There's no place like Kansas

     In two small cemeteries in rural Harvey County, Kansas lie the earthly remains of my family members.  My folks, a brother and sister, a niece, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, they all lie buried beneath the Kansas soil in the Halstead City Cemetery.  My great-great grandmother and several other members of the "Brown" side of my family are interred in the tiny Quaker cemetery called "Fairview" just up the road to the north a ways.  A monument just outside of that little burial spot honors my great-great grandmother, Rebecca Burch, as the last living pensioner of a Revolutionary War veteran in the United States.  It is the empty piece of earth, just to the south of her grave there, where I will be laid to rest as well when my time shall come to leave this earth.  By my count, over 30 members of my immediate family have been lain to rest in the soil of the Sunflower State.  Each one of those departed family members in their own way played a huge part in my becoming the person that I am this day.  The blood of my parents and grandparents runs through me and I would swear that their spirits have gone with me, especially in some pretty tough times in life.  I think it might be a reason why I love Kansas so very much.

    Today is Kansas Day, the 153rd birthday of the state of my birth.  January 29th has come and gone in my life 58 times over. Never would I have dreamt that this year I would find myself spending this special day of statehood in a state other than Kansas yet here I am in Colorado.  This morning as I sit here typing away at the kitchen table in our home just outside of the city of Montrose, I'm thinking about just why it is that Kansas is so very special to me. 

     You know, I've always been grateful that as fate would so allow it, my six siblings and I would be born to a Kansas farming couple named John and Lois Scott.  Even more so appreciative I am of the fact that all during my growing up years I was raised up near the most beautiful little town ever, Haven.  All of my childhood was spent there being nurtured not only by my own folks but just about every other adult there as well.  Haven was a lot like that, you know?  From the little old ladies who lived along Kansas Avenue that ran right through the center of town, to our teachers at school, to all of the patrons of my family's business called Scott's Café and Service, and anyone else in between that wasn't busy doing a thousand other things, the motto "It takes a village..." applied to my life and shoot, to the lives of every other kid I knew as well.  The people that lived in that little Reno County town are good and decent folks but as I stop to think about it, so are the others that live throughout not only Reno County but the remaining 104 counties of the state as well.  The people?  Well, hey maybe THAT'S why I love Kansas so very much.

     I've been wrestling with writing this blog post for over a day now as I keep going back and forth as to why the 34th state of the Union, the 34th star on Old Glory means so very much to me.  Perhaps it is because in 58 years of living there, my heart had the chance to store up so very many good memories of people, places, and things.  I have wonderful recollections of being a little girl there doing all sorts of fun "kid" things like going to the library in the summer, attempting to learn how to swim and nearly drowning (LOL, or so I thought), of working in my parents' restaurant from the time I was 11 until I graduated from college.  I remember friends from my childhood, the friends of my youth.  We all grew up together and for better or worse, we generally speaking stuck pretty much together.  So many things happened to me there and at some point in time, my spirit must have written the name "Peggy Ann Scott" in the Kansas soil.  I'm really at a loss to explain it and I guess that is that.

     I never did a lot of travelling outside my home in Kansas, well that is until 2012 when I decided to make a "bucket list" trip to Maine to see my first lighthouse.  I had always been a "home body" and never really wanted to stay away from my home for more than a day or so.  It was stretching it pretty far to remain away for a week.  I was satisfied there.  After going to Maine, I learned that there was a great big world outside the boundaries of Kansas and I found it was actually kind of fun to see it.  I began to travel more and in early 2013 when I renewed my friendship/acquaintance with this boy from my high school days back in Haven, I learned just how beautiful the state of Colorado really was.  When Mike and I got married and I moved here in the early summer, it was a tough thing go away from the place that I had called my home for so very long.  I suffered through some pretty "mean" homesickness but I made it and as time has gone on, I've felt much more comfortable in my new home here along the Western Slopes.  Time it takes~

     Today we are having a Kansas birthday party in our fourth-grade classroom at Olathe Elementary School.  The "18" are inviting their kindergarten buddies down for some cake and a Kansas story.  It feels good to know that even though I now live so very far away from there that I can still remember it and honor its presence as the next-door neighbor of Colorado.  We're going to sing "Home on the Range" and if the weather allows it, we might even go outside to play a game that the pioneer "4th graders" might have played back then.  I hope it is fun for my students as I know I will be enjoying it.

     I was born "Peggy Ann Scott" in Newton, Kansas on the 26th day of October of 1955.  I am a Jayhawker and I am a Kansan.  I always will be.  I have been blessed at this point in time to have two places to call "home".  My new home in Colorado, my new life as the wife of Mike Renfro are signs to me of the unfolding of the next chapters in my very wonderful life.  May you feel equally blessed my friends.

     Happy Birthday to you Kansas!  You don't look 153 :)

Wish you all didn't live so far away from us~we'd be glad to share a piece of cake with you too!

 He's a nice boy and although my parents never met him, I'm sure they would have approved.

                                                  "There's no place like Kansas."