STORM TRACK: November 30, 1986 (Volume 10 Issue 1)
excerpts from the Wall Street Journal, March 9, 1983.
Although U.S. Highway 54, which runs nearly the length of Kansas, has been designated the Yellow Brick Road by the state legislature, it hasn't a single yellow brick! In fact, the highway's new name is one of the best-kept secrets in Kansas. Many Kansans are upset. "I've always hated people from out of state asking me if my dog is named TOTO and if I'm always dodging tornadoes", says Merle Warner, the wife of a farmer.
To try to increase tourism, the state decided to make a big to-do of the role it played in the infamous movie. In Liberal, you can visit Dorothy's House, which the Governor declared: "the Gateway to the Land of Ahs and Oz". Then you can follow the road east through a town known as the Emerald City (Wichita). Of course, no one knows where in Kansas Dorothy's home was supposed to have been.
The states endeavor has attracted more controversy than tourists. Although tourism officials have insisted that the Wizard of Oz theme will give Kansas a new and exciting image, many Kansans argue that the movie is what cursed the state in the first place with its old image of a bleak and tornado-torn wasteland. Imagine, portraying Kansas as tornado alley where nasty old women ride bicycles across the flatlands. It's as if a seaside community would call itself "The Home of Jaws", said one disgruntled resident. "Nobody wants to go on vacation in a state where they think they'll spend most of their time in a storm shelter".
The controversy over the Land of Ahs has even gone beyond the border of Kansas. Connecticut began calling itself the Land of Ahs saying "If Dorothy and her friends had come to Connecticut, they would have stayed". Before long, newspapers in Kansas and Connecticut became embroiled in a smear campaign that didn't do either state any good. The Wichita Eagle Beacon mentioned that if Dorothy had gone to Connecticut, she would have been "mugged or lost forever in rush-hour traffic", and went on to assert that Connecticut was "created solely as a divider between Massachusetts and Long Island Sound".
The Bridgeport (Conn.) Post fired back saying that the stolen slogan wouldn't have been noticed if Kansas had any tourists to keep them busy. Eventually, Connecticut agreed to stop using the slogan and the Post conceded that the Land of Ahs theme probably suited Kansas best "since the natives out there use ah so frequently: ah, yeah, there's ah lot to ah see in ah state."
Actually, there is a lot to see in Kansas. There's the worlds largest free swimming pool in Garden City, the largest man made prairie dog at Oakley, and the first U.S. flag ever made of concrete in Lucas.
The Yellow Brick road starts in Liberal. There's a house on the corner of Yellow Brick road and Pancake Blvd. It's the house where Dorothy didn't really live! On this morning, there are two visitors here to see it. Curator Ludessa Prater leads them up a walk of yellow painted bricks, past a tornado cellar, and into the quaint, four room house, where she dares you to try to find any differences between Dorothy's bedroom in the movie. The room is complete with a wicker picnic basket, shiny red slippers, and yes, TOTO, complete and stuffed resting on a shelf. How about that for starters? But what fascinates visitors is a fake window which is painted with a dark ominous tornado whipping toward the house.
Buddy Piper is the town founder and self proclaimed Wizard. Mr. Pipers mother, he calls her Aunt Em, has lived in Liberal until she entered a nursing home recently. Mr. Piper plans to transform the town of Oz into a world famous mecca for thousands of tourists who are tired of the world and want to play the parts of Dorothy, the heartless Tin Man, the cowardly Lion, or the brainless Scarecrow. The Wizard plans to build a theatre in Liberal where nightly performances of, you guessed it, "The Wizard of Oz" will be showing. Mr. Piper has a goat named TOTO and he calls his nephew "Tin Man" who is really Mr. Alger who is a potter.
Once you leave Liberal on Rt. 54, there is nothing to remind you that you are following the Yellow Brick Road. But you can stop in Greensburg (tornado hit in 1923) and pay 35 cents to climb down 109 feet into the worlds deepest hand dug well. After passing the Emerald City (Wichita) you can take a covered wagon ride in El Dorado (tornado hit in 1958) and then close in on Iola (tornado, 1919) to tour the infamous home of Frederick Funston. (Who's Frederick Funston? For those of you who forgot he was the explorer and hero of the 1901 Philippine insurrection.) Then onto Fort Scott, the site of an 1842 military post. Now, the Yellow Brick Road also begins at Fort Scott, for traffic flowing west. Town officials are considering splashing yellow paint of the first mile of Rt. 54 outside of the city.
Meanwhile, for those people concerned about the state's image as a place where people frequently get blown away, the tourism agency recently approved ABC television to film the movie "The Day After", which dramatized the dropping of a nuclear bomb near Lawrence (tornado hit in 1981). However, Miss Kruzic, the tourism director, said that the movie has caused a lot less controversy than the "Wizard of Oz". "There was an initial problem with some farmers", she concedes, "but it was cleared up after we convinced them it was okay for ABC to blow up their barns".
