Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Liberal’

Homes, Like Brides, Once Came Mail Order

Posted in Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 2, 2011| 3 Comments »

“Home is the place where it feels right to walk around without shoes.” – Unknown

The Coronado Museum in Liberal Kansas today. It began life as a Sears and Roebuck mail order home. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Travels With Maggie

On my way to Idaho to escape the Texas heat for the summer, I visited the Coronado Museum in Liberal, Kansas. It was so named because Vasquez de Coronado traveled through the area in 1541 in search of the fabled Seven Cities of Gold. He and his band of soldiers left behind a few trinkets, which are now on display at the museum

While the exhibits were interesting, the tidbit that intrigued me was the fact that the 1918 building housing the museum was ordered from a Sears and Roebuck Catalog. The popular mail-order business sold hundreds of these between 1908-1940, offering 150 different models to choose from.

It was the second such building I had encountered in my travels. The first was a historic farm house in Battle Ground, Indiana, adjacent to Prophetstown State Park.

That Indiana home, the Hillrose model, came complete with all electrical and plumbing fixtures, and had been shipped by rail to the site, at a cost of $6,880. For tourist purposes, meaning dollars, that house had been recreated at a cost much exceeding the original.

What got me thinking about these homes were two things. First, the main topic of conversation on my Story Circle Network chat group the past week has been the green benefits of smaller, older homes vs larger, newer ones.

One of the mail order homes offered by Sears and Roebuck between 1908 and 1940. -- Illustration courtesy of Wikipedia

Having once lived in a small home built in 1912 that had thick walls and real wood construction – and low utility bills, I weighed in on the side of smaller and older. While not exactly small, the Kansas mail-order former home and now a museum looked as if it had stood the test of time.

The second thing that got me thinking about Sears and Roebuck homes was a great mystery writer, Blaize Clement, whom I discovered a couple of weeks ago. Her heroine’s grandparents, and now her brother, lived in a Sears Roebuck mail-order home. The fictional home was mentioned in all five of her books, which I gobbled up the past two weeks.

It’s sort of funny how when once you learn something new, you come across it everywhere. It makes you wonder why it’s only now come to your attention.

Has that kind of thing ever happened to you?

Read Full Post »

Kansas: Meadowlarks and Oz-like Winds

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 25, 2011| 5 Comments »

A scene from Dorothy's House -- Photo by Pat Bean

Western meadowlark, photo by Kevin Cole

 “It’s a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds’ cries; I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes. For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills, and April’s in the West wind, and daffodils.” — John Masefield

Travels With Maggie

Kansas: The sunflower is the state flower and the western meadowlark its state bird. While I was a bit too early for sunflowers, I saw lots of western meadowlarks. This is a bird whose beauty I failed to see until I first looked at it through binoculars 12 years ago.

It’s golden breast, adorned with a black necklace, is so brilliant that on seeing the feathers magnified I forgot to breathe for a bit. Now when I see one flitting alongside the road as I drive, and I saw lots this day, I remember the intensity of the golden color even if all I see to identify the bird is its outer white tail feathers as it skims the grasses in the opposite direction from the road.

Besides meadowlarks, I also experienced plenty of Kansas’ Oz-Land winds, although not quite as bad as the one that sent Dorothy’s home flying out of this world. The state, in case you’re interested in trivia, is named after the Kansas Indians, who were once known as People of the Wind.

While the wind blew outside this morning I, appropriately, toured Dorothy’s House that sits beside Liberal’s Coronado Museum. Both the historical museum, and its recreated kitchen of Aunt Em’s time reminded me of my grandmother’s home, perhaps because I was born the same year the Wizard of Oz movie was released.

Two antiques on display at the museum, an icebox that was kept cool by a daily visit of an ice wagon and a treadle sewing machine that was foot-powered, had strong memories for me.

I remembered waiting for the ice man to come to my grandmother’s home before she finally broke down and bought one of those newfangled refrigerators, and I remembered the time I played around on her sewing machine and put a needle through my thumb.

Gosh! I hadn’t thought of those things in a long time.

Back outside in the wind, Maggie and I only made it to Garden City, just 65 miles up the road from Liberal, before calling a halt to our travels for the day.

“I’m tired of fighting the wind,” I told the clerk when I checked into RJ’s RV Park.

“Perhaps,” he said as he assigned me to a site on Tinman Alley, “it will be calmer tomorrow.”

I doubted it. After all, unlike Dorothy, I was in Kansas.

Read Full Post »

Vernon to Liberal: An Ordinary Day on the Road

Posted in Birds, Journeys, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on April 24, 2011| 5 Comments »

I think Maggie was as surprised as I was on seeing a circular sidewalk, landscaped with funky art, that led nowhere off to the side of the Western Star RV Ranch in Liberal, Kansas. -- Photo by Pat Bean

I saw turkeys alongside the road when traveling Highway 83. — Photo by Pat Bean

 

“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.” Albert Einstein

Travels With Maggie

After rising early, drinking my cream-drenched coffee while posting my blog, catching up on e-mail and reading the New York Times online, then waking and taking my dog, Maggie, for a walk, I decided to get a few extra miles on the road this day.

I did just that – making it from Vernon, Texas, to Liberal, Kansas.

Vernon lies along the route of the former Great Western Trail and millions of cattle passed through the town during the late 1800s. Liberal lies along the route Coronado took in his search in the mid-1500s for the mythical Seven Cities of Gold.

The distance between the two historic cities, if you take Highway 287 west to Childress and turn north on Highway 83, is 261 miles. It was an eye-opening journey.

The landscape was mostly occupied by agriculture fields with an occasional oil rig plopped down in the middle. Sometimes the pump was rusted and still, sometime rusted and pumping.

The flatness of the land was broken by stumpy hills whose summits looked out for miles and miles to an almost endless horizon.

A multitude of birds were out enjoying relief from the high winds that had dominated the outdoors for the past several days, during which I had mostly only seen turkey vultures. This day I identified robins, great-tailed grackles, house sparrows, mourning doves, meadowlarks, red-tailed hawks, horned larks, rock pigeons, Eurasian collarded doves and even a half dozen wild turkeys.

Then there was the dinosaur near Canadian, a funny name for a Texas city I thought. A bit of internet research after I had settled in for the night told me the town was named after the Canadian River. Since the river’s headwaters are in Colorado, that left me wondering where the name of the river came from.

I’m still wondering about that, but I did learn more about the dinosaur that sits on a prominent Mesa for the viewing pleasure of Highway 83 travelers. The 50-foot brontosaurus was created by artist Gene Cockrell and named Audry after his wife. You can see a picture of the long-necked creature – the dinosaur not the wife – at RoadsideAmerica.com

I laughed when a huge RV overtook and passed me towing a fancy barbecue smoker with all the works. Then I wondered where those folks were going to settle for the night and if I could finagle an invitation to dinner. The rig disappeared over one of the hills, however, and I never saw it again.

Almost before I knew it, the miles were behind me and I was hooking Gypsy Lee up at the Western Star RV Ranch on Highway 54, five miles outside of Liberal.

The park had a a circular sidewalk, leading nowhere and with funky landscaping art, where I took Maggie for a walk. A patch of sickly grass with stickers, however, lay between it and the graveled RV area.

Poor Maggie got a sticker in her paw. She stopped, lifted her foot and demanded with a painful look that I Remove the nasty offender! After it was out, I then got the toasty brown-eyed look that said Carry me to the sidewalk.

Of course I did. She’s the boss, or so my kids are always telling me.

I also shared the red beans and rice leftovers from the night before with her before we settled down to watch an episode of Castle on my DVDs. She got a doggie treat and I got some peach yogurt to eat as we watched.

As my travels go, it was just an ordinary day. But I loved every minute of it.

Read Full Post »