-by Greg Hoots- Letter-writing has become a lost art in more ways than one. Once, the majority of Americans corresponded by mail with their relatives or to those with whom they conducted […]
Dear Rita…Letters from Max Palenske
BOOK REVIEW: “Life Lessons from My Father” Provides Guideposts for Life
by Greg Hoots Recently, a good friend of mine whom I’ve never met sent me a book from their home on the East Coast. It was a brief eighty-two pages in length […]
Michael Alley: A Quest for Freedom
-by Greg Hoots- I would like to gratefully acknowledge the contributions and assistance of Brenda Norris in researching this article. Until I became acquainted with Brenda, I had never heard the life […]
Lucille Mulhall and the Mulhall Wild West Show
-by Greg Hoots- It’s not often that a generic term’s origin which describes a person’s vocation or hobby can be traced to a single individual, but in the case of the moniker, […]
The Life and Times of Hickory Jones
-by Greg Hoots- Elmer Jones was born on January 17, 1878 in Bowling Green, Kentucky. His path to the American West is undocumented, but by 1895, the seventeen-year-old youth had arrived in […]
Steinmeyer Bros. Garage, Alma, Kansas
-by Greg Hoots- In the 1910s, a wave from the future swept across America. The automobile arrived in the cities and small towns, alike. Ten years earlier, most people had never seen […]
Phelps Oil Company, West Plains, Mo.
-by Greg Hoots- I was born at Christa Hogan Hospital in West Plains, Missouri in the middle of the 1950s. I don’t remember any of the event, although my mother had a […]
The Curious Case of Postcard Photographer, John Bowers
-by Greg Hoots- John Bowers was born in 1865 in Minnesota, the son of a farmer. In about 1879 John left Minnesota to move to Topeka, Kansas where he took residence with […]
The Peter Thoes Barn
-by Greg Hoots- Peter Thoes was born in 1821 in a small village on the river LaBelle Mosille on the western edge of Germany. After Peter’s birth, his parents, Johannes Thoes and […]
The William Horne Barn
Many of the most historically significant barns have disappeared from the Wabaunsee County landscape throughout the 20th century, leaving a remaining few relics of their heyday scattered at the sites of former […]
Flint Hills Special 