Hays has it!

I've been driving to Hays, Kansas for as long as I can remember. Literally, some of my earliest memories are of the long drive from Minnesota down to the All Star City and hanging out in the small town where Mom and Dad grew up. The drive was barely tolerable with my older sister, younger brother, and me all crammed into the back of whatever station wagon or minivan Mom was currently driving.

Funny thing about this drive is that twenty years later, it's still barely tolerable with the entire fam in such a small space for such a long amount of time.

It's the little stuff that really starts to get to you. The seat in front of you being just a little bit too far back and a little bit too reclined. The garbage piling around you in the back. The old guy in the huge Ford Expedition who swerved around you a few times, refused to let you pass him, and for twenty miles, tried to engage you in serious road rage after his wife flipped you the bird out the side window. Okay, so that last one was just today. But really, patience runs thin. I believe at one point today I sighed and said with utmost exasperation, "God, Cyndy, I can hear you BREATHING!"

What I love about the drive, though, is that about forty fives miles outside the city, the signs start appearing. There are the regular advertisements and billboards for the goods and services that Hays has to offer, but there's also the more general signs about the all-around greatness of the city. It's like an entire PR campaign to get people to love Hays. I think my favorite are the big ones that just say: "Hays Has It!"

And boy does it ever.

It has:

• The Historic Sternburg Museum, home of the Incredible Shrunken Head
• Fort Hays State University, alma mater of any good Hays kid (Dad included)
• 103 degree heat
• Statues of the Virgin Mary in almost every yard
• penned up buffalo
• Taco Grande, best tacos in the nation
• The Mall. The one and only.
• two movie theaters
• as many bars as there are churches

And the more personal:

• Grandma and Grandpa's house: both sets. Dad's dad is now buried here.
• "The Farm" (once the home of Great Uncle Jake, Great Uncle Harry, and Great Aunt Cilla, two brothers and a sister who lived on the farm together for most of their lives after Harry and Jake returned from World War II, the Battle of the Bulge, and laying railroad track)
• Home of Great Aunt Alice and her husband John Kundred, who scared us as children by asking us how to spell words like "Mississippi" and "Massachusetts" and telling us that we cried purple tears. They also had a yellow canary named Charlie that had a bad habit of flying into the freezer when the door was open, not to be discovered until long after rigor mortis had set in. I think they've had four or five birds by now, all named Charlie.
• A nightly whiskey seven with Grandma and Grandpa.

Yes, Hays most definitely has it. And it's pretty certain that I'll have about all I can take by the time we leave Thursday afternoon.

It undeniably has its charm, though. I never really lived here, but it's funny how you can feel tied to a place--how sometimes despite the fact that the only real connection you have with a place is through the histories, lives and memories of others, it can still feel a little bit like home.