The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1921-11-17

h4nGAG
Officially, America was discovered
once, in 1892. But that should not be
regarded as final. For example, West
Broadway" by Nina Wilcox Putnam.
IS the authentic record of another dis
eovery. Nina Wilcox Putnam has
made the discovery that You can be in
the United States and not know where
you are until you go out to see. And
one OF those days when Nina went out
to see where she was, she discovered
Kansas City and Hutchinson and
especially Ellis County, Kansas.
West Broadway" is an account of
a very original set of impressions of
the United States. Add to this an
entertaining plot, Miss La Tours
ShreWd remarks on life in general and
on marriage in particular, the whole
translated into the latest Broadway
lingo, and you have a book with
chuckle hidden behind many a line.
Discovering the Real America
Strating in a motor car at ColuRn-
bus Circle, Manhattan, Miss Putnam
drove straight through to Market
street, California. Along the 1928
miles of transcontinental Main street
the breezy author of at Pays to
Smile" found many new things At
least, they were new to her, as they
will be to many of her Atlantic Coast
brethren and sisters who are just be-
ginning to learn how to examine west
And now Nina Wilcox Putnam
''just loves Kansas
"And the folksp' she exclaims
ecstatically. when 1 think of Kan
sas folks 1 want to cry and laugh,
and my heart swells all up. Because
they are so kind, so warm and friendly
so alive. And, oh, how tall! Really
it's the TRUTH saw more tall people
there than any where's in my4ife be-
fore"
Remembers Kansas City Boulevards
Being in a motor car, Nina-or,
rather we should say Marie La Tour,
because it is in this character that she
IS making her colloquial observations
remembers Kansas City largely for
its boulevards. AS she says: kan
sas City is practically all boulevards
that go around and meet themselves
and are so beautiful, not to say COM
plicated, that the visiting strangers
can literally hardly steer themselves
away" Marie declares that kansas
City is golden with its promise for
the future, startling in its present
achievement, and full, to me, of the
excitement that comes of the name it
justly gives itself-the Gateway to
the West!
Finally disentangling herself from
Kansas City's boulevard system, Miss
La Tour tremblingly invaded the
'dime novel country"
when we struck into Kansas" she
writes, ''aH I knew about it was that
we had to cross it, except for Jim's
descriptions which had left a very
definite idea still in my mind of fields
of jack rabbits who wouldn't wait to
be looked at, and a lot of perfectly
fiat space growing wheat, with -four
sacks between the rows to put it into
by modern machinery, and grain ele-
vators which l supposed would be like
hotel elevators, only Of course not
gilded, at the R. r. stations to take
the sacks up high enough to dump
4 3
that nothing, for day after day.
Kansas Isn't All Prairie
"Well, see your Oculist and then see
America, because you got to take a
film off the eyes of the mind to see it
right. The great oculist, Experience,
had shown jim and l how to look
these past few weeks, l guess, for
certainly jim didn't see Kansas right
when he saw it the first time from the
train. It goes through the fiat part
of the state, probably, because that Is
where q sensible train would. But
take free gratis, Kansas is not fiat.
"All the way from Kansas City to
Hutchinson, where we spent our first
night, we were going over hills and
across washes. AS for the wheat, 1t
was all cut and taken away some
Mace. bags and all, and nobody can
tell me those were wheat fields, any
way. They were counties, not fields
Nobody need tell me field can De
that big-no, not even after I've seen
it with my own eyes.
But through these endless
stretches of stubble, which looked like
somebody was growing the world sup
ply Of hair-brushes on EN- the roads
began to be better, giving such ease
to our motorists hearts as only