Kansas 2005

Part 2: Hutch

After leaving Wichita, we dropped Andy back at the airport (he had to come back for another wedding) and continued to Hutchinson, the home of a huge branch of my family tree. Three of my father's five siblings live there, as well as his mother and assorted others. When we drove up to Aunt Helen's newly-installed swimming pool, a bunch of my relatives were swimming. I had, of course, left my swimsuit at home, so we dropped by Target® and I bought a new one (I needed it anyway, because going to the beach with only one swimsuit is unheard of). The water was a nice, bacteria-friendly 88°F, and it felt wonderful. Dinner that night was chicken right off an industrial-sized grill and tasty lemonade. It was great to hang out with my family, and I got to meet two small children with whom I'd not been very well acquainted previously, Jackson and Faith, my first-cousins-once-removed.

Okay. This is a father-and-son pair. Look carefully at the father's expression. Now look carefully at the son's expression. Tell me that they're not exactly the same. This isn't a posed shot or anything: I just snapped the photo, and later realized that they had the same expression. I thought it was perplexing.

Back to the story, though. We spent our time in Hutchinson ("Hutch," affectionately) eating, playing Scrabble® and UpWords^TM and swimming. It was extremely nice to hang out with all the cool people in Hutchinson. One afternoon we went hunting for elevators.

Now, most of my eastern compadres will think I'm talking about big metal boxes that move up and down in tall buildings, the type of elevator that Brits call a "lift." I must assure you that isn't the case. I'm talking about grain elevators: big concrete boxes that store grain. Observe:

Two Types of Elevator
A Lift	An Elevator

The grain elevator in the picture above is, specifically, the world's longest grain elevator, stretching really far from one end to the other. Most elevators are rows of white concrete cylinders several stories tall. In that photo, there are train cars included for scale. And also because they were just in my way. Either way, elevators are neat. Most people who live in Kansas take them for granted.

What are they for, you might ask? They're for storing grain, plain and simple. Lots and lots of grain. It's kind of like a grain bank. You or I can take a bunch of grain to the elevator and ask them to store it for you, and they'll give you a slip of paper that says you have so many bushels of wheat stored in such-and-such an elevator. This is the lowest point of the commodities market on wheat: the direct storage of the wheat. It's kind of cool. Here are some more elevators:

The bottom one is the same as the one I showed you earlier. It's easier to see how long it is, though, from a shot that isn't from quite so oblique an angle. I couldn't get the whole elevator into my frame; you can see where it ends on the right side, but it keeps going on the left. This also means that one side is longer, because I had the center tower centered in my viewfinder. Interesting, yes? I thought so.

At any rate, Hutchinson was primarily visiting with family. It was wonderful. We left on the morning of Wednesday, after sharing breakfast with my grandmother and the entire staff of Advance Termite & Pest Control.