Dispatches I — Touchback
5' 9", 170, and probably a punter, in case you're wondering.
I want to write an article about the hopelessness of high school football players in these rural counties, who create Twitter profiles and Hudl accounts when they’re 14 years old, who post blurry clips of their rudimentary kickoff returns and flatfooted slants each week.
Who list their height, weight, position, GPA, preferred Bible verse, squat, clean, and bench in their social media bios, who are named things like Talen and Tripp and Tanner, who light fireworks with their friends in their backyards in late summer, who have little money but whose parents have always told them that if they work hard and pray after practice every night the Lord might smile upon them and K-State will take notice.
None of them will go pro, but all of them think they will.
I want to write about them.
A camera crew from Overland Park followed me around my first day at the paper, which was stressful. They’re making a documentary about the raid and wanted to film the new employee from New York’s first day. They filmed me walking to work, which was funny, because they had to made me go back to my apartment first. After that, I sat at my desk and they filmed my computer screen. I hadn’t gotten an assignment from the paper yet and didn’t really know what to do with myself. Eventually they realized I wasn’t going to write anything and went away.
This is why I don’t want to make movies. Writing is the greatest form out there, I figure, because it leaves the most to the imagination. When I write that I saw a pretty girl out on Cedar Street, the image of the pretty girl (as well as Cedar Street) is up to the reader to visualize. In a film or photo, the girl and the street are right there for you to see. You skip the imagining and go straight into interpreting. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, of course. It’s certainly easier on the eye. But to me, the imagining is the most mysterious and beautiful part.
One might counter that writing cannot match the vividness of a visual art like painting or photography or filmmaking. It’s true. But in lieu of that, the writer can create the scene they want with far less effort. A painter, at least, must make three distinct movements with their brush for triangle to appear. A writer only needs to type “triangle” to do the same. A sculptor might take years to craft a photorealistic sculpture of a nude Steve Buscemi in the style of Michelangelo’s David. I have created that image already, in seconds, through my words alone.
From there, the reader can fill in the rest—where the statue is located, what material it’s made of, whether Buscemi’s expression is gorgeous or horrific or something in between, etc. It is a simple and beautiful act. A handing off of a football to a back who knows what to do with it.
I’ve written seven articles in five days, relatively simple stories about places and events happening around the county. A popular deli in Goessel. A preview of the Hillsboro Arts and Crafts Fair. It’s been fun, even if my hands are already starting to feel arthritic.
The people of Marion like me so far. The comment I’ve been getting the most is that they don’t appreciate how often the paper hones in on the negative aspects of the county—crime and discord and all that—and so it’s nice that I’m covering Big Truck Night or the restoration of the church’s stained-glass windows or whatever. I hope they’ll still like me if I’m able to write some good investigative stuff.
As for living in Kansas, well, it’s certainly the best place to move if you want to see how you'd fare in a post-apocalyptic world. It’s as flat as anything. It gets totally dark at night if you aren’t walking under one of the seven lampposts in town. Sometimes there are strange sights outside of people’s homes, such as a large ball made of wire or a backyard filled with yard-sale materials—dirty plates, picture frames, old records, chairs—with no one around, and no signage indicating that it is in fact a yard sale. (Some of the frames had price tags on them. I ended up taking a bunch of shit and leaving a twenty by the door.) There are vast fields of corn and even vaster pastures, with no life around but bugs and cattle. You rarely see anyone walking on the street, and if you do, it’s an event that sticks with you—I said hello to someone today. He had a grey beard. She was in a scooter. Mostly people just flash by in cars, or stay home. Never have I seen so much space and so few faces.
Kansas also evokes the threatening kind of feeling that one might expect following the end of the world. Although the infinite pastures are full of contented-looking cows and pretty switchgrass, the barbed wire and PRIVATE PROPERTY signs everywhere mean one must resist the urge to pull over and frolic amongst the wildlife as God intended.
A sign on the outskirts of Cottonwood Falls (pop. 856, good antique store) I saw today: “Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.” This wasn’t even for a ranch. It was for some fucker’s yard. There was a gravel road leading into the yard, and the metal fence was wide open. I went in a few steps to get a better look. A trailer, some farm equipment, and a football field’s worth of grass, all surrounded by a thin layer of foliage. Some grasshoppers at my feet flung themselves into the undergrowth. I went out again and sat under a tree.