Washington, Kansas

 

A regular theme of these travels is the settling of Kansas.  Historical markers, museums and historic sites, national and state, recount stories of the state trying to attract people to fill and farm its vast expanses.  The Homestead Act of 1862 brought many, including quite a few Europeans.  A black reverend and a white businessman recruited Blacks after the Civil War to found a community of their own.  Oddest of all was the transport of orphans from eastern big cities to Kansas and elsewhere, some as young as two years old, to become part of a family and eventually field hands.

The story of the orphan movement is recounted at the National Orphan Train Complex in Concordia.  The former train depot was an appropriate location for the museum, as the orphans were transported by train, which came to be known as Orphan Trains, though not so crassly at the time. Between 1854 and 1929 some 200,000 orphaned, abandoned and homeless youth were brought to communities where they were put on display and locals could take on those that captured their fancy, sometimes two or three.  It was an early version of foster care with a hint of slave auction.

Throughout Concordia are mini-statues of orphans and a plaque giving their history, from their origins to what they made of their lives.  There was one in front of the former Carnegie Library, now a history museum.  It was the first Carnegie of these travels that included “Free” on its facade preceding “Public Library.”  As with others, it had its date of inception, 1908, in a prominent position.    

The subject of the orphan plaque was Rudolph Jubolet, who arrived in Clyde, Kansas in 1884 at the age of nine.  He remained in Kansas until his mid-twenties then served in the Spanish American war.  He married, had two children and worked as a restaurant owner, commercial fisherman and farmer in California.

Another one in front of the post office was devoted to John Lukes Jacobus.  He arrived in Ottawa, Kansas in 1915 at the age of two. After graduating from college and working assorted jobs he served in the Army Medical Corps in WWII. He worked in the postal service in Long Beach, California until retirement in 1972.  He and his wife traveled extensively for two years.  He then worked in a mortuary from 1974 to 1997, retiring for good at 85, then living another fourteen years.  If I didn’t have a favorable wind I might have spent the next couple of hours searching out the rest of them scattered around town.

On may way from Concordia to Clay City, forty miles away, I stopped along the road for a rest and a snack.  When I returned to the road I rubbed my tires to make sure they hadn't picked up any burrs. I noticed a slight bulge in my front tire, explaining the bump I’d been feeling.  I thought it was due to too large of a tube in the narrower tire, and was going to wait until later to swap tubes.  But it was actually because the tire hadn’t been properly seated.  I let out the air and pushed in the bulging spot.  There was still a slight bump when I resumed riding that I would tend to later, not wishing to deflate and inflate all over again.  

A couple miles down the road a pickup truck had pulled over and a guy hopped out to wave me over, a not uncommon occurrence, but the first of these travels.  The middle-aged fellow said a friend of his had seen me working on my bike and called him as he owned a small bike shop in a town ahead and thought I could use his help.  Talk of guardian angels.  I explained what I had been doing and said I hadn’t quite fixed the problem.  He could see the slight bulge.  He apologized he didn’t have a pump with him, knowing the effort a small hand pump would require, but said I could stop by his shop in Miltonville up the road.  It would have required a couple mile detour that I did not wish to make,  which he could understand. 

The Carnegie in Clay Center mirrored the grand style of the Carnegie in Concordia.  Clay Center hadn’t grown as had Concordia, so its library hadn’t been replaced nor expanded.  Unfortunately it had limited Saturday hours from ten to two so I didn’t have the pleasure of its interior, which would no doubt have matched the majesty of its exterior.  While I sat in back taking advantage of its Wi-Fi, I was able to do some charging thanks to a pair of benches facing each other with solar panels and USB outlets.

It was another thirty-eight miles southeast to the next Carnegie in the sprawling college town of Manhattan, home of Kansas State University.  There were four-story condo complexes everywhere and every franchise known to man, including the first ALDIs I’d come upon in these travels.  I arrived early Sunday morning, an optimum time for checking on its dumpsters.  A three-pound plastic container of grapes was perched on a post beside it, a nice welcome.  

A quick perusal yielded a slightly crunched loaf of multi-grain bread, a dented canister of oatmeal and a large container of cottage cheese with the day’s expiration date, all I had room for.  I would have traded the grapes for a dozen brown eggs, one cracked, had Charlie still been along, as he had a stove and we could have had hard-boiled eggs for a couple of days, as I always enjoy when traveling with Andrew in France. I was just sorry not to spot any bananas, a usual item.  How sweet it was to grab food for a couple of days in a minutes time. Free food is always nice, but equally nice is the convenience, just stopping and grabbing and not having to walk around a store I’m unfamiliar with trying to find what I want.  And the dumpster always expands my diet, providing me with items I never would have thought to buy.

The cottage cheese mixed in nicely with my ramen.  Charlie reports he has become a convert.  He’s had ramen for lunch nearly every day since he returned last Monday, saying “it’s easy to make and easy to punch up with vegetables and beans.”

Manhattan’s Carnegie was in a complex of civic buildings across a small plaza from the courthouse.  It now served as civic offices.  It completed a trifecta of large, two-story, stone Carnegies, a sharp contrast to the smaller, not much larger than one-room, rural Carnegies, each distinguished in their own way.

On the way back to Nebraska for five Carnegies in the southeast corner of the state I passed through Washington, twelve miles south of the border.  Its Carnegie had been torn down, but the town had a Statue of Liberty in its central plaza containing its courthouse.  It’s new, rather small, library, scrunched between two businesses faced the courthouse.  It’s Wi-Fi required a password, so I had to ask a passerby if he knew who won the women’s NCAA championship earlier in the afternoon.  His answer was, “Iowa lost.”  I was sorry to hear Caitlin Clark’s storybook year didn’t finish with a flourish.