Monday’s international and national news cycle was relatively slow by recent standards, which was fine by us, as our own personal Kansas Day here in the relatively big city of Wichita, Kansas proved exhausting.
Our own Kansas day began just a few short hours after the time our nocturnal selves would usually be going to sleep, as we had to get our aging Dad, who is still the very best man we’ve ever known, to an early morning foot doctor appointment at one of those newfangled medical facilities way over on the east side. As we we drove across the crowded and slow-moving 13th Street from near-west Wichita to the Canal Route and up to the the K-96 bypass highway that cuts a few precious moments off the drive to Hillside and Oliver and then to the once-far-eastern Woodlawn to our parents’ swank retirement home approximately halfway between Woodlawn and the once off-the-edges-of-the-Wichita-map Rock Road we tried to our best to avoid a half-awake traffic accident as we listened to an old friend of ours on his early morning broadcast on the local right-wing talk radio station.
So far as we can tell from our occasional early morning broadcasts or our long friendship our old friend is usually politely apolitical, as is the more senior early drive-time radio partner who also seems a likable enough sort of Kansas fellow from our occasional encounters, and on our weary-eyed trek east they mostly talked about how this particular cold but tolerably-cold Kansas day was Kansas Day. Kansas Day marks when the Kansas territory emerged from the “Bleeding Kansas” atrocities that resulted from the pre-Civil War abolitionist struggles and joined the United States as a free state where slavery was forbidden and all men were cerated equal and that original conception of the Republican party ruled, and to this day it still invigorates our Kansas souls even more than a couple of cups of coffee. The “Steve and Ted Early Morning Show” also noted that Monday is the entire nation’s “Curmudgeon Day,” and that also helped us keep awake on our way to the still-far-east Woodlawn exit.
We arrived in time to drink a couple of cups of coffee from the newfangled coffee-maker our parents’ swank retirement home has provided, which also helped, and after that we had the best man we’ve ever known arrived at his foot doctor appointment in a familiar near-eastside location early enough to negotiate all the medical insurance regulation folderol and get his foot treated on time. After that, our Dad and we headed back to Woodlawn to visit one of those newfangled medical facilities where our Mom, the best woman we’ve ever known, was recuperating from the flu. It’s just the flu. but our Mom is the best woman we’ve ever known and she’s 83 years old and we keep reading in the ongoing news about how vicious this season’s scarier-sounding influenza epidemic is, so we were admittedly worried. The good news is that she looked and sounded and felt better than she had before she admitted herself to that newfangled medical facility, and she insisted that both our own sorry selves and the best man we’ve ever known go home and take a much-needed break.
Our Dad, who as we’ve already stated is the best man we’ve ever known, apparently spent the afternoon fussing over the sorts of damnable details that Mom would usually attend to, while we thought better of the matter and spent much of the Kansas Day afternoon napping in a deep-dreaming state where slavery was abolished and all men were created equal and that original conception of the Republican party still held sway. After that we we made our way back to the east side to view the Kansas Day screening of a documentary account of the origins of “Home on the Range,” a beloved American folk song and Kansas’ official state song, which was being screened by our folks’ swank retirement home.
Mom had insisted we be there for the screening, as she’d invited a couple of our folks’ longstanding and truly great old Kansas friends and their delightful daughter to be there with us, and they not know she was in in the hospital with the flu lest they decline to attend. Those olds friends of our beloved folks’ beloved friends of ours along with their daughter, as was their dearly parted son who was also a great Kansas guy, and we wouldn’t have missed it on any day. One of the two Kansas guys who was responsible for the pretty-darned-good-documentary about “Home on the Range” is also an old friend, of course, who once co-wrote a book with us about the once-great Kansas country music radio station FFDI, and his mother-in-law also loves in the swank retirement home as our parents, which is is where we usually seem him these days, and his co-producer also seems a very likable Kansas guy, and another couple of our of dear Kansas friends were mentioned in the credits, and we were glad our Mom insisted we attend this Kansas Day event.
After that we felt entitled as dutiful sons to a beer at the relatively east-side and very ghetto Kirby’s Beer Store, where we wound up in a nice conversation with a Kenyan guy who who had immigrated from Kenya to Wichita many years ago, and that wound up in a delightful conversation. We recalled how our one of boyhood hometown heroes was the great middle-distance runner Jim Ryun, and how his greatest rival for best-in-the-world status was the pioneering middle-distance running Kenyan Kip Keino, he recalled how he’d also followed that classic sporting rivalry from his own local perspective, and we clicked glasses as we recalled how the rival had ended in a lasting friendship.
On the day after Kansas Day anything seems possible here in Kansas, no matter what what else crops up in the news cycle in the rest of the world, and despite everything we expect that our beloved Dad and Mom and the state of Kansas and our own sorry selves and all our dear friends and all the rest of you will somehow muddle through until God grants us a perfect state where slavery is abolished abolished and that all men and women are d equal and the highest principles still somehow hold say.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 