Mothers last Home

by Corporate ranking

Looking at houses

Who wudda’ thunk?

I’d find just the places

With all the right funk

Better Behavior....

 

Because it’s just structure

Bones the best part

Steel beams and girders

Understand now the Art

 

But only because

‘Minds me to return

To Joints and to Tendons…

soluvial burn…

IMG_3556

Walk or the Walker… Heels ? Big Toe Feels… Stretch? Or the Stretcher?

 

But Buddy & Sukie

There was also a Place

I’m only suggesting

A lovely nice Space.

Fountains of Couth while Facing The Truth...At Casas Adobes.

Fountains of Couth while Facing The Truth…At Casas Adobes.

 

Gallery… Nice!

& maybe some clay?

In last final moments

At max one week stay.

 

I’m sure there’s a hot tub

That has some Wi-Fi

And if modem don’t work

Will have button…to fry!

Mama’s Got a Squeeze Chute…

by admin

 

Mama’s got a Squeeze Chute she wears around her chest, and when Daddy comes home never gets no rest…

…in and out and in and out and in and out again…

…”Cause she’s playin’ all night,
and the music’s alright….”

…Well the kids don’t eat
and the dog can’t sleep.
There’s no escape from the music
in the whole damn street…

She goes, squeeze me, come on and squeeze me

Come on and tease me like you do
I’m so in love with you…

-Pete Townshend.

 

 

Ode de Savage and the Good ol’ boys at Eddy’s.

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Prince Michael Savage, Paula Graves Adams, Eddy de la Hunt. First Meeting sum '11.

I saw Michael Savage, The Artist, the other day at Eddy’s.

We have different coffee schedules with our respective yoga-paint patterns.

Anyway, we only had a minute for an update.

We don’t really need to get into the context.

And, I don’t want to put word’s in someone else’s mouth, but I think it went something like this.

To paraphrase the Sauvage:

“Well, in the [good] old’n days, the wife [in the country] just died!”

 

A cock and bull story.

by admin

He'll be as useless as tits on a bull.

I can’t really remember what exactly was the issue here,

you’ll have to ask the Boss.

But, I do remember

that there was a female involved.

62nd Botar Ball to Benefit the American Royal Association. Muehlbach Hotel, Kansas City. Oct. 22, 2011.

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National Hereford Association Bull. Faces n-s politically neutral to KCK, but no bull about it, he faces north. Prevents the newly developing city from forgetting its roots as a cattletown.

In the spring of 1949, newly appointed Senator Harry Darby gathered a group of civic leaders to find a way to interest young people in promoting the American Royal.  Their common passion was the American Royal, one of the country’s largest horse and livestock shows and a unique and legendary event in Kansas City.  The Royal had come to symbolize the country’s good life straight from the Midwest-land, agriculture, animals.

By 1970, after twenty-eight years of existence, the American Royal Coronation Ball was replaced by the profitable BOTAR Ball, raising more than $1.5 million to date in 1999.  The Charles N. Kimball Lecture “It’s All About the Eating: Kansas City’s History and Opportunity” says it all.

excerpt from the lecture:

THE SPIRIT OF THE ROYAL (A hundred years of growin’)

All bricks are bare now, where a thousand cattle bawled.

The window signs are changed where all the packers called.

Though the yards which penned the critters now are bare,

the heartbeat of a city and its spirit linger there.

The ghost riders come at midnight with jingle in their gait,

The agents and commission men are getting figures straight.

Calloused hands with stubby pencils working numbers in their heads,

Hot coffee and cigar smells rousing buyers from their beds…

You can’t quite see their faces or the color of their eyes,

But you know they remember things that you can’t realize.

They keep the blood a flowing… through the city’s veins,

As they lean back in the saddle, look up the hill across their reins…

And see the city growing, see the concrete sprawling out,

Covering up the grassland where they used to ride and shout.

They think about their bellies and the beans they used to eat,

They put the bull on the east horizon, and brought the nation meat.

They are the founders of the city with the cow stuff on their feet,

The echoes of what they did rebound from every wall,

They’re the soul of the American Royal, They’re the ones who built it all!

Rich Hawkins 4/27/99

The Royal is the symbol of our past; but more importantly, it is the symbol of our future….I thank all of you for coming and listening. It’s an honor for me to deliver the last Kimball lecture of the 20th century on a subject that could be our shining star for the 21st century. Let’s invite the folks who feed us all to dinner.  After all, we still have to eat…and I remind you, It’s All About the Eating!” 

Oct. 21, 1999. Mr. John A. Dillingham.

Children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of old and new Civic Contributors to Kansas City and Kansas in Agriculture, Business, Community, and Preservation participated in this event. It was held Oct. 22nd, 2011 at the Muehlbach Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri. And it was grand!

Here are some very amateurish highlights of the event:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq5zISxcUkQ[/youtube]

A little tight there, Dad! But I'm confident she'll make a break for it...though always her father's daughter.

 

Beautiful Cerise presents...Mama Connie & Mama Paula were BOTARS together. In fact, as petites, they danced beside each other.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A6fcBwax9A[/youtube]

Note: One of the ladies featured had a paternal Great Grandfather who served on the Livestock Exchange Board whose Cattle Company, still in existence, was a charter member of the American Hereford Association.  Her maternal grandparents made contributions to Kansas City in the areas of preservation, architecture, and education. Mom and Dad were a BOTAR and GOTAR and continue in their respective fields to pursue work in agriculture and architectural history in the state of Kansas.

This lady BOTAR works in marketing for an agricultural advertising agency  based in St. Louis with offices located in downtown Kansas City. She lives in a loft in the Kansas City Board of Trade Building and walks to work.  It is a block away from three different downtown architectural offices of her maternal Grandfather.  And, Lacy Amelia Adams can herd cattle, vaccinate and build feed bunks with the best of them as

“some of the best cowboys are indeed, cowgirls.” 

Calving Part III: Anomalies in Agriculture at the XIT Ranch.

by admin
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8F5veIKnnI[/youtube]

My last and perhaps best Paul Anka selection. Distracting and counter-intuitive to my motives, but makes the post, hang in there until 1:05 at least. But then, you won’t want to leave.  And what mutual conclusion did John and Paula have about Anita, Paul Anka’s singing partner in Europe, after viewing her forearms…? So I think we were right on with Paul being big with the drag queens.

Tonight’s essay is about anomalies. The boss (only works part-time on Sundays) threw me a bone. He helped me with organization of my thoughts and photos. So, you can thank him for connecting the dots that were related in my brain to identify my point before I had one.  Yes, it very often works this way with the Adams…

Sink and mini hot water heater station in calving zone of barn.

John pointed out the hot water heater Friday night.

Paula: “That’s so nice of you, I bet they like the warm water.” But I hadn’t ever noticed any post-labor rinse-off for the girls before…?

John: “That’s for me.”

I was sympathetic after other night in the pens when it was below freezing. There is only a small space heater in the barn, and this was only added in about 1996 when we moved to the west ranch.

I guess cold water is a real shocker after all that hot pV$….well, I don’t say these words, my father might be reading, let’s just say steaminess. See Part I.

So, hot water heater in the barn is anomaly one. Like a rancher with a cadillac, this is pretty high status for the XIT.

Mother and baby twins, born Jan. 22, 2011.

Anomaly Two: Baby twins were born Saturday night.
This is always fun. But, the mother cannot nurse two children, so John’s brother-partner brought over a cow from the e. ranch who had lost her baby. This is so the extra calf can “mother up” to the mother who no longer has her calf.

Anomaly Three: That girl is a freak.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3CtadNZdSY[/youtube]

John is speaking about a cow that never had any contractions. Being on the same team (females) as the cow and two weeks overdue with my own children, I have other theories for this. For example, she is such a good mother the children don’t want to leave, the calf might actually need more time in the womb, or she’s tired of men pushing her to fit their schedules and going to be difficult.

The point is, for rancher this is a pain:

Inconvenience: he has to stay up in the middle of the night either way.  He can

  • haul the girl himself to Ashland (72 miles one-way), wait for the c-section, then drive her home the other 72. This is probably a good 4-6 hr time commitment in the middle of the night.
  • Or bother the people you value the most, his great vets in Ashland, to do a housecall at the ranch.

The vet is expensive (to John the money guy). And a word about vets…The Ashland Veterinary has the best large animal and K-state grads in the region, and also great for cats and dogs.  And cheapest, maybe $175 for labor, $75 for mileage and time. It would be twice as much from Liberal.

  • One of a Cowboy’s many fine motor skills at the XIT is that he can stitch. They can handle a prolapse. This is when everything in the region from where the calf resides falls out. It gets shoved back in, she is stitched up and her life goes on.  If life at stake, the vet called regardless, even if she’s going to town to the auction block the next year or the next day.

And if there is any perceived harshness about mothering tendencies in the video, it’s not perceived; if you’re barren, you’re out after the first year.

Last, I just couldn’t figure out the hanging stirrup from the ceiling conundrum from Part I. If you’ll remember the visual stirrup of a horse and word connection reminded me of the OB/GYN so I was really trying to figure out how she got her legs way up there by the ceiling…Finally, as I did with so many engineering confusions I had in classes at KU, I had to ask.

John illustrates the function of the stirrup in the last frame.

Anyway, anomalies are good. I wouldn’t want life any other way.


The mounted roadie: Ride Tall, He’s always watching.

by admin
"Went to see a horse about a man"

Went to see a horse about a man.

Taking a roadie is taking a break. I think we may all do it, always have, in all times and places, by whatever mode of transportation is available. And times, it has only been in my mind.

The restlessness, the need for freedom, I think, is a part of who we are, or at least who I am. Being a 5th generation Kansan and a 4th generation Jayhawker, it might not seem as though I’ve left home. But I have lived in Paris and traveled quite a bit, in the states and across the state. And we all leave home in different ways. Through the books that I read, adventure is only as far away as my thoughts. And I always return home, wherever that may be, with a new perspective.

"Location:  ridge in the home pasture"

Location: ridge in the home pasture

Sometimes taking a roadie is by horse. In the aerial, you can see that I’m in the home pasture on a ridge (the line) about a mile north of the headquarters, on the north side of the Cimarron River. As it goes, really not very far from home. But it’s the concept that counts.

I’m going to include this photograph that my father-in-law Raymond Adams took, for it is far better than mine. He said one time,”if want to get close to God, you get up on that grey horse and ride up that hill behind the house and you will be about as close to God as you can get.”  And another thing he said, “I am one helluva cowboy.”

Ride tall, he's always watching.

 

Put a little gravel in my travel….let my mind unravel…77 to Junction City.

by admin
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDK4GEAUjCM[/youtube]

 

Round bales running east and south...

Letting my mind unravel on 77…

Thought it would take a while to say

after 28 years living day to day

8 miles of gravel in my travel

ranch to pavement, tiny bit of the way…

 

But I’m “Sick & tired of this interstate system…”

At least this last two months, now I’m christening

“‘ ‘Wichita-KC Paula’s Freeway…

I don’t know but something miss’nin…”

Another beautiful white frame and limestone barn, not the bank barn of my studies.

Structural tile silo? Can't think it would be well? Dennis Domer? Mike Swann? any comment?

 

I was called mid-week to 77

Burns to Florence and Marian

J.K. Williams old barnyard,

white bank barn still standin’ hard.

 

Roads I’d traveled doing history stuff

Places where the writin’ was more than fluff

Highways, sideways, drainage ditches

Engineering plans that had some glitches…

 

I passed by and got to smile…

Road re-routed a fraction of a mile

cows in stockpens still intact

KDOT got it, had impact.

-a song, my day, my thoughts, my memories my mark on 77 with KDOT, KSHPO, and Citysearch.

Kansas Department of Transportation does a great job!

The importance of the road in the political landscape reminds us of something we are not always willing to accept: 

man as a political animal is always inclined to be footloose, inclined to leave family and home for a more stimulating place. 

p. 27, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape.  J. B. Jackson.

 

Cash in Can: a word about junk, cash, and signs. S. Seneca, Wichita, Kansas.

by admin

There is really no such thing as junk or trash.

a) it don’t matter, it’s all matter, but if we ‘no matter’, it will only affect us.  a comfort.

b) don’t want to be trite but he don’t make junk.

c) reduce, re-use, recycle. -Jack Johnson

d) beauty is in the eye of the camera holder

But, at the XIT Ranch, all the “matter” currently waiting for a new life (scrap iron, old steel fenceposts, etc. etc.) is neatly organized in front of the shop. And, if it grows too large for the ranch to use, it gets hauled off and is “cash in can.”  Not a lot, not really to be handed over to me for a little weekend New Mexico sojourn, but it all counts as going in the kitty.

Cash for scrap metal.

I was driving to Weckworth Manufacturing on South Seneca from Wichita down to Haysville at 7:15 am a few weeks ago and had to stop when I saw these signs.

Kansas Can Sign. S. Seneca between Wichita and Haysville.

I do believe that “Kansas Can” and I am a sucker for great signs so I had to pull over. How could I not? Signage in the “new” manmade suburban landscape post 1970 is so standardized, codified, and controlled in an effort to be homogenized and tasteful? that as a few good people stated:

There is no there there”  (Gertrude Stein)…

in the “geography of nowhere.” (James Howard Kunstler)

So this is an area of town where we can still have a unique iconic sign to sell the goods. Uniqueness and creativity pays back to the owner, in cans. And cans pay back to the consumer, in cash. 

And, Gigantism has been, for so many purchased items, the current status of our shopping culture. So signs must often follow suit in scale and uniformity to be consistent with the structures.

This is not to say that there are not very wonderful creative signs being made today, because there are. Hutchinson is home to the best signmaker in the region, Luminous Neon, Inc. with origins in Kansas of 84 years linking cities of Kansas City, Dodge City, and Hutchinson through ownership.

And, sometimes interesting signs must be grandfathered in and protected when there is actually an old building left upon which it hangs. But that generally happens when the business behind the sign has not also become obsolete. Everything changes…

This is not a judgment, blame,  or lack of understanding about how that works. It’s understandable and creates order in an ever-more-complicated world. It’s just a comment about when, where, and why I am actually interested enough to stop. I think these are treasured places.

So, I will stop here but these are a few photos from my stop.

Aluminum corrugated siding used as privacy fence.

Beware of dog. Privacy fence required with value in material behind it.

I could use a good ladder.

what's inside to west?

Peephole.

 

Reveals holy un-cola.

There. It’s in the can. 

Happy memories of School Buses and Drivers…

by admin

My most beautiful photo: Bus, plastic, wind, thistle.

Art has to move you and design does not, unless it’s a good design for a bus.

-David Hockney

I’m not sure how David Hockney meant this. But, I think the design of the yellow schoolbus is classic and timeless. It moves me everytime I see one.  Here are a few reasons why…

All the memories…of…

…the brown leather seats with those upright backs.

…the boys not keeping their hands to themselves on field trips.

John Graves and John Charles Adams playing very hard finger twisting on bus tour of Miami Beach.

…the girls all sitting together in the back, pulling out all the cool stuff we were organized enough to bring on the bus for the trip.  This began with strings for Jacob’s ladder…to Barbies and teen magazine…to makeup and saved school “notes.”

…the teacher, always a fun one with great tolerance like Mr. Nickels, sauntering back to check in that everything was reasonably under control. And not exerting his or hers before heading back to the front to hang with the driver.

…no bathroom.

…the incredible amount of time it seemed before we would get to a rest area as well as the incredible amount of time it took when we did stop.

…Indian Hills Junior High School’ers peering out of the window at our first transvestite encounter in Washington, D.C.

Miami, 12th and Ocean. Lacy and Paula front row, Jack and John safely across Ocean Drive.

Schoolbuses are good places for storage if you have a place for one in your yard.

So many people in rural America can find use for an old school bus.

They are built like an armored truck and seem to last many generations before losing their structure or color.

La Junta County Schoolbus.

They can be used to haul feed or store it.

Or, to organize stuff by category as in this picture.

Transmissions, I think...

 And last, memories of my children and the schoolbus. 

The Adams children were shepherded to and from the 28 miles from the XIT Ranch to Meade Grade School and Junior High on a school bus.

It was where they played with their neighbors after school, maybe did a little homework, heard really bad language from the other kid on the ranch, and heard tales of fun badness from Jimmy Johannsen.

Lacy laughed with her kind-of cousin, Carcy Larrabee who lived on another piece of H.G. Adams landholdings on the uplands of the river off of highway 23, 15 miles south of Meade. And Jack palled with Blake Larrabee, Carcy’s older brother, doing whatever boys do. Their grandparents were cousins and Horace Greeley Adams was their shared great-great grandfather.

They had two wonderful drivers, Mick Friesen and Betty Friesen (not related…there are about 18 Friesen’s in Meade).

They both loved and cared for my children and escorted them safely from school to my doorstep at the ranch.

They were patient at 7 am being the first pickup.

They were kind and appreciated Jack and Lacy for their kindness and appreciation.

And, on the holidays, they gave them sacks of candy and cookies.

They may have spent more time with these parents than with  their own.

And, I could not have been luckier to have these loving hands and hearts be there with them. Thank you, Mick and Betty.