The Road Trip Diaries, Author Unknown: Kansas Afternoon 1963
We’ve hit our groove now. We’re rolling like this car was meant to roll! The adventure has finally begun. A road trip doesn’t really begin, I’ve decided, until you start covering ground you’ve never seen before, you know? Places you’ve never been. That’s when you start to really let go, when your own edges start to expand, when you start to unfold yourself like the map, finally out of the glovebox and spread out on the dash. We’ve just come through Kansas and I’ve never seen anything so flat. This is my first time in the Midwest and in spite of the absolute thrill of adventure in being in a brand new place, secretly all I feel is trapped – Where is the ocean!?! Everywhere I look, nothing but land, flat flat flat land. How do you get out of here? We rolled through a tiny little town early this afternoon and I felt like we had driven right into a movie. A western. I was so tempted to jump out of this big fat beautiful car and check behind the buildings and see if they were just fronts. I did peek behind the Esso station when we stopped for gas, just for laughs. (Actually, that’s a lie. I really did think it was possible that it was a movie set?! I did.) We laughed about my checking (“Just in case!” I insisted), as we rolled out of the station, all of us warm with that satisfied feeling of camaraderie and freedom that only well matched travel companions and a full tank of gas can elicit, especially when it’s a full tank of gas in a big beautiful convertible that has its hood ornament pointed down an unknown road! But then I saw the flames. We all saw them at once, and slowed way down. At second glance I thought my eyes had been playing tricks on me and that it was just the sun we were seeing; we had driven far the day before and hadn’t slept much that night. But as we approached I could feel the heat, there was no mistake. My heart sank as we slowed the car to a crawl: The building that housed the town newspaper was on fire! It was an old wooden structure, like the rest of the town, which, by the way, was so small you could spit from one end to the other, and it was going down. There was one old fire truck there and a fire company, such as they were, which frankly looked like no more than an old fashioned bucket brigade. They weren’t making any progress, the fire raged on, but they kept throwing water. As we rolled by with our top down I felt we should pull over to help, and said as much, and we did. But all we could do was kind of stand there and gape, like everyone else. The afternoon wore on, the sun sinking lower and lower in the sky, looking like it was about to land right on that big flat Kansas prairie at any minute, adding its own flames to the fire. I never saw such a sunset, and kept one eye on it and one eye on the matter at hand. I watched as one by one, person after person resigned themselves to the fact that the effort to save the building was hopeless, and quietly approached and then offered comfort to the family, the owners of the paper, with a pat on the shoulder and a nod, or a hug. Finally it was just the firemen, the family, and us. I’ve never felt like so much of an outsider. We didn’t really know how to leave politely, so we just stayed and stayed, leaning against the Lincoln and looking on. Mrs. fought back tears as her three children clutched at her apron and put on brave faces; a fourth, the baby, sat in her mother’s arms watching her mama’s face, looking just about as concerned as a one year old can look. Periodically she would raise her tiny hand to her mother’s cheek, as if to say “It’s okay, Mama, I’m here,” and her mother would manage to smile at her, sometimes kissing the offered hand. Mister was at the head of the bucket brigade, shouting encouragement to the team in such an upbeat manner that I thought for a second that he really believed they could save the building, and his business, until I saw his eyes, which held not hope but a kind of steel. Finally it was over, and we all just stood there, looking at the charred remains of this little Kansas town newspaper building. There would be no news that day. We watched it burn.
