Sweet Essence of Kansas City

From What Do You Say to That?” by Walt Bodine
Westport Publishers, 1988

In my WHB days, I used to leave the office building in the very heart of downtown at one or one-thirty in the morning. Walking to the car, I could hear the ceaseless rumbling sound that never ends in cities. I would pass by the doors of several noisy bars where the denizens would be drinking up before closing hour. Now and then I would encounter a down-and-outer for whom all reality had narrowed down to the need for one more drink. And, in the midst of all that urbanness, that smell of hay would waft down the canyons of downtown, and I would be reminded again of nature.

Here in the city where what we do is mostly consume, I feel refreshed to reflect that out there, beyond the buildings, nature is in charge of one continuous act of creation. Men and women in these buildings sometimes have the nerve to speak of their own creativity — when all they have produced is one more way to fill a sheet of paper or to dazzle the inhabitants of a conference room.

Out there in the endless miles of growing things, out there where no public relations can tout it, no spotlight can illuminate it, out there where at last the roar of the city dies out and the city dweller is shocked at the majesty of silence on a starry night, out there, you can conceive of the fact that as the good earth gives rise to plants, the city was but one more of its creations. The earth was here before the first city. If one day our towers stand as empty relics and even if the earth has been scourged by fire, somewhere on this wonderful land — somewhere — a tiny plant will begin to push up through the crusts of the surface. And if nature now and then has to do it all over for us, she always hopes that maybe this time we will catch on.
(Page 18-19)