Where's Kansas?
I am from Kansas. Kansas City, Kansas in fact. We're the smaller city on the other side of the Missourie River from Kansas City, Missouri. We are the ones with the attitude: why does everyone think Missouri when it's called Kansas City?
It's a fine city — either one, actually, since they rather merge together into one large metropolis, but Kansas is a strange place to be from. Although it is placed in the "Heart of America", one can feel like one comes from a different planet when one travels to other civilized regions. I went to the East Coast after a sojourn in Iowa for college, landing first in New England, then North Carolina, and finally settling here in Maryland where I've lived now for over 20 years.
I adored Iowa, by the way: a state where all the farm boys go to college to study classics and then return to their farms, reading Greek in their tractors as they plow the fields. Iowa has over thirty colleges and universities, and approximately twenty community colleges. Believe it or not, Iowa has the nation's highest literacy rate and a high school graduation rate over 20% above the nation's norm. It also rates first in corn production, hog raising, and farm-machinery manufacturing (home to John Deere, of course!). I saw my first tractor pull competition at a county fair in Iowa, and it was thrilling. (The Deere headquarters, in Moline, was designed by Eero Saarinen and has a pool in the front of the building decorated with a large sculpture by Henry Moore.)
My favorite little joke about Iowa, no doubt apocryphal, involves a young woman from Iowa who made the trek to New York City. At a party she shared conversation with a very sophisticated New Yorker. When asked where she was from, she said "Iowa". The very sophisticated lady replied "My dear, out here we pronounce that 'Ohio'".
Anyway, back to Kansas. The joke there was when people asked if we still had problems with the Indians, I would say that we put the station wagons in a circle every night. People in the east had a very skewed view of what it was like to be from Kansas.
(Or from anywhere in the midwest. My fellow midwesterners of a certain age will no doubt remember the "maps of the USA" as drawn by New Englanders: A huge blob for New England to the right, an elongated thingie for California on the left, and a big bridge over the Mississippi River connecting the two. When asked whether they had been "out west", the typical New Englander could be counted on to answer "Oh yes: Pennsylvania".)
Not just the East of the US, I suppose. My grad-school friend Andrea, who was born in Czechoslovakia, claimed that in her youth she believed that "Kansas" was a fabulous, mythical place, known of course from the movies. She was amazed later to discover that it actually existed.
Kansas, known to many as flat, flat, flat, actually has many parts and characters. In the east, where I grew up, the landscape is gently rolling hills. It's not until one reaches the western third of the state that one gets finally to the Great Plains, the enormous prairies that have to be seen to be understood. Out west, it is indeed flat, flat, flat: one can watch a thunderstorm pass by miles and miles away, and when the wind blows it seems to have been blowing forever. I've know people to react by extremes when they first see the Plains. Some feel that they've glimpsed the hand of God in something so big, others become acutely agoraphobic and feel a pressing need to return to a place where the horizon is comfortably within arm's reach.
Rachel McCarthy James, in her piece "Shall we call you Dorothy?", in the Lawrence [KS] Journal-World, wrote
People at my school, Hollins University [in Virginia], tend to be surprised that I'm from Kansas, surprised by the very existence of a real, live Kansan. Kansas is uninhabited territory, a flyover state, the wild, wild Midwest. At my initial hall meeting, I said I was from a small city in Kansas, and the initial reactions were, "They have cities in Kansas?" "They have people in Kansas?" "Aren't there, like, seven people there?" It's interesting to offer yourself up as proof of existence of a state; almost all of my friends had never met a Kansan, been to Kansas, or really thought of Kansas as more than Dorothy's place or one of those states in the Bible Belt. I tend to refute whatever perceptions people have of Kansans; I'm just not what they expect.
[…]
But as anyone who's left the state knows, there is one giant, looming, figure that towers over all factors in someone's thoughts about Kansas: Dorothy. Toto. The Wizard of Oz.
Ah yes, Dorothy. We in Kansas feel rather proprietary about Dorothy. I used to claim that she lived just down the street and that Toto was a nuisance: ill behaved and prone to pooping in everyone's yard.
Now that I've gotten to this point, I'm not sure what I want to say about Dorothy. These days I've gotten older, some life situations have been threatening or challenging, and I feel more nostalgic, not to mention a certain kinship with Dorothy and her dreams. I guess even those of us who are salt of the earth from the heartland wish sometimes that we could go over the rainbow to someplace better, just like Dorothy.
And her little dog, too.
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on Saturday, 7 May 2005 at 01.51
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Yeah, mention of Kansas brings to mind beef, aircraft, lots of flat farmland and railroads running across big, windswept plains. Not that I know any of that from firsthand experience. I've been to many places and parts of the country but haven't had occasion to visit Kansas, at least so far.
A couple of people I've met from Kansas were quality folks, For that matter, an Iowan (another state I haven't been to) was among my closest friends in the service.
One thing that has impressed me in the different parts of the country I've come to know pretty well is that there are always some really good, bright, decent people.
I wonder, while in New England did you ever enjoy a Maine "bean hole supper"? It's probably done elsewhere in New England too.
on Thursday, 12 May 2005 at 19.38
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Hey! I'm the author of the piece you quoted and linked to above. I found your blog by googling my own name (narcissism, I know – but I'm a writer, what am I but narcissistic?) and I wanted to say thanks for making my month! This is the first time I've seen my writing quoted by someone unfamiliar to me. So thank you so much!
BTW, how did you happen to come across this article?
-RMJ
P.S. I love Iowa, too.
P.P.S. Midwest Represent.
on Saturday, 14 May 2005 at 23.54
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I'm a little biased here seeing as I still live in Kansas City, KS. When I was working in Tennessee I got teased by a guy that claimed Kansas didn't even have trees, that it was totally flat. Of course he was joking, but this shows what people think of Kansas. I saw more flat land driving down I-29 from Canada than I have ever seen in Kansas. I once met a guy in Washington D.C. that didn't even know Kansas City, KS existed. I had to explain to him that it was right next to Kansas City, MO.
Now I pimp my site: check out some pictures of Kansas (mainly KC) on my site by clicking on my name :)
A little side note to Rachel-we all Google ourselves, even if we aren't writers or famous, so don't feel too narcissistic.