Fidelity (The Return)

 

We finally made it to Fidelity after our previous disastrous attempt in July 2019, in which I got stuck in the mud just west of Bittersweet Road, tore off our van's bumper, and had to walk to Highway 75 in flip flops and jeans over the gravel roads. 

But, as I said, we finally made it! St. Augustine's Church is lovely, and the graveyard across the street was full of flags in preparation for Memorial Day.

The fields in the surrounding countryside were full of old cornstalks cut short in last fall's harvest. The day was cloudy, but sharp shafts of sunlight blazed down through gaps in the clouds. 

We explored the cemetery, pausing at tombstones that caught our interest. We were especially saddened by the ones where babies were buried - young lives snuffed out by disease long before their old age. Lila Wiltz was one such: She lived from 1919 to 1920. Another tombstone proclaimed simply, "Bakers Infants, 1941-1941." So much heartache expressed in so few characters carved into stone!

As we were wandering through the graveyard, we noticed that a lady had come out onto the porch of a neighboring home. It was Mrs. Meyer, who lives in the old "Sister House" across the street from the church. She has lived alone there for the past three years since being widowed. She was wondering if we wanted to look around inside the building; she had the key.

We definitely wanted to look inside, and so we took her up on her offer. Within the church, we could feel and smell the age of the place. The wooden fixtures had the fine patina that only generations of hands can lend. The walls had pictures of the nuns who had served the people of this community as teachers before living out their twilight years in the Sister House.

It was a good way to spend Memorial Day, when we remember the people we have loved and lost, but also when we remember our own coming deaths. This little town -- what's left of it, anyway -- definitely has the feeling of a place that is dying, and so it led our hearts to consider our own mortality, as well as what lies on the Other Side.

Fidelity: Failure

Things don't always go smoothly on our little exploratory jaunts.

The weekend after the Fourth of July, we decided on the spur of the moment to go for a nice country drive in Brown County, then perhaps have lunch in Hiawatha. We almost succeeded in the first part of our plan.

We were trying to get to Fidelity, which has a pretty church with a steeple you can see for miles around. However, we made the mistake of following our phone's GPS, even when we should have followed our better judgment instead.

Google Maps instructed us to turn off of Highway 75 onto 190th Street, just between Sac & Fox Casino and Fairview, KS. The better route was 200th Street, just a mile north of there. 190th Street is no longer maintained west of Bittersweet Road.

So if anyone is reading, here is the main thing you need to take from this blog post: Never use an unmaintained county road unless you absolutely have to. And if you do have to, certainly don't do it in a 2-wheel-drive vehicle.

Things went fine for a little while... but then there was a little bit of mud. And then a lot of mud. And then the van got stuck in it. 

After about 90 minutes of trying to get us out of the mud, I had succeeded in:

1. Digging us in deeper
2. Tearing off the front bumper
3. Causing a mysterious white vapor to come from the engine area

So I stopped trying and struck out for help. I walked (in my flipflops on golf ball-sized gravel) back to Bittersweet Road, then a mile in either direction, trying to find help at the houses there. No one was home (it was Fourth of July weekend, after all).

Finally, I made it back out to Highway 75, which was another 2 and a half miles. By this time I was a muddy, sweaty mess in my jeans and flip flops. The folks at the nearest house were really kind and gave me water to drink, a phone to call a tow truck, and transportation for my family to the nearest gas station. They were perfect examples of Kansas hospitality to us, and we were grateful beyond words.

The countryside was lovely, but we were too distracted to take any pictures of it. Instead, you get a picture of the very nice man who towed our van from almost-Fidelity back to Topeka.

We failed this time Fidelity, but we'll get you yet!

Horton

Horton is a quiet little town of a little less than 2000 that has recently been working hard to renew, refresh, and reinvent itself. Recent changes include a nearly new town swimming pool!

The streets were quiet and we saw several nice buildings, including St. Leo's Church, which was very pretty! We had to be sure to stop by the mortuary that our friends Chuck and Phyllis Maple used to own.

We were also hungry, so we stopped at Grandma's Depot Cafe and had a nice lunch. The kids loved the model train outside and the train decorations and memorabilia inside!

I bought a copy of The Brothers Karamazov at the cafe's gift shop. I mentioned that I really like Dostoevsky, to which the proprietress gestured vaguely and responded, "Oh, yes -- we sell a lot of religious books here."

Hamlin

Hamlin is an itty bitty town, boasting a population of just 46 in the 2010 census. This is quite a step down from the 1910 census figure of 208.

Interestingly, Ellen Palmer Allerton, the poet who I mentioned in our post about Padonia, is apparently buried in Hamlin's cemetery. Though maybe it's not that interesting -- I guess we all have to get buried somewhere.

By the time we rolled through, the rain had stopped and the kids were sleeping, so Magen and I got to take a selfie. There wasn't much more to the town than the grain elevator you see in the background, but there was a mighty pretty lady there for a little while at least. (And no, I'm not referring to Ellen Palmer Allerton's corpse.)

Padonia

Even in some of the earliest histories of Kansas, Padonia is mentioned as a township where businesses and services were declining. Today, it is more or less a ghost town. Only a small group of houses and a grain elevator and remain, though in the past it also had a mill.

We've loved seeing the kids get old enough to take their own pictures on these little trips. On this occasion, it was raining quite a bit, so the kids did all the photography in the rain while Magen and I stayed in the van and cuddled. Pretty convenient for the parents of this outfit!

One of the most famous residents of Padonia was the poet Ellen Palmer Allerton, who arrived in a covered wagon in 1879. Two of her poetry collections are available on Google Books: Annabel, and Other Poems and Walls of Corn and Other Poems. Here are some lovely lines from "Annabel" that capture the sense of place that permeates her poetry:

Look there, my friend, through yonder clump of trees. 

You see yon lofty, weather-beaten wall?

You hear the hum of wheels, the broken fall 

Of pent up waters borne along the breeze? 

That is the old brown mill. Its walls have stood 

While children's children have grown old and gray, 

While ruthless axes have hewn down the wood,

And yonder town has grown, rood after rood, 

The mill has stood there as it stands today.

Reserve

Reserve is a small town that contains several tribal agencies and services for the Sac and Fox tribe. The town itself has a lot of older homes, many with boats in the yards or driveways. We didn't see a lot of activity in town since it was a rainy Saturday afternoon. We were intrigued by the tribal museum, but it was closed, so we took some pictures and continued on our way.

This also marked one of the first towns where our eldest child was the primary photographer (see his selfie to the right). Not too bad, son! :-D

Hiawatha

Hiawatha is a quiet town at the intersection of two main highways. In rural Kansas, that's often the predictor of whether a town will survive or slowly die off.

The town is pretty large for the area, with a hospital, lake, and many businesses. It seems to be doing pretty well.

We were tired after a long day, so we didn't do as much exploring as we hoped to. My one regret was that we missed visiting the Davis Memorial in Mt. Hope Cemetery. Since this town is at such a major intersection, I'm sure we'll be back to see it again someday.

Fairview

Fairview is a small bedroom community with several restaurants and local businesses, including the Dragon's Claw Salon and Votruba Archery. It was pretty quiet on the Saturday afternoon we drove through, but a few folks were out and about.