OUT OF OZ

The wind was scraping the prairie dry. It was from the east, menacing, devoid of compassion, determined, willful, sly.
This was Kansas at the end of June, and some of us were prepared to die.















This was the land of Dorothy, Auntie Em, Toto, the Scarecrow, and Tinman. A harsh landscape where the threat of tornadoes and bad politics are never far from the horizon.
Kansas seems to have never been able to establish a sound footing on the terra firma of these United States.
Like the cousin no one wants to play with at the family reunion because of an abscess permeating from their lower lip. And just like the inflicted family member from those bygone days, Kansas withdrew into itself, put some salve on it's lip, and sat in it's complacent, geopolitical corner of the park and cried.
Even it's closest relatives , Uncle Colorado, Grampa Oklahoma, and Auntie Nebraska weren't able to console the pubescent youngster out of his self indulgent pouty funk. Nor could the older cousin Missouri, freshly returned from the peace corp, manage to pry the tear soaked hot dog bun from the hands of the young Kansas.
Kansas rode home that day in the back seat of his country alone. His father, the colonel from Texas, apologizing to the rest of the states, for his son's introverted behavior, promised Grampa Washington that Kansas would be enrolled at the nearest military academy in Texas. The Colonel, drunk from Lone Star beer and Cousin Kentucky's bourbon, and while guiding the family station wagon out of the park and down the dusty road of history, raised his can of Coors to his wife, the beautiful Utah, and remarked...........
Hell of a reunion this year wasn't it mother.
Kansas cried.

"I HEAR YOU SINGING IN THE WIRES
I CAN HEAR YOU IN THE WHINE
AND THE WICHITA LINEMAN IS STILL ON THE LINE"

JIMMY WEBB