Following the Yellow patterned concrete...

[joegoda]

So....

Sherry and I drove to Sedan, Kansas. Sedan Kansas is now known to me as the place of teh suck. I absolutely abhor the use of the Cyber-buzz letters 'teh', but in certain desperate cases when reaching for the appropriate aphorism, you do what you gotta, right?



And yes, pictures will follow, but what you really want to hear is the story, if I were to wager. So, let's be on, shall we?

I do like my sleep, but Sherry and I were determined to be awake and leave before to long after the rest of the world was at work. Actually, we had aimed for about 7:30 am. An ungodly time for me, but it is a doable.

So, at 10:30 we left Tulsa. No, no, no! That's not because we changed our mind! It's because we decided, rightly so, that sleep is important and because of this, we didn't set our mutual alarms. I sent her a text message about 9:30 telling her I was alive and a while after that... oh, say 10:00, she called me on my phone. Tired, tired Sherry. Which is okay, cuz I was a sleepy Chester.

We left Tulsa just fine, chatting about the current situation of politics, the economics and how I believe, because I'm like that, that where we are really goes back about a decade and a half, but nobody in the government stopped to think... "huh. What will this do in a few years?" Tain't the exclusive fault of Wall Street.

Tain't the exclusive fault of the Govn't. I think we're all to blame, and I wish to heck the those folks on the podium would quit pointing fingers away from themselves. Oh well... Breads and Circuses, folks. Vote as your conscience aims you to, and I won't because I can't with good conscience vote for folks that aren't honest with themselves or with me. I may have to live in their house, and I will follow their rules, but I will NOT go to bed with them. Ya'll go do what you believe will give you a voice, and I hope that you succeed in what you believe you are doing. I'll abide by that choice, but I won't be surprised by just bout anything.

Enough rant.

We drove up Highway 75 on a slightly overcast day, with temperatures that were just wonderful. The roads were clear, the traffic light and the company was wonderful! There is nothing better than traveling companions that can chat about anything, disagree with respect, can defend their position and can Oooh and Awww over the cool stuff on the way. It's even better when they recognize that my brain goes all over the place and sometimes it needs to be manually pulled back into focus. My Griz is like that. I recommend her to anyone traveling.

We drove and drove and went through Bartlesville (yawn)... there were a couple of neat things along the way, but nothing remarkable or else I would remember them.

Outside of Bartlesville is the town of Dewey, the Home of Tom Mix. Well, it's not really his home, cuz he's dead, but he lived there for a long time, so they claim him. Taking a paragraph from the "Get lost and have an adventure, we turned left and drove down Main Street, Dewey.

This was prompted because I had a memory of Tim, Sherry and me stopping to look at the Tom Mix museum. The museum, in my memory, was an old converted hotel. It had a green awning and simulated coffins outside... like how they used to show off the dead bad guys they had caught and killed so the public could view 'em.

In my memory, the museum seemed closed, so Tim pulled off to a parking spot and I hopped out to go check. Sure enough, the museum WAS closed, but I stopped and looked at the fake corpses and the three of us got out and walked around for a bit.

Here's the kicker to that memory. IT NEVER HAPPENED.

The museum is really this nice little brown brick building that looked like it used to be a post office or a library. This time I have pictures of Sherry standing in front of the museum, of the water well where Tom Mix and his horse, Tony, used to drink. It was a small town, with a small museum, very clean streets and a movie theater. It was a nice town, but not what I had in my memory. Not even a coffin to look into.

We left Dewey and continued on our drive. About .... um... a few miles up the road, I mentioned that I had considered a left turn off the road well traveled, just to see what was out there. You know? What was over that hill waaaay over there? That sort of thing.

Bless Sherry's heart, she said "Hey, I'm just along for the ride." And off we went. It was a 40 mile detour on Highway 10 through some very nice countryside, where we saw lots of horses and a really cool lake. Make that two lakes. We passed by the bottom of Copan Lake, which was a nice enough lake, but then, about another 14 miles alone, we passed by the bottom of Hulah lake.

We were impressed enough that we turned onto the lake road and drove along, looking for what sort of camping areas they might have, just in case Warrgarbl decided to rough it. Well, they had a nice little lake front camping area, and there were some RVs there and some tents and some people who were camping. It looked peaceful and there was even a lakefront BarBQue place. I do think that it's a bit more rough that the Warrgarbl team would want, but I might make the trek, just to get out and away and do some personal soul cleansing.

Highway 10 joins up with Highway 99, which then goes due North to Kansas, and then to Sedan. That's just about all there was on that part of the ride. Rolling hills of Oklahoma and Kansas, very little traffic, and quiet fluffy clouds. We pulled into Sedan just about noon-thirty or there abouts.

Sedan, at first glance is a quaint little sleep town. It was sunday We drove around for a bit, looking at the architecture, and to be honest, they had some very nice buildings, very old. They have a ball team (I'm not sure which ball, base or foot or even tennis) called the Blue Devils. That should have been a sign.

We did find the the Yellow Brick Road of Sedan! It was there, curling around the downtown area like a lazy snake. We drove around a bit more, looking at the place, getting the feel, and finally decided to park. We couldn't park on Main Street itself because there were a lot of cars parked there. Not a lot of people. In fact, we didn't see anyone at all, except one woman crossing the street.

There were three churches that we passed, and none of them had cars in front of them that I can remember. There weren't many cars on the side streets, though there were plenty of houses. Still, and it could just be my imagination, I don't remember seeing a single soul except for that one woman crossing the street. I remember her because I remarked to Sherry that she did not look happy or friendly.

I pulled over, got out of the car, turned around and saw something excited me. We had parked directly across from the Emmett Kelly museum! Now, some of you may not know, but for a while there Emmett Kelly was THE premier Clown in the country, and quite possibly the world. Before Bozo, and before Ronald, there was Emmett Kelly!

Granted, I know some of you get freaked by clowns, but I'm not. In fact, part of my history involves clowns, geeks, carnies, Big tops and stuff like that. In many ways, the Ren Faires are very much like the family that is developed in Circus World. Ren Faire family is more delicate and socially acceptable, whereas Circus family is sort of like the scoundrels that nobody talks about. There is a very rough part of me that lives in Circus World, even now.

And.... it was CLOSED! Well, it was a Sunday in a small town, after all. The positive side is that we were standing on the Yellow Brick road. Well.. the Yellow Brick Sidewalk, anyway. Okay, okay... So it wasn't even brick. It was a molded concrete sidewalk that had been painted yellow after it had names printed in each of the section of the molded concrete.

Disappointed? A bit. Not entirely, but a bit. This was a research trip, after all.

We wandered down the yellowed sidewalk, reading the names. For 25 dollars, you can buy a place on the sidewalk, and the folks of Sedan will embed your name into the concrete before it's set into the sidewalk. There are a lot of names! Over a hundred thousand, I think, and some of those names are pretty recognizable. George and Betty Bush. Bob Dole. Vice Pres Qayle. Yep... those were impressive.

Still... it wasn't want I was wanting, but it was what I wanted. The truth of the town and the yellow brick road. I was wanting a quiet little town, pretty in it's own way, with friendly folks, and brightly colored bricks with the names of famous people printed on them. What I wanted was a place where I could set up the final showdown between implacable evil and immovable good. Sedan is the place in my November book where the good guy meets the Evil One.

Besides all the cars parked on Main Street and no people around, the other odd thing I saw was when we were crossing the street where we had parked. We had parked in front of a hardware store. It had the old style hardware store signage, and a bench by the side door.

I saw an old man, hunched over and sitting on the bench, wearing brown pants, brown boots and a brown flannel shirt. His hands were folded between his knees and he had a sad look on his face when he looked up at me. He started to sit up and I blinked. At the end of the blink, he was gone. Just. Like. That. Sherry didn't see him, and she suggested maybe it was just an echo that I had seen. It's possible. I've seen echoes before.

Sherry and I continued walking and looking around. Every store on Main Street was closed. We had started to get a little hungry, so we decided to cross the street again and see if there was an eatery or something like that.

I saw a gent come out of somewhere, open one of the car doors and fiddle around in it. Then I saw that one of the stores had lights in it. It was a Thom Mcann. Not the Shoe store, though I thought it was one. It was apparently open, when I could have sworn that it had been closed moments before.

I looked in the window and there were lots of people in it. It was a restaurant, all righty, but a very small one and it was jammed packed. It could have been that, after Church on Sunday, everyone in the town came to the Thom Mcann restaurant to have Sunday dinner. I looked at Sherry, and she looked at me, and we went inside.

It was brightly lit, and we waited a bit for someone to notice us. Nobody seemed to, except for two old women at a table by the front door. They looked at us with such negative curiosity that I named them the Watch Harpies. Yes, we were strangers, and yes, we had walked into the only place open on Main Street, but darn it, we didn't mean any harm. I even removed my hat before I entered.

I asked a young woman, a waitress, if we were to just find a table and sit down. She looked around, saw a few empty tables that had to still be cleaned off, and said "If you wait a sec, we'll clean off a table and you can sit."

Okay. There was a menu board with prices, so while we waited, Sherry and I looked at the board. The least expensive thing there was a chicken salad for 6.95. The most expensive thing was a steak dinner for 16 dollars.

I mean... Eeek! In a town of just a few folks, how could they possibly afford prices like this? Maybe it was because it was the only open place in town. The 2000 census put the median income at 26,400 dollars. And a 16.00 steak dinner?? OUCH.

I did get a few positive things from the restaurant. I saw the face of my antagonist. Older, about 60is, with gray hair neatly combed. He wore a gray pin-stripped suit with a red and black stripped tie. He was very dapper looking, very distinguished looking, and he smiled at me. It might have been a friendly smile. It might not. I think he was sitting with the Watch Harpies.

Okay. So we nixed that idea. We left Thom Mcanns and went back to the car. We were still commenting on the number of closed business and some of them were not even open for business at all. Some buildings looked to be storing book and furniture, and that was all.

We drove back around the town, thinking that we might find just a regular place to eat. There wasn't so much as a Burger Stand open. There WAS a place that said it had be best burgers in town, but somehow that lost it's meaning when that store sold the ONLY burgers in town.

We stopped at a Casey's General Store, just outside of town, for a restroom break. I talked to the lady behind the counter, and she told me that the town closed down at about 5 pm Friday and didn't open until Monday. She agreed with me that it didn't make much sense because the tourists came in to see the Emmett Kelly museum and the Yellow Brick road, and tourists came in on the weekend.

I came to the conclusion that it would be very easy to list Sedan, Kansas as an evil town. It appeared to me to be like the corpse of a vibrant old place, where people once enjoyed life, but when it died, the Mortician painted the face too bright, too pretty.

The renovations of the Main Street building had them painted in pretty colors. The people of the town were hidden until we actually got out of the car and walked around. There was a ghost sitting outside of the hardware store. All the business were either closed, abandoned, or were used for storage.

Granted, we did see some wonderful buildings and the sign of life as we drove around the area surrounding Main Street, but not much. We heard and I saw children playing at the High School playground, but not many... maybe 5 all told. There were NO other children anywhere that I saw on a sunny Sunday afternoon at 1:30.

Sedan Kansas is a spooky town to me. I don't plan on going back there, except in a literary sense. It was exactly the opposite of what I was wanting, but the exact thing that I wanted for the story. A town, evil to it's roots, that houses some very nasty secrets.

On the brighter side, Sherry and I did make a trip to Arkansas City, Kansas. And that turned out to be a very nice surprise, indeed.

The only down thing we was were some anti-abortionists picketing outside a funeral home. Yawn. Not worth more time on them. The rest of Arkansas City was clean, well laid out, pretty and had an amazing downtown with old, old buildings, all well kept and loved. We drove around the place, riding on RED brick roads, as many of the neighborhoods had paved their streets in RED brick. These were not narrow streets either. They were Highway Wide streets.

We saw many older houses, dating to the turn of the century, that could have used a touch of paint, and a bit of care, and we decided that it would be a perfect thing on a Sunday if a group of anti-abortionists turned their time to painting and upkeep of some history, rather than standing on street corners waving signs.

The one, single, shining jewel of Arkansas City for Sherry and me was a High School that was built in 1890. I know it was 1890 because it was carved in stone on the front of the building directly below the words "High School". We walked around it, and I took pictures of the building. It was made out of native stone, and had a reddish rock hue to it. I couldn't tell if it was marble or quartz or sand stone, but it was an incredible thing to experience.

We looked for a little cafe to eat at, and found one. Daisy Mae's on the west side of town. It closed at 3pm, which was the exact time that we pulled up to it. Ah well.

We settled for a Long John Silvers, a place I hadn't eat at for a decade or more. It wasn't bad, all in all, for cheap fast food. The place was clean, the staff friendly, and there were no Watch Harpies at the door.

So, we left Arkansas City at 4 or 4:30 and headed home.

We found a few other places to stop and take pictures at... Like Sadie's Adult Playground. It was a mock up of an old tyme Western town, with Saloon, Jail, Bank and General Store. The Saloon was open, but we didn't go in. Sadie's did give Sherry the idea that it would be cool if a town would adopt a year round Renaissance village for folks to live in and perform in.

And so... we drove home and went to pub, to be with our friends and family. Safe and sound. And no Watch Harpies around... until Next month, when I write about them.

Comments

[capi.livejournal.com]

"We did find the the Yellow Brick Road of Sedan! It was there, curling around the downtown area like a lazy snake. We drove around a bit more, looking at the place, getting the feel, and finally decided to park. We couldn't park on Main Street itself because there were a lot of cars parked there. Not a lot of people. In fact, we didn't see anyone at all, except one woman crossing the street."

Huh. See my theory is... all those cars? Those were the coffins you had imagined from the earlier town, manifesting here in THIS town.... (my clue was the lack of cars in front of the churches on a Sunday, see?) *LOL*!! Ok, i'll shut up and read.... *snort*
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"I did get a few positive things from the restaurant. I saw the face of my antagonist."
*shudder* Some POSITIVE! Ok ok, i know what you meant, but OY!
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"Sedan Kansas is a spooky town to me. I don't plan on going back there, except in a literary sense. It was exactly the opposite of what I was wanting, but the exact thing that I wanted for the story. A town, evil to it's roots, that houses some very nasty secrets."

*shudder* I think you two fell into the Twilight Zone!
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Watch Harpies..... Dood. You could do a whole series just on them alone. I'm really really glad you had no adventures. (((HUG)))

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

I will tell you, my dearest sister, that it was one of the most interesting adventures I've had in a while. There is something very odd about that town. Both Sherry and I had a heck of a time even remembering it's name after we left the place. And I mean mere minutes after leaving the place.

It is the perfect place for the Kansas Episode, hidden evil, lack of children, mysterious people. It's all there, just waiting.

Watch Harpies are an interesting concept. They serve the same purpose that Gargoyles used to serve, back when Gargoyles roamed free, rather than just channeling chamber pots.

Honestly, I don't know what was behind it all. We may have just gotten there at a wrong time. It was indeed a town that seemed to be out of a Stephen King novel.

[capi.livejournal.com]

Creepy. So very October-perfect, that town. Mis-named, tho! I think that's it's alias, really. Sedan. A name for a witness protection survivor, eh?
Yeah, Stephen King... EXACTLY! *shivah* I never EVER read his stuff.... *hides under the bed*

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

*shudder*

I know an Iowa town like that, or at least it was about 30 years ago, wonder what it's like now.

The only way I'd wanna go to that town would be in the company of B, P & G and/or Queen's Gamboni. I got the creeps just reading about it.

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

I am open to the idea that I'm mistaken. It could actually be a great little town. I'd like to see it during the week. That might change the whole aspect of the town... but yeah. As April mentioned on Pub night... it was kind of like Children of the Corn spooky.

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

Sorry we missed Pub Night last night...but since we didn't get home until after midnight, you guys were already gone. Plus we were really dead on our feet.

You know, that's a really odd phrase...makes us sound like zombies or something.

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Well... it is nearing All Hallow's Eve. Spooky things are all over the place. And... I feel there is a thinning in the fabric. Might be a wonderful time to go visit Center of the Universe.

[shackrlu.livejournal.com]

It was one of those towns where you could see what it should have been like, but never quite lived up to it's potential. It was a very odd place indeed.

[rowangolightly.livejournal.com]

Might be interesting to see what it's like during the week, but how odd for it to be all closed down on a weekend when they advertise a yellow brick road and the Emmet Kelley museum!