Welcome To Kansas

WELCOME TO KANSAS

Welcome to Kansas—

The Center of the Universe

The lovely Fly Over State

Please don’t let me—

Delay your important trip

From LA to New York City

Pause a moment though—

To gaze down at Paradise

Our lovely Fly Over State

Way down here where—

Nice Sunflowers bloom &

The Cattle shit on the Prairie

Lovely Emporia

LOVELY EMPORIA 

Who can possibly—

Say that Emporia isn’t

The Athens of the Midwest?

Lawrence has KU—

Manhattan has K-State

And Wichita has nothing

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Emporia is surely—

The Jewel of the Vast

Lovely FLY OVER STATE

From the Missouri to—

The Rocky Mountains

Emporia surpasses it all

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What a lovely Showcase—

There’s nothing else from

Olpe all the way to Allen

Home of the Twinkie—

Iowa Beef Somali Wonderland

Cute Mexican Wetbacks!!!

LOVELY SUNKEN GARDEN

The Sunken Garden—

Gone Norton Hall & the

Glum Plumb Hall

So much History—

As time goes on & on

The obituaries growing

______

How was I to know—

That I’d ever feel so

Nostalgic for it so?

SUMMER AND SMOKE—

Tennessee Williams’ play

Alma by the Fountain

___________

Vernon Sheffield—

Playing Chopin sonatas

There in Plumb Hall

Organist there at the—

Congregational Church

He was my gay lover 

WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE LIBRARY 

It was air-conditioned—

Such a nice place for a kid

Such a fag little bookworm

It smelled inside just like—

The ‘50s Eisenhower Era

So calm & postwar moderné

_________

I hid away in the stacks—

Row after row of books

Secluded and safe

Reference Room windows—

Tall like some Temple in

The middle of Nowhere

______

How did Kansas rate—

Such an Oasis there

In the middle of nothing

Straight up Commercial—

From the Santa Fe tracks

To kitschy Twelfth Avenue?

THE LOVELY TEMPLE 

Temples come & go—

And, honey, I should know

I worshiped at this one

I hid away in the Stacks—

Hiding from the world

Keeping to myself

_________

It was my Sanctuary—

A calm air-conditioned

Nice Eisenhower Temple

It even smelled like—

The Fifties back then

In the secluded Stacks

___________

The campus so close-by—

A few blocks from my home

There on Constitution Street

The Stacks so open then—

William Allen White Library

Such a nifty Fifties Temple

Kansas Queen Bee

KANSAS QUEEN BEE

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KANSAS QUEEN BEE

KANSAS COCK

STRONG CITY COWBOYS

CHASE COUNTY HUSTLERS

Z-BAR RANCH HANDS

COTTONWOOD FALLS COURTHOUSE

FFA BOYS

QUEER QUARRIES

HOT CHEVY PICKUP DATE

LYON COUNTY FAIR

PETER PAN PARK

THE SUNKEN GARDEN

____________________________

KANSAS QUEEN BEE

There once was a Queen from Kansas—

Who dressed up in drag what madness

She liked young cowboys

From the rodeos

Bowlegged ones especially

KANSAS COCK

There once was a Kansas Cowboy—

Who was quite the handsome Boytoy

He was Bowlegged

So cute when Naked

Driving all the Queens just crazy

STRONG CITY COWBOYS

Strong City cowboys are so cute—

Making all the queens simply mute

Strictly buck-naked

Very bowlegged 

Tall, erect in their cowboy boots

CHASE COUNTY HUSTLERS

Way out there is where you’ll find them—

The prairie so very blue-stem

There in Chase County

Where there’s a Bounty

For all the well-hung cute Studlings

Z-BAR RANCH HANDS

After Smith left the Z-Bar Ranch—

Heading back to Kansas City

The cowboys moved in

Gave the Ranch a spin

Butt-fucking in the big Mansion

COTTONWOOD FALLS COURTHOUSE

The old Cottonwood Falls Courthouse—

Stands tall and proud like an outhouse

So gaunt and gothic

A sexy topic

So pale white, erect & phallic

FFA BOYS

Pointed cowboy boots so tres chic—

Stetson cowboy hats that aren’t meek

FFA boy struts

Tight blue jeans cute butts

Their tight blue corduroy jackets

QUEER QUARRIES

Once upon a time there was slime—

An Inland Sea covered Kansas

After many years

Turning to limestone

Churches, courthouses & fence-posts

HOT CHEVY PICKUP DATE

He waited for me after school—

There in his sleek Chevy pickup

After a six-pack

He banged his head hard

Against his back window’s gun-rack

LYON COUNTY FAIR

He won a nice big Blue Ribbon—

And I tell you I’m not fibbing

For the biggest Hog

In Lyon County

What a big Porker that kid had

PETER PAN PARK

Once upon a time way back then—

I knew this Tinker–Bell Fairy

In the Grape Arbor

That’s where he’d slobber

Getting the guys off

THE SUNKEN GARDEN

It was all so tres romantic—

Love back then so cinematic 

The Sunken Garden

Like “Summer and Smoke”

Getting off hot Earl Holliman 

Wood Bloxom

WOOD BLOXOM

1889-1983

"I have seriously mixed feelings about Bloxom.  I liked math, and did well in it. Also, he was entertaining. On the other hand, he told a story one day about a little girl who grew up normally, ... until, one day she had learned all she could.  Her brain was full and she couldn't learn any more. So, she just stopped developing. That was it.  Well, he told the story in Trigonometry.  Every day I wondered -- feared -- that that was it. I would stop learning today.  It is modestly funny now, but it was not at all funny back then."
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Hi Buddy. Thanks for your nice email. What I really need is a "brain implant" my sister told me recently. :-)

Funny, how these memories of Emporia work. I had this dream last night that we were all back in Bloxom's trig classroom. A sort of dream-like reunion of sorts. Anyway, you were recounting to Wood and the class his story about the little girl who's brain became full and she couldn't learn anymore.

What you feared would happen to you back then, had happened now. You'd stopped learning. You'd stopped developing as an attorney and that was that. Wood nodded knowingly to you and turned to all the rest of us. "You see, now the sun is shining here in Emporia."

I woke up with the feeling that it was the same with me. I'd learned everything there was to learn. But with this twist: I didn't need a MFA in writing from Columbia because writing can't be taught or learned from anybody other than yourself. Once one learns that there's nothing more to learn about then perhaps that's the beginning of true learning?

I like how you've kept learning. Publishing. Helping to found a law school. Your volunteer work with KSTC/ESU. I've seen your photo there on their leadership/scholarship page. Very good, Buddy.

Perhaps that story that Wood told us was really about himself. After all, he'd been teaching geometry and trig since before my mother went to EHS back in the '40s. Maybe he felt like he was in a sort of rut with that room, the blackboard, the cabinet with all the geometry models, the years teaching the same thing.

But Roger Hartsook once told me that Wood picked up on the so-called "new geometry & math" that Alderman was teaching in his class on the east side of the building. And Wood learned something new about the old math that he was seemingly stuck with. So perhaps the "story" he told us was actually a story about himself... and then later on breaking out of that rut and actually learning something new?

Oh well, don't pay any attention to me. Just a story within a story. But you got me thinking about Wood all those years ago. :-)