Coffeyville
Don't let them tell you there's nothing to see in Kansas. There's Coffeyville after all. Tucked into the southeast corner of this great state, Coffeyville is home not only to Amanda the Wichita concierge who refuses to be interviewed for my project but to Walter Johnson, the greatest pitcher ever according to some.
It was Osage Indian country until the whities started camping out here in the 1860s. In the Drum Creek Treaty of 1870, the settlers pushed the Osage south to present-day Oklahoma.
But the town is best known for five other invaders who pulled up on their horses one day in 1892. The Dalton gang. They robbed two banks, but before they could make off with the $25,000, townsfolk opened fire on them, killing four and losing four of their own. The graves of most of these dead are in the cemetery. You can still see the holes in the walls from the shootout. Just as you can see the holes in the walls in Northfield, Minn., where the Jessie James gang had a shootout. I saw those holes on a visit to Carleton College in 1984.
The surviving robber had 23 slugs pulled out of his body, served 15 years in prison and was pardoned before becoming a real-estate salesman in California.
But I have to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, what had the biggest impact on me in Coffeyville was a concrete container sitting on a downtown corner with this sign on it: "This capsule to be opened in 2061 contains items placed herein by the Coffeyville Historical Society in 1961."
"Yes!" I said. I must come back here for the grand opening, to see what's in the capsule. A typewriter, perhaps, a small farm implement. We don't know, because the members of the historical society are dead.
But then I did some math, standing in a parking lot. I saw that I would no longer be alive in 2061. It started as a frustrating sense of not being able to make an appointment then moved quickly into the strange feeling of the world going on without you, as difficult to grasp as conceiving of the time before you existed.
What great foresight they had, these historical society members, the imagination to think ahead and not just behind. Could they have imagined their capsule would have such an impact on a man in 2006, not even halfway to opening day? That the man would stand frozen in a parking lot, drawing concerned stares of passersby.
The smoke mounts in great strides over the refinery. The sky is blue today, at four o'clock. A bird dives. In a flash of flight there is both happiness and sadness. The bird gives the man company. His is not the only transience.
It was Osage Indian country until the whities started camping out here in the 1860s. In the Drum Creek Treaty of 1870, the settlers pushed the Osage south to present-day Oklahoma.
But the town is best known for five other invaders who pulled up on their horses one day in 1892. The Dalton gang. They robbed two banks, but before they could make off with the $25,000, townsfolk opened fire on them, killing four and losing four of their own. The graves of most of these dead are in the cemetery. You can still see the holes in the walls from the shootout. Just as you can see the holes in the walls in Northfield, Minn., where the Jessie James gang had a shootout. I saw those holes on a visit to Carleton College in 1984.
The surviving robber had 23 slugs pulled out of his body, served 15 years in prison and was pardoned before becoming a real-estate salesman in California.
But I have to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, what had the biggest impact on me in Coffeyville was a concrete container sitting on a downtown corner with this sign on it: "This capsule to be opened in 2061 contains items placed herein by the Coffeyville Historical Society in 1961."
"Yes!" I said. I must come back here for the grand opening, to see what's in the capsule. A typewriter, perhaps, a small farm implement. We don't know, because the members of the historical society are dead.
But then I did some math, standing in a parking lot. I saw that I would no longer be alive in 2061. It started as a frustrating sense of not being able to make an appointment then moved quickly into the strange feeling of the world going on without you, as difficult to grasp as conceiving of the time before you existed.
What great foresight they had, these historical society members, the imagination to think ahead and not just behind. Could they have imagined their capsule would have such an impact on a man in 2006, not even halfway to opening day? That the man would stand frozen in a parking lot, drawing concerned stares of passersby.
The smoke mounts in great strides over the refinery. The sky is blue today, at four o'clock. A bird dives. In a flash of flight there is both happiness and sadness. The bird gives the man company. His is not the only transience.
posted by Thon at 8:08 PM
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