The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson [102]
At Red Cloud, home of Willa Cather, I joined US 281 and headed south towards Kansas. Just over the border is Smith Center, home of Dr Brewster M. Higley, who wrote the words to Home on the Range. Wouldn’t you just know that Home on the Range would be written by somebody with a name like Brewster M. Higley? You can see the log cabin where he wrote the words. But I was headed for something far more exciting – the geographical centre of the United States. You reach it by turning off the highway just outside the little town of Lebanon and following a side road for about a mile through the wheat fields. Then you come to a forlorn little park with picnic tables and a stone monument with a wind-whipped flag atop it and a plaque saying that this is the centremost point in the continental United States, by golly. Beside the park, adding to the sense of forlornness, was a closed-down motel, which had been built in the evident hope that people would want to spend the night in this lonely place and send postcards to their friends saying, ‘You’ll never guess where we are.’ Clearly the owner had misread the market.
I climbed onto a picnic table and could instantly see for miles across the waving fields. The wind came at me like a freight train. I felt as if I were the first person to come there for years. It was a strange feeling to think that of all the 230 million people in the United States I was the most geographically distinctive. If America were invaded, I would be the last person captured. This was it, the last stand, and as I climbed down off the table and returned to the car I felt an uneasy sense of guilt for leaving the place undefended.
I drove into the gathering evening gloom. The clouds were low and swift. The landscape was a sea of white grass, fine as a child’s hair. It was strangely beautiful. By the time I reached Russell, it was dark and rain was falling. The headlights swept over a sign that said WELCOME TO BOB DOLE COUNTRY. Russell is the home town of Bob Dole, who was at this time running for the Republican nomination for President. I stopped and got a room for the night, figuring that if Dole were elected President, I could tell my children that I had once spent the night in his home town and perhaps thereby deepen their respect for me. Also, every time Russell was shown on TV over the next four years I could say, ‘Hey, I was there!’ and make everybody in the room stop talking while I pointed out things I had seen. In the event, Dole dropped out of the race two days later, primarily because nobody could stand him, apart from his family and some other people around Russell, and the town, alas, lost its chance at fame.
I awoke to a more promising day. The sun was bright and the air was clear. Bugs exploded colourfully against the windscreen, a sure sign of spring in the Midwest. In the sunshine Kansas seemed an altogether more agreeable place, which surprised me a little. I had always thought one of the worst things anyone could say to you was, ‘We’re transferring you to Kansas, son.’ Kansas calls itself ‘the Wheat State’. That kind of says it all, don’t you think? It really makes you want to cancel that Barbados trip, doesn’t it? But in fact Kansas was OK. The towns I went through all looked trim and prosperous and quintessentially American. But then Kansas is the most quintessential of American states. It is, after all, where Superman and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz grew up, and all the towns I went through had a cosy, leafy, timeless air to them. They looked like the sort of places where you could still have your groceries delivered by a boy on a bike and people would still say things like ‘By golly’ and ‘Gee willickers’. At Great Bend, I stopped on the square beside the Barton County Courthouse and had a look around.