Custer, the Gilded Age, and Trains

I recently read Terry Mort’s Thieves Road: The Black Hills Betrayal and Custer’s Path to the Little Big Horn. This text investigated the effects of the American Gilded Age on Custer’s world, which made it different from many that explore this historical icon. The research focused heavily on post-Civil War American finance rather than on Custer’s personality or that of his fellow officers. Detailed information about the transcontinental railroad and resulting American progress brought to life how this era influenced the development of the West, including Kansas.

I told a friend I’d read this book and mentioned the term Gilded Age. She promptly asked what that term meant. It came to life via Mark Twain, the famed author who published a satire about the period following 1870 to the new century. His book The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today made fun of social issues of the time. Poking the bear as only he could, Twain prodded American sensibilities for sugarcoating serious concerns with a thin gold covering.

More than a century and a half has passed since those days so we must recollect that while America emerged reunited after the Civil War, it was a country with enormous debt. The nation’s finances were tied to the gold standard so a wobbly economy put a hold a most financial and business advancement. Shrewd businessmen with names such as Gould, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Mellon, Stanford, and Vanderbilt are still recognizable today. These enterprising fellows put the gilded in the term by investing heavily in railroads through selling stock to desperate job seekers whose lives depended on Western opportunities.

The impoverished government couldn’t aid the railroads financially, but it had an enormous amount of land to give companies selling bonds to fund track building across a vast continent. That incentive allowed entrepreneurs to either give or sell cheap town lots and farmland to those willing to migrate to the region. Early Kansas benefitted due to these booster promises. Many towns across our state began as barren railroad property, which soon filled with folks expecting to produce goods they could ship East on the same trains that delivered them to their new address.

Towns such as Dodge, Hays, Ellis, Wakeeney, Hill City, Logan, Phillipsburg, and Norton are direct results of Eastern robber barons’ dreams. One of those men left his mark in several places in Kansas. Jay Gould, a New York speculator tied to Boss Tweed of the famous Tammany Hall scandal, took control of the Union Pacific Railroad during the 1873 financial crisis. Making informed and competitive decisions, Gould revamped a failing system that then succeeded because of shipments to and from recently recruited farmers and ranchers.

Because of his impact on the region, Harlan, Kansas, in the North Central part of our state named a then prestigious university in that community Gould College. Today, you can find a plaque that marks this institution’s former locale. In Ellis, Kansas, several local property owners examined their real estate abstracts to find Gould’s signature as the first to transfer railroad property to private possession.

This book about how the railroad and the Gilded Age cost the Sioux the Black Hills and, subsequently, Custer his life aided my understanding of how my ancestors became part of the rush to develop communities across Kansas. Every time I cross metal rails now, I’ll thank those men who were looking out for their own bank accounts and not my relatives’. Their desire to create wealth offered my ancestors an incentive to leave Canada, England, and Russia for these Great Plains.

Masochistic Flowers

Take a close look at a rose bush, clematis vine, or slender columbine stalk. You’ll see perfectly formed leaves that bugs can chew to look like fishnet stockings in a feeding or two and fragile blooms that appear as if they’d unravel at the seams during high winds. Anything this delicate looking ought to frighten new gardeners. Not so. My mom has tested these three species and discovered they like abuse. In fact, they thrive on it.

For the last five decades, Mom has grown lovely roses in yards in two states. Her plants are always healthy and bloom profusely through the summer. Last year, her plants continued to produce huge, scented blossoms into mid-November when a visit from Jack Frost nipped them and ended the display. In this case, she feeds the plants regularly. Then in late February or early March, she grabs her clippers and takes out any stored up winter aggressions on those thorny stems. When she’s done, stubs of the former plant remain. By May, it’s clear the roots enjoyed this shearing as they produce hordes of new shoots that soon sport lovely red, white, and pink flowers she can enjoy on the plant or cut to put in a vase to perfume her house.

Mom’s green thumb includes more than roses. This last summer, Mom’s showy clematis overtook much of her front flowerbed draping itself over surrounding plants. Unsure of how to handle this issue, last fall she grabbed her shears again and took after those dry stems, cutting the vine back like a pedicurist trimming too-long toenails. All winter long, she worried that she might have gotten carried away and killed her favorite spring harbinger. Imagine her delight when she saw new growth earlier this year. Triple that emotion to describe how she reacted when she came home from a short trip to find over fifty saucer-sized blooms climbing her trellis.

Not surprisingly, cutting back that aggressive clematis also benefitted the yellow columbine growing in the area in front of Mom’s treasured vine. Last year her Colorado flowers were two feet tall. This year, they’re at least six inches to a foot higher. And she didn’t fertilize them. This growth is the result of receiving more sun along with abundant spring rains. You’d think towering, long stemmed blooms would succumb to some of the “breezes” we’ve enjoyed lately. Not these guys. We had a doozy of storm the other night and by sunrise, those yellow flower stood at attention to welcome those bright rays.

I tend to garden cautiously, but after seeing the results my mom gets by energetically trimming her plants and then not worrying about what the weather does to them, I’m going to change my ways. I’ve concluded that plants are like feet and hands. Anyone watching a pedicure or manicure for the first time would swear the technician was abusing the client during the process of softening and pushing back cuticles and dealing with calluses. In reality, anyone who’s enjoyed such services knows the treatment feels great, and like my mom’s treatment of her garden, produces lovely results.

Orioles—Guest or Pest

For those who have computers and are on Facebook, join local photography sites to see what’s going on around our state. You won’t be sorry. Right now, a slew of oriole pictures--Baltimore, Bullock, and orchard-- fill scroll bars daily. Based on the shots I’m seeing, Kansas is currently inundated with these pretty birds. I love the digital captures of these saucy black and orange avians as well as stories about them that photographers post.

If you aren’t a birder or someone who loves one of these obsessed individuals, you may not have a clue about these colorful birds other than the fact you saw a streak of orange and black flit through nearby trees. In addition to their eye-catching plumage, they build quaint nests that look like small brown bags. While harder to see when trees leaf out, once foliage drops in the fall, you’ll see these burlap sack shapes dangling from bare branches. As a child, I love spotting an oriole nest and imagining what it would be like to begin life swaying in Kansas breezes.

These distinctly marked creatures migrate to Kansas each spring to feast on insect, nectar, and fruit as well as raise their young. One of the reasons photography and birding sites fill with these creatures’ likenesses is that May is their peak nest building time. They’ve completed long journeys from as far away as South America, and now they’re ready to weave those clever nurseries for their young.

The Baltimore sub-species is the most brightly colored with the male’s deep orange contrasting sharply against black feathers. The Bullock tends to a more yellow hue while the orchard is a russet tinge that camouflages more easily than its vivid kin. Based on the pictures posted online, these are the common Kansas visitors. Residents of Southern states claim a few more varieties for bird watchers to add to life lists.

In addition to being lovely to look at, orioles sing beautifully as well. Because they are so attractive and their songs brighten humans’ lives, many folks invite these birds to their yards. Nailing or propping half an orange in a nearby tree is a good way to lure one onto the premises. They are also fond of grape jelly served up in a fancy store-bought feeder or in less stylish jar lids nailed to a board. Based on cyberspace anecdotes, these feathered friends keep homeowners running to the grocery store to buy more of this sweet stuff. One birder in an oriole-dense community in Eastern Kansas reported that their local Aldi’s recently ran out of grape jelly. Once the store got a new shipment, the jars flew off the shelves into the hands of oriole buffs.

Buying scads of Welches is one thing, but sacrificing fresh fruit to this creature is another. A friend has a small orchard, and he’s not nearly as fond of orioles as these people putting pictures online. He’s battled aptly named orchard orioles for several years as they peck damaging holes in his ripening peaches. I have to confess that would frustrate me too. Their brilliant coloration and their lilting songs wouldn’t make up for the ruined hopes for luscious peach pies and cobblers I had as I watched blossoms open each spring.

Like all things on our blue planet, orioles are good and bad. Enjoy their coloring and their song, but protect your fruit trees from them. More than anything, sign up for some photo pages so you can enjoy their visits in other people’s yards.