Tag Archives: kansas

We Are The Goon Squad And We’re Coming To Town, Beep Beep

Posted on by Bill Chance

There’s a brand new dance
but I don’t know its name
That people from bad homes
do again and again
It’s big and it’s bland
full of tension and fear
They do it over there but we don’t do it here
—-David Bowie, Fashion

Belle Plaine Service Area, Kansas Turnpike

Belle Plaine Service Area, Kansas Turnpike

As a tiny young kid I rode in cars along the Kansas Turnpike so many times that the strip of asphalt took on a life of its own in my tiny young mind. Looming large in the imaginary mythology inside my bean were the oddly-shaped proto-spherical water towers that emerged from the featureless plains at each service area. They were like silver spaceships marking off the molasses crawling miles.

This photo is of the Belle Plaine service area – recently rebuilt after a devastating grease fire in the resident Hardees. The one I remember most is the tower from the Matfield Green service station – one of the most oddly beautiful and weirdly desolate places on earth (in my opinion… and I know desolation when I see it).

The Secret of Magic

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Learning the secret of flight from a bird was a good deal like learning the secret of magic from a magician.”
― Orville Wright

Little Arkansas River, Wichita, Kansas

Little Arkansas River, Wichita, Kansas

A Vision Was Given In My Youth

Posted on by Bill Chance

And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth, — you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.
—-Black Elk, from Black Elk Speaks

Keeper of the Plains sculpture, Wichita, Kansas

Keeper of the Plains sculpture, Wichita, Kansas

That Student’s Letter As A Precious Treasure

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The poor girl ws keeping that student’s letter as a precious treasure, and had run to fetch it, her only treasure, because she did not want me to go away without knowing that she, too, was honestly and genuinely loved; that she, too, was addressed respectfully. No doubt that letter was destined to lie in her box and lead to nothing. But none the less, I am certain that she would keep it all her life as a precious treasure, as her pride and justification, and now at such a minute she had thought of that letter and brought it with naive pride to raise herself in my eyes that I might see, that I, too, might think well of her.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

Woman writing in a Moleskine Notebook, Wichita, Kansas

Woman writing in a notebook, Wichita, Kansas

Woman writing in a Moleskine Notebook, Wichita, Kansas

Woman writing in a notebook, Wichita, Kansas

Woman writing in a Moleskine Notebook, Wichita, Kansas

Woman writing in a notebook, Wichita, Kansas

I have a stack of Moleskine notebooks, going back years. In the times I didn’t have a blog – I wrote in them every day. Now, it’s more hit and miss – collections of thoughts, ideas, and stuff I want to remember. Some snippets of truth and more of lies.

It’s the slightly oily cover, the cream paper and the way that fountain pen ink feathers. A permanent part of a person’s mind – converted into reality and held there for posterity. Writing in a Moleskine notebook is a calming thing – maybe because of the way it holds the relentless advance of time at bay for a little while.

Car Cooler

Posted on by Bill Chance

When I first saw one of these it was over forty years ago and although I was only, maybe ten years old, I remember it like it was yesterday. It was in the parking lot of the McDonald’s at Fourth and Walnut in Hutchinson, Kansas. There is still one there, but it looks completely different of course. In 1967, the place still was more of a shack with those giant yellow arches. I think its “sold” sign was still in the millions. Once, I saw a guy actually fetching a bag of real potatoes from an outbuilding to cut into fries.

That was a long time ago.

At any rate, there was a car in the parking lot with this galvanized steel contraption attached to its window. I looked at it closely, with the kind of curiosity only a nerdy ten-year-old boy has. It was a big metal tube, closed off at the back, with a coarse screen on the front, and a vent that went through the partially opened window into the interior of the car. I was able to guess its purpose, though it seemed pretty odd.

My father confirmed that it was a crude air-conditioner. You dumped a five pound bag of ice into the tube and when you drove, the air was forced over the ice and into the car. Ordinary air-conditioning was still rare in automobiles, but I have no idea how common this sort of contraption was.

So now I see another one, sort of, at a car show. This one is not as crude as the one in my memory (I’m pretty sure that one was home-made) and, instead of ice, it’s an evaporative cooler – better known in these parts as a swamp cooler. It’s known as a Car Cooler or a Thermador.

Maybe that’s how the one in my memory worked… but I seem to remember a place for ice. No matter, neither one would really work very well. I think I’ll stick with Freon.

Car Cooler

Car Cooler

A Clean and Clever Wrestler

Posted on by Bill Chance

I wrote yesterday about a play I saw here in Dallas called The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity and mentioned that, although I feel nothing of it, there was some wrestling in my blood. These posters and clippings are of my eponymous grandfather.

They speak for themselves – however I’d like to point out a couple interesting phrases from the posters, due to the lack of attention span on the internet.

“Winner Takes All The Gate Receipts” (If you lost, you didn’t eat)

“Hooch is Strictly Barred” (1924 was right in the middle of prohibition)

From the article, the wrestling match lasted 38 seconds short of an hour. That’s a long time to wrestle.

The admission ranged from 55 cents up to a dollar for a ringside seat – which was a lot of money in 1920’s Western Kansas. However, ladies were admitted free.

(Click for a larger version on Flickr)

What I learned this week, May 18, 2012

Posted on by Bill Chance

Another good article, this one from Vanity Fair, on the ongoing cotroversy between the Museum Tower and the Nasher Sculpture Garden.

A Glare Grows in Dallas: Why a New Condo Tower Has the City’s Art Community Up in Arms

From the article:

It’s hard to know what the mediation will accomplish, since the developers of the condo tower and their Los Angeles architect, Scott Johnson, have so far done little to accept responsibility. In an exhaustive report on the issue in D, Dallas’s city magazine, Tim Rogers quoted the developers as asking the Nasher what it was prepared to do to help, as if this were a negotiation in which both sides were expected to give an equal amount to reach an amicable compromise. Johnson, for his part, told The New York Times, “I can’t say sitting here now that the Nasher may not need to do something on their end.”

Why, in heaven’s name, should they have to? The Nasher was there first, it didn’t create the problem, and it is suffering from it.

 
There’s a photo of the glare inside the Nasher’s beautiful, Renzo Piano designed pavillion.

Photo from Vanity Fair

  

http://youtu.be/pD7T7y6CsJA

http://vimeo.com/26504393

The Next Great Technology Platform: The Bicycle

http://youtu.be/p24IdqUT_zY

I don’t want to sound like the old fart that I am, but look at this list of the best 70 albums from the 1970’s (not considered the best decade for music by any shot). There is nothing that comes close to any of these being done today.

Just sayin’

The 70 Best Albums of the 1970s

The ’70s sometimes get a bad rap: Often these years are remembered as the musical era that brought us disco at its absolute gaudiest. But there was far more going on in the decade than polyester, sequins and cocaine; the 1970s saw the rise of the singer/songwriter, the birth of punk rock, reggae’s infiltration of the mainstream and the long, strange trip led by some of psychedelia’s finest.

In fact, it’s a decade so musically diverse, we had quite a time whittling it down to our top albums. When we polled our staff, interns and writers, over 250 albums received votes, but ultimately these 70 emerged as clear favorites.

14 Photographs That Shatter Your Image of Famous People

http://youtu.be/NZU1B8kb8EQ

Awesome People Hanging Out Together

Kansas and Baylor

Posted on by Bill Chance

http://youtu.be/hIa2sPE5cHI

I am an American male – so therefore, I am a sports fan. And I admit it. I like to watch sports on television and live. It’s an entertainment, beauty and skill… it’s a demonstration of man’s abilities to exceed his putative limitations… and it’s something that there is no way to know the outcome ahead of time.

Now, I do believe in cheering for the teams that represent the city that you live in. Here in Dallas, there is an extra lift in the steps of the folks on Monday after the Cowboys win the weekend before – and that is a good thing. Otherwise, though, I try my best to avoid the trap of rabid fandom, of believing that the winner or loser of a sporting event is important beyond the game itself. I try, but I am not always successful.

The one team that I am an admitted fan of is the Kansas Jayhawk Basketball team. I feel that is my right, as I did graduate from there and it is a team with support, future, and history that deserves and rewards this fandom.

http://youtu.be/ZM7pOAxLD_s

I thought of all this Monday night as I wasted too much time watching the Kansas/Baylor game on television. It was a home game for the Jayhawks and Allen Field House was rocking – they said on television that the crown noise was at 114 decibels. Kansas was ranked seventh in the nation and Baylor was third and undefeated.

It was not a very good game for anyone other than Kansas fans – KU pretty much stomped all over the Bears, the game was not in doubt after the half.

Photo by Nick Krug from Kusports.com.

Thinking about it, I remembered about another Kansas/Baylor basketball game, in 2007. It is impossible for me to get tickets to home Kansas games, but living in Texas enables me to see an away game every now and then. At that time Nick was a KU fan too and we drove down to Waco. I wrote about it in my blog back then:

February, 2007

Rock Chalk

Hey, over here!
Have your picture taken with a
reclusive author!
Today only, we’ll throw in a
free autograph! But wait,
there’s more!
—-Thomas Pynchon, The Simpsons

When I went from high school to college I knew nothing about basketball. Actually, we played basketball, but at ANS it was played outside, in the tropical heat, on a concrete court with no spectators and no players over six feet tall. Once I arrived at KU I was convinced to buy student tickets to the basketball season, though I couldn’t understand what the big deal was.

It was amazing. The excitement and the sound were something I had never experienced before and have never experienced since.

In those simpler days tickets at KU were twenty dollars a season and, though some hardy souls would hang out to get better seats you could walk up at game time and sit in the rafters of Allen Field House. What I liked the most was the ebb and flow of the games – how one team would eke out a lead and then the other would go on a run. The whole thing was driven by emotion, fear, and confidence. Those were only kids out there, after all, and were obviously susceptible to the foibles of us all.

Several months ago, Nick and I noticed that the KU Jayhawks would be playing a Wednesday evening game in Waco against Baylor and before Christmas I bought a pair of tickets from their web site. Late January seemed a long time in the future, but time flies and here we were. Nick skipped soccer practice to get out of school a bit early and I took a half day of vacation. The trip was easy – I have made that drive to Waco a thousand times but I was worried about parking. I shouldn’t have given it a second thought – the basketball fanaticism in Waco isn’t as strong as I feared (not too surprising, given their sordid recent past) and parking was not only plentiful and close, but free (I’ve lived in the big city too long… free parking is a rare treat).

The game was, as expected, a blowout win for Kansas. The facility was beautiful, though not nearly half full. There seemed to be as many Kansas fans as Baylor fans in the place. With home tickets so difficult to get, KU fans do tend to pack in the visiting arenas. Near the end of the game the “Rock Chalk Jayhawk chant was really obvious, especially around our seating section. A Baylor student behind us shouted, “But what does it mean?”

For Christmas, Candy ordered a KU basketball for Nick. When it arrived, I noticed that half the ball was covered with white leather. “That’s not a ball for playing,” I said, “That’s for getting autographs.” Nick decided to take the ball to Waco and see if he could get someone on the team to autograph it. Now, I know nothing about getting autographs – didn’t even know if it was possible. After the game, we fetched the ball and a black sharpie and walked around the arena. In the back was a steep driveway full of television trucks and littered with thick cables. At the top of the driveway was a couple of long-haul buses, idling, air brakes hissing, their cargo holds open and full of athletic bags. There was another family standing there, two kids, one with a ball like Nick’s, the other a poster.

“This must be the place,” I said, and, sure enough, one by one the players came hiking up the driveway, each carrying a pizza box. They all looked exhausted, most limping, but were very friendly and accommodating to the three kids that wanted autographs. A couple of walk-ons were first and they seemed really happy to have someone ask for an autograph. Then the starters started coming out and signing Nick’s basketball. A center, Sasha Kaun, from Russia, signed and Nick said, “I’m used to tall players, there’s some high school players almost seven feet tall, but his hands were huge. When he took the pen out of my hand I couldn’t believe how big it was.”

We stood out there for almost an hour and collected autographs from all the players on the team, plus Danny Manning, and head coach Self. It had worked out perfectly with the players stringing out over time, in no real hurry to board the bus, and only three kids standing there. They were quiet but all did talk a little; they kept asking the kid with the poster, “Where’s me?” so they could sign in the right place.

After the last signature we hiked back to the parking lot while the bus pulled out. When I was in school I had a Center from the basketball team in my 7AM Analytical Chemistry lab and he would be so worn out during the season – arriving back from west coast games and going immediately to class for the next day.

We had it a little easier and made it home around one in the morning.

Unfortunately, I cannot find any of the pictures I took of Nick getting the ball signed. I wasted most of this evening digging through my backup files… I’m afraid they are lost. I had good pictures of him with both Danny Manning and Coach Self.

This was in 2007, the team won the national championship the next year. The championship team’s signatures are all on the ball except for Cole Aldrich.

The Autographed Ball

Nick was a fan of Kansas Basketball for his whole life up until his senior year in high school. Over time, he built up a nice collection of Kansas Basketball memorabilia with the autographed ball as the most prized item.

Then he applied for early consideration to Duke University. For those of you that don’t know American Basketball, Duke is another of the elite Basketball schools.

I was in Seattle on business and on a plane flying back when the decision would come down on whether Nick would get into Duke or not. When I arrived home, I looked in my office and there was a pile of Kansas stuff that Nick had hauled out of his room and heaped up on the floor. The signed ball was on top.

So I knew he had got into Duke.

Taylor to Robinson for the HUGE slam!! #kubball on Twitpic

Other Blogs:

Baylor needs to hit somebody. Observations from their trip to Lawrence

Jayhawks Get All The Ladies

Baylor’s Undefeated Season Ends in Kansas