In 1879 Charles Jesse Jones came to hunt antelope; "where the deer and the antelope play", he promoted the city and influenced The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroads to put in a switch station.
In 1885-1887 Western Kansas saw a land rush. The United States Land Office put a location in Garden City and people came to make their land filings. This brought lawyers and settlers, thirteen drug stores and two daily newspapers. The city is 255 miles southeast of Denver on the north banks of the Arkansas River. The climate is harsh; hot dry summers and cold dry winters. It's frozen from October to the last week of April. It gets precipitation of 19 inches in a year.
It's a desert; I remember tumble weeds traveling in front of my bike. I watched my dad change many of bike tires from thorns that seemed longer than my five year old index finger. My home was a single wide in a trailer park. It cost my parents $17,500 in their early twenties. I'm over a decade older than my mother was when I was born. My father worked in a Hospital as a physical therapist. Nineteen thousand dollars a year moved him seven hours from his family. I was his shadow, as he mowed the lot I pushed my blue and red toy lawnmower behind him. He always made sure I didn't get on his right side where twigs and rocks were propelled from under the lawnmower’s tow eating blades. After mowing our lot instead of a green ring on his shoes he had a dust line where his socks ended and his calves began. We lived close to a feedlot, and neighbors would tell visitors that it was the smell of money...money stinks.
I learned how to ride a two wheeler in this land. I learned how to whiten the whitewalls of a cars tire with SOS pads. I helped wash a 1981 green Honda Civic hatchback that my family kept for 10 more years. I kissed my first girl behind an a/c unit of a neighbor’s trailer. I don't remember her name.
I had a friend named Joe. We would bury ants with dry dirt and watch them tunnel out just to bury the scouts again. I don't know Joe's last name but my dad called him JoJo from Kokomo. I didn't know where Kokomo was but it always made Joe laugh. I was trailer trash, covered in dust from a day’s play. When I rode my bike I could feel dirt and dust carried by winds pelt my face. I watched dirt devils dance on paved streets with my dad. My parents loved me, my mom with an 80's perm and my dad with those large, gold framed glasses from the same decade. I always wore an unmarked orange baseball cap. I loved baseball caps and cowboy boots...some things, even 28 years later never change. Most of these days and memories come from photos or home video's my parents would record with a camcorder they rented from a small family owned video store. My favorite toy was an Ernie doll, my favorite show was Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street.
I am part Garden City.
