An exhibit of Fremont Campaign Flags from 1856 was on display at the Kansas Historical Society in Topeka. The Republican Party was formed amid the controversy over whether Kansas would enter the union as a free or slave state. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector)
Tomorrow is Kansas Day.
Funny, but the date Kansas was admitted to the union was one of those that churned through my mind when, seven months ago, I found myself on the pavement next to a convenience store gas pump at Missouri Valley, Iowa, amid what seemed like gallons of my own blood. The thought ticked me off because there I was, on the edge of unconsciousness and maybe death, and Kansas Day was elbowing for my attention.
There were other things, to be sure, that crowded my mind in the moments after I became dizzy and started vomiting blood.
The past: One Christmas Eve when I was a kid, when my salesman father come in through the door with store-wrapped presents in his arms; walking as a kid across the abandoned streetcar bridge over Spring River to the wooded dark on the other side; the telephone poles leading to infinity out near Dodge City during a westerly vacation; the whisper of a summer night spent outside a farmhouse at the edge of town with a girl who broke my heart. And a jumble of memories of my mother, my friends, my own kids.