My wife, Carol, and I live in El Dorado, Kansas. We’ve been there since Memorial Day weekend of 1995. That was just a few years after the time the state of Kansas started a Pronghorn Antelope Restoration Project for the Flint Hills, which run basically north and south through the middle east-central part of the state.
When we were courting (my, that has a grand, old-fashioned ring to it, doesn't it?) and each of us would travel, on opposite weekends, our various routes back and forth between Wichita (where I lived) and Belton, Missouri (where she lived), we saw a sign somewhere south of Emporia on the Kansas Turnpike announcing this restoration project and as a result, Carol always thought she should be able to see a few pronghorns gamboling across the steeply rolling prairie beside the roadway from time-to-time, but she never did.
“I'm beginning to think there really aren't any antelope there,” she told me after a few trips. “It's all because of that damned song, isn't it?” she asked, switching subjects in mid stream-of-consciousness, as is her wont.
“Yes,” I told her. “The deer and the antelope are all sitting around, playing cards or something, just on the other side of the hill. They all hide, though, when you come by. Then they stick their antelope tongues out and go, 'Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah' after you've passed.”
“Yeah, I thought so,” she said. “But I really would like to see one, sometime.”
Well, she's been saying the same thing, more or less, ever since. It even got to the point where I seriously (or semi-seriously, at least) contemplated hiring someone (or two someones) in an antelope costume to make an appearance beside the highway as we drive by. Or to have someone hold up a mounted antelope head as we whiz past at 75 mph.
But then I reconsidered the whole thing. With Carol's sense of timing, she'd miss the show I so carefully orchestrated. I can't even begin to count the times when we traveled and I pointed out an interesting sight along the roadway, like “Wild Turkeys!” or “Deer!” or “Dead Armadillo!” or something equally noteworthy, and she would look up from her crossword puzzle or magazine or whatever she was contemplating at the time and say “Where?”-- always looking in the wrong direction.
The only times she’s seen what I tried to call her attention to was when it was something so vast--like a sunset or a mountain valley--that she couldn’t miss it. So I know an item as fleeting as an antelope, whether it was real or staged, had no chance of being noticed.
A few years ago, I hoped fate would intervene in the antelope quest when Carol and her best friend, Debbie, took a trip out to western Kansas to spend the night in a sod house Bed-and-Breakfast. I knew pronghorns were much more prevalent out west than they are in the Flint Hills, which is just on the edge of their historical native range, and I really wished Carol and Debbie would happen to spook one up out there on the flatlands. But no such luck. Jackrabbits—which in extreme cases can get almost as big as an antelope—were about the only even halfway exotic animal they managed to see.
Debbie, by the way, thinks Carol's quest to see an antelope in the wild is just silly. But Debbie grew up in Wyoming, where antelope are as ubiquitous as jackrabbits are in Kansas. What Debbie doesn't quite grasp is the sense of wonder that would accompany such a sighting for Carol; the sense of a longing fulfilled—the sense of knowing, “Well, now I can die happy because I've seen everything I always wanted to see.”
Carol just about confirmed that attitude last October on a bright autumn afternoon as she and I drove back home from a day trip up to Cottonwood Falls, Kansas—which is 40 some-odd miles northeast of El Dorado.
On the trip south from the town, where we visited the ornate Victorian Chase County Courthouse and ate lunch at the Emma Chase Cafe, we drove south on Kansas Highway 177, which is designated a National Scenic Byway because it runs right through the heart of the Flint Hills and is a lovely drive almost any time of year. “You know,” Carol told me, “I've seen a lot of really nice things in my life. I went to England and saw Stratford-on-Avon and the house where William Shakespeare was born.” Then she shook her head sadly and continued, “But I never saw an antelope.”
All this time she was gazing intently out the windshield of the car at the tawny and russet-colored hills and the yellow and gold cottonwoods in the streambeds at the hills' base. As she looked, you could see she was hoping for a pronghorn to make an appearance, silhouetted against the azure sky like a character in a John Ford western.
“I went to Times Square on New Year's Eve,” she went on, “and watched the big, lighted ball drop at midnight. And then kissed a total stranger.” She paused for effect. “But I never saw an antelope.”
“I met Cary Grant in person and shook his hand. And I met Vincent Price and even had him hold my hand in both of his and look intently into my eyes as he listened to me tell him about how much I loved the theater and what I wanted to do with my life—all the while making me believe I was the only person with him in the room and that I wasn't some silly, gushing schoolgirl.” A sigh, this time. “But I never saw an antelope.”
We drove on in silence for a while, watching the country as the sun slowly slanted off to the west, its spectrum lengthening through white to amber to orange as we crossed the high plateau north of the Kansas Turnpike.
“And I went to Warrick Castle,” Carol said. “Not 'County,' but 'Castle!'..."
At this, I rolled my eyes, knowing (as she did) that some of my ancestors came from Warrick County, Indiana.
“...and I saw the throne that Queen Elizabeth sat on. Not the second one, but Elizabeth the First. “But...”
This time I completed it with her, changing the adverb from “I” to “you,” of course, to make it grammatically correct.
“...I never saw an antelope.”
“And I went to Alaska with you and went whale watching and saw whales,” Carol said. “I saw them, but I never saw an antelope.”
Her list of sightings and adventures continued but I let my mind wander. I watched the land roll by on either side of the car. As we proceeded south, the scenery changed from bluffs and river valleys to rolling prairie, all burnished with a golden hue from the westering sun. Railway track atop an embankment on the left, fence row on the right, bronze all around. Over the overpass across the Turnpike, past the town of Cassoday, angling slightly westward. But when we reached the overpass where the road swung back south at the corner of El Dorado Lake and over the rail line, I turned the car off the highway onto the gravel section line road. I figured there was still enough light to show Carol one of my favorite gravestones.
It's not really a morbid pastime, but I do like to visit cemeteries. I like to say it's for the history they show us, but I think it's more for the peacefulness they imbue. Though the town of Chelsea, Kansas is no longer there (the town site is at the bottom of the lake) its cemetery is. So after traveling a quarter mile or so west I turned the car south. Crossed the railroad track, then turned into the cemetery entrance.
At one time, the graveyard must have been a beautiful place—I've seen period guidebooks that describe it as lovely—with mature cedars, a pond in the middle and the graves spread out in rows on either side of the water. The tombstone I wanted to show Carol is on the east side, across the now-dry pond.
It's the grave of a man named William Early. Young William, at the age of 20, joined the Union Army during the early days of the Civil War—16 November 1861 to be exact. As a recovering Civil War Reenactor (that is an addition, you know) and a historian, I did extensive research into the history of all Civil War veterans buried in Butler County, Kansas. According to William's service record, he was assigned as a Corporal in Company I of the 4th Iowa Cavalry on 5 December of that year. He was promoted to 5th Sergeant (each cavalry company had five troop Sergeants, plus a Quartermaster Sergeant and a Commissary Sergeant) on 1 January 1862. More promotions followed as attrition through disease or wounding or death or resignation or promotion of those outranking William followed. Finally, after serving nearly three years he resigned his commission as a 1st Lieutenant in 1864.
But I've always imagined an older William regaling his family about his exploits in the 4th Iowa “Calvary”; for that is how most soldiers of the period pronounced the name of that branch of military service. And that's the way it was written on his tombstone: “1st Lt. 4th Iowa Calvary.” It wasn't until some time later, I suppose, people pointed out the misspelling. But rather than invest in a new tombstone, William's frugal Kansas farm family merely had the stone mason correct it to read “Cavalry.” Yet on the stone, the outline of the original spelling can still be distinguished. That's what makes that stone my favorite; not the facts it represents, but the humanity it displays.
Actually, though, I knew Carol probably wouldn't think the headstone is that big a deal. Most people don't. But I figured "what-the-hell"; if she wanted to go on and on about seeing (or not seeing) an antelope, she could at least let me bore her for a while reciting facts about the life of a man I never knew, never met and who probably did nothing more than lead one of those "lives of quiet desperation" that so many of us do. But he did serve in "The War of the Rebellion." Nothing can change that fact.
But we didn't even get to see the stone that day. When Carol and I got out of the car we looked up to see a deer standing under one of those cedar trees at about the spot where the grave marker is.
For a long time, all three of us stood there motionless; the deer, Carol and I. The deer wasn't very big—perhaps a Spring fawn doe. She looked at us with first her right eye — her head turned to the west and the line of her spine pointing in our direction. Then she slowly turned her head around to the east to gaze at us with her left eye. And still nobody moved. After what seemed like a long time, the young doe daintily stepped, turning and walking slowly away to the east, deeper into the darkness of the cedar forest.
By this time, Carol and I knew it was now too dark to read the writing on the tombstone, so we climbed back into the car. I started the engine, found a place to turn around and headed back to the gravel road.
As I turned the car north and it climbed over the railroad grade, back toward the section line road that would take us back to the highway, Carol finally broke the silence.
“Well,” she said, “it wasn't an antelope. But it'll do for now.”
