Going, Going, Behind Straight Lines
Russell, KS – This is a town of straight lines. The roads don’t bend. Why would they?
The dark green awning of the A & W is perfectly parallel to the main drag. The root beer stand has a flat roof like Russell’s other squat, one-story buildings, including the Klema Apple Market. It’s a big grocery store that looks like any other, circa 1985.
The signs naming the contents of each aisle appear hand-lettered. For some reason, there’s a lot of pink food: cookies, eggs, marshmallows, sausages. More so than in other stores I’ve been through.
The only curvy thing I see is the water tower, with “Russell” in faded, cursive script facing the highway.
This is rural western Kansas and there appear few analogs to the rural North Country. Except the people. In their work clothes, they’d look right at home from Adams to Ticonderoga.
After strolling Klema’s aisles, I’m sitting now in Meridy’s restaurant. In the hour I’ve spent in this town, I’ve seen two people under the age of 30, maybe. Most are over 60.
One other thing I’ve noticed during my travels of late (not just this trip): From New York’s Fifth Avenue to San Francisco’s Fillmore Street, from the Drives of Rodeo in L.A. to Lake Shore in Chicago, hair is dark, defiantly yellow or platinum white or simply shaved off. Gray hair is increasingly a marker of rural America.
There is a couple in their early 80s, I think, sitting at the table next to mine. He’s a talker, but their conversation (if you could call it that) is stilted, without rhythm. In a disappointed, authoritarian tone, the man tells the woman she needs to put new batteries in her hearing aid.
Still, he tries to gossip with her about a diner sitting on my other side. This other diner and I hear exactly what he’s saying, all three times he says it.
Eventually, he gives up.
Another gray-haired woman finishes her meal and walks over to the couple’s table. They talk about land. The woman standing at the table says she may lose some of her property. The man clicks his tongue and shakes his head. His seated companion asks the standing woman about a recipe for pot roast.
The singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega has a tune called Straight Lines, about a woman imprisoned by asceticism and solitude. It’s running through my head right now. “…behind straight lines, stra-a-a-aight li-i-i-ines.”
The waitress asks me if I’d like anything else. I’m stuffed. The check for my massive veggie omelet with hash browns, toast and a pot of coffee: $5.50.
I leave a five on the table and pay the cashier with the other crumpled bills in my front pocket. “Come visit us again soon!”
As I walk out of Meridy’s, I see another curvy thing: a late-model Dodge pickup truck. It’s remarkable for two reasons: it is bigger than any other pickup I’ve seen. It’s bigger than the typical 30’ x 20’ house in the North Country. And, instead of a front license plate, it has a small sign (that’s about the size of the hood on my car) that says, “EAT BEEF.”
Accelerating from the on-ramp as I get back on I-70 West, there’s another faded sign: “Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner.” That’s the hope here, anyway. That America eats beef and the people at Meridy’s can hang on to their graze land for another year.
