This Man is Homesick
Former Citizen of Crawford County Writes from Kansas
Winfield, Kan, July 6, 1906, Editor Herald:
Having been in Kansas several months and through our tried and true friend, The Hutsonville Herald, we hear from our old home. I will try to tell you of our 4th of July dinner and Winfield.
Strangers in a strange land we naturally expected to spend the 4th of July quietly at home with fried chicken and a few extras for dinner in honor of our Nation's birthday. But a neighbor, who recently came from Illinois, suggested that we eat our dinner picnic style all by ourselves in a wood near by.
We proceeded to prepare well filled baskets pretty much the same as all 4th of July picnic baskets with the exceptional addition of a baked pigeon pie. We also felt a little secret satisfaction in the belief that all Illinois people could not boast of fried chicken and roasting ears for their 4th of July dinner. We left the cobs at home, 'tis true, but the corn was a product of our garden this summer just the same. The woods is real close by, and the corn and pigeion pie was still warm when we ate our dinner. We invited another neighbor who was temporarily a widower, with no prospects of a 4th of July dinner or company in view, and from all appearances he enjoyed pigeon pie and a picnic with Illinois people as much as if he had grown there too.
The place we chose was an ideal one and is what I call Winfield's beauty spot. It is a narrow strip of woods skirting Timber creek and is known as Highland Park but is private. It was formerly used as a beer garden before Carrie Nation got busy with her hatchet in Kansas and put the lid on.
As a matter of course we are all very little short of being homesick, but thanks to our energetic dispositions and not to our pleasant surroundings, we managed to get through the day with a fairly light heart and a hope that our Nation's next birthday would find us in our native land.
Having told you of our 4th of July dinner in Winfield, Kas., it will be in order to give a description of the town as it looks in the eyes of an Illinoisan. While I have never fell in love with Kansas, I will admit this is the best part of the state and has some good qualities as well as poor. I will describe it for the benefit of those who have never had the opportunity of visiting it or the misfortune of seeking it as a place of abode in place of an Illinois home.
Winfield is the county seat of Cowley county and lies in the valley of the Walnut river. I have never learned the exact population but have been told there were 9,999 souls exclusive of the town politician who is not popularly believed to possess a soul. This is a college town and has some beautiful dwellings and business blocks, a great many churches, the state imbecile school, and three hospitals. The soil here in the valley is almost entirely without rock and is very rich and productive and is commonly called the "Tropic of Kar corn."
The most interesting place is Sunset Rock or Observatory Hill. It is situated on the east side of the city at the foot of 9th Ave. We watched the sun go down, from the top of the observatory, in the pink and gray magnificence of a clear spring evening. The Sunset Rock is a geological upheaval, like an immence fortification guarding the town along the eastern side. It has a very steep slope on either side and on the top of this rock some public benefactor erected an observatory. It stands high and lonely on the rock, a place never to be forgotten and to be woven into history when Winfield shall have her written.
Kansas may be alright for people who have always lived here but when people come from Illinois, God's own country, this country seems to be the uttermost part of the earth.
Yours truly,
Robert Bailiff
"Hutsonville Herald", Illinois, 13 July 1906
