Monday, June 30, 2008
A man walked back from the Kwik Shop to his car, an old boat of an Oldsmobile with scuffed blue paint parked at pump number two.
The smell of gasoline was strong. Unleaded was going for $3.82, $3.80 with a Dillons Plus card. The man swung open the driver’s side door, revealing a burgundy Holy Bible planted on the dash, and exited out the south entrance of the 19th and Massachusetts service station.
An aqua green car driven by a young woman playing R&B music at a high volume quickly replaced the vacated spot. The young woman walked into the convenience store. All four pumps were occupied. Three minutes later all but one were empty.
This was Lawrence.
•••
A woman was jogging east along 19th Street toward Haskell Avenue, moving at a slow but steady clip as she approached the entrance to Zimmerman Steel Company. Later, on the other side of Haskell, the man who wears socks on his hands was walking west.
Photo by Frank Tankard
•••
Traffic was busy on 23rd Street. The sky was pale blue and cloudless. The sun shone hotly through the glass of the bus terminal.
A man drove a rumbly Penny’s Concrete truck south on Haskell and turned left on 23rd. A police officer turned right out of the QuikTrip on the corner, where unleaded cost $3.82.
The steady, high-pitched beeping of a Lawrence Public Works truck backing up could be heard. Birds chirped over the hum of traffic. It was still morning.
A wooden utility pole was next to the bus terminal. No “lost dog” signs were stapled to it but a number of rusty staples remained. On the wet grass was an empty hot sauce packet, a piece of cardboard with “8694” printed on it, a paper cup from Taco John’s and a no-luck scratchers ticket.
Photo by Frank Tankard
•••
The bus arrived five minutes late. It was empty except for the first and second seats on the right, which were occupied by a young girl and a woman wrapped in a purple fleece blanket. The air conditioning was blowing hard. The row of seats on the left rattled.
Another woman with a young girl got on the bus at 16th Street and Barker Avenue, taking the fourth and fifth seats on the left. The woman set the girl’s pink Powerpuff Girls backpack and a water bottle on the empty seat to her right. A couple of times she grabbed the water bottle to save it from rolling off the seat before giving up and holding it in her hand for the remainder of her ride.
The second woman knew the bus driver. She complained to him that on the previous day the bus had been full and no one had offered her daughter a seat. “Y’all are jerks,” she remembered thinking. The day before had been “Dump the Pump Day” and fares had been waved, resulting in a ridership bump of 35 percent.
“New Jersey Street,” the bus driver said.
“What?” the second woman said.
“New Jersey Street.”
“Thought you were talking to me.”
She and her daughter got off at Ninth and Massachusetts streets. “Bye, J.R.” the woman said. Her daughter echoed.
“Got some fans,” the first woman said to the bus driver.
“Oh, I know a lot of people,” the bus driver said. “Get to be a bus driver, then you get bus groupies.”
Photo by Frank Tankard
A man and a woman got on. “I’m going to the hospital, J.R.,” the woman said.
•••
The lawn in front of Haskell Library was wet. Campus was quiet and subdued, the students gone for summer. A man mowed the cross country course. A woman and a boy emerged from Haskell Health Center.
Photo by Frank Tankard
Christopher Knoxsah
A teenaged boy jogged north on West Perimeter Road. The speed limit was 20. Dogs had to be on a leash. No bicycles, skateboards or inline rollerskates were allowed. A Rainbo Bread truck headed south. A foam packing peanut lay by the side of the road. A bubble of brown liquid sat atop a low wall overlooking the Stidham Union courtyard. A woman vacuumed inside the building.
A 22-year-old man in a baggy white T-shirt and a Yankees hat, the hologram sticker unremoved from the bottom of the bill, walked slowly through the courtyard. His name was Christopher Knoxsah. He was tired. He had been up late the night before packing his things. Everyone had been told to move out of their rooms in Winona Hall but the administration was letting him move to the basement. He was staying on campus for a few more weeks to teach a beading class to students in the Upward Bound program, of which he was an alumnus.
•••
Steve and Bonni Higginbotham were having a garage sale on Learnard Avenue, the street where William S. Burroughs once lived, at Steve’s mother’s house, which was next door to Steve and Bonni’s house.
Photo by Frank Tankard
Shorts were 50 cents. Blankets were $3. Jeans were $2. Hats were 50 cents. A Powerpuff Girls sticker book was 10 cents. A red Power Rangers action figure was 10 cents. One fourth of Steve’s CDs had been sold. Among those remaining were “Four” by Blues Traveler and the soundtrack to “The Preacher’s Wife.”
Up the street, a yard sign said FRESH EGGS FOR SALE. No one was home except a white maltese, which yapped against the window.
•••
A man and two young girls sat under the bridge to North Lawrence, watching the white water of the high Kansas River crash through the machinery of Bowersock Dam.
Photo by Frank Tankard
A heron flew low over the river to the rocky north bank. A train whistle blew mournfully. A man carrying a large bottle of grape juice walked under the bridge, circumventing a barbed wire fence to emerge on the dam, where he took in the scene for a couple of minutes before moving on.
Upstream from the dam and across the river, the silence of the narrow path leading south from Burcham Park was broken when a long stream of bikers zoomed over the bridge. Two middle-aged men walked the trail.
Heavy rains had turned the woods near the river swampy. An empty container of nightcrawlers lay near the bank next to a paper cup full of orange drink from McDonald’s. Wispy white tufts detached from cottonwood trees and drifted through the air, making light shadows on the road leading to Burcham Park and pooling together in a ditch.
A woman and a boy in a black Volkswagon pulled into the park, walked to the playground and turned back. “So that’s all you’re going to do today?” the woman said to the boy as they climbed into the car. They exited.
Photo by Frank Tankard
An image of Kansas City Royals Hall of Famer George Brett and “1985,” signifying the Royals’ lone World Series victory, was spraypainted onto a railroad crossing sign. Mitch Young, district three supervisor for the Lawrence Parks & Recreation Department, has been battling the unknown sprayer of this stencil for years.
A man in a dark green Ford Explorer crossed the railroad tracks and entered the park. A chihuahua stood on its hind legs in the seat behind him, its head poking out the window. On the other side of the tracks, the Kaw River Water Treatment Plant hummed.
A home was for sale across Third Street from the treatment plant. It had three bedrooms, two bathrooms and no garage. It was built in 1959. It contained 1,248 square feet and one level. The asking price was $160,000.
•••
A postman with a gray goatee and dark sunglasses walked up Fourth Street and turned right on Indiana. A fat, orange tabby cat lounged on a porch railing. A man watered his flowers. The street was shady and produced a languid mood in the warm afternoon.
A plaque identified the area as the historic Pinckney Neighborhood and told of a settler named Hugh Cameron, who had walked westward after losing his mathematics professorship at Rittenhouse Academy in Washington, D.C., for sympathizing with abolitionists. He wound up in Lawrence in 1854 and went on to serve in the Civil War and publish a “journal for the working man,” which failed. The plaque continued:
Photo by Frank Tankard
“He became an eccentric who did not cut his hair from age 55, perhaps because of a failed romance. He walked to Washington, D.C., for every inaugural ceremony. In 1907 he moved from a hollowed out tree trunk at Cameron’s Bluff (near current KPL plant) to an elaborate tree house and cave he built at Louisiana and Penn Streets.”
Cameron died broke a year later.
•••
Inside the entrance to Wal-Mart, an obese woman and an old woman sat across from each other in motorized carts, each preparing to get out. Flip-flops were in a bin for $2. Lysol was $1.75. Lawrence High and Free State High windbreakers were $23.83. A container of 24 Canadian nightcrawlers was $2.97.
Rows of TVs all showed a man explaining “tips for digital living.” A box of frozen Bun Dinos, promising “delicious strawberry filling inside a tender biscuit,” was $2.23. Sixteen ounces of Jennie-O ground turkey was $1.37. A canister of WD-40 was $2.08. Scanners beeped in the checkout aisles.
Photo by Frank Tankard
“Car wax,” a woman said.
“There we go,” another woman said, and they turned down an aisle in the automotive section.
“Attention Wal-Mart customers,” a voice said on the intercom. Someone’s car was ready.
•••
The weight limit was five tons on the turnoff to the Clinton Lake spillway. A man had been fishing with chicken livers for a couple of hours and hadn’t caught a thing. Water was flowing out of Clinton Lake through a pipe regulated by the Army Corps of Engineers.
By deciding how much water to release from the pipe, the Corps controls the flow of the final leg of the Wakarusa River, which feeds into the Kansas River near Eudora. The Kansas River feeds into the Missouri River in Kansas City, Kan., the Missouri River feeds into the Mississippi River near St. Louis and the Mississippi River feeds into the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans.
The man sat in a chair along the rocky bank. Others stood high above the water on a concrete walkway built above the pipe and threw their lines down. A young woman sunbathed on the hood of a gold Toyota Camry.
Photo by Frank Tankard
Rick Boldridge
On the opposite bank, Rick Boldridge fished with his brother. He wore a straw hat, sunglasses, a black T-shirt that said “security” and Kansas City Chiefs pajama pants.
Retired, Boldridge, 52, lives near Clinton Lake and fishes at least three times a week during season. The water was a few degrees below 78, which is the magic number for catfish, Boldridge said. When the water warms to that level, catfish start spawning. He said it should happen in a week or two.
A large, apparently dead fish bobbed up and down in the water before him.
•••
On the KU campus, a large group of shirtless young men in swimming suits occupied the lawn of the Delta Chi house across from JRP Hall. Most congregated on the walkway in front of the house. Some played cornhole.
Also known as bags, Indiana Horseshoes, baggo, sack and holes and an assortment of other names, the game consists of throwing a sealed bag filled with corn through a hole in a wooden box.
A wedding party walked past Potter Lake. The bridesmaids wore turquoise dresses. The bride and groom lingered on the bridge for pictures. The lake was all but covered in moss. The bells of the Campanile struck 3:45 p.m.
•••
Eight people crowded around two chess games in progress at 10th and Massachusetts streets, watching mostly in silence. A man slept on a front lawn at 13th and Kentucky, spread out on his back and snoring loudly as sweethearts strolled past.
Photo by Frank Tankard
Minerva Ortiz
•••
Minerva Ortiz ate Golden Grahams with organic milk for breakfast. She used organic milk because she thinks it tastes better, not because she is particularly concerned about cows.
Ortiz is going into her third and final year in the master’s program in painting at KU. She is 25. She was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. She moved to Dallas with her family around the age of 9 and had to repeat the third grade because she didn’t speak English. Then they moved to Watsonville, Calif.
When she was 16 years old, she started dating a boy. They stayed together for six years. They had planned a trip to Spain together and broke up before the trip. She went alone. Then she came to KU for graduate school.
She recently started taking Zumba classes. She is reading a book called “Cannibals and Kings” by Marvin Harris, which she said examines the “why’s” of civilization—why wars happen, how kings came about, why women are mistreated.
She had a mild hangover from St. John’s Mexican Fiesta. She spent the morning at the Merc working on her website, where she plans to upload images of her paintings. She had already paid $118 to keep her domain name, minervaortiz.com, for two years. She hoped to get the site up in a week.
She ate French toast with a lake of syrup for lunch. She recounted such details at the New Jersey Street duplex she shares with two other art graduate students, sitting on a couch covered with a yellow sheet.
The sun set. Many other things happened but went unrecorded. «
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Posted by banditteeth (anonymous) on July 3, 2008 at 6:51 p.m. (Suggest removal)
This is really nice. Great to visit our town through the filter of your prose, Frank Tankard.
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Posted by choffman (Chris Hoffman) on July 5, 2008 at 3:30 p.m. (Suggest removal)
my favorite sighting:
"An image of Kansas City Royals Hall of Famer George Brett and “1985,” signifying the Royals’ lone World Series victory, was spraypainted onto a railroad crossing sign. Mitch Young, district three supervisor for the Lawrence Parks & Recreation Department, has been battling the unknown sprayer of this stencil for years."
...that is an awesome find!!
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Posted by Shelby (anonymous) on July 7, 2008 at 12:21 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Bill James is probably the culprit.
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