Kanarado, Kansas

 

On the Colorado Kansas border is the declineing village of Kanarado.  It was named for the two states is joins up with.  The Interstate passed it by and most of the highway business have withered away to empty shells.  The exit is back over there someplace to the east of town and the little rest area at the state line is empty and overgrown.

No longer do the passing motorists pause briefly for fuel and maybe a quick bite at the greasy spoon.  The wind whistles through the remaining trees.  The train rumbles through couple times a week and the occasional farm truck rolls into the grain elevator. 

Main street appears to of been a lively commerce center.  Toady it is mostly empty.  A few cars cars the street.  The Post Office is open and there is a sign on one of the old building that says “Senior Center.”  Otherwise a person could probably take a street nap and not be disturbed. 

There are a variety of old empty decaying buildings for reminders of another day when it was a bustling prairie town.  From the size of the town it appears it was around 500 to 1000 residents at one time, now a couple hundred or less call it home.  The farms keep it alive.  The school is gone, consolidated with the neighboring town, where most of the businesses are now. 

The lumber yard office is now the community museum.  It is open a couple days a year.  Like most of the rest of the town, it is asleep the rest of the year. 

The reminders of another era cling to life, in various states of decay and neglect the little town hangs on.  There are numerous vacant lots and some neat old homes that would make cool haunted homes.

Next October I’ll probably pull it out for halloween week and see what kind of story I can put to it.  These little towns had so many different characters that lived in them and their stories beg for telling. 

Buildings stuffed back in a corner beg as question…. what were they used for?  It is a question to speculate on for the mystery is the question. 

Just outside of town a farmer has a neat old barn, that has been kept up.  It is these few people that keep the little burg from completely disappearing.  Although now they drive some distance to go shopping. 

On the side street by the tracks are more reminders of when this was a prosperous little town.  Shops and garages, now overgrown with weeds and ill kept. 

The siren song of the big city has a lure that many a country person goes to.  The big box store has replaced the little mom and pop stores.  The fragrance of new attracts many a person to the big plastic city lights.  These little towns are on life support and recitation is of very little avail. 

The grain elevators and the railroad are the life support system to keep a faint pulse. 

The Great Depression and the Dirty 30’s was the clamp that began to squeeze the life out of the farm villages.  The big box stores began hammering nails into their coffins.  Today the whispering winds of the past float over the land.