In Cold Blood

"The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there' . . . The land is flat, 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

A long delayed posting from the trip west with Sanford. Of all the moving experiences that travel has brought me over the last few years, oddly, the one that I can't seem to get out of my head is the short side trip to Holcomb, Kansas. As I've discussed, Sanford Zale is a great travelling compansion and happily went along with my odd requests. And one of the oddest was to extend our trip a little further west than we originally planned. Our goal was to reach Guymon, Oklahoma, and so we were going to follow US 50 west and then drop south down to Guymon. However, I realized along the way that if we continued a little further along 50 we would come to Holcomb, Kansas, the small town featured in Truman Capote's classic novel In Cold Blood. I had not read it in years, and Sanford had never read it, but it just seemed like a perfect fit. Sadly, we didn't even spend much time there, mainly because it was at the end of a long day's drive, and we then had to turn around and backtrack so that we could make it to Liberal, Kansas, our last stop before crossing into Oklahoma and Guymon. We never found the house itself, nor, for that matter, much of the town - at least the town I remember from the novel.

We did find the beautifully simple and quiet little Holcomb Park, which is dedicated to the Clutter family. Maybe everyone should read In Cold Blood, and I'm thinking about making it required reading in my COL 120 Concepts of Community class if I come back to Champlain.

Here are the actual word of the Clutter Memorial. I love it since it celebrates their lives, and doesn't mention Capote or the novel or the movie - and even the murder itself is downplayed (I've included the one brief reference in bold):

"CLUTTER MEMORIAL

HERBERT AND BONNIE MAE FOX CLUTTER FAMILY

Herbert Clutter, son of James and May Clutter, was born May 24, 1911 in Grey County, Kansas. He grew up on a farm near Larned and graduated from Kansas State College with a Bachelor of Agriculture degree in 1933. He worked as an assistant County Agent in Montgomery County following graduation. He moved to Garden city after his marriage to Bonnie Fox in 1934. He was employed as the Finney County Agriculture Extension Agent for 5 years until he became engaged in farming in 1939. The family lived 2 miles west of Holcomb where Herb raised sheep and cattle as well as feed grains and wheat. They moved to a farm on the south side of the Santa Fe Railroad just west of Holcomb in 1948 where he continued the farming operation which included raising grass seed crops. He also managed a dry land farm 23 miles NE of Garden City.

Herb was active in many activities which included: Holcomb Community Club; Holcomb School Board; Farm Bureau; Grange: Board of the Finney County Community chest; Chairman of County Road Committee; member of the Agriculture Committee of Garden City Chamber of Commerce; Chairman of the Farm Labor Commission for Finney County; Community Committeeman of the Agriculture Credit Association; Trustee of Southwest Community Hospital Inc.; Director of Western Kansas Development Assoc.; First President of the National Association of Wheat Growers and the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers; Board of Directors and President of Garden City Cooperative Equity Exchange; member of the National Farm Credit Board; member of the National Grain Advisory Committee; and other state and national agriculture committees and boards.

Bonnie Mae Fox, daughter of Arthur B. and Mae Fox was born January 7, 1914 in Rozel, Kansas. She grew up on a farm there and attended the St. Rose School of Nursing in Great Bend. She was married to Herb on December 2, 1934 and moved to Garden City. She raised four children and was involved in many community and church activities. The children were all born in Garden City. They were Eveanna Marie Clutter Mosier, born June 26, 1936; Beverly Jean Clutter English, born October 11, 1939, Nancy Mae Clutter, born January 2, 1943 and Kenyon Neal Clutter, born August 28, 1944.

Herb and Bonnie were community and project leaders for Sherlock Strivers 4-H Club for many years. The family belonged to the First Methodist Church in Garden City where Herb taught an adult Sunday school class many years and Bonnie taught in the children's division. The children were active in the youth department and the adult choir. Herb served as chairman of the building committee.

Eveanna, Beverly, Nancy and Kenyon all attended Holcomb Consolidated Schools. They rode the school bus to and from school. Most of the school activities occurred during school hours which made it possible for the young people to participate in many different activities. The family's leisure activities included entertaining friends, enjoying picnics in the summer and participating in school and church events. They used the Garden City Public Library a great deal and enjoyed the community music events and band concerts at the park in Garden City. Herbert, Bonnie, Nancy and Kenyon were killed November 15, 1959 by intruders who entered their home with the intent of robbery. The family was buried in the Valley View Cemetery, Garden City, Kansas."

Maybe what I like about it is that it is as much an elegy for a region and for a lifestyle as it is for a family. I loved my drive across Kansas, and I saw a lot of good and bad. The people were unfailingly and sincerely warm and giving - so much different than the cold Northeast. However, there was also so much anger, most of it, in my mind anyway, so misdirected. We passed so many really graphic anti-abortion signs along the road, even though there aren't that many abortion providers in the entire state. There was definitely a dark undercurrent to life there. It's as if the plains are dying and they are looking for someone, anyone, to blame.

Which begs the question - what's the matter with Kansas?

William Allen White, the Sage of Emporia, asked the question a century ago. He proposed that, “Kansas is a state of the Union, but it is also a state of mind, a neurotic condition, a psychological phase, a symptom, indeed, something undreamed of in your philosophy, an inferiority complex against the tricks and manners of plutocracy -- social, political and economic.”

A decade ago Thomas Frank, in his own brilliant What's the Matter with Kansas?, revisited the question. To him Kansas was representative of that skillful shell game that the Republicans play when they misdirect folks to focus on social issues while actively pursuing an economic policy which is destroying the lives of average Americans. Not surprisingly, when What's the Matter with Kansas? was published overseas it was entitled What's the Matter with America? Frank wrote:

"Not long ago, Kansas would have responded to the current situation by making the bastards pay. This would have been a political certainty, as predictable as what happens when you touch a match to a puddle of gasoline. When business screwed the farmers and the workers - when it implemented monopoly strategies invasive beyond the Populists' furthest imaginings -- when it ripped off shareholders and casually tossed thousands out of work -- you could be damned sure about what would follow.

Not these days. Out here the gravity of discontent pulls in only one direction: to the right, to the right, further to the right. Strip today's Kansans of their job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans. Push them off their land, and next thing you know they're protesting in front of abortion clinics. Squander their life savings on manicures for the CEO, and there's a good chance they'll join the John Birch Society. But ask them about the remedies their ancestors proposed (unions, antitrust, public ownership), and you might as well be referring to the days when knighthood was in flower."

So, we find someone else to blame. It can't be our fault. I remember talking to a student at Champlain last year who, during a discussion on inequality, went on a little rant about his frustrations with seeing some poor folks on public assistance while his mother had worked hard her entire life. My point was that maybe his rage was, like that of Kansas, misdirected. I told him that if he wanted to get mad at someone he should get mad at corporate America, and that it was highly unlikely that any poor person had ever done him or his mother any real harm, whereas the policies of the ultra-rich were making their lives so much harder.

And yet, it can never be that simple. It is certainly never our own fault fault - or it is the fault of someone further down the food chain. It reminds me of the words of Perry, one of the killers of the Clutter family. "'Am I sorry? If that's what you mean - I'm not. I don't feel anything about it. I wish I did. But nothing about it bothers me a bit. Half an hour after it happened, Dick was making jokes and I was laughing at them. Maybe we're not human. I'm human enough to feel sorry for myself." Maybe that is what is most cold, the disintegration of a region and a society. In the face of the death of the plains people are looking for an answer, and they can't get their brains around the complexity and enormity of the global economy - and they can't believe that the rich of their own country would sell them down the river so shamelessly (because, well, hell, they're going to be rich themselves someday) so it's easier to blame the poorer or the darker or the more, in their mind, morally bankrupt. As my brilliant friend Sanford Zale, the Sage of Sayville, so eloquently put it - any Kansas politician who spends his time trying to shut down strip clubs while the state is dying around them should be charged with treason.