The Four Factors that Led Me to Westmar College

I am planning a return visit to Northwest Iowa -- this has long been on my list of things to do. It has been 40 years since I've been there. Am I anxious -- a little as things have changed so much. But I feel the need to acknowledge that I grew up so much at Westmar. I was a shy, naive country kid that never lived in a town before going to Westmar, and the community of Westmar College changed me to who I am today. 

Occasionally, you gotta recognize your roots to know where you are.

I recalled my high school senior year the other day about choosing a college. I only applied to United Methodist colleges and did not submit one application to a public college or university. I did want to apply to one public college in New Mexico, but my parents nixed that idea lol. I think being a UMC PK, applying to UMC colleges seemed to be the right thing to do; but, I really never had a conversation with my parents about college. It was up to me. My choice.

When the push came to shove about deciding where I was going, three colleges were left: Baker University, Southwestern College, and Westmar. Two colleges in Kansas and one in northwest Iowa.

Baker dropped out early for all of us -- they weren't that interested in me and offered a really nonchalant financial aid package. I did run into quite a few Baker students when I began graduate school at KU in Lawrence as Baker was just down the road -- by whom I ran across, I really was not a good fit for Baker four years earlier.

We visited Southwestern College first in Winfield, Kansas. I was not impressed. And I don't recall any excitement from my parents either.

Then came Westmar. Did they pull out all of the stops for us or what! But it was two states away and a bit further than either parent wanted me to be.

Four factors influenced my decision to go to Westmar:

1.  A very persistent and personable Director of Admissions. Valda Embree called me several times and sent me letters. I felt welcomed.

2. By far, the best financial aid package given with an academic scholarship, a PK discount, a large scholarship for Kansas residents attending Westmar, and much more. 

3. During my overnight visit placement at Westmar, Valda was smart. She placed me with a student on the 1st Floor, Wernli Hall. Not only welcomed but felt included too. Wernli became my college home for 4 years (minus my off-campus studies in D.C.)

4. And then the deciding factor, one that I did not share with my parents because it might have hurt their feelings some. This was before the advent of the Web and social media. Westmar provided the opportunity to escape the bubble-wrapped PK fishbowl that many PKs find themselves in. I could become who I wanted because no one knew who I was before attending Westmar. That freedom set me on my life journey.

Now, I have the opportunity to say goodbye to Westmar College, which died in 1997. Westmar alumni numbers have been dwindling the past 25 years as no new alumni have been added. For me, closing the chapter.

Birth Order Indeed Makes a Difference for the Baby

 A few years ago, there was a book published about birth order that caught wide attention. The premise of the book was that first born children tend to have certain characteristics not readily as found in other children of the same family.

I thought of this book when I read the biographies of my Dad's two brothers. Their lives were completely different than the baby of his family - my Dad. And the same is very true for me - my child and teenage years were very different than for my siblings.

I remember my Dad telling me about his frustrations trying to convince his sister that his childhood was completely different than her. My aunt did have set ideas about her childhood and wasn't about to change them for any reason. But of course his childhood was different -- he was home alone, his mother would stay several days a week at the school house to teach. And most importantly, how the same events were seen differently from different ages. That makes it all different.

For all practical purposes, Dad was the outsider in his family among siblings. Four or five years of separation as the baby of the family might as well be twenty years among siblings. I think any baby of the family with a few years of separation feels that way; I know I did. The last one at home. The isolation that comes with that. The parents become different. Cousins marry or move away.  Relatives die. Fewer large family gatherings.

For example, Dad's eldest brother knew both of his grandfathers. Dad was only two when the last of their grandfathers was alive. For Dad, he was only 8 years old when 1941 came around; yet, both of his brothers were drafted -- one sent to the Azores and the other to Europe in a communications group. His brothers came home different men. But Dad must have emulated his eldest brother a lot. Instead of going to high school where buses would take him and the school provide hot lunch, he chose to hitchhike to another high school just like his eldest brother did. It just dawned on me that his brother probably was living in the same town as this high school. 

I wonder how Dad felt in his sister's biography of one of his brothers that she wrote that Dad went to her school. When she wrote the biography, Dad had already graduated from a different school. 

I wrote this for another blog post on a family history blog:

My last 12 months being an everyday resident and livin’ on the Hunter farm was – different, way different. I was by myself – a lot. Both of my sisters by this time were graduated from high school and starting their own journeys in life. Dad was in the midst of converting his career from a farmer to a minister. Mom and I would travel to the different churches he would preach at each Sunday. Occasionally, we would attend our church in town, but more often than not on any given Sunday, we were at the Mt. Pleasant church or the Baptist church.

I was the only child still going to K-12 school. The first day of 8th grade was memorable – the school bus never came for me. Mom had to take me into school. After school, I tried to get on my old bus with Mr. Bedore but was told I was no longer a rider and that another school bus was picking me up. I don’t know how many times, I had to run down to the bus in the mornings as the new driver conveniently forgot about me. And being the last person picked up, trying to find a seat. The same thing repeated on the way home, being dropped off way past the driveway to the house and having to hike back. So, yeah, 8th grade was not that great of a year as a bus rider. Thankfully, Dad was creating a path for all of us to exit the farm.

After Bible Study, sometimes, I was the only one left of the students as I waited on Mom to arrive to pick me up. A year earlier, her lateness would have been no problem – I could have easily walked the half of a block from my 8th grade teacher’s house to where my Aunt Kathy’s house was and waited there for Mom, or my sister Vick could have picked me up. But alas, my life during the 1975-76 school year was very different. There were no Arbogast families in Stockton. Plus, cousin Billy had moved from Woodston to Cawker before 8th grade and was even further removed from seeing him.  Billy and I would have been in 8th grade together at Stockton as the Woodston 6-8 school had merged with Stockton that year. Not having any cousins around in town/school made life much more isolated.

And it wasn’t just relatives moved away from town. I recall mom and me leaving Webster’s supermarket and her Aunt Violet turning her head to avoid seeing us. Mom was so disappointed saying aloud – she ignored us! I often wondered if that was the price to be paid for planning to leave Stockton – being ignored and isolated.

As you can read - even my 8th grade year in the same place where my siblings grew up - was way different for me. And at the age where things are remembered.

Dad's mom died during his senior year in high school. That had to be a tough thing to overcome alone when everyone returned back to their lives and he was still in school.

A friend of mine on Twitter recently tweeted that feeling when your 21 months younger sibling lives on another planet. For me and my Dad, it was several years difference - might as well be a different galaxy.

Music From My Naive Pre-Teen Years

I thought it would be cool to put together a music video playlist representing songs that I listened to on the radio during my pre-teen years. Out in what most would consider isolated, open country Kansas, the radio was my main connection to the real world and to my dreams. It wasn't much of a connection to the real world, as I discovered later when I had more access to information, but the songs did drive my dreams.

I put 10 videos on the playlist just to make it short; I could have added 50. Hang on Sloopy seemed to be constantly on the radio. Windy was played on the piano at home too. I didn't know what Petula Clark looked like until I was in college but Downtown was a young boy's dream of mine. The Archies were Saturday morning cartoon viewing and records cut out from the back of cereal boxes. The last song on the playlist was actually performed in 1983 but was a cover of a song I loved in the 60s - Crimson and Clover. I chose the cover version because Joan Jett shredded the original version with her cover.

Oh, for what it's worth, the Buffalo Springfield video shows a young Neil Young on lead guitar. And a David Cassidy video - a very underrated performer/vocalist. 

This playlist and a couple of others can be viewed on my website at orangejayhawk.com

Enjoy the playlist.

Mapping Thornburg to Westmar

Me at Westmar College, 1984

When I decided to go to Westmar College in Iowa, I could tell my dad wasn’t exactly thrilled I was moving that far from home. Most of my classmates were going to much closer institutions in like Hays, Colby, Concordia, Manhattan, even Lawrence and Wichita. I think in hindsight he might have been worried too about the cost of private college versus public in-state tuition.

But Thornburg was only four miles from the state line with Nebraska, so it wasn’t like I really going a great distance in leaving Kansas. But it was still much further than going to Winfield, south of Wichita, and the home of my second choice, Southwestern College.

Well - to the gist of the blog post - there wasn’t Google Maps back then to give you options of different routes to compare time and mileage. I loved looking at maps, something I picked up from my Dad. The summer before going to Westmar, I had already tried a different couple routes: all interstate (except Thornburg to Hastings) and Highway 81 to Highway 20. Both were about six hours drive and I wasn’t a fan of going through Omaha. [Back then Interstate speed limits were double-nickel unlike today]

But I thought to myself, there’s got to be something better than Highway 81 and getting blown off the road by semis. So, I found a diagonal route - diagonal routes usually are the best way to get from point A to C by bypassing point B.  So out of curiosity I plugged my old route into Google Maps and was pleasantly surprised.

The third route choice was my route. It was 331 miles long and took 5 hours and 50 minutes to travel. That was right. Almost always about 6 hours to get back home or to get back to campus. I was pretty pleased with myself.

The number one route choice picked by Google Maps had the most miles to drive but the shortest time - that was the aforementioned interstate route. Again, Google Maps is figuring in today’s speed limit and not back then because back then - it was still about 6 hours to drive. Have to remember back then in big cities, the speed limit dipped below 55.

The number two route surprised me. In fact, if I had known that this route was both shorter and faster than my route, I would have used it. But back then, I didn’t think anything could beat a diagonal route - not true in this scenario.

So the second route option from Google Maps was to take Highway 77 straight north out Lincoln, through Fremont, and across Highway 20 to Highway 20 Business through Sioux City to Highway 75. That route never even occurred to me to being the better route. It was only six miles shorter than my route at 325 miles but it was 30 minutes faster! Wow - I would have loved that.

My thesis from Kansas University

I wanted to write a blog post about my thesis for my master's at KU.  So this happened during the mid 1980s. I went directly from college to grad school (minus the summer break in between).

First let me digress, that was a weird summer because as soon I got back to Kansas after graduating in Iowa, I was helping my parents pack up the house. I could sense the dread from my parents of moving away somewhere comfortable to a new workplace. It was really weird to move even further east in Kansas.  For my Dad at least, the move became the first time he lived in town. We had neighbors just across the driveway. You could walk down to the post office. But I wasn't in the new town for long, less than two months, and then I moved to Lawrence.  One of my three moves in Lawrence the two years I lived there for master's degree study.

KU was a culture shock for me. I went from a college of 400 students to a university of 25,000 student. I had easy, relaxed living before.

An interesting story about my thesis. This was before Microsoft Word and instead was in the early days of word processing software. I was using Leading Edge to type up my thesis. I gave the floppy disk (yes the 3.5 floppy disk of yore) to the departmental secretary in order to print out three copies for binding. Somehow or another, a mistake was made and a period was inserted after every word! I was beyond words.  The college had to send the disk to the company to fix the issue. It came back fixed and all ended well.

Here is the cover to my thesis: Supervision Practices and Opinions of College Student Newspaper Advisers. If you are ever in Lawrence, it can be found in the archive library.

This thesis reviewed the current legal status of the student press on the college level and surveyed their faculty advisers on the advisers' attitudes and practices concerning censorship of student newspapers.  Information was gathered via mail questionnaires and follow-up mail questionnaires. Each mailing including a self-addressed stamped envelope for easy return. The survey covered 92 colleges around the Lawrence region of the country.

I then wrote five hypotheses about what I would find from the calculations of the surveys. The hypotheses were written and approved by my thesis committee before the surveys were mailed out.

I had to learn very quickly Honeywell computer skills and punch-out cards in order to run cross-tabulations of the survey responses to the questions and then to the related hypothesis. I did significance to chi-square and cross-tabulations through SPSS-X statistical analysis program. Yeah, I had to learn that program really quick as well.

I had help of course. There was a young woman in the KU Statistics Lab who helped me tremendously through the program and data input process. My professor from Westmar had decided to move back to Kansas and he lived very close to Lawrence. He helped me develop the survey tool. I also thanked my parents profusely in my acknowledgements because without them, I would have never found an affordable apartment to move into, nor keep me calm when I thought my thesis had been ruined by the period after every word.

Some more pictures below. One is the thesis title page and the other is one of the many tables depicting cross-tabulation and all of the numbers I dealt with for each question on the survey. This was a massive undertaking but I am very proud of this accomplishment even if it was over 30 years ago!

 

Journey to Kansas - Going Back to Tennessee via Springfield, Illinois

[Part Three of Four]

We woke up early on Labor Day 2018. The Dwight D. Eisenhower Library and Museum opened at 9:00 AM in Abilene, and we wanted to be somewhat close to there by then.

I remember my first visit to the Eisenhower Library. I was pretty young. The only thing I knew about Abilene was from the cowboy movies and from Gunsmoke about being a rowdy cowboy town. Back during that first visit, that was what I was half-expecting. But Abilene was not. Pretty slow town. I remember the chapel where Eisenhower was buried and his boyhood home. But I mostly remember on that visit long, long ago was visiting prairie dog town -- a large expanse of gopher rodents coming out of the ground.

Fast forward to 2018. While my family made several stops to the Eisenhower Library over the years, we only did the free stuff. The chapel, the house, walking around the grounds, browsing the stuff at the gift shop. This time was different. We were actually going to pay admission to visit the Museum and get it counted on the presidential library passport.

But, alas as we got to Abilene and to the Eisenhower Center, the Museum was closed for repairs! All of the exhibits were moved to the Library. Most Presidential Libraries are off limits except for authorized researchers, but this time, the staff was allowing anyone to visit the Library as part of the Museum exhibit.

Library entrance

The exhibit showed the timeline of Eisenhower's life, especially through the military, how his coast to coast convoy as a young lieutenant led to a personal desire for better roads (hence the Interstate System was approved during his term as President) and the interactions he had with other military leaders.

One thing I didn't know. Eisenhower signed the law to create NASA. This led to JFK being able to promise to land a man on the moon.

Outside on the grounds is the Peace Monument. It is General Eisenhower statue surrounded by a large peace medallion. Peace was very important to President Eisenhower. Here is a picture of the statue and me casting shadows on the dove symbol.

After finishing up at the Eisenhower Center, we drove east, leaving the state of Kansas at the Kansas City, Missouri city limits, as we drove to the Truman Presidential Library. This was a five-minute stop to get the passport stamped verifying our last visit in July 2015.

Leaving the Truman Library, we decided to head north, not east from the KC area. A few miles north of Worlds of Fun, we turned onto US 36, a four-lane highway all the way to Interstate 72, headed to Springfield, Illinois for the night. Since I wasn't driving, I reminisced about US 36. US 36 runs all the way Denver. It goes through the town where I went to high school, where I dragged main on Friday nights. So, US 36 played a big part in my life - going to events in Phillipsburg, Norton, Mankato, Belleville. The way to Concordia. All the towns in my high school year. And when I was a junior in college, I drove all night and most of the next day using East US 36 until I had to get on the Interstate. The same route we were on now in Missouri.

We got to Springfield, Illinois, the state capital a little after 7:00. We were surprised at how rural it was almost up to the city limits. And how quiet the city was. I had reserved a hotel several weeks before the trip that was the closest to the Amtrak station. My daughter would be taking Amtrak back to her home. I didn't realize how close the state capitol building was to the hotel. Here's a view from the front door of the hotel.

Illinois State Capitol from hotel front door

I think Illinois got it right. A small state capital makes it easier for everyone to access state government, unlike Nashville in Tennessee. 

After dinner, we took a walk around the Capitol and took several pictures. Here is one of those pictures. 

A beautiful building! We had to get up early the next morning - one of us had to catch a train, and another had a seven-hour solo drive back home to Chattanooga. Part four will be the last part of this series - the long solo drive home.

Birthday with Mom (and Dad) (and the farm)

[Part 2 of 4 - continued from the Tumblr post of Part one]

My daughter and I woke up on Saturday at the Hays motel on my birthday. In Kansas. Hours west of Kansas City. Back to my roots.

For the first time in over three decades, I was celebrating my birthday with my Mom in the same physical location. A major drawback in living so far away from your parents - the lack of availability or finances to make a round trip to visit on special days.

After buying food at the local Walmart, we headed north to Stockton on US 181. 181 was a frequent path for me when I was younger, but by the time I was in high school and driving on my own, it had become almost not a road traveled at all for me -- especially this part from Hays to Stockton.  Hastings, Nebraska in high school had become my road destination to find a McDonald's and other entertainment.

We greeted Mom/Grandma with joyous celebration upon arrival in Stockton!

And we stocked her refrigerator with a lot of food! It was so good to hear Happy Birthday in person from my Mom. When you get old, you appreciate that a lot more. For you people who can routinely see your parents, don't discredit that moment each year; it is precious.

While Mom was making pizza and cake, we traveled out of Stockton to visit the cemetery to see Dad. I know Dad was so happy for me and my daughter to be here on my birthday. I said with an emotional voice at his grave, "Dad, I made it back here to visit you and to see Mom on my birthday."

I was so pleased that I had made it back to the cemetery just a little over two years after Dad's funeral. I visited other family graves and remembered them as well. My aunt and uncles. My grandfather. And other family members I never had a chance to meet -- my grandmother, an uncle, and great-grandmother and great-grandfather. Always good to remember those who lived before you and who left a part of their DNA for your existence.

I stood in the cemetery and it's loneliness as the wind whistled through the grass. I looked out beyond my family graves and looked at all of the other graves here. People who moved here, lived in this part of the world, and had moved on from this planet.

We left the cemetery to drive over some more rough roads to see the old family farm. The farm where all of those Hunters who were buried at this cemetery lived. Kind of amazing over 100 years of history tied to the farm and to the cemetery.

My arrival at the farm was reality. The last time I visited here at Dad's funeral, even though the farm had passed through other owner hands by that time, it still looked somewhat familiar then.
Now, it did not.

The house that a Hunter built from limestone was gone. Vanished. Demolished. No more.

It was a shock to see.

The farm house as it was in the 60s.

Now just the trees and empty space.

We traveled back to the pavement the quickest we could. The rough roads were too much for the car. And for me.

Back in Stockton, we arrive just in time for pizza birthday lunch with Mom! We stayed with Mom for another day, and my older sister came to visit Mom on Sunday. We went through a lot of old pictures and photo albums on Sunday. I found some great Hunter family information for a second cousin I had just met virtually through Ancestry. Second cousins are the great-grandchildren of the same great-grandparent.

It was joyful for me to stay with Mom for a couple of days. Three nights in Western Kansas. Did me a world of good.

On Monday morning, Labor Day, we left Stockton for Abilene and then went onward east to Illinois. That will be part three of this four part series about my birthday trip.

"I knew better than to look in my mirror - I never looked back." Dad to me about the day of the move.

2018 National PTA Legislative Conference

One of my many trips during March - May of this year was to Arlington, VA/Washington, D.C. for the National PTA Legislative Conference. The event was held at the Crystal City Gateway Marriott with the Day on the Hill at the Capitol in D.C. Everyone calls this event LegCon - much easier to write about using the nickname.

Charles Scott and I standing in front of the US Capitol

Before I write about my trip and adventures and who I met and more, let me answer this question: what is LegCon? At the core, no matter the level, PTA is an advocacy association--an association working to improve the lives of children and families. Attending LegCon for me was a great way to enhance my advocacy skills, learn and implement new advocacy strategies, talk about PTA priorities to our US representatives and senators, and of course, connecting and networking with other PTA members from across the country. PTAers from every US state was there.

If you are in the PTA, take the opportunity sometime to attend LegCon! It is an experience and training worth having for the rest of your life.

National PTA lines up the speaking points for everyone to base their conversations and chats with their legislators. Our two main asking points were Support Bipartisan Gun Safety and Violence Prevention and Invest in Safe and Supportive Schools. One of the bills we were supporting for Gun Safety and Violence was approved by the House on the very same day as our Day on the Hill!

Now to my travel and walking notes! I had a weird flight schedule flying out of Chattanooga on Delta but flying back into Chattanooga on American. I flew in from Atlanta to Reagan National, took the hotel shuttle to Crystal City Gateway Marriott, and checked in. What a beautiful hotel - I had a view of the indoor pool plus there was a huge underground mall connected to the hotel with all kinds of restaurants, subway stop, and other stores. Very cool -- worth visiting just for the entertainment value!

On my first day, I attended several workshops that got my Tennessee PTA friends and me ready to go for Wednesday's Day on the Hill. The workshops were very informative in preparing strategies, in preparing talking points, and in preparing how to pace yourself.  Good stuff.  And I got to meet PTA members from different states as they paired state delegations with other delegations at different workshops. I met people from Florida, Arizona, Washington state, and much more. And a met a new PTA friend from Tennessee. I love meeting new PTA colleagues!

We decided at our planning session workshop to forego the subway at morning rush hour and pay for taxis out of our pockets. That was a good decision because Wednesday morning was cold and windy!

Tennessee PTA waiting in line at the Rayburn Office Building

We arrived as a group, taking two taxis, at the Rayburn Office Building. There was already a line! Woo - I was glad our stay out in the cold wind wasn't too long. As the acting federal legislative chair for Tennessee PTA on this trip, I had set up a visitation schedule two weeks earlier. Everyone really liked my schedule!

Once into the Rayburn building, Cheryl, Anita, and Charles went to the first appointment with Rep. Steve Cohen (Memphis) while Betsy, Kim, and I visited several other offices as unannounced visitors. We visited four other offices and came back to Rep. Cohen's office. Our group was still sitting in the foyer waiting room, so we joined them to make one big Tennessee group to visit Rep. Cohen. What a great meeting we had and possible future involvement at the local district office with PTA!

Tennessee PTA delegation with Rep. Steve Cohen

We took a lunch break at the Rayburn Office Building cafe area. It was crowded. Rep. Cohen greeted us as he walking by with his lunch - very cool. The serving lines were really long so I decided on a sandwich and Coke. Let me tell you, I had the best PB&J sandwich ever. That's saying a lot since I'm not a PB&J fan.

Well, we decided to split the group for the rest of the day. This gave one group extra time to cross over to the Senate side and get into Dirksen Senate Office Building. That left Charles Scott and me to visit one more representative and then hoof it over to Dirksen for our next appointment.

We had a great conversation with Rep. Marsha Blackburn. We saw a picture of her when she was young with big beehive hairstyle. That was cool to see. She said she had heard of PTA before so that was good joke to break the ice. Always good to make everyone comfortable.

Charles and I standing with Rep. Blackburn

I'm sure my wife would not have approved of my color coordination, but I decided to go with a camel brown suit jacket, purple shirt and tie, black pants and shoes. I thought I looked pretty debonair with all of those colors blending! Of course, I'm always looking good.

After meeting with Rep. Blackburn, Charles and I started walking over to Dirksen. When we walked in front of the Capitol, we got lucky with our picture as there was no one in the background at all. I took pictures of the Capitol and of course the Library of Congress. I spent many hours in that library when I was college student in D.C. Yep, I had returned back to my old college stomping grounds a few decades older and several pounds heavier! When I was a student here, I visited so many US legislators that I no longer have any idea who they were. Well except, Sen. Richard Lugar - he was larger than life in the early 80s.

Selfie

The Library of all Libraries

We had a short wait to get past security to get into Dirksen. Again, the strategy of conquer and divide was working as the one group was meeting with Sen. Lamar Alexander while Charles and I met with a staff member from Sen. Bob Corker's office. Both groups had really good meetings -- so exciting to the do the work of PTA, that is, advocating for every child with one voice!

Group One meeting with Sen. Lamar Alexander

After the National PTA reception in the Dirksen building (where three of Sen. Alexander's staff showed up to mingle with PTAers), I headed back to the hotel to explore Crystal City mall. That is a great place. I had a great meal at King Street Blues, wow, just excellent.

The next day was debriefing. The best speaker of the entire conference spoke that morning - Bradford Fitch from CMG. He gave us great advice and tips to continue the advocacy work we started here and bring it home. After his speech, we sat down with our Arizona PTA friends and planned a strategy of what we were doing when we got back to Tennessee.

After that workshop planning, I caught ride on the hotel shuttle to the airport and flew home to Chattanooga via Charlotte.  I had a great PTA learning and advocacy time. I learned a lot, I reminisced about my college days in DC, I met new PTA people, I conversed with US reps and senators. All in all, LegCon was just a great experience!

Point Roberts - land enclave, US exclave, witness protection

I enjoy maps - looking at maps, creating maps, exploring maps. When I was younger and we went on family vacations, I had the Rand McNally Atlas in my hands looking at highway routes. One of my favorite classes in grad school at UTK was GIS map making.

So one day, I was exploring the Canada-US border with Google maps and I noticed something a little weird. I found a part of Washington state surrounded by Canadian land (a land enclave) and US-controlled waters between the land enclave and the main body of land (exclave).

This specific point is called Point Roberts. Point Roberts, Washington.

Point Roberts was created when the 49th was used west of Minnesota until the Vancouver Bay. The five square mile land is at the tip of British Columbia. So when I used street view in Google Maps, I found houses on the Canadian side built up right onto the border. I mean like the US border is part of the lawn border!

Here are some pictures from one of the streets in Canada looking into Point Roberts. Notice the simple yellow painted curb. This is looking from Canada into the United States.

On both sides of this street are houses. Across the road is the start of a recreational area. There is one point of entry for cars and trucks.

So what is Point Roberts economy and education? Children K - 3 attend the elementary school on the point. From fourth grade onward, they must take a 40-minute bus ride through British Columbia to reach Blaine, Washington to go to school.

Economically, Point Roberts has five shipping and receiving companies. Why? Online retail shipping into Canada is costly. Shipping to Point Roberts and trucking it into Canada is much less expensive. Groceries are 30% cheaper and gas a dollar a gallon cheaper than across the border.

During the summer months, Point Roberts doubles in population as Americans come to spend the summer yachting by using the superb harbors and waters.

And with the crossing border and exclave properties of Point Roberts - it has served another useful purpose. A large population of people in the US Marshal's Witness Protection Program live there too.

Google map link to Point Roberts: https://goo.gl/maps/wX8ysebyVtr

Sandy's

In 1970-71, my mom was taking me to see medical professionals for regular monthly visits in Hays. The trip to Hays took an hour. One-way. So, naturally, I got hungry before heading back home.

That’s where I got hooked on Sandy’s. Sandy’s was a fast-food chain with a Scottish-based theme. The workers wore Scottish-plaid berets and the food was really cheap. 

The menu at the Sandy's restaurant included a 15¢ hamburger, a 20¢ milkshake, and a 10¢ bag of French fries. My favorite, the Mariner (fish sandwich), was 15¢.

Once, I was able to splurge for a Big Scott – two single patties with cheese and the special Sandy’s sauce.  As one could guess, Sandy’s was started by three guys who were unhappy franchisees of McDonalds. The Scottish-based theme and the Big Scott were all directed toward their former partners.

Sandy’s was located at 2700 Vine Street in Hays. That’s where the Hays Chamber of Commerce is now across from Walgreens.

Hardees bought out Sandy’s in late 1971 and then they were gone. A few Sandy’s stayed around with different names. One of those few was Bucky’s in Lawrence. I was fortunate to be a student at KU when Bucky’s was still open for business.

I loved the Scottish motif and the food. Back then, news like the Hardees buyout wasn’t in our life cycle. One day, Sandy’s was there, and another day, it was gone, and we didn’t know why.  The beauty of the Web is that now I can find out what happened to businesses like Sandy’s. Boy, I sure do miss it and those prices.

My favorite Sandy’s television commercial – Big Scott.


 

Sometimes we forget past blessings – The Toy Box

Last week, I came across a written note that my Dad sent to me. Written were the words—sometimes, we forget our past blessings. And I connected in my mind those words with the toy box Dad built for David.

When I was growing up on the farm we had an old granary. This granary was not like most. It was built out of wood, was rectangular in shape, and had a slanted half roof. The wood was painted red. The same color as the barn. I never thought of it as a granary. It wasn't round, it wasn't made out of tin or metal, it wasn't a silo: it was instead a red wooden, rectangular granary built on limestone rock foundation with open space below. My drawing from memory of it below:

I always thought it was a weird looking granary. Certainly nothing to tell any of the other boys at school about. It was more to me like an embarrassment. A wooden, rectangular shed used as a granary. It certainly didn't have much capacity. Because to enter it, there was a regular size door with a piece of wood about 2 feet tall to hold the grain back.

I recall that we had a small tubular auger, yellowish in color. I remember scooping grain that was poured on the ground into the auger feeding tube as the auger transported grains of wheat or of milo into a port, a window-type hole, which was created for this type of thing. After completing the auger task, the port would be sealed shut with a solid wood gate latched back into place.

I discovered while researching the Web that wood granaries were set on some sort of foundation that raised the building off the ground and provided ventilation underneath. Until the 1930s, farm granaries were of wood-frame construction.  I never knew when I was a young that granaries had been constructed of wood and not always out of metal. Here is a picture of wood granary that looks very similar to the one on the farm:

In the early 90s, Dad had the granary torn down and replaced by a large Quonset hut. He salvaged some of that granary wood and made a toy box – David’s toy box. Now, many decades later, I have a new found love of the old granary. It is the only piece of the farm that is in my house. Below are some pictures of it. The granary still remains a part of our family through the toy box: a past blessing not forgotten.