This essay is about the man who works at a feed store in eastern Kansas. It comes to me from a woman who was born in Olomouc in the Czech Republic. Since her birth, she has migrated first to England and then to New York. So you see, there are international implications to this simple essay.
As you can understand, I have to get into the act here. In July of 1951, my employer, the AT&T Company, decided to offer me a promotion. The catch was that it would require me to move from St. Louis, my home, to Kansas City. I argued very slightly with the vice president, who offered me the job, but in the end I took the position. But if my memory is anywhere near accurate, I believe the pay at the new position was $450 per month. That is not a princely sum, but in 1951 it was adequate.
I went to a bank which was patronized by my employer and asked for a loan. It seems to me that everybody who worked at the bank had the title of vice president. In my case, this vice president looked at my earnings and said that he would reluctantly grant me a mortgage. And so it was that I bought my first house in a town called Prairie Village, Kansas. The name of the town is not as formidable as it may seem in that it was only about eight miles from my home to my office in Kansas City. However, the word prairie in the title of my new home was quite accurate. My new home was located on what had been a prairie before.
When the residents began to move into this new neighborhood, there were a few inconveniences. Actually, there were no deli’s, no drug stores, and no A&P Markets, but there was a feed store. For those of you who are not familiar with feed stores, they sell feed for animals such as horses and dogs. When I moved into that house, I did not have a horse. But there was a feed store which offered its services to those who needed feed for cattle and dogs.
I lived in the Prairie Village home for two years, for which I paid $15,000. When I sold it two years later, I was lucky to get $15,000 in spite of all the improvements I had made. But that is the way of corporate life in a large company such as AT&T.
Now we shift to the person who told me this story. Her ancestral home is in the town of Olomouc, which is in the Czech Republic. She migrated first to England and then to the United States. The lady who told me this story lost her father in the Holocaust that Adolph Hitler and the Nazis inflicted upon the world and it came to be called World War II.
So as an essay writer, it seemed to me that this incident involving the feed store clerk had an element that must be remembered. This incident did not take place in my former home of Prairie Village. It took place in a town very near Prairie Village, Kansas. The man in question at the feed store was apparently an employee. He was not the owner of the feed store. For purposes of reference, he was indeed a black man. For better or worse, he was the fellow, as many black men were, who did the heavy lifting. And in a feed store, there was plenty of heavy lifting to do.
As you might imagine, this gentleman at the feed store followed the election of President Barack Obama. When it came time for Mr. Obama to start his second term in office, the man at the feed store thought it should be recognized. And as a Democrat who knows a little bit about life in eastern Kansas, I think so too.
As the time drew near for Mr. Obama’s inauguration, the man at the feed store did some inquiries, asking if there were any plans for flags on buildings to commemorate the second term of Mr. Obama.
Now the fact of the matter is that Kansas is a rock-ribbed Republican state and is well on its way toward becoming prehistoric. The governor of Kansas is Sam Brownback who used to be a senator. For example, when it comes to abortions, Sam Brownback and the Republican administration are in the vanguard to stamp out any hint of abortions. It is the intention of the Republican Party under Sam Brownback to take Kansas backwards in time. Curiously, when I lived in Kansas I did not realize that there was a propensity for going backwards as we progressed. Remember, this is the state that had a doctor who performed abortions murdered.
Well, to get back to the story, the man at the feed store found that there was no enthusiasm for decorating the buildings in a town in eastern Kansas. So this clerk at the feed store who does the heavy lifting proceeded to buy American flags that he attached to telephone poles. Who can say anything negative about the American flag? But as inauguration day approached on Monday of last week at the feed store, he placed the flags on the telephone poles in this small town in eastern Kansas.
Now if I had returned to this small town in Kansas, I would feel obliged to ask what we were celebrating. Now remember, this is rock-ribbed Republican territory. If I were told that the flags were to celebrate the second inauguration of Barack Obama, I would be thrilled and excited. In this backward-looking section of the United States, it is a phenomenon of the greatest importance to recognize the second inauguration of a Democratic president. And to make matters a bit more poignant, he is also a black man, as is the case with the clerk at the feed store.
I am certain that the town fathers of this small town in eastern Kansas would be aghast to be asked to pay for the flags. So the man at the feed store paid for them himself. And if the town looked more festive on that January day, it must be attributed to the efforts of the man at the feed store.
This is a very small incident in the affairs of the United States of America. But coming as it was at the inauguration of a black man as president, the efforts by the man at the feed store take on greater significance. For myself, I am more than happy that the man at the feed store provided the flags to decorate the town. If I knew him, I would offer to pay for the cost of the flags that he used to decorate the town. While I cannot pay for the flags, I will tell him through the grapevine that I need to write this essay so that his efforts should not go unrecognized. If I ever run across this fellow at the feed store, I will make sure as an old Democrat and as a member of the American Army to hug him vigorously.
So that is the story of the man at the feed store. It gives me great pride as an essayist to recognize someone who takes the bull by the horns and does something. Mr. Obama will not be eligible to be inaugurated anymore. But I am certain that the man at the feed store will find other events that need to be celebrated. And he should know that there are people in far off New Jersey who applaud his efforts. So it is that this essayist says to the man at the feed store, “Go get ‘em.”
E. E. CARR
January 30, 2013
Essay 735
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Kevin’s commentary: This essay made me smile more than any has for a few weeks. I particularly liked “is well on its way toward becoming prehistoric” as a turn of phrase. I think the main evidence for this claim is that a town there had feed stores but did not have a deli, which is to say that in that town it was easier to get animal feed than it was to get a sandwich. This is roughly how things were long long ago.
Now the obvious question is how Pop came to be acquainted with this Czech woman — hopefully we can get an answer to that soon.
Also, this essay reminds me of just how crazy inflation is. Right now I have to pay about $925 each month to rent a single room in the house of a bitter Chinese man who refuses to turn the heat on in February. It strikes me as very odd that were he to make the same figure today, 1951-Pop would have had to work two full months and spend money on nothing else, just for that privilege.