Another Nothing-in-Common Road Trip.

Once again we got in the car and headed south, and then west. This time it was mostly west to Kansas, specifically to Lawrence, Kansas, a delightful college town replete with excellent diners, Prairie and Craftsman architecture, and transplanted Easterners.
Historians know that Lawrence was settled in 1854 by the New England Emigrant Aid Company, originally 29 men intent on promoting the abolition of slavery and ensuring that Kansas would enter the Union as a Free State. All did not go smoothly. On August 18, 1863, a certain William Quantrill led a group of pro-slavery Missourians (Bushwhackers) against the anti-slavery residents of Lawrence (Jayhawkers) and slaughtered everyone they could find. At the end of the day there were 85 widows and 250 fatherless children. These days you can take a self-guided driving tour of Quantrill’s Raid. It takes about one and a half hours.

But I get ahead of myself. We meandered our way to Kansas, stopping to bathe in mineral springs in West Virginia, lunch in Harmony and unsuccessfully seek Economy, Pennsylvania.

One thing that strikes the insular New Yorker in the course of visiting other states is the prevalence of signs prohibiting guns. These signs are necessary because, so I learned, guns are otherwise legal and carried everywhere. Absent such a sign, you can assume that the diners at the next table in Indiana, or the passengers on a Mississippi river boat, or the lady in the stall next to you in the rest room, are all carrying concealed weapons.

Here is the home of James Thurber, beloved humorist and creator of Walter Mitty.

And here is the home of Abraham Lincoln. Yes, even at Lincoln’s home it is necessary to tell gun-toters to leave their weapons at home.

And here is the Dana Thompson House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, in Springfield, Illinois.

This sign is outside the wonderful Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.

You get the idea.

We drove straight home Sunday and Monday,with no more stops at historical sites or museums (Well, yes there was one. We visited the Kent State University Memorial in Ohio.)and the one story on the radio, on every radio station from Kansas to New York,was the shocking massacre of 49 people in Orlando, Florida by a man who was allowed to legally to buy automatic weapons that have no other function than to slaughter people, lots of people.

Literature and Chickens

In a letter to James Thurber, one of the funniest men ever to put pen to paper, E.B. White, no slouch himself, wrote: “I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.” I would concur with his confusion.
If you want to read that sentence again, you can walk along 41st Street between Madison and Fifth Avenue, a block known as Library Way, and look down. There are many other pertinent and pithy quotes embedded in the sidewalk, but you can understand why this one jumped out at me, and clucked.
It seems we embarked on this chicken venture in complete ignorance. I read The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald, about adventures on a chicken farm in Washington state in the 1930’s; and we wandered through the poultry tents at county fairs coveting the silkies, and thought we were ready. Or I did.
Then Annie F. gave us 25 eggs and the Hoffman boys incubated them. Fifteen hatched and if you’ve been reading for a while, you already know how many were roosters. So we ordered 15 more hens, guaranteed to have ovaries.
CSB built a beautiful chicken house (only slightly unfinished and still in need of the electrician) and we bought a copy of Chickens for Dummies. I also bought a Field Guide to chicken breeds so I could wonder what breeds we have. Which is not as simple as it sounds. A crest and a beard may be the defining characteristics of a Crevecouer, but so are leaden blue toes and Bump’s toes are more of a slate blue. Then there is the matter of Mamacita’s weird comb.
I mention Bump and Mamacita because as far as I can tell, those are the only two laying hens we have thus far. I have seen them both, at various times, brooding in the roosting boxes, but I have not seen them actually lay the eggs.
In the law I think this would be referred to as circumstantial evidence.

In addition to the Decapitation of Saints Cosmas and Damien, and the Naval papers of the Quasi War between France and the US that I pass by en route to the powder room, one of the great benefits of having an office is that I am not tempted to visit the chicken house every hour to see if any more eggs have been laid. This is what I did all last weekend, and I am sad to report that my eagerness did not seem to enhance egg formation.
As for which is more discouraging, literature or chickens, they are neck and neck, wattle to wattle, beak to beak.