When I first told my friends and family that I was spontaneously moving to a rural Kansas town of 5,000 people, many joked about tornadoes. “ Make sure you get in a cellar in time,” they warned, or suggested I get a dog named Toto.
Once they learned that the In Cold Blood murders happened just a short drive away in Holcomb, the comments ranged from literary enthusiasm to genuine concern. Right before I left, a friend kindly requested: “Make sure you get some good country gossip from the grandmas.”
My previous conception of Kansas was a state of dying towns, endless farms, and an aging population. From the sky, the Great Plains looked like a horrifying expanse of flatness, where irrigation machines spray crops in unnaturally symmetrical circles across repeated grids.
Although I have barely been here a week, my first impression is the immense warmth of the people. Whether someone offers to be my adoptive grandma and buy me lunch, or I’m suddenly shaking hands with the sheriff and mayor, I have felt deeply welcomed. I greet community members who stop by with tips or just to chat while working in an office filled with throwback black-and-white photographs and archives from decades of local reporting.
Don’t tell my team, but I had no idea I was going to be managing editor. The job listing read “reporter and editor,” and I thought it would be a modest way to experience small-town life in the Breadbasket of America. Instead, I have suddenly been learning how to coordinate sales, legals, and a good chunk of the paper’s written content. Thankfully, I have the help of a dedicated team: Ervey in sales, Elizabeth in distribution, Tina in design, Carrie in bookkeeping, ReDonn in publishing, and part-time writers like Soila and Tyler. Their eagerness to guide me, and share local history you can’t find on Google, has meant a lot.
I also didn’t realize I was taking over for Nancy. Attending her going-away event and hearing heartfelt speeches about her impact on the community made me look at myself, a 22-year-old fresh graduate from suburban Pennsylvania, and realize I had massive shoes to fill. I am doing my best to embrace this responsibility and bring a fresh lens to a town I’ve already come to appreciate.
The landscape itself is more compelling than the view from an airplane suggests. While Kansas is still as flat as cardboard, there is a striking simplicity here compared to the East Coast. Driving down endless gravel roads, I pass oil pumps nodding back and forth, grain elevators rising like cathedrals, and power lines slanting like giant crosses. Passing trucks sway my car in their wake, and wild turkeys trot across the road before I can make them into my next Thanksgiving meal.
Every so often, an overwhelming stench drifts from the feedlots where thousands of cattle are housed beside silage pits. In the distance, highway signs point to towns a hundred miles away, and windmills spin like giant daisies. I cross railroad tracks that trace the old Santa Fe Trail, carrying freight and dreams across the plains, the passing train whistles even interrupting my work at the office.
Driving through the open spaces of Grant County forces you to sit with yourself. The vast expanse makes me reflect on the industries and people that keep the country’s heartbeat steady. The other evening, I drove west from Garden City under a full moon. Blinking radio towers, glints from road signs, and distant lightning lit up the sky. I was so entranced I almost lost track of the falling darkness until a semi-truck flashed its headlights at me. Otherwise, my only company out there was the moths squashing into my high beams.
Despite the closest major airport being five hours away in Denver, Colorado, I’ve been surprised by the town’s energy and accessibility. From family-owned shops and the farmers market, to my landlord offering to fix my dryer and a neighbor lending me tools, people have gone out of their way to make me feel at home.
Naturally, there has been some culture shock: the sheer density of different church denominations and being told “I don’t know how you can survive here without God,” learning the phrase “fixin’ to,” seeing how many people my age are already married, the prevalence of pickup trucks, and the vibrant Spanish-speaking community and Latin American businesses.
While city papers often focus on policy and breaking news, small-town journalism captures the intimacy of community life. Reporting here in Ulysses provides direct access to the heartbeat of the country, from local industries and schools, to the chamber of commerce and law enforcement. However long I stay in Ulysses, I hope to use this experience to become an active, advocating citizen while modernizing the paper for how younger generations consume news.
The newspaper industry faces real challenges, with many rural papers closing. Here in our office, it looks like Ervey and I will likely manage day-to-day operations on our own, even though Grant County was once home to several competing newspapers. Stepping into a full-time role serving and informing this community is daunting, and I have a lot to learn. (If you’d ever like to share a story, or even invite me to a garden party, I can learn that way, too.)
As a ‘Gen Z,’ global connectivity and individual self-expression shape my perspective. It might be young idealism, but I want to help this paper carry on by also reaching younger generations through ideas like social media, street sales, merchandise, and student internships. (If you or anyone you know is interested in having a role in the paper, let me know!)
So, why “Isabelle in Ruby Slippers”? Although I don’t want to reduce Kansas to The Wizard of Oz, the metaphor fits: when Dorothy taps her slippers, she travels home. In L. Frank Baum’s original book, those slippers were actually silver: an 1890s Populist metaphor for the silver standard, designed to empower working-class Americans. I like the idea of Dorothy’s slippers representing both my journey to a new place and my responsibility to give a voice to the people who make up this community.
Now, I don’t own ruby slippers. What I do have are black cowboy boots I found at a Goodwill in Phoenix, Arizona. They don’t have magical properties that I know of, but as Nancy Sinatra sang,“these boots are made for walkin’.” I hope they carry me forward the same way Dorothy’s slippers did: not back to my old home, but toward a new one.
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