The abandoned farmhouse sits openly defying its surroundings. Long ago stripped bare of its life, devoid of inhabitants (to say nothing of doors, windows or even a coat of paint), it exerts its power over the landscape through and by the singular act of remaining. Its power resides in its mere existence, enough to keep at bay the encroaching wild grasses.
The same may be said for much of the Flint Hills of Kansas.
The Flint Hills is a grassy, elongated keloid raised from the otherwise flat state, running north-south one quarter of the way in from the Missouri border. They were once home to thriving American small town life, exemplified by towns like Council Grove – last stop on the westward Santa Fe trail – and Strong City – renamed from Cottonwood Station by William Strong in an effort to break free from the nearby town of Cottonwood Falls. In their heyday, these towns exuded American independence and strength. Their power sprung from the vitality of their populace.
As is the story for much of small town rural America, though, the region suffered a bleeding of population in the late twentieth century. Younger generations fled for the opportunities harbored by bigger cities, especially those of the coastal metropolises. What is left is the municipal equivalent of that abandoned farmhouse: a greatly hollowed framework standing against the encroachment of time.
The hollowing is visible in the many downtowns and surrounding residential streets, where operating businesses and inhabited homes stand cheek to cheek with their abandoned counterparts. The empty lies adjacent the occupied, the manicured beside the overgrown. Poetically, one might imagine a battle between these two forces – the corrosive force of decay versus the vital force of renewal.
But will the overgrown consume the manicured, will the fallow overwhelm the occupied? These questions are unanswerable from our vantage of the present (there is truth to the phrase, “only time will tell”). But there are hints, at least, that vitality will win out. Take, for example, Eureka, a town of some 2,400 people in the southern end of the Flint Hills. Eureka’s population has dropped precipitously to nearly half of its population of 1960. The empty storefronts of ts downtown and the abandoned houses of the surrounding neighborhoods attest to that loss.
On a recent fall afternoon, however, Eureka’s junior high school football team was practicing on a strip of grass in the shadow of its football stadium. A construction crew was busily completing recent upgrades to the facility, both to the field itself and to the surrounding stands, built and now rebuilt to hold the town’s cheering families. The team was coached by four involved coaches and tended to by a pair of doting managers. The force of life of the practice and the adjacent construction was nearly palpable. The empty houses and vacant storefronts, sitting a short bike ride away, were on no one’s mind, only the practice at hand.
Such life, surely, is enough to beat back any encroaching decay. One can hope, at least, for the sake of the Flint Hills.