Reflections: 1974-2008
Observations on 30 Years

How It All Began

My grandparents on both sides were Kansas farmers.  One set had a
farm west of Topeka about ten miles.  The other set of grandparents
had a farm in Atchison County between Larkinburg and Arrington.  As a
youth, I loved exploring both farms.  As it turned out, both farms had
ghost towns on them.  On the farm west of Topeka, there was once a
ghost town called Plowboy.  It was a small place of around 100 people,
and most of it is now a plowed field.  Nevertheless, it was like going
back in time walking the fields where the town stood.  An old stone
corral stood on the site, its origins unknown.  Some believed it was
much older than the Plowboy community.   About a hundred yards from
this site was part of the Oregon Trail, which was another interesting
section of the farm to explore.  A couple of miles from here, the Oregon
Trail ran through Uniontown, another famous long lost ghost town,
before crossing the Kansas River at present Willard.

My other set of grandparents had a stage station on their farm.  It
has never been adequately identified, but it may have been a station
on the Fort Leavenworth to Fort Kearny Military Road.  It sat on the
edge of a high hill that overlooked the Delaware River valley.  Local
superstition claimed that a stove exploded in the wooden structure,
which forced it to catch fire and burn to the ground.  There is evidence
of this, including charred, twisted pieces of a stove and evidence of
fire.  The mystery and legends surrounding these places generated a
great deal of interest in ghost towns in general. 

From 1973-75, I photographed and researched over a hundred lost
ghost towns, many with old-time friend Brad Trimble.  We would take
off in my old 1966 Ford Mustang and tackle lonely, haunted townsites
all over Northeast and North Central Kansas.  The places we photographed
are even further lost today.  One area in particular that we explored was
the Lecompton area.  This was a strange, wild forgotten area full of ruins
and mystery.  There was Mt Aeola, home to a Kansas territorial governor.
It now sits high on a hill two of three miles east of Lecompton in ruins
as part of a pig farm.  Thirty years ago, the woodwork and much of the
first floor of Governor Frederick Stanton's place was still standing.  What
a strange, forgotten place.  There was Rising Sun and Fort Titus and a
host of other little communities around Lecompton, now long gone. 
These places gave me that original wanderlust that sent me hunting for
more and more ghost towns.

My Worst Speaking Engagement

From 1977 on, I gave a lot of speaking engagements.  It was all part of
promoting Ghost Towns of Kansas.  For several years, I gave as many as
5-10 per month.  As time went on, through sheer experience, I was pretty
good at public speaking.  There was one speaking engagement, however,
that was one of the most embarassing. 

In 1986, there was a 10th anniversary program honoring the Topeka West
High School oral history program.  Now, the Topeka West Oral History program
was unique on several levels.  It was one of the first of its kind, where stu-
dents had an opportunity to merge several medias into a Kansas-related
topic.  Some of the topics were quite controversial.  Some were quite pop-
ular.  I was involved in the first two years of the program, 1976 and 1977. 
Working with old friend Cory Barron, we did an oral history on Ghost Towns
of Shawnee County, and The Ku Klux Klan in Kansas.   Some other topics
included Ed Asner, Dee Wallace Stone, the Chrysler family, Doc Brinkley, and
the list went on.

At the 10th anniversary of the oral history program, many of these people
were in attendance.  Dee Wallace Stone, in fact, sat right behind me.  I was
to give a reminiscence of the first ten years.  I worked on my speech for a
month.  I had everything written down on cue cards.  I couldn't make a mistake
in front of celebrities.  Unfortunately, that is what happened.  My cue cards
got turned around, and in the middle of my speech, I realized the problem.  After
what seemed like a lengthy silence, I got back on track but not before the
damage was done.  Even today, I think back to this speaking engagement as one
of the worst embarassing moments in my career.  Many people have a fear of
speaking in front of crowds for just that reason.  Believe me, it is embarassing
when things go bad. 

Meeting the Rock Band Kansas

Meeting Kansas (the rock band) started as a practical joke.  During my decade
with the Kansas State Historical Society, I became famous for staging famous
famous April fools jokes.  In 1987, the target of the practical joke was my
good friend in the photo archives, Nancy Sherbert.  With the aid of cohort
Darrell Garwood, we decided to give Nancy her dream come true:  meeting
Robert Redford.

Nancy idolized Robert Redford.  With the help of a letter that was already in
the archive files that had a nice heading from Paramount Studios, we removed
the contents of the letter and created a brand new one.  This one was from
Robert Redford and he was wanting several wild west photographs for a Wild
Bunch documentary.  He was going to be calling soon and wishing to talk to
Nancy.  It looked so authentic it scared even me.  April 1st came.  Darrell and
I snuck the letter in with the day's pile of inquiries and letters for Nancy, and
then let the fun begin.  Nancy got her mail and began reading it.  The minute
she got to the Redford letter she out a blood-piercing scream and began mut-
tering Robert Redford over and over and over as she ran up and down the
hallway.  Imagine her disgust when we told her it was all an April fools joke. 
Her last comment was, "I'm gonna get you Dan."

A couple of months later, guitarist Richard Williams from the rock band Kansas
called me at work wanting to get together to discuss potential ghost town
locations for their next concept album, In The Spirit of Things.  My first thought
was, Nancy is trying to get me back.  I went along with the ruse, thinking, "no
way am I going along with this joke."  He suggested meeting later that night at
a Topeka area restaurant to discuss.  Now, Richard Williams was from Topeka,
he even went to the same high school as I did.  He still owned a house in town
and came back occasionally to take care of business.  It was not beyond the
realm of possibility that he would find my book in a local book store and buy it,
which is what he did.  But all I could think of was that this was a practical joke
from Nancy.  It was not until that night when Richard Williams actually showed
up that I realized my paranoia was just that, paranoia.  The rest was, as I like
to call it history.

Did Nancy ever get me back with the supreme April fools joke?  No, but I had a
great 30th birthday when they vacuum sealed everything in my office, literally
everything, everything in my desk drawers, everything on top of my desk,
everything in my files.  I couldn't get at anything.  As for fake celebrities, no
such thing happened.

Kansas and the Minimum Wage

A January 10, 2007 article appeared in the Washingtonpost.com regarding in-
creasing the state's minimum wage to $7.25 an hour.  The author went to
Atchison, Kansas to interview some folks regarding the impact of the in-
crease.

I lived in Atchison for two years, so I was fascinated with the article.  In
addition, several of the people interviewed I knew quite well.

The gist of the article showed how small towns, like Atchison, have their
share (more than their share, I might add) of folks hovering in the poverty
level.  The increase in the minimum wage law would bring several of these
folks closer to lower middle class status. 

A link to the article appears below:

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/09/AR2007010901812_2.html

The plight of today's small agricultural town is represented in this article.  Much
of the focus had to do with one Wal-Mart employee.  While stores living on the
edge must deal with paying their employees more per hour, what sometimes
happens is that their hours will be cut, or the hours of other employees will
be cut to make up the difference.  While this is never the intent of increasing
the minimum wage, this is often the grim reality, especially with businesses living
on the edge.

I wish the best for those interviewed for this article, and I encourage everyone to
read it.  Do I offer any advice?  Apply yourself, and get a good education so that
you don't have to rely on the minimum wage to survive.  Sell yourself like you would
sell a commodity or a product.  If that doesn't work, leave for greener pastures. 
Right now, Wyoming is begging for workers at $10-$15 an hour.  Sometimes leaving
can be the only alternative. 

My heart goes out to everyone forced to work at minimum wage.  I know it is not easy.
Never give up the opportunity to better yourself and those around you.

Moving To Florida:  2003

I received an email from a fan a couple of weeks ago, wondering how a Floridian could
be an expert or write about Kansas.  Good question.  Here is my background.

I was born in Topeka, Kansas, and lived in Northeast Kansas or Platte County, Missouri
most of my life.  Unfortunately, I'm getting old so that was a long time.  In writing the
five, going on six ghost town books, I've traveled somewhere in the neighborhood of
10,000 miles across the state.  If Marci Penner and I were part of the same interview,
the stories we could tell. 

In 2002, the employer I worked for, Vanguard Airlines, went bankrupt. That left me with
few airline options because most major airlines were in the same boat.  Since I love to
talk, I chose GE as my next employer.  GE was a wonderful place to work, and a year
after starting my career with them, I was transferred to sunny Tampa, Florida.  That
was 2003. 

Don't get me wrong, I still love Kansas.  The change of seasons, the Flint Hills, you name
it.  However, providing a comfortable living for my family required that I go where my
employer wanted me to go.  That was Tampa. 

Along the way, the University Press of Kansas has played with the idea of a Ghost Towns
of Nebraska, Ghost Towns of Missouri, and Ghost Towns of Iowa.  The Nebraska manu-
script sits about 1/3 done.  I would love to finish that.  Ask me about Nebraska too, if
you'd like.  Ghost Towns of Missouri has been a bunch of field trips, and Iowa....well, Iowa
has yet to get off the ground. 

Those who would like to keep me informed, please do.  I have missed a lot of Kansas stories.
Think of me when the next hurricane heads towards Tampa Bay.  We have lived through a
category 1 hurricane, and three tropical storms.  It was no picnic.  Category 2's and 3's, or
even a 4, forget it.  I'll take my chance with a tornado anyday.  Anyhow, that is the down
and dirty explanation for how a Kansas boy ended up in the Sunshine State. 

Me, Brad and Bigfoot: 1975

The 1970’s may have been the “Me Decade,” but it was also the decade of Bigfoot.  Yes, you heard me,
Bigfoot sightings ran rampant during the decade.

My good friend that shared in these Bigfoot experiences was Brad Trimble.  After watching The Legend of
Boggy Creek, a 1974 full length feature film about a Bigfoot that lurked in the woods around Fouke, Arkansas,
we were convinced that Bigfoot does exist, and that we could find him in Kansas.  In fact, after a frenzied
search through a wooded, desolate part of Northeast Kansas one October afternoon in 1975, we made a
decision that we were going to dedicate our lives to finding the elusive beast. 

The combination of ghost town hunting and Bigfoot hunting was a perfect mix.  Ghost towns were generally
isolated places; Bigfoot hangs out in isolated places.  Our search was fueled by actual sightings.  Around
this time period, Bigfoot was actually spotted crossing the Kansas Turnpike somewhere near Bonner Springs. 
The Topeka Capital-Journal documented the sighting, which was an eyewitness account at dusk.   It led to
other sightings in Northeast Kansas.  Near my grandparent’s farm in Atchison County, two farmers riding horses
through a wooded, lonely stretch ran into something large and upright in the thick brush.  The horses got spooked
and threw the farmers to the ground before taking off.  The farmers, obviously startled, took off right behind their
horses.   The sightings continued unabated through much of 1974 and 1975, before they ended.   There has not
been a Kansas Bigfoot frenzy since. 

Obviously, neither Brad nor I dedicated our lives to finding Bigfoot.  I continued my search for ghost towns. 
Brad is now a lieutenant with the Kansas State Highway Patrol.  There are days, though, when I would like to go
back to 1975 and re-live the days of hunting for a national mystery.