{"id":602,"date":"2010-10-15T23:29:45","date_gmt":"2010-10-15T23:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/garyborders.atomicnewstools.com\/pages\/?p=602"},"modified":"2012-01-28T23:30:04","modified_gmt":"2012-01-28T23:30:04","slug":"you-can-go-home-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/you-can-go-home-again\/","title":{"rendered":"You Can Go Home Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

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WAMEGO \u2014 It seemed fitting on my final weekend to live in Kansas to attend a stage performance of \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d in the historic and exquisitely restored Columbian Theatre, in downtown Wamego. The Columbian\u2019s auditorium is festooned with six huge paintings from the 1893 Chicago World\u2019s Fair, which banker J.C. Rogers bought when the fair ended and hauled to Wamego to decorate his new music hall.<\/p>\n

This Mayberry-like town about 14 miles northeast of Manhattan has ably profited from J. Frank Baum\u2019s creation \u2014 with the Oz Museum, Oz Winery and even Toto\u2019s Tacos \u2014 not to mention the recently concluded OztoberFest. I wanted to say a silent goodbye to this place, since I\u2019ve been publisher of the weekly Wamego Smoke Signal as part of my job description \u2014 an easy gig since the paper has an able editor.<\/p>\n

An additional incentive: Someone had told me the Wicked Witch of the West actually flies across the stage. Actually, there were several flying characters, from Glinda the Good Witch, those infamous Flying Monkeys and even Dorothy Gale. A company called D2 Flying Effects, based out of Johnson City, Tenn., was in charge of rigging cables to actors and actresses up in the air and sending them floating across the stage smoothly and safely. The grumpy Miss Gulch even floated across riding a bicycle. Hey, I was impressed. It looked like fun.<\/p>\n

Area children of varying sizes, in this all-volunteer production, portrayed the Munchkins and Winkie Guards. The main cast members appeared to be college-age students. A well-behaved Yorkshire terrier named Rupert \u2014 though two dogs appeared at the curtain call \u2014 played Toto, according to the program. Maybe the other dog was an understudy. Before the show started, we sang \u201cHappy Birthday\u201d to two patrons with 10\/10\/2010 birthdays. Little kids comprised a goodly portion of the audience, unsurprisingly. It was a happy afternoon as clouds gathered outside, and it threatened to rain.<\/p>\n

I sat on the third row, taking occasional notes, reflecting on the strange turn of events that brought me to Kansas in the first place, and the equally unexpected change of fortune that is propelling me back home to Texas. A change in ownership at the newspaper company for whom I worked for more than 20 years in East Texas meant I was out of a job earlier this year. I found the ad for this job running a family owned newspaper and soon came to an agreement with its owner. Our relationship has been wonderful. I couldn\u2019t have asked for a nicer boss or a better group of folks to work with here at the paper. But the transition from Texas to Kansas, leaving a fianc\u00e9e and her daughter, my grown children, Mom, siblings, etc., behind has been wrenching.<\/p>\n

So, like Dorothy \u2014 only in reverse since I\u2019m in Kansas while she was in Oz \u2014 I concluded that this isn\u2019t home. I\u2019ve tried hard to make it feel like home, but it hasn\u2019t worked. I\u2019m too used to living in Texas. That state has plenty of flaws, but I\u2019m used to its idiosyncrasies. When the chance fell into my lap to run a newspaper in the Austin area \u2014 well, you have to listen to that sort of answered prayer. It\u2019s where my oldest daughter teaches school, my middle brother lives, where we\u2019re about to move our mom, and where most of my friends from high school and college long ago settled.<\/p>\n

When Dorothy laments, \u201cI\u2019ll never see Kansas again as long as I live,\u201d toward the end of the play, I thought about the long nights I\u2019ve spent wondering how long I could live this split life, flying back to Texas every other weekend to see my family, loved ones and friends.\u00a0 The Flint Hills is a beautiful piece of country, with good people, but it\u2019s been a lonesome existence for this Texas expatriate.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s goodbye after just five months. I am confident that my successor will be able to build upon the work that this paper\u2019s fine crew and I have done in my short time here to make this newspaper better.<\/p>\n

As Dorothy says at the close of the play, \u201cThere\u2019s no place like home.\u201d It is time for me to go home.<\/p>\n

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Print this entryWAMEGO \u2014 It seemed fitting on my final weekend to live in Kansas to attend a stage performance of \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d in the historic and exquisitely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[39,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-39","category-columns"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":604,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602\/revisions\/604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}