A Visit to Greensburg, KS, Second Essay

While I was walking along the abandoned roads West of downtown in Greensburg, KS yesterday, I headed for the one house that still stood. It was a brick home, with a tarp on the roof. The house had suffered severe damage, but its basic structure was still intact. It stood out alone in the area, except for one home a block away that clearly had been built in the past few months.

But what struck me most was not the house but an older man who was walking along the road back and forth in front of the house. It didn't seem that he was looking for anything in particular, but his gazed was fixed intently alternatively on the house and the ground in front of the house. I would have guessed he was in his 70s, clad in a suit and fedora, with those small feathers tucked into the hat. Such an unusual sight made me turn aside and walk in the man's direction. He paid me no heed, even though we were the only people in sight. So, I called out to him and said in my friendliest tone, "Do you live here?" He turned around and looked at me quizzically for a second, and then said, laconically, "No." But then, thinking a bit more, he said, "I lived here from 1956 until May 4, 2007." All of a sudden I felt something well up within me, as I realized that this was home for the man his entire adult life.

I had to inquire further, even though I wanted to respect the privacy of the man. So where do you start in such a situation? I felt a little bit like a voyeur, taking some kind of perverse interest in a situation that was clearly very private. But, then again, I was so curious about so many things that I simply had to continue the conversation. So, I said, "Could you tell me where you were on the night of May 4, 2007?" I realized as the conversation unfolded, that I had asked the right question, but the answer I received was of a different kind that I anticipated. Read on.

The Man Responds

He began a little haltingly, but then began to gain momentum with every sentence. On Friday night May 4, he had a fraternal society meeting in Pratt, located about 25 miles to the East. He told me he was a 55-year member of the Odd Fellows Lodge. I couldn't help musing to myself, while showing no external signs of my musings, that such a characterization seemed to "fit." His meeting ended about 9:15 p.m., and he headed back home. A storm had begun, and as he approached Greensburg, he said the lightning was so frequent that he barely needed his headlights. But then the lightning stopped and wave after wave of rain hit, along with huge winds. He was unable to negotiate the highway well, and he swerved back and forth, using only the corrugated pavement strips on either side of the highway to keep his bearings.

I didn't want to interrupt him, since he was clearly engaged in his story, but I started to get a little funny feeling as I talked to him. 'Why,' I thought, 'did he keep driving?' But I kept my peace and let him continue. He finally arrived near town about 10:15 p.m. or so. By that time the downtown had been leveled, and all he said to me in his narration was that as he negotiated an empty Highway 54 he noted the destroyed town to his left. He continued to his street, but was unable to turn down it due to 3-5' of debris piled up on his street. He was flagged into a lot, where the Highway Patrol and some emergency officials were already present. He parked his car and, with a number of other people, was taken to a Department of Transportation buidling about 1 1/2 miles away. They all were asked if they were OK, whether they needed medical assitance or anything like that. Then, the people would be transported to a local grade school, which had been turned into an emergency shelter.

The Story Gets Stranger

The man then told me that he left the shelter and began to walk back towards town to his car. Why? Well, the next day (May 5) in Coldwater to the South was a medical equipment fair, and the man had already reserved a table for that event, which he would need to staff from 7:00-10:30 a.m. So, thinking that he had to make the fair, he walked through the rain and wind, which had considerably died down by this time (about midnight-1:00 a.m.), and finally reached his car about 1:30 a.m. As he drove the car a few blocks away to settle in to sleep, the winds and storm picked up again. His car shook, he battened down and rode it out. Then he told me he slept for four hours, awakening at 6, and then he headed down to the fair in Coldwater. Only later that day did he return to find that his neighborhood was destroyed and his own home, which his parents had built in 1956, was severely damaged.

Conclusion

Finally, the man paused in telling his story, and I looked at him intently. Something was not making sense to me but I couldn't put my finger on it. The man told the story with accuracy, precision and complete sanity. Every sentence he said was completely believable. But his affect was rather flat, he was emotionless, and he made no eye contact. He simply kept narrating. Some might say that this is just a typical Kansas farmer, readily accepting the realities of life, not exaggerating or understating but simply telling the facts as they happened. But something more was happening. The next essay tells you what that was..

3031