Matt Slaby, David Banks and I descended upon Lebanon, Kansas last month to document the town for 24 hours. Lebanon is a quiet place. It’s the geographic center of the United States and the perfect start to a group project that all of LUCEO will be working on. The population of the town teeters around 200 (less than my high school senior class). It’s surrounded by beautiful swaying fields of wheat and clusters of cows. Main Street has buildings that are crumbling. There’s still a beauty parlor, a bank in a trailer, an everything type of convenience and grocery store attached to a small diner, an American Legion where I photographed 9 women in their 60-80s exercising, and a gun shop.

A brochure made by the Lebanon Hub Club about Lebanon’s claim to fame as being the Center of the 48 States reads:

“The Simple Life in the Middle of the USA: Smith County offers a lifestyle rooted in raising crops, nurturing families, building community relationships, and open spaces…. Smith County offers a quiet life with beautiful sunsets in an area where neighbors know their neighbors.”

I took it for granted for most of my youth, but visiting my grandparent’s farm in rural Georgia a few times a year instilled something in me that makes me feel at home when I’m surrounded by fields. There’s something so basic and so beautiful and so simple about being surrounded by sky and rich dirt and vegetation.

You’ll hear more about the plan for the project and why we’re doing it and see an edit of our work soon on the main blog. For now, this is my take:

I’d never been to Kansas before and was completely breath-taken by the hypnotizing bright green wheat as it swayed in the wind.

People always say that Southerners are nicest. Well, forget that. I’ve spent my life in the Deep South and the people in Lebanon had them beat. Strangers will pull over to chat with you. They stand close. They’ll tell you all, if you just sit and listen. They’re happy to know someone is honored to be in their small corner of the world. They’re happy to know someone from so far cares.

The first person I met was Ava Lee Maydew. I set off on foot walking down Main Street right when I got in town (after meeting up with Slaby in his sweet convertible rental) and decided to head to the old school where I’d noticed the doors were open. Ana Lee was pulling away from the school just as I walked up; she’s maybe in her 70s, she’s in a shower cap and a red, white, and blue patterned shirt.

She rolls down her window and I tell her who I am and ask if it’s okay to go into the school. She tells me the halls are wet from a recent storm, parks, hops out in socks, puts on her damp shoes to walk toward me, grabs my hand and tells me she’s going to have to come in with me because it’s slippery and she doesn’t want me to fall. I like her right away. She calls me kid just about every other sentence and she shows me all her hard work she’s put in preparing for the upcoming school reunion. Though the school is closed now and has been for 20 years (children go to school in a neighboring town over a dozen miles away), former students return to celebrate their 70th to 80th reunions. Yes, 80th.

Ava Lee taught first grade there for 25 years and got to work with her husband, who has since passed, there. She shows me a room full of memorabilia she’s proudly gathered, including Don, a giant stuffed great dane that died in 1925. As we’re walking out and I’m asking about what might be good to shoot in the next 24 hours, she invites me to her exercise class at the American Legion early the next morning. She also gives me her address to her farm, where she’s heading to mow the lawn. She gives me a ride four blocks down the road, though I insisted I could walk.

I arrive a few minutes late to the exercise class the next morning. The 9 women, all in their 70s and 80s, gather three times a week. They sit in folding chairs and have weights on their ankles. They take turns counting out the reps. Afterwards, they all head next door for a cup of 25 cent coffee. Ana Lee says LaDow’s is the “only place you can get it in the United States for a quarter.”

Elsie used to own the store everyone’s drinking coffee in. She sold it for $1,000 to be an Over 60 (what they call the senior center) years ago. Now it’s LaDow’s.

Elsie Carper, 91, is originally from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She married a man from Lebanon and had never seen a farm. She lived a life of leisure growing up five blocks from the Atlantic. “Nobody knows how hard it was for me,” she said about relocating to Lebanon decades ago. She had to learn how to cook and farm on her own and didn’t let anyone know what a struggle it was. “I was scared stiff,” she said of starting her new life as a married woman in Kansas, but “I would have gone to Africa with him.” Her husband died in 1970.

Hearing these candid stories is what is so appealing about this project to me. The buildings are starting to crumble, women are widows, yet there are so many stories left in Lebanon to hear. It’s the very heart of our country and recording its history is so important. There used to be over 100 farmers there and now there are less than 30. There used to be a dozen stores lining Main Street, now there are a few. Who is to say what will be there in 10 years? Who is to say who will still be living there in 10 years?

I met Robert Marihugh as I tiptoed toward his backyard to photograph his girlfriend as she took down laundry as it blew on the line. He’s spent 78 years in Lebanon, he says, and then tells me he’s 78-years-old.

“I was born here. All my roots are here,” he said, with a pause, “though they’re all dying.”

The town used to have everything you needed, he said. “Two drug stores, a hardware store, a grocery store, a mens clothing store, now it’s gone. It’s a shame.”

I asked him why he thought the stores had closed and the town had compressed. “They took away our school. Television came in and you’d say, ‘Wanna go and play a game of pool?’ ‘No.’ There was no incentive for the pool hall to stay open.”

“The traffic is wonderful,” he said with a half-grin. “It’s a nice, quiet town.”

He brags about the $3 lunch across the street at LaDow’s, where I’d sat with the exercising seniors as they drank coffee hours before. He says if you leave a tip on the table at LaDow’s, they’ll run you down. The seven table restaurant in the corner of the store also lets customers keep a tab.

A huge siren goes off just feet from where we stand, it’s attached to the corner of the neighboring building and squeals for a minute straight. Robert quickly covers his ears, smiling, and tells me to do the same. I try to ask him what it’s for as it keeps whirring, he keeps smiling, waiting. After it’s done, he said there’s been many a day that he has plotted shooting down the siren. I ask what it’s for, thinking it’s possibly a warning signal, perhaps a tornado has been spotted? No, it’s to announce that it is noon.

He mutters about the housing crisis that’s been in the news the past few years. People can’t make payments on their 1.2 million dollar homes, he says, but all his property, which is a house on Main Street and a 420 acre wheat farm outside of town, is valued at $10,000.

Robert will stay there, he said. Though he’s lived all over the country, he came back to Lebanon.

“There’s nowhere else to go.”

He and his girlfriend Audrey Costa, who is a widower he met in Texas and who he doesn’t call his girlfriend (“She’s good company”), are off to Smith Center, a town a couple miles away. She has skin cancer and they’re off to see the doctor.

Next I’m off to feed calves with Cauy, 5, Colton, 6, and Adalynne, 8, and their mother Lori. We met them as they sat next to Slaby, Banks and I at lunch at LaDows, where I gobbled down a delicious plate of mashed potatoes and peas. Lori and her husband rent 1,000 acres to farm and just moved from “downtown” Lebanon out into the country.

As the day winds down and the light gets lower, I walk through the town for a third time–there’s about 6 paved streets lined with houses to wander up and down.

I strike up a conversation with Monica, who is originally from California and moved to Kansas in 2000. She now lives a street off Main and works at the Dollar General in nearby Smith Center. She has five cats and two dogs in her backyard. One cat is missing an eye, the other has fluid constantly dripping out its nose. She said she had 30 cats and five dogs at one point not long ago, couldn’t do that in California. Her two daughters, 23 and 33, live in town, as well.

She’s not too positive when she talks about Lebanon, like the older crowd I’d spoken to were. “Everybody knows everybody’s business,” she said. If you’re not someone who grew up there, or if you’re not in the older clique, you can be a bit lonely.

It’s getting dark. Banks and I meet-up, head to Red Cloud, Nebraska in our rental to meet Slaby for dinner and sleep at the Green Acres Motel.

Matt Slaby, David Banks and I descended upon Lebanon, Kansas last month to document the town for 24 hours. Lebanon is a quiet place. It's the geographic center of the United States and the perfect start to a group project that all of LUCEO will be working on. The population of the town teeters ...