Remember when you were about nine or ten years old and you
began to stumble upon certain mysteries of life? Remember how disappointing it
was to find out that certain things you believed with such fervor and that brought
such joy were nothing but a sham? We all remember that moment when we learned
the Big Guy wasn’t real. No, not God, you silly goose…Santa Claus. That’s how I
felt while driving through Kansas today: crushed - just like the day I learned that Mom
and Dad had lied to me for ten years.
What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word “Kansas”? Do you think of Dorothy? Toto? Carry on Wayward Son? No! You think of WHEAT!!! You think of vast
expanses of wheat, caressed by the wind and undulating like a boundless amber
ocean. You all think of that, right? I’m not the only one, right?
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| What I expected to see during my travels today... |
As any regular reader of this tome knows, I am required to
visit my online students when they start the program, wherever they may be,
come hell or high water. So, you can imagine
my giddiness when I saw two Kansans on my class list for the coming term! I’ve
always wanted to see the great wheat fields of Kansas and now was my chance.
For some reason, bleak, simplistic landscapes have always
fascinated me. Perhaps it stemmed from my love of jazz guitarist Pat Metheny
and his use of these barren naturescapes on his album covers.
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Or, perhaps that’s just how God wired me. Regardless, I was
totally stoked this morning as I headed westward out of Beloit, Kansas towards
the beckoning western expanse.
It began slowly. I saw some fields of short corn and what
appeared to be an alien strain of mutated soybeans. “OK, that’s a start,” I reassured
myself. Then I saw it: my first wheat field. Much to my dismay, however, it was
only about 10 inches high and as level as a Marine recruit’s haircut. “THEY’VE ALREADY
F@&$ING HARVESTED IT!!!” I screamed at myself. My second, less obscene thought was, “OK,
maybe they harvest earlier in the central part of the state. Maybe the amber
waves are still flowing out west.”
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| What I actually saw during my travels today... |
Nope.
Four hours later, when I arrived at my destination funeral
home in Garden City, Kansas, I shared my
consternation with the fine folks there and was informed that the harvest is in June.
Sonofabitch. June. I just missed it.
I was inconsolable as I began my four-hour trek eastward
towards Topeka. “Where is God?” was all I could think as I drove past the short
stalks of wheat that had now become a metaphor of my Kansan Dream: a beautiful dream abruptly sliced off
at the base by a metal blade and left to die, forgotten and neglected until next spring.
As I sit in my hotel room here in Topeka tonight and reflect
on today's wheat-less journey, I’m trying to focus on the positives: I technically did see
wheat fields. Even in their shortened form, they were still somewhat awe-inspiring with
the limitless landscape behind them.
Conversely, I also saw an assload of
sorghum. In case you didn’t know, sorghum is the Seth Rogen of crops: a
moderately-repulsive soybean plant with a giant turd-like growth on top. The
more sorghum I saw, the more pissed I got that all the wheat was gone.
Still mired in my agnosticism, I can honestly say this trip,
which held so much promise of natural beauty, didn’t help much. However, next
month brings a visit to Alaska. So God, if you can arrange a flowing wheat
field ready for harvest that lies juuust a bit south of the Arctic Circle, I’ll
renew my membership!
Pax...
Travis
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