1988 Chevrolet K20, Wichita

Chase County Courthouse, Kansas

1958 Chevrolet Viking, Hutchinson Kansas

Ford Roadster. Hutchinson, Kansas

Jan Zwicky's "Prairie"

Prairie

 And then I walked out into that hayfield west of Brandon,

evening, late July, a long day in the car from Nipissing

and long days in the car before that; the sun

was red, the field a glow of pink, and the smell of the grasses

and alfalfa and the sleek dark scent of water nearby…

I remember –now--  chasing something underneath the farmhouse table as a child

and seeing the big hasp on the underside that locked the two main leaves: it seemed

rough and enormous, out of keeping with the polished surfaces

it held together, almost medieval, I was startled and a bit afraid; and later

as an adult, fumbling for it, blind, at the limits of my reach,

how finally it would let go with a sharp jerk and the leaves

would sigh apart: but it was there,

in that hayfield, that I felt some rusty weight in my chest stick

then give, a slow opening to sky—

                                                it was that hasp, I know it now,

though at the time I did not recognize I was remembering,
nor, had you told me, would I then have known why.                                                  

                                                                                  Jan Zwicky

                  "Prairie" appeared in The Echoing Years, an anthology of poetry and translation from Ireland and Canada.

1948 Chevrolet 1 1/2 ton Loadmaster. Hutchinson, Kansas

No rust. If it was used as a grainer, possibly low mileage. What's low mileage on a 65-year-old truck?

1941 Plymouth & The Ford 352 Special

I caught these cars on a bright October Sunday, outside a little old garage that looked like a one-man speed shop in Strong City, Kansas.

Downtown Hutchinson, Kansas

The writer Josh Barkan suggested I go have look at Hutchinson, Kansas. So on a bright October afternoon, I did. Interesting town. I suspect there was a huge boom there when the price of wheat was high, from the 1900s to 1929. Hutchinson was a railroad town when that meant something, and probably a regional banking center. Wheat farmers need banks. Looks like during the last eighty years the town's ambitions have sort of collapsed; everything seems a little damaged, shrunken. Still, those proud high buildings: startling for a town its size. Downtown has somewhat revived, recently--there are bookstores, and antique shops. But it's just hanging on. The neighborhood streets and alleys, which I'll cover in another post,  reminded me of the mise en scene of Arthur Penn's 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde: overgrown back alleys and weathered frame houses could have been a Depression-era town anywhere on the southern prairie or plains, Missouri to Texas.