Dodge City

First, look at this picture..... Yes, I think I could live in Kansas if I had to. It has such a beauty of its own, no? After leaving Kinsley, we traveled west to Dodge City. We had been told that perhaps Anna had been buried there, as some of the Pritchard family lived there, at least at one time.

And low and behold, A&W's still exist.....

.....where one can still purchase the original rootbeer floats, although they are not served in those heavy frosty-cold mugs like the olden days

And they still have the drive up portions, too! Can you believe that?

We talked with an older couple here. They gave us directions to a cemetary, but we had no luck finding Anna's gravesone there.

So we drove to Front Street, where the wild west was once lived out..... here is a picture of a photo of the original Front Street (behind a glass window).

It has obviously been refurbished, but it still maintains some of it's flavor.

What is the Old West without Wild Bill?

Or a stagecoach?

What character this building has!

Central School in Dodge City

Darrell was excited to see Longhorns. Longhorns were my high school mascot. Leigh High Longhorns. Piece of trivia for you there ;-)

Pretty good-sized horns on this fella!

Wild turkeys also ran on and alongside the highway.....

When we first came upon this horse, it was in the cornfield you see in the background, and all you could see was his ears sticking up above the tall stocks. As we slowed down the car, he came prancing out to say 'howdy' to us!

The following photos of the scenery around Dodge City are a couple that typelify the vast openness of Kansas.....

I find the layers of colors very pleasing to the eye...

And the lone trees indicative of the lonely plains...

Well, it was getting late, so it was time to get the hell out of Dodge and head for the barn!

The Farm

For the last 3 days my husband and I have been hopping around Kansas attempting to root out some family history from Darrell's side of the family. I am not going to blog in the order of how we did things, and will begin with our drive out to Kinsley on Sunday. Kinsley is about an hour from Hutchinson, our base 'camp' and the city in which Darrell was born. His father's mother, Anna Pritchard Harmon Bernatzki lived on a wheat farm out of Kinsley, having married a Mr. Frank Bernatzki to whom the farm belonged. We are just beginning to put pieces of family history together, by pestering Darrell's mother with questions via the phone, and peppering Nadine, Anna's only remaining sibling (out of 11), with inquiries about the past. It was amazing that we even found her today. I never knew she even existed. Darrell remembers one or two of her 13 children, who would be second cousins to him. She lives in Wichita, KS., at the ripe age of 96! Sharp as a tack!

After finding Frank's headstone at the only non-catholic cemetery in Kingsley, we found that his first wife died in 1947, and he died in 1951. That means that even if he remarried Anna right away, it was a very short marriage, due to his death in 1951, ans Anna's death in 1952. So Darrell never really knew either of them (he was born in 1951).

Every town has these beautiful water towers

The confusing part here was that Darrell has several very clear memories of living on that farm. As it turns out, his mom, Dorothy, is a fairly poor historian, having told us they lived on the farm with the grandma for a while. As it turns out, after Anna died, Franks' brother (we think Theodore, as we found his headstone next to Franks, and the dates fit), took over the wheat farm, as he owned the farm next to Frank's. The house, which was an old 2 room schoolhouse, sat vacant. During this time Darrell's family lived in Hutchinson. Shortly before that family moved out west to southern CA., Kenny (Darrell's father) was not able to find any work, and thus they moved to that empty house for a few months (or perhaps more). As Darrell was around 4-5 at this time, he would be able to retain some memories from then. But Anna had been dead several years by then. I will tell you more about this wild Anna tomorrow.

Windmills are spotted all over the Kansas countryside

The town was completely deserted on Sunday. Nothing opened. No people milling about to ask questions. So we were not able to ascertain just where the old wheat farm is, or was. Disappointing, but it was good to see the small town (of about 300 folks) where that bit of history happened.

This sign stood right in front of a corn field!

Prairie Grass in the foreground

Perhaps winter wheat behind

Kansas is indeed a very flat state, though we spotted some small rolling hills around the Kansas City area. It seems as if every square inch is planted in one crop or another, except in the downtown hearts of the cities.

Milo

My personal favorite crop, based on looks alone, is milo. As far as the eye can see, there stretches seas of this golden amber red. Magnificent!

And of course there are ever so many of these gargantuous grain mill silos. They stand tall and majestic against the wide open blue skies!

The land also seems to have quite a few boggy areas, complete with fish, I suppose, as this man appeared to be fishing in one!

I was surprised to see quite a few oil rigs around the Kinsley area. Many farms have their own water tower reservoirs. I love the quaintness they add to the picturesque scenes!

The trains would stop at each granary to collect the grains. As you can imagine, there are train tracks everywhere! Today they truck it all out, of course.

In Kinsley most of the town streets (which number only a handful), are paved with bricks. This is true of many towns. Darrell's theory on this is that it was the only way to keep above the mud during those days.

Wouldn't see a sign like this in the Seattle area! Yet it is still a main building here.

This old schoolhouse is still the only school in Kinsley today.

The Baptist Church



Even a small town like Kinsley has a movie theater!

Hillside Cemetery.......... now that is a puzzle of a name. What hillside? There are 2 small Catholic cemeteries and one non-Catholic Cemetery. Beings as there is not a shred of religion in the Harmon family (except Darrell), we guessed correctly that we would find at least Frank Bernatzki here, if not Grandma Anna also.

Hillside Cemetery

Soldiers Memorial

Aha! Here lies Frankie boy! Right next to his first wife and apparently 2 deceased children. But no Anna here.

The claim to fame for the little township of Kinsley, is that it lies exactly half way between New York and San Francisco!

From here we set out for Dodge City........

A Little more of Fall

These two photos are of the vine maples around the fire pit.....

These two are taken along the road on the drive down the mountain.....

Below are odd cloud formations for our area. The entire sky appeared like this. Very pretty. Perhaps a new sign of fall?

Scout lets the warmth of the afternoon sun soak into his sore joints.....

Bagheera enjoys a cat nap amongst the carrots.....

Whatever the name of this bush is, it has the most magnificent fall coloring.....

The leaves are now quickly falling.....
And what would fall be without the colds that swirl around? I managed to catch a doozy of one this year. I haven't had a cold for years. This is what I am taking for it, in hopes my head will not be clogged up when we fly out tomorrow night for Kansas. And yes, it tastes as bad as it looks! Maybe worse.....

When you fall on somebody, it's not enough to say you didn't mean to; after all, he probably didn't mean to be underneath you. ~ Pooh