Beats a Chainsaw

The rancher across the road from us is doing some fence maintenance. He's taking over the operation of his parent's cattle ranch and the fences haven't been maintained properly for several years. One particular stretch, probably a half mile, is overgrown with hedge trees (osage orange) to the point where you can't even get to the fence posts sufficiently to fix the barbed wire. In my younger days this would just mean breaking out the chainsaw and most of the family members and clearing out trees, one at a time. It takes weeks. Not today (if you have the money).

One day a bulldozer and an excavator show up. In the course of about three days the half mile of osage orange trees has been taken out and stacked for burn. They haven't rebuilt the fence row yet, but the worst is over, and it looks sharp. They've already reworked the fence along the road with nice 5-strand tight barbed wire. He knows how to do it right.

When the tree-clearing was finished the dozer was taken to its next job, but the excavator is still there. Last night was a warm night (for March) and I had some time after supper to walk over and sketch this beast.

March Sketch Crawl

Today was sketch crawl time for Lawrence Urban Sketcher. We visited the KU Spencer Museum of Art. My first visit. We had a good showing of sketchers and met in the Student Union for a little food and talk afterwards.

This sketch doesn't really exemplify a typical art exhibit. I was drawn to this exhibit, though. The heart wants what the heart wants. The artist made up a story about an escaped (stolen) lab animal from KU. He had the office desk of the lab researcher, letters explaining the escape, lab tools everywhere, and then you notice an incubator with a weird looking animal in a glass globe. Then you notice the lungs expand as it breaths! And it's all made up. I walked around to all the other arts exhibits but came back here to sketch. Due to typical art museum paranoia we were told to use pencils only. I used my fountain pen. I sure love my flex nib.

The Urban Sketcher scene around here is very active and in a state of flux. The longest-running group in the area is organized by Kate Johnson of Excelsior Springs (Kansas City). As that group is fading away, another unofficial group started in Lawrence, headed by Gail, which I've been attending. Then an official Lawrence Urban Sketcher groups started in Lawrence last year. Our two groups have been meeting together lately. Then last week was the kickoff sketch crawl for the newly-created Kansas City Urban Sketchers group.  It's a busy time for urban sketchers! I think they're onto something.

Out With The Old

I was driving near downtown Topeka this week and noticed an old building being demolished. Not just any building. It was the Morrell Meat Packing Plant. My dad worked here right out of high school. This was the second largest employer in Topeka, with over 1200 employees. Then the flood of 1951! This was a big event in our local history. This building is virtually on the banks of the Kansas River and was flooded out. After the flood waters receeded, the building was declared unfit for production of food products, or at least it would not be cost effective to rebuild the building to where it could be used again my Morrell. So it has stood empty since then. That's 75 years. Not that people haven't tried to refurbish the building for other uses. However, no pipe dreams came to fruition. This building was erected in 1940, so it only saw 11 years of service.

Recent work to rehabilitate the levees and flood walls along the Kansas River have created the idea to just tear it down. A second Morrell building has already been removed.

Flooding of the Kansas River has happened a few times in Topeka history. It's part of who we are. The '51 flood caused many changes in the area, and in Kansas. It was the pivotal event that spawned the creation of several US Corps of Engineers flood control projects (lakes) in eastern Kansas. It also changed my history. If it weren't for the '51 flood, I would be the son of a butcher. Dad really liked the vocation of meat butcher. Not so much the big slaughterhouse experience, but after you pay your dues, you can hire into a grocery store as the house butcher, which he said would be great. Good skills, good food, good pay. He was set. The flood put him out of work, and after service in the Army he became a printing pressman. He loved that job, too. But I always remembered Dad when I saw the Morrell building. Now one more thing is gone to remind me of him. Now I have this sketch, though.

I decided to spend Saturday morning sketching the demolition work while there was enough structure to see what is used to be. While sketching, I had to good fortune to meet Danny and his grandson. They parked near us and had also come down to watch the action. The grandson just walked up and asked what I was doing. Nice kid. Then, after his curiosity was satisfied, he played with some toy cars he brought. Danny worked just across the street from my Dad and we're both grandpas raised in the area, we chatted a while. Danny and I chatted as they started to use the wrecking ball. We had a front row seat, right behind their fencing. Once in a while the vibrations would come through the ground. Impressive. So, it was a nice outing all the way around.