.  Jimmy Carter was a case in point.  Carter was a good man, and still is, with ideas for how we could be a better society, but he didn’t have the knack for governance that some of the more cunning and winsome presidents like LBJ did. Johnson, who rose from a hardscrabble beginning, could be very crass and racist  and was always looking for an angle.  When he championed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, it is alleged that he stated that by doing so, the Democratic Party would be assured of the black vote for 200 years.  In  spite of being vulgar and aggressive,  he expanded civil rights, medicare and support for public broadcasting,   ideas which we are still benefiting from today.

In the past 100 years, we have had some good presidents, such as JFK,  who were not perfect people and some good people, such as Jimmy Carter,  who were not perfect presidents.    We have had some who were adored by the public and others that were hated.  What we have not had until the past twenty or thirty years are presidents who see themselves as more important than the office of the President; those who see the presidency as a celebrity position rather than a position of service.

George Herbert Walker Bush may have been one of the last residents of the White House who saw his role throughout his life as a public servant.  His life was filled with some heroic deeds and some missteps along the way, but his public persona never diminished any of the offices that he held.  He was not a celebrity, he was just a husband and father whose last words to his son were, “I love you”.

Most of us in turn loved him back.  He will be missed.

Sometimes I think I am living on a foreign planet.  All of the familiar traditions that I grew up with have vanished and I  don’t know how to participate in or adapt to the ones that have replaced them.  “Friendsgiving”, for instance.  I barely know what it is, let alone the requirements for how it should be celebrated.

I do know that it is a substitution for the tradition of families celebrating Thanksgiving, which no longer seems attractive or viable due to our living so far apart and isolated from our families.  In spite of leaving behind most of our family traditions, the younger generations still long for connections.

We used to have that in family.  The nice thing about family gatherings is that we know each other.  All of our foibles are familiar.  The red-neck brother and leftist cousin who will always argue about politics, and then hug and sit down next to each other at the table.  The other cousin who does not know what being on time entails, who will show up with a cold dish just as we have finished cutting the turkey.  The aunt who strives for perfection.  The clumsy one who is always spilling gravy on the white tablecloth.  The one who bakes the most amazing pies.  All of these have a place at the table and it would not be the same, it would not be family if even one failed to show up.

Try to replicate that with a bunch of friends or strangers.  When I was young and just out of college, I ignored family Thanksgivings for a few years.  A few friends and I tried to cook a turkey that never tasted like the one that grandma or my mother made.  We may have thought that we were sophisticated, citizens of the world, but nothing came together in the same way that it did in my grandmother’s kitchen.  It wasn’t too long before I began sheepishly appearing at family holiday celebrations.  They weren’t the same without family.

I remember all of the holidays that we celebrated while we lived in New Jersey and Memphis.  We were usually surrounded by friends.  The food and conversation was good, but it was not family.  We eventually found ourselves making the trek back to Kansas City for Thanksgiving and Christmas most of the time, just because that’s where  family was.

These days, it seems like we’re losing the nuclear family.  With it, we’re losing the traditions that can be passed on to another generation.  Grandma’s pumpkin pie recipe can only be passed down within the family from generation to generation.  It would be lost and changed until it is unrecognizable in the context of a group of friends.

I realize this when I glance through all of the magazine articles about Thanksgiving dinner this year.  Nothing is as I remembered it.  It’s as if everyone is trying to make their recipe the most creative and memorable.  Who needs fifteen variations on  pumpkin pie or pumpkin pie with a chocolate cookie crumb crust.  Who needs bourbon spiced sweet potatoes or stuffing with ingredients you can’t find at your local grocery store?

Thanksgiving is not the time to impress people with your gourmet skills.  It is not the time for a champagne celebration.  It is not a time to substitute friends and acquaintances you have known for a few months for those who have experienced your entire life with you.

It is only among those who know us best:  those who have watched our struggles and viewed our successes, those who have known us at our worst and at our best, those who have cheered us on when everyone else thought we would fail, that we can truly give thanks.  They are the ones who have witnessed the grace poured out on our lives and who know truly how much we have to be thankful for.

Last weekend we had the pleasure of attending choreographer Septime Webre’s  Wizard of Oz,  performed by the Kansas City Ballet at the Kauffman Center in Kansas City.  L. Frank Baum’s book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, first appeared as a stage play in 1902.  It has since been adapted as a movie, the famous one with Judy Garland,  along with Disney’s Oz, The great and Powerful, and as several Broadway shows such as  The Wiz and Wicked.  It has been  spun-off as several television shows, and now is told in ballet form.

This new telling of the classic children’s story has been created in collaboration  with the Colorado Ballet and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet with an entirely new orchestral work by Composer Matthew Pierce.  The music is not what we are familiar with.  There is no “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” or “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”, but it is at times enchanting and occasionally reminds you of that great dean of American music. Aaron Copeland.   Instead of the Yellow Brick Road, there are “Roadies” dressed in costumes to mimic yellow bricks, that follow Dorothy and her three companions to a pseudo march tune that has you chanting ‘follow the yellow brick road’ internally as the character move down the road.

One of the benefits of the collaboration between the three ballet companies was that together they could produce a $1 Million dollar plus extravaganza by pooling their resources and they definitely succeeded.  The show has everything you would expect and more. The costumes are spectacular.  There are great video effects, acrobatics, enormous puppets and  a very life like puppet representing Toto.  It spectacularly depicts the original L. Frank  Baum story.

Following the production in Kansas City, The Colorado Ballet will present the Wizard of Oz in February of 2019 and  in May of 2019, it will be performed in Winnipeg.   The production is so good, one hopes that it will be around for a long while.

It is interesting that it was three companies, hovering on the mid-western plains, that have come together to create such a fantastic production.  Perhaps it is time for us to resume celebrating our mid-western values; celebrating that fact that we are not stupid, that we really have a heart, that we are courageous and that there really is no place like home.

We all have the tendency to get caught up in the tornadic whirlwind that society creates.  We’re going about our way, minding our own business and everything seems to be so black and white when all of a sudden, everything swirls around us, confusing and frightening us and we realize that we have lost our way.

We run into all sorts of creatures, some that we have difficulty recognizing as our fellow human beings.   It may be a more colorful world, but it is much more frightening.  When we pull back the curtain, we see that there is nothing there to be afraid of, it wasn’t our imagination.  It was just bluster that we fell for.  We have had everything that we needed all along.  All we need to do is go home.

On our way back to Emporia from Kansas City, we turned off the main highway and took the rural route home.  We drove through the bronzed autumn fields of the prairie, past harvested corn fields,  fields of grass and copses of trees turning red and gold.  A bald eagle swooped low over the road as we drove past.  It was Kansas at it’s best.

Whenever we travel, we always get one of two responses when we mention that we are from Kansas.  “Oz” or “Dorothy” most people overseas will say.  As if those two words are enough to convey that they think they know where we are from.  If we’re here in the States, the response is usually “You’re not in Oz anymore”,  usually with a somewhat demeaning chuckle.   Neither response reflects accurately where we are from.

We are not from “Oz”.  We are from Kansas.  It may not be as colorful as Oz, but if a tornado is going to drop me anywhere, this is where I would want it to be.  Home, amid the rolling plains, the magnificent sunrises and sunsets.  Home, with those that I love, where life is simple but sure and predictable.  Why would anyone not want to be at home?