Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
“I was surprised at that myself when I first came here eight years ago,” he said. “After all,
it was the biggest thing that ever happened in the town. But you have to realize that the
people here hated the topic. They banned it from the public library and a lot of them even
now won't talk about it.”
This surprised me. A few weeks before I had read an article in an old Life magazine about
how the townspeople had taken Truman Capote to their hearts even though he was a min-
cing little fag who talked with a lisp and wore funny caps. In fact, it turns out, they dis-
dained him not only as a mincing little fag, but as a meddler from the big city who had
exploited theirprivate griefforhisowngain.Mostpeoplewantedtoforgetthewholebusi-
ness and discouraged their children from developing an interest in it. Kennedy had once
asked his brightest class how many of the students had read the topic, and three-quarters of
them had never even looked at it.
I said I thought that was surprising. If I had grown up in a place where something famous
had happened I would want to read about it. “So would I,” Kennedy said. “So would most
people from our generation. But kids these days are different.
We agreed that this was, you know, weird.
There is nothing much to be said for the far west of Kansas except that the towns are small
and scattered and the highways mostly empty. Every ten miles or so there is a side road,
and at every side road there is an old pickup truck stopped at a stop sign. You can see them
from a long way off-in Kansas you can see everything from a long way off-glinting in the
sunshine. At first you think the truck must be broken down or abandoned, but just as you
get within thirty or forty feet of it, it pulls out onto the highway in front of you, causing
youtomakeanimmediate downwardadjustment inyourspeedfromsixtymilesanhourto
about twelve miles an hour and to test the resilience of the steering wheel with your fore-
head. This happens to you over and over. Curious to see what sort of person could incon-
venience you in this way out in the middle of nowhere, you speed up to overtake it and see
thatsittingatthewheelisalittleoldmanofeighty-seven,wearingacowboyhatthreesizes
too large for him, staring fixedly at the empty road as if piloting a light aircraft through
a thunderstorm. He is of course quite oblivious of you. Kansas has more drivers like this
than any other state in the nation, more than can be accounted forbysimple demographics.
Otherstatesmustsendthemtheiroldpeople,perhapsbypromisingthemafreecowboyhat
when they get there.
