Three Tales from the Kanzany Road

Who, what, or where is 'Kanzany' ???

Vocabulary:

'Kanzany' is a word I created to combine the meaning of the 2 words 'Kansan' and 'zany'. Checking Google, there appear to be no hits except when used as a proper name some where far, far away. The accent is on the first syllable.

The Kanzany Road:

Now you'll get to peek at a few candid cases of Kanzany that were part of my trip to Topeka a few years ago.

1^st Case of Kanzany: The PJ leg of a trucker. Now 'PJ' doesn't stand for pajamas, that would have been bad enough to see a trucker in his pajamas wandering around at a truck stop. No, it stands for 'Practical Joke'. As I was passing a semi on the interstate there was an apparently amputated leg with a shoe and pants sticking out the sleeper door of the semi rig on the driver's side. A second look showed that the door was closed and the artificial lower left limb for laughs was securely held in place, and designed catch your eye. It worked, it caught my eye. I was just glad I wasn't witnessing a sloppy serial killer. Now I am not claiming that the driver was from Kansas, I just saw it in the state, out on the KS road. I later wondered how many near accidents these legs have caused. Perhaps they need border patrols for Kansas itself, for what they let in AND out of the state.

2^nd Case of Kanzany: It took place on my way back from Topeka in the little town of Iola after deciding to make a pass down through Missouri and entering the east side of Kansas. There was nothing memorably strange in the state of Missouri. Just as I was leaving the west side of Iola on highway 54 there was a cemetery and something caught my eye in the middle of it that seemed kind of out of place, even for Kansas. It was a road sign, and guess which road sign-> a 'Dead End' sign. Well, this kept me laughing for several miles. Just about the time I had finally settled down from the Dead End Placard at the Dead End Place, the final piece of Kanzany happened.

3^rd Case of Kanzany: It took place on a passageway built up across a dry lakebed. It was a straight piece of highway 54 with very wide gently sloped gravel shoulders and a guardrail way out at the edge of the gravel on both sides running all the way across the lake bed. I was following another vehicle as I approached the east side of the passageway and the driver suddenly slowed down and moved way over to the left side of the left lane. My eyes panned left following the vehicle wondering what-on-earth he was doing driving in the wrong lane and then I saw there was a 2^nd vehicle coming straight toward me in a head-on manner driving on my edge of the highway, but then a split second later I realized he was moving very slowly, had his emergency flashers going and wasn't looking my direction but off to my right. After moving into the left lane to avoid the head-on collision, my eyes were drawn back to the right again to see a 3^rd vehicle, a sedan, coming toward us way over on the guard rail, and slamming into the guardrail every once in a while sending sparks flying. Enough sparks that you could see during the day time. A Bouncing Buick as a strange sparky monorail device. So it appeared that the 2^nd vehicle was keeping tabs on the 3^rd vehicle. I anxiously waited to see who was driving the B-Buick and as the B-Buick reached me, there appeared to be a very ancient tiny person just barely able to see over the steering wheel, probably an escapee from an old folks home. Probably found a key and decided to flee. Some times I will help out with incidents, but being that far from home, that late in the day, hundreds of miles before bedtime, & my mother was expecting me for supper, I decided to leave this piece of Kanzany in the hands of Kansans. Besides, the B-Buick was going in the opposite direction, away from me. I was reminded of the movie 'The Great Escape' and the Steve McQueen motorcycle scene near the end of the movie. He is a prisoner of war escapee on a motorcycle trying to elude the Nazis. He tries to jump over the fence at the national border 'Evel Knievel' style, but just barely fails, and winds up back in the cooler with his baseball and glove.

After experiencing the zaniness, I left the state and got a beauty bonus while departing Wichita later that day. The sky was filled with pockets of pretty pink & purple puffy mammiform clouds with sharp segmentation. So what did I learn from my trip through Kansas? Never travel without a camera, preferably a movie camera, to capture the 'The Foot, The Dead, The Elderly & The Beauty' of strange places, especially Kanzany places.

Reference & Note:

Coordinates of the Iola KS "Dead End" sign:

approx 37dg 55' 20.25" N 95dg 24' 50.58" W

Note to my step-sister LA in Wichita: This journey took place while our combo parents were still living there. You should know I wouldn't pass through town without seeing you and going out for flaming Japanese food.