Parking Lot Pimpin'

WICHITA, Kan. – For me, an ideal Saturday would be dinner at a trendy restaurant, a drink at a fun bar, a few more at a good club and then some greasy late night snack before crashing at an ungodly hour of the morning. For some people in Wichita, it's a trip to an empty piece of pavement, where they pop their hood, roll down the window and blast some music.

I live across the street (different street than the recent armed robbery) from Kansas' largest flea market. Two days a week, this lot fills halfway with people from the surrounding towns, buying cut-rate used books, jewelry and faux-folk crafts at not terribly good prices. If a strongly-accented caller to my desk a couple weeks back is to believed, they also aren't paying sales tax.

The building's day function doesn't concern me. What does is on Friday and Saturday nights, when dozens of cars return to the lot. They are teenagers mostly, although some are well into their 20s. It starts around 10, and I've seen them there at 3 or 4, when I return from a night out. They play music, sometimes shout at each other, but mostly stand around.

Their scene – I use that term loosely – is impenetrable. Even though these people are roughly my age, they way they point their cars toward each other isn't welcoming. When I pass by them on a late night drunk run to QuikTrip, they don't beckon me over with a wave. Instead they glare, wondering why I am on their piece of pavement.

Now comes news that elsewhere in town, these armies of parking lot vagrants are causing trouble. In Wichita's northeast quarter, a group of nearly 900 people assembled in the Kenmar strip mall parking lot. At around 3 a.m., someone opened fire into the crowd, getting off nearly a dozen shots before disappearing ahead of the police. No one was arrested, and police are now patrolling the area. (One of the Eagle's reporters wrote an excellent article on the situation, which appears in today's paper.)

It should come as no surprise that 1,000 people + alcohol + gang affiliations + Late Nights sometimes equals violence. But I'm not sure whether the police should take any action about the people hanging out in the flea market parking lot. Although I don't think their gatherings seem particularly exciting or welcoming, that doesn't mean they don't have the right to do it.

So parking lot people, you're welcome to your post. Maybe someday you'll find something better to do.

Will You Buy Me a Drink, Carry Nation?

MEDICINE LODGE, Kan. -- From the top of the grassy mound, I could see no evidence of man. No power lines, no farms, no cities or even a cell phone tower. Just hundreds, maybe thousands of identical looking hills, rising a couple hundred feet off the prairie floor, a few low scrub trees and a threatening sky, sealing off Big Sky country.

I felt alone, more definitively in the wilderness than I thought possible in Kansas. It was like Wales, only more gloomy and more forlorn.

My two companions were Ryan, with a day off from his ambulance job, and Jean, in town from Quebec City. The first Quebecois to come to these hills? Maybe.

Why we climbed this hill, and not the dozens of others we passed since leaving Medicine Lodge, I'm not sure. But it wasn't until we abandoned my Toyota Corolla and hiked up the mound that I realized how far from civilization we had come. I wondered if we'd ventured too far. I suggested we head back to the car. We had no map, and it was already 5 p.m. On this gloomy day, that meant not more than two hours until nightfall.

Back at the car, I looked at the gas gauge. One-quarter full. I wondered if we'd be spending the night in these hills.

On a map, Medicine Lodge is about 75 miles from Wichita, an hour's drive. In practice it takes well over two, because of the paucity of roads in rural Kansas. We wound south, then west, then south and finally back to the east before reaching Medicine Lodge.

I wanted to see Indians. Medicine Lodge is where in 1867 20,000 Indians from five tribes signed a major peace treaty with the government, an important part of our nation's history of unequal agreements with these peoples. Coming into town, several large billboards advertised triannual campout where people would reenact the signing. Unfortunately it wasn't for a few more weeks.

The only pioneer relics in town were a few rusted out cart frames, parked next to the town's little league field.

We needed an activity for the day, so we decided to walk up and down the town's mostly vacant Main Street for ideas. At the grocery store - where the Wichita Eagle is sold, proudly displaying the lead article written by me - an older man suggested a drive in the hills. At a nearby gas station, a woman suggested the "Scenic Drive," a road that left the main highway just outside of town.

"People seem to like it," she said, and shrugged.

The road began by ascending a small hill, using wide curves to avoid steep inclines. The view slowly came into focus. We weren't terribly far from Wichita, but it seemed as if we'd crossed some invisible border that separated the High Plains from the West. The soil was now rust colored, and the grasses were spiky and short, not reaching three inches off the ground. I'd last seen this scenery in Colorado.

After six miles, the scenic road turned to dirt. On the way to Medicine Lodge we ran into a downpour so heavy that I had to pull over and wait for 15 minutes until it moderated. Water pools were scattered over the road. I have been on wet dirt roads before here in Kansas, with messy results. Egged on by my passengers, I turned on the road anyway.

The journey was wild. Wheels gripped the road one second and then slid off at a 45 degree angle the next. I had to keep the car in second gear, furiously pressing the gas petal and pulling the steering wheel to keep the car on the road.

The road went on and on and on. Ten miles became 20, then 30 and 40. We passed a couple cattle fences, but saw no one. There were no car tracks, and the route wasn't on the Kansas AAA map I had in the car.

We drove through the twilight. Right before I needed to turn on my lights, we reached the highway. I was thrilled. I wrote my name in Chinese on the inch-thick mud on the side of the car, took pictures and cleaned off my sandals. We had returned.

Note: This is the second of three entries on my recent travels outside of Wichita. They'll be posted between current musings on Kansas' largest city.

Return Diner, Return Traveler

WICHITA, Kan. – There's plenty of "Ethnic" food, as it is regrettably known around here, in Wichita, you just need to know where to look. Thanks to my friend Ryan from Hong Kong, a couple nights I ate at Café Asia.

It was my first Asian meal since, well, Asia.

The restaurant's decor and location weren't impressive: a small space hidden at the back of a strip mall in the north side of town. Inside there were tablecloths hiding tables that looked straight out of a cafeteria and a collection of Buddhas and postcards on the plain walls. At one corner there was a section of DVDs, with a sign: "Not for Sale." Children of the owner watched them when they came to the restaurant after school.

I studied the many-sectioned menu. There were "Appetizers," "Chinese Favorites," "Chef's Specialties," "Thai Items," and "Combination Plates." Each one had several dishes, with the ingredients explained in grammatically correct but sometimes confusing English ("pork with pieces of sliced vegetables cooked together").

The menu, did however give away that the restaurant was owned by a Malaysian family. The Chef's Specialties were all Malaysian, the rest was just a drab mixture of Chinese and Thai that most Asian restaurants in small-town America feel they need to offer to ensure a crowd.



I asked the waitress for Nasi Lombok, the Pad Thai of Malaysia, and something I ate quite frequently when I visited the country.

She looked surprised. "Oh, I've heard of that. Yes, yes I have had that once. We don't have that here."

I wound up getting a kind of sweet Malaysian noodle, which were pretty good, but the real point of that request an excuse to converse. I told the waitress of my travels in the country, and in turn she told her story.

She was from northern peninsular Malaysia. That's why they had Thai on the menu, because the country is quite close to the border so people knew how to make some of the dishes. She also knew some Chinese people in her hometown, so she knew something about that cuisine, too. Business in Wichita was fine, if not booming. She longed to make a return visit to her home country. She'd done it once before. Maybe next year.

On the way out the door, I said goodbye to my new Malaysian friend. She'd been very friendly, talking for nearly 20 minutes, pausing in between to help other customers.

"Wait," she said, "Take this."

She pushed a piece of paper into my hand. I opened it when I got outside. I was expecting a menu, for my return to the restaurant. Instead it was a tourist brochure, for my return to Malaysia.