well, my grandfather got his latest issue of the Yates Center, Kansas newspaper… and apparently, them tornaders hit town, mostly causing rural damage. lots of pictures. awful.
my grandfather’s mum and dad moved there when he was a boy. so i consider that place a sort of ancestral home… a second hometown for me, even though i’ve only been there a few times. but i still miss that place. the long, flat brown land. the smell of boll weevils and silkmoths. longhot summerdays spent making balsa-wood aeroplanes (aeroplanes being another thing that was heavy in my family, being from Dayton, Ohio meself and my grandpop’s having flown a C-47 over the skies of Europe during the Second Great War (WWII)). my great-grandfather’s old work shoes and trousers he’d never throw away because he could always mow the yard in ’em. Aunt Selma and Uncle Dean, legless and always with a crazy and usually racy novelty toy to show me… the one i remember most vividly being a yellow plastic strongman statuette that would pee on you if you tried to pick it up… or a dirty joke. all now long gone, and more now gone still. the local department store, a giant regional sort of bastard child of Sam Walton and mom & pop stores, where i’d go to get my first model cars (a Pinto hatchback of all things and a ’69 Chevy Nova – my first two cars, coincidentally). those hot, hot days with neither hill nor vale to keep you from the intense heat the wind would scatter and lay down at your chest as if some sort of accidental backwards offering you never wanted (“i said DON’T bring me heat, and you went and DONE brought me heat, you ol’ wind you!”).
the flat brown goodearth of Yates Center, Kansas.
my grandmother’s people were from Denver, and our Ancestors rode across Oklahoma as pioneers. there’s a clock on our mantelpiece that came across America with those verysame people. it’s a good clock, and has seen a lot of time go by. you’d never know it was so old because it looks like a reproduction. but it was there and it saw things and hardships that you and i will never know about.
old land, old places, old people, old things, old old old old old.
ancient land, ancient places, ancient things, ancient faces. ancient, ancient, ancient, ancient, ancient.
“Welcome to Yates Center, Kansas”
