There are at least 78,000 miles of gravel roads in Kansas, about 60 percent of the state’s total road mileage. Estimates and studies can range toward 100,000 miles, numbers that may include township dirt roads or the unpaved streets in a hamlet.
The character of these roads varies widely, especially over long rural stretches ‒ the flat hard-pack along western cropland, the sand hills wash boards, the sharp rocks of the Flint Hills, the slippery curves and blind roller coasters over the northern Smoky Hills and along all, doughy windrows ‒ and dust.
After the grader has been over a rural back road, traffic returns it to the familiar contour of grooves ‒ middle, left, right. Driver-side tires on the middle track, passenger side on the right. Too far right, and the vehicle pulls onto the slippery drift of a windrow, usually at the edge of a sharp ditch.
A friend who lives in rural Wabaunsee County (154 miles of gravel, 64 miles paved) has been driving the northern Flint Hills roads for a long time. He sees this as a cultural experience. Someone’s coming toward you, and you both move your vehicles slightly to the side. You pass safely and move on.
“That’s the way it’s always worked,” he said. “I think of it like good politics. We’ve been driving with a wheel in the middle road for generations because that’s what works.
“Someone comes along, you both move over for a moment, then go back to the middle. From what I see, that’s what the governor has been trying to do ‒ work from the middle.”
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In January Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, opened her second four-year term with a commitment that rankled Republicans and frustrated some Democrats. She likes the middle road.
“That’s how I think and I recognize you have to govern from the middle,” she said. ” Look at the dysfunction in Congress, and that’s because you don’t have people who are trying to work towards the middle. I can’t see any reason I would want to change.”
Move over for a moment, allow the oncoming proposal some space, then work back to the middle.
For Kelly, a lot of traffic has approached, sometimes at high speed. Republicans dominate in Topeka and have approached her while hauling heavy loads. Much of their freight comes from out of state, cargo from feverish cause lobbies: naughty books, election fraud, public money for private schools, tax cuts for the wealthy and so on. It’s all trucked in, usually after dark. The mission is to convince constituents that they had ordered the goods.
This is hard to believe. Most people trust their schools and teachers, their librarians, their government managers. The list of true concerns remains basic: taxes, roads, schools, health care and the weather. That, and the football team this fall.
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Kansans generally have good intentions. They elect one of their own to take their concerns to the legislature, but in no time a Statehouse brawl has broken out over signage on bathroom doors, or yesterday’s history lesson.
In Topeka, minds get disabled. In Topeka only one mind is important, the leader’s. He or she is someone powerful, unfamiliar or remote, one who takes orders from people up the political ladder, perhaps out-of-state. Citizen legislators who challenge or question a leader put themselves at risk. Committee chairmen have been replaced, non-conformists shunned. Resisters have been moved to barren quarters in the Capitol, then hacked in the next primary election.
The legislator becomes guarded, scans the political road and awaits instructions. There are only two grooves, not three. No one dares to move over or make way. Few if any risk putting their own talent into the process. The inclination to share a mission and to compromise is stuffed away.
My friend from Wabaunsee says this is a dangerous way to travel.
“You move over, give some room, let the road work,” he says. “If you don’t, if you try to play chicken, you’re likely to wind up in the ditch ‒ wrong side up.”
