by kenny

After leaving Salina, we backtracked to Lucas, Kansas. We were headed out to Lucas because they have this weird folk art community there that formed in the early 1900's. The art community essentially makes up the town, almost in entirety. In fact, the Lucas community was voted one of the 8 wonders of Kansas art. Who knew? Just in Kansas. 8 wonders! To be expected there are strange art sculptures scattered throughout the town and on the main highway. But we headed there for mainly two reasons. The Garden of Eden and the World's Largest Collection of the World's Smallest Versions of the Worlds' Largest Things or, as it is otherwise affectionately known, WLCoWSVoWLT.


So, yeah. Yesterday we were at the gates of hell and today we are entering the Garden of Eden. Kansas is diverse! Samuel Perry Dinsmoor built the Garden of Eden between 1907 to 1928. The house is built from limestone "post rock". (These abundant limestone outcroppings are found all over Kansas and have been used for everything from building blocks and fence posts to mortar (in powdered form) and grave markers. was. Anyhoo, from a distance the stone house could be mistaken for a log cabin. Dinsmoor was a teacher, a Freemason, a Populist, and a sculptor. The sculptures around the house is where it gets bizarre. Mostly every bit of the sculptures are made from concrete and are have something to do with the other sculptures to tell elaborate stories. Biblical stories from creation to the story of Cain and Abel are told through concrete, with Dinsmoor's own twist. There is a scupture called the "Crucifixion of Labor" that describes his feeling about the politics and the economy he found himself in. It depicts the torture of Labor, or mankind. A banker, lawyer, preacher and doctor surround the crucifixion. The topper is the mausoleum he built. He dug up his first wife without permission and buried his her in it. His second wife, who was 20 when he was 80 (and they had 4 kids together!), is apparently buried elsewhere. For himself he constructed a cement coffin with a glass window over the head. This was done as a fundraiser to keep the Garden of Eden running. He added a stipulation to his will that anyone could pay a dollar and they would be let in the mausoleum to get a look at him. And we did. Ol' dead Dinsmoor.

Right next door is WLCotWSVotWLT. Erika Nelson creates miniatures of the world's largest things from the world's largest teepee in Arizona to the world's largest lobster in Maine. Laura and I love all things Roadside Americana, as many of our posts attest to, and what Erika has done here is absolutely brilliant. She has imitated Americana in a way that is, ironically, completely unique. A short school bus has been converted to display her collection so she can take it with her as travels the nation visiting the world's largest things and creating the world's smallest versions. She visits the large things, creates the small things, and then photographs them together. When we went, Erika was not home, but on her porch was the world's smallest collection of the world's largest version of the world's smallest things (the opposite of WLCoWSVoWLT): 3 quarks.



From Lucas it was on to Cawker City for one of the icons of Roadside Americana, The Big Ball of Twine! I know this is ridiculous, but the ball of twine had dominated my internal compass since Jr. High. I mean it. I love the ball of twine. Frank Stoeber started the ball of twine on his farm in 1953. By 1957, it weighed 5,000 pounds, stood 8 feet high, and had 1,175,180 feet of twine on it! Apparently, there is a rivalry between the size of this ball and another in Minnesota. The one in Minnesota was bigger when Frank died in 1961, so the townsfolk in Cawker City kept the ball going and now is the biggest ball of twine. I found out when writing this post that you can still add twine to the ball, so I guess we will be going back!

Painted on the sidewalk by the ball of twine is an unwound string that goes all through town. It beckons you to follow and if you do you will be rewarded with famous paintings altered to reflect Cawker City's ball of twine in all the local shops. I love that the whole town of Cawker City is dedicated to this amazing ball of twine.


After leaving the ball we headed to where it all happens, the center of the contiguous united states. Two miles northwest of Lebanon, Kansas is a rest stop of sorts that has a pyramid type monument with an American flag on top, a gazebo with a rooster ( a real live one) in it, and a tiny chapel. We took some time to offer up some prayers for family and friends in this chapel in the center of USA. Hope you all were blessed that day.


We decided to go back to Lebanon to get a souvenir, but the town is dying, if not dead. I circled the town once and saw no sign of anything kitschy. So I stopped at the gas station and asked where I could get a souvenir and was directed to the grocery store I already passed. "It's the building that's not torn down with the wheelchair ramp." So we got our bumper sticker and headed due north.

From the center it is a short drive to the Nebraska border and so we left Kansas with quite a lot of fondness in our hearts. Hoorah for the Sunflower State and on to the Cornhusker State.