The Kansas Move - Part 2
Black Dirt, Bike Skids, and Baseball Dreams
Morning in the Middle of Nowhere
I awoke to a new day with anticipation buzzing in my chest. The first thing I did was check the view out the front window of our mobile home's living room—that makeshift ballfield where those kids had been playing yesterday.
Empty.
Dad had already left for the sawmill, leaving behind only the lingering smell of coffee and the quiet hum of morning in a town so small you could hear everything and nothing at the same time. I settled into a bowl of Cap'n Crunch—my absolute favorite—while surveying our new kingdom on North 2nd Street.
Boxes were stacked everywhere like cardboard towers, and Mom was already deep into her unpacking mission, trying to transform this mobile home into something that felt like home. The familiar dance of settling in was underway, but I had my own assignment waiting outside.
The Great Ditch Project
"You need to fill in that gas line ditch," Dad had told me. Translation: welcome to Kansas, kid—time to earn your keep.
I headed outside, hoping against hope that those baseball kids might materialize, but the vacant lot remained stubbornly vacant. Walking around to the back of our mobile home, I found the evidence of my summer sentence: a ditch about 30 feet long and one backhoe bucket wide, with Dad's shovel leaning against the house like an exclamation point.
It was daunting.
But here's what I didn't expect—when I grabbed that shovel and took my first scoop, the dirt was black. Not brown like every other place we'd lived. Black as coffee grounds, rich and dark and completely different from anything I'd seen before.
I always thought dirt was brown. Apparently, Kansas had other ideas.
The Art of Procrastination
After about fifteen minutes of shoveling that black Kansas earth, I decided I needed a break. Conveniently, my bike had survived the move, so I started pedaling around on the dirt road in front of our place.
I didn't venture far—just down to the stop sign at the end of the block, then back again, discovering one of the great joys of dirt roads: you could slam on the brakes and make the most spectacular skid marks. The dust would fly up behind you like you were some kind of motorcycle daredevil instead of just a 14-year-old kid killing time.
Back and forth I went—stop sign, skid, turnaround, repeat. It wasn't exactly thrilling, but it beat shoveling black dirt under the Kansas sun.
The Moment of Truth
Eventually, even the brake-skidding entertainment wore thin, and I headed inside for my standard summer lunch: PB&J with a glass of milk. Mom was making progress with the boxes, slowly turning chaos into something resembling normal life.
I finished my sandwich and wandered back to that front window, more out of habit than hope.
And there they were.
The kids were back in the vacant lot, and this time I could see them clearly—four boys, ranging from what looked like my age down to a couple of younger ones. They had that easy way of moving that comes from knowing each other forever, the kind of friendship that develops when you're one of only a handful of kids in a town of 300.
The question was: did the new kid from out of state have the nerve to walk over there and try to join in? I had done it several times before. I grabbed my glove out of my closet and ran out the door.
Ever been the new kid trying to break into an established group? Share your stories of those nerve-wracking first encounters in the comments!