Open Roads Volume 1: Coldwater, Kansas

I just started reading the nonfiction book “Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen” by Larry McMurtry. One of the premises of the book is the concept of place and how it influences our legacy and lineage. His hometown of Archer City, Texas, is a dusty little windswept town between Abilene and Wichita Falls. Ironically enough, it is also a town that I have a story about, but that’s for another time.

One of the significant places in my family tree is the semi-ghost town of Coldwater, Kansas. Located in rural Comanche County, Coldwater is about two hours west of Wichita and close to nothing else.

Despite the desolation, it has a genuine beauty. Comanche County is on the edge of the beautiful Gypsum Hills, a region of the state decorated by otherworldly outcrops of gypsum.

The town itself isn’t really much to talk about. It’s your typical rural area town that has halved in population since the 1960s and will eventually empty out completely.

But it’s important to me because it was important to my dad. My grandfather was the town physician, and my grandmother was an English teacher, real pillar of the community types.

While my dad’s graduating class was small, he was a popular guy and a good athlete, being named the homecoming king. It’s no wonder why that small town was so important to him; the rest of his life never really panned out; he’s been laid to rest in Coldwater since 2007.

Coldwater has the typical downtown style of the era with brick buildings and storefronts. The Chief theater has changed very little since the ‘60s, and still shows movies regularly.

The past two times I’ve been to Coldwater have been for funerals: 2008 for my dad’s funeral, and 2023 for his sister’s funeral. I suppose that’s appropriate for a dying town.

Will I ever go back there? Maybe, but I doubt it will be anytime soon. My mom lives in Florida, and my family is on the opposite side of the state. I have no siblings, and my dad’s remaining siblings live close to me now.

But I do have memories of Coldwater with my dad, back when he was still mobile, when he was in his element at a high school reunion. A grouchy recluse was taken back in time to his glory days and his true friends, and for those few hours, he was a different man.

It’s probably best to leave well enough alone and maintain these memories without acknowledging the reality that this town, along with those stories, is on borrowed time.