We Ain't In Kansas Anymore

After her wondrous adventures over the rainbow in the Kingdom of Oz, Dorothy Gale clicked her heels to return to Kansas and was quick to tell her family and friends, "There's no place like home."

Kansas despite the tornados has always been considered the heartland of America and the prairie state has steered clear of any change to the social fabric of the Bible Belt with attempted bans on abortion, a temporary elimination of evolution from school books, a campaign to proscribe the American Heritage Dictionary for the inclusion of bad words, the rejection of gay marriage, and the lowering of the marriage age to 15 in accordance with its Taliban morals.

Being a square state gives a state a complex to be square.

We can only hope that Kansans don't try and make the rest of us squares.

I like to think of myself in five dimensions.

THIS AIN'T KANSAS / Bet On Crazy

Every morning in 2010 I checked the weather for New York City. The forecast determined my attire for the diamond exchange, especially as the seasons of September seesawed between summer and autumn. The weather bureau predicted a temperature of 75 with rain later in the afternoon. I dressed in a lightweight suit. My umbrella was in the closet at work.

Morning passed into afternoon with the air growing heavy around 3. I stepped outside the exchange and studied the western sky. I tensed my fingers into a fist. None of the knuckles crackled with age, indicating a falling barometer. The air was thick with humidity. A storm was on its way and I figured it would hit around closing time.

I had to be at an art opening by 6:30 and I returned to my desk to old customers. It had been a slow day. The telephone rang at 4:30. Manny my boss was calling on his cell. My 80 year-old boss had taken off the day. His hip was bothering him.

"You be careful." His voice was edged with urgency. He was calling from his Midtown apartment rented from his second son.

"I'm always careful." 47th Street was plagued by thieves.

"There are reports of tornadoes."

"Tornadoes?" I dismissed his weather report as the hysterical reaction to the fear-mongering tactics of the TV news.

"Yes, severe thunderstorms are expected and the clouds are getting dark. I can see them from my window." Manny was from Brownsville, whose motto was "Never ran. Never will."

"You're not joking, are you?"

"No." Very little scared Manny, but he was worried about his son.

"Where's Richie Boy?"

"He's talking to a customer." Richie Boy was listening to a beautiful female client explain how her fiancee gave her the ring in Vietnam.

"Tell him to stay inside."

"I don't think there's any problem of that." The Ford model had long legged and girlish breasts. Richie Boy wasn't going anywhere.

"Go outside and tell me about the sky."

"Just a sec." I exited the store and checked out the western horizon.

It was very dark.

"I went back into the exchange and picked up the phone.

"We're not going anywhere until it's over."

"Good, because the TV is warning people to seek refuge in their cellars."

"Just like THE WIZARD OF OZ." Dorothy and her dog Toto had been sucked into the heavens by a Kansas twister. Their house had landed atop the Wicked Witch. The munchkin EMS had declared her dead on the scene. Manny was a life-long Democrat and I said, "Maybe if we're lucky the exchange will fall on GOP."

"I'm being serious." Manny sounded like one of the extras from LA tornado scene in THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW. "A line of black clouds is approaching."

Storm chasers describe this phenomena as the 'bear's cage'.

"We'll stay inside." Gloomy rain pelted 47th Street. Pedestrians sought shelter under the alcove of the exchange. Richie Boy's had yet to break from the tall model. He was close enough to smell her perfume.

It was an innocent flirtation.

Richie Boy was always faithful to his wife.

Same as me to mine.

The wind whooshed through the canyon of 47th Street. The storm blew past in five minutes. I called Manny to tell him that we were all right. The old man was relieved by the news. He was heading downstairs to his local bar. The model left and Richie Boy said, "Let's close."

It was only 5:15. His father never shut the store before 5:30. My co-worker Ava hit the interior showcase like a Pirate of the Caribbean. We were out of there by 6.

I got home to Brooklyn at 6:30. A tree had fallen on my street. My apartment was soaked by rain. I had left the windows open. An actual tornado had struck my neighborhood. I phoned Manny. He was in the bar.

"You were right. There was a tornado."

"I don't joke about shit like that."

"I know."

"Are you okay?"

"Yes." I was drinking a little wine and eating yellow tomatoes.

"And my son?" Manny was a father of four and only one thing mattered to men like us.

"Fine I last saw."

I'll see you tomorrow."

"Barring wind, sleet, rain or snow."

I was glad to have the work. These were strange times in many more ways than the weather.

Oklahoma Isn't Kansas

Back in May 2013 Oklahoma City was devastated by a massive tornado whipping winds over the prairie at speeds greater than 200 mph.

The BBC reported that a record-breaking tornado that struck in precisely the same region in 1999, during which the fastest winds ever seen on the Earth's surface were recorded: over 500km/h (310mph).

While the early warning system alerted many people to the impending tornado, the two-mile wide storm ravaged the suburbs with a murderous intensity. Over twenty people were declared dead and hundreds were missing in the storm's aftermath. Schools and hospitals were not spared from the devastation and hundreds of houses were smashed to toothpicks by the EF5 or Enhanced Fujita rated tornado.

Meteorologists point to a number of factors leading to the creation of such a powerful event; the collision of hot and cold fronts of varying temperatures, but they are not discussing a major cause of its intensity which has to be the ground heat generated from the drought-stricken plains same as a hurricane gathering strength over the tropical warmth of the Gulf Stream.

This Monday the New York Times published an article about the vanishing aquifer.

Less water in the High Plains Aquifer, less cooling effect to the Bible Belt states of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

And it isn't going to get any better.

The ancestors of Tom Joad from THE GRAPE OF WRATH will be hitting on the road again.

To read about the collapse of the High Plains Aquifer, please go to the following URL

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/us/high-plains-aquifer-dwindles-hurting-farmers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

No Safe Place For The Rich

This past May 29 demonstrators surrounded the White House. The 12 or the police were overwhelmed by the protests and Donald Trump left the Oval Office for the subterranean presidential bunker.

Trump reported to the Media that the chicken-shit speed freak had descended to inspect the underground shelter for a tiny amount of time. Attorney General Barr contradicted his boss' narrative by saying that the Secret Service advised the POTUS to seek safety on the bowels of the Earth. Trump hid there for over an hour. Supposedly his wife and son accompanied the traitor, but I doubt it. The KKK hero only cares for himself and returned to the surface once the Secret Service gave to the all-clear signal.

Onme hour is tiny time for the President-God.

This incident coupled with the young demonstrators' anti-rich rhetoric has forced the wealthy to consider similar refuges and a security company has proposed converting Kansas missile silos into luxury Doomsday havens, leaving the treasures stolen from the masses to the people.

I say the sooner they are inside the better and then permanently seal the entrances once they are inside the concrete paradise like Fortunato in Edgar Allen Poe's The Casque of Amontillado.

In pace requiescat!

Illustration by Henry Clarke 1919

Kansas Shakes

Last year Oklahoma was hit by eighty-three tornadoes. Twenty-three citizens were killed on May 14 in Cleveland OK and on May 20 thirteen cyclones struck the state. No one in the state government mentioned global warming as a cause of the upswing, despite temperatures breaking records throughout the summer.

Oklahoma is not only the Buckle in the Bible Belt, but authorities are fiercely anti-science on evolution and climate change.

Kansas has no shortage of flat-earthers judging from the response from oil and gas industry about the increased number of earthquakes due to tracking across the state.

"In Kansas, there's no evidence that the earthquakes are being caused by fracking," said Rex Buchanan, interim director of the Kansas Geological Survey.

Seismologists argue the opposite, since the fracking process requires the injection of 7.5 barrels of salt water to extract on barrel of oil.

Like putting ten pounds of cow paddy in a one pound bag.

Something is bound to break and Kansas is that egg.

Naked As A Jaybird

The Soviet Premier Khrushchev famously declared in 1956 that the USSR would bury American Imperialism. "We will bury you!"

Actually he said, "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will dig your grave."

The Western press preferred the more threatening 'we will bury you'.

President Kennedy was upset by the USSR thinking America was soft and JFK called the American people to improve their health and fitness. His primary challenge was the 50-mile hike, which Teddy Roosevelt had challenged the Marines to accomplish the feat in 20 hours. In February 1963 JFK and his brother walked the distance in the winter. It was a cold and snowy day. Bobby was wearing leather oxfords. He must have been miserable.

The fifty-mile hike became a national fad by spring and that summer at Boy Scout camp in New Hampshire my older brother and I joined a troop of hikers on a 100 mile hike through the forests of the White Mountains. Our scout leaders drove the phalanx of 12-13 year-olds in 20-mile stages every day. We ran out of food on the second day and pillaged a nearby cornfield for dinner. The farmer caught us red-handed and had us pay for the corn. My brother and I gave him fifty cents. The next morning we woke without breakfast and we set out on a tortuous trudge surrounded by miles of chopped tress. The relentless sun beat us with a solar whip and the leaders promised us a good meal at the end of the trail.

"At Big Man Pond." They said that the crystal-clear lake was 30 miles across from shore to shore.

"Food and water." Hot dogs and hamburgers were cooking on a BBQ with ice cream sodas to chase them down.

We tramped with the first word for the right foot and water for our left.

'Food and water' built a mirage of Big Man Pond and hastened our weary legs.

The reality came as a shock.

Big Man Pond was barely 300 feet in length. One of the boys from South Boston threw a rock across it. There was no food. We groused about the failings of our superiors. The troop leader yelled at us.
,p>"Stop your complaining, This pond is spring-fed. That's our water. The food will be here later. We've marched 60 miles in 3 days. Everyone strip off your clothes."

"Naked?" None of us obeyed his order.

"It's time for a swim. You've earned it.

He led the way and was buck-naked with seconds. We joined him without protest. Boys are age were good at following orders when we were hungry.

"Everyone in formation. Now one quick jog around the pond and then in the water."

We followed the troop leader. Our penises bounced up and down. At the starting point he stopped and pointed to the pond.

"Into the water."

We were robots to his command.

That was the first time that I went skinny-dipping, but not the last.

Since that day I have swum naked on Cape Cod, at Watchic Pond, the Quincy Quarries, Riis Park in New York, Black Beach in San Diego, and Goa in India. I enjoy the kiss of the four elements on my flesh, however most Americans condemn a naked body as a threat to morality whether in a movie, on stage, or swimming at a beach, but especially in the Sea of Galilee as evninced by the GOP Congressional leader excoriated a Kansas congressman for swimming au natural where their savior walked on the water 2000 year ago. The naked plunge took place last year, but Willard Romney and his running mate joined in the pillorization and a few Democrats chucked a few stones for good measure. Personally I applaud the representative's free-style. It sounds like it was fun, as was Prince Harry's evening of fun and games in Las Vegas, until someone took photos of his naked frolics with a beautiful girl and posted them on the internet. A complete wanker and Rupert Murdoch's The Sun published the pictures for their readership. Naked women, Las Vegas, strip billiards. The news of the day, but no one is taking any naked photos of me. Not even myself, for these days I no longer look at my reflection in the mirror. My shadow perhaps, but never my reflection. But I still like being naked. It's a natural thing. ps the expression 'nekkid as a jaybird' supposedly comes from the bird's private being covered by down instead of feathers

118 In Kansas

Q: How do you make holy water? A: Boil the hell out of it! Q: How hot is it in Kansas? A: So hot every fat guy sweating smells like Bacon! Q: How hot is a Kansas summer? A: So hot that I saw a fire hydrant chasing a pack of dogs! Q. How do you know the toothbrush was invented in Kansas? A. If it was invented anywhere else, it would have been called a teethbrush. Q: What's the most popular pick up line in Kansas? A: Nice tooth! And that's all. folks