Road Trip Day 13 (maybe): The Man That Managed To Redeem All Of Kansas

“My aren’t you exciting, Kansas. Just get a look at those…hay bales.”

If Colorado’s Rocky Mountains are the equivalent of a teenaged heartthrob, then Kansas is the slightly over-weight pimple covered boy that sits in front of you in math class.

We needed to cover a fair amount of ground, and there just wasn’t anything we were really excited about doing in Kansas, so we picked a campsite by a lake without looking too much into it. We were planning to get there an hour before dark, throw the tent up, sleep, and then pack up first thing in the morning. Our logic was something like “Who cares if the place sucks? We will only be there to sleep.”

Silly, silly us.

The campsite was right across from the lake. Nice. The campsites were basically a gravel parking lot, each space being about twenty feet wide, with absolutely no barrier between our neighbors. Lame. But who cares, right? It is just for one night, right? The neighbors can’t be that bad, right?

The first thing my young children heard upon exiting the vehicle was our neighbors to the right using an expletive as every other word in casual conversation. That wasn’t so bad—it’s not like the kids hadn’t heard such words come out of my mouth now and then. Besides, it was a teaching opportunity. That, kids, is how stupid people speak. You don’t want to sound stupid, do you?

On the opposite side, our neighbors to the left asked if they could borrow a lighter. They came camping with no way to start a fire…interesting. They looked to be fresh out of a college dorm room. Small red flag.

The folks to the right started to loudly tell a story about how the last time they camped the cops were called and everyone started fighting when they arrived. Slightly larger red flag.

Then it got dark and an absolutely gorgeous full moon began to rise above the lake, and it started to get colder than a Bud Light in a redneck’s cooler, and I was huddling next to the fire starting to think about how I would need to borrow some of the expletives from my neighbors to properly described how cold it was in Kansas…when the music started. On both sides of us. Enormous red flag.

The rednecks to the right were playing early 2000’s rock, which really wasn’t suited to the mood. I was staring at a full moon so pale pink and delicate against a sky so softly fading, and it was like seeing Diana the Moon Goddess herself elegantly disrobing…while listening to Limp Bizkit.

To the left the college kids started playing college music, which was no improvement at all. They spent the remainder of the evening staring at their phones while listening to loud music next to their fire. I'm not sure why they didn't just do a fire at home and unburden all the normal campers, but that is a mystery that will remain unsolved. So we spent the next hour or so making fun of the two battling blue tooth speakers, before campground quiet time arrived, and the college kids calmed their music down…and the rednecks didn’t.

Which brings me to an interesting realization: rednecks are everywhere. This is horrible news. I thought they were a southern thing. In Alabama, sure, one expects to stumble across rednecks. Indeed, Florida too has rednecks. But Kansas? The land of tornadoes and The Wizard of Oz and great swaths of nothing? It is so disappointing.

The rednecks started taking shots. Their redneck friends from in town drove in and parked their redneck trucks at the edges of their redneck campsite, and the redneck party was just beginning. No doubt the moon goddess takes pity on those that camp next to rednecks, and used a bit of her magic dust, because the kids somehow went right to sleep amid all that noise of annoying music and loud drunken trashy stupidity.

I lay awake staring up at the ceiling of the tent, listening.

“I’m half Indian,” one man slurred out in a shout as though he were aiming for the entire campground to hear.

No one cares.

“And I’m gay,” he continued.

Noted. Still, no one cares.

“There was this time in the grocery store…”

I won’t burden society any further by repeated that sordid story, but I can’t express in words without expletives how glad I am that the children slept through that show.

The next morning all was wonderfully quiet. The rednecks were out cold in their drunken stupors, and the college kids to the left probably needed to sleep until noon. As I was at the spigot rinsing out some bowls in water cold enough to turn me into a dishwasher-woman ice sculpture, a man approached from the campsite behind us. He nodded to me and to our Florida license plate with a head wearing a clean baseball cap. His clear blue eyes had a calm sincerity in them—unflinching and unabashed.

“Excuse me. I just want to apologize on behalf of all of Kansas. I felt so bad for you last night. All Kansans are not that disrespectful.”

The man with his soft manners and clean baseball cap has redeemed Kansas…

Somewhat, anyway.

_{I was mighty glad to hit the Missouri border, where lots of trees waved at me with dramatic gold and red leaf-hands, and then the Illinois border and the dust of a harvester on our next stop…}