“The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them.” Truman Capote (In Cold Blood)
Rural Kansas
What a powerful narrative. The featureless Great Plains offer an unhindered panoramic view of the horizon. Only those “Greek temples” that arise from the plains alert you to the presence of nearby towns.
During a week of storm chasing, you encounter numerous small towns. And every small town has one or more grain elevators, usually along the railroad tracks. Why is that?
In 1870, eighty percent of Americans lived in rural areas. In the pre-automobile age, people didn’t want to walk, ride a horse, or pull a wagon too far for goods and services. Rural areas typically spaced towns about 10 to 15 miles apart for that reason.
Many of those towns were located along railroads. One hundred and fifty years ago, railroads dominated transportation. Railroads delivered everything including the mail, merchandise for stores, and individual customer packages.
You could even deliver a house by railroad. In the early 19th century, Sears sold homes through their catalog. Primarily shipped in railroad boxcars, these kits included most of the materials needed to build a house!
Railroads moved crops from small towns to markets in large cities like Chicago. The town grain elevator held crops safe from moisture and contamination until they were shipped out.
When horses pulled wagons, it took a farmer all day to make a 10-to-15-mile round trip to town and back to deliver his wagon load of grain. Farmers needed to live within a 5-to-7.5-mile radius of town.
The Shot
Capote was describing Holcomb, Kansas in his book. We were storm chasing 45 miles south of Holcomb near Ulysses, Kansas on March 30. The heavy rain, clear air, and perfectly positioned clouds bathed the landscape in glowing, glorious yellow storm light.
Several “Greek temples” rose along the distant tracks above the otherwise featureless landscape. The grain elevators added visual interest. They also provided scale when comparing them to the massive shelf cloud ominously looming above us.
For a change, no rain, lightning, or hail was threatening to force us to relocate. We enjoyed a leisurely and exhilarating half hour photographing nature’s light show.
We started reviewing and sharing our images on our camera LCD screens after we returned to our van. Nobody seemed upset about the five-hour drive back to our hotel in Lubbock, Texas. Everyone was giddy after “getting the goods.”
Thanks for looking,
Chuck Derus