Travel

J. D. Carpenter’s American Odyssey

DAY 8 – COUNCIL GROVE, KANSAS: After watching the July 4 parade on sweltering Commercial Street in Emporia (fire trucks, women and girls on horseback, giant tow trucks, Ecuadoran dancers, a lawn tractor pulling children on wagons, perspiring weight-watchers carrying bottles of water, flag-waving families dressed thematically — NASCAR, for example — a group of mentally challenged adults, Girl Scouts of America, a church group dressed in Bethlehemic garb), we lit out for the Flint Hills, an expanse of rolling grassland so beautiful that we got ourselves lost in the myriad of gravel backroads and had to stop and ask directions of a bare-chested man walking with two boys.

The man, Alan Pollard, not only answered our questions, but invited us to see his house, which stood in a grove of trees a short distance away. While the boys cooked up the crayfish they had caught in a nearby creek, Karen and I sat in Alan’s living room sipping cold Coors (Coors, not Coors Light), and the three of us soon found ourselves discussing the vagaries of life. Two hours passed, and Alan, a renaissance man if there ever was one (falconer/thinker/singer/songwriter/and, oh yes, he builds houses to make a living) based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, invited us to make camp at his place (a three-acre piece of paradise which was once part of the 36,000 acre Diamond Springs cattle ranch). He and the boys — his son, Bryden, and Bryden’s pal, Devon, both 14 — were expected elsewhere for dinner, so while they were gone Karen and I drove to Council Grove, bought supplies (southwest bean salad, potato salad, foccacio bread, peppered beef, beer), returned to Alan’s (he’d left the door unlocked for us), fed ourselves, walked his two Gordon setters to the top of a hill where we could see for miles in every direction, descended the hill, visited the three quarter horse mares in an adjacent field, and generally relaxed. Alan and the boys returned about ten, and Karen, Alan, and I talked — whiskey-fueled (to borrow a phrase from Doug and the Slugs) — into the wee hours about the usual late-night topics — art, love, the meaning of life, and whether or not to store your bourbon in the freezer.

Tags: American, American Odyssey, language arts

About the author

J.D. Carpenter's Campbell Young novels have been nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award, appeared on national bestseller lists (The Globe & Mail), and received critical acclaim (The Globe & Mail, The Toronto Star, The Edmonton Journal, Maclean's, Quill & Quire).