A Book Review By Wilma Rife (taken from Center for Kansas Studies Fall 1994 Newsletter)
From the cover photograph showing John Houser and Clarence O. ("Red") Haywood sitting in a tree in Ford County nearly a century ago, on through letters and diary excerpts of more than a dozen teenagers who came to Kansas with their families between 1867 and 1900, "A Funnie Place, No Fences" is an authentic, revealing and highly readable history. Two immediate realizations come to the reader from these entries: the extraordinary amount of physical labor that was done by most of these young people and the degree of socializing that was--along with the work--a part of life in the "empty" heartland.
The writers were observant and explicit. Bertie Canfield, 14, writes, "It looks very funnie to us, for there is no fences, when we have come from New York State where they have the land fenced off into fields."
Jennie Eliza Milton, 15, carefully records daily mileage on the family trip by covered wagon from Storm Lake, Iowa, to Prescott, Kansas: 15 3/4 miles one day, 18 miles another, with river crossings noted, towns named, extraordinary sights remarked on, "We camped for dinner in Leavenworth. Saw a Chinaman."
Ned Beck, April 3, 1886, comments on the Kansas weather,"...land of surprises and variety of weather...The snow is 6 inches deep and still falling."
There is D. C. Grinnell's impressive litany of activities, "...raked oats...hauled 7 loads of manure and went swimming,...broke prairie,...plowed corn," and on his way to Hill's mill on the Neosho, a surprising burst of purple prose, "...the Effulgent rays of the celestial Orb of Day was hidden from my sight and darkness mantled the Lamp of heaven." Pretty high-flown rhetoric from a hauler of manure!
There are frequent accounts of church going, family and neighbor visits, even dances lasting until 4:00 a.m., alongside the somber details of sudden and early death, "Alf's little baby was buried at 3 o'clock...They buried him under the box elder bush..."
The youthful accounts are supplemented by several entries written by adults looking back on their early lives. Among them are William Allen White's memories of his El Dorado High School years.
Photographs from the Kansas Collection of the University of Kansas libraries and drawings by Sandra Jarvis add to this vivid portrayal of Kansas life in the last decades of the nineteenth century, as seen through the eyes of a few of the remarkably energetic young people who lived it and some adults who remember how it was.