My Dad told me he will not have to read the “National Geographic Magazine” cover story in the May 2004 edition.  He already understands what is happening in America’s Great High Plains.  He recently got a report stating that since the 2000 census, the population of the nine counties of Northwestern Kansas where he lives has declined by 2,000 people. 

“People are moving out or dying off,” Dad said of his beloved Great Plains.  One of the maps in the National Geographic piece shows the population decrease by county from 1990 to 2000 starting from West Texas moving to the Panhandle of Oklahoma, up through western Kansas, on up through the Nebraska sand hills and continuing to the Canadian border.

The story by John Mitchell says, “Between 1909 and 1928, farmers flocked to the region and broke 32 million acres of sod.  Increasing mechanization and farm consolidation have driven people off the rural Plains ever since.  Though cities have grown and prospered, the farm population is less than an eighth what is was in 1930.”

Talking with my mom about the piece featuring the High Plains, I said, “Mom, the story talks about Lebanon, Kansas, the geographical center of the United States.  That’s just a few miles from Smith Center where you were born.”

“I wasn’t born in Smith Center.  I was born in Yates Center.  That’s in Southeastern Kansas,” she said.  I always assumed her birthplace was Smith Center.

Mom knew her birth mother but never her biological father.  “My dad and Uncle Bill drove a 1931 Model A from Dresden to Yates Center and picked me up when I was a few days old,” she said.  “Can you believe it?  Can you imagine two Northwestern Kansas dirt farmers taking a week-old baby on a 350-mile trip in 1933?  That was a big deal.  My mom never told me why she didn’t come, too.”

            Mom’s parents were childless, and they adopted my mother when they were each 33 years old.  My Grandpa and Grandma raised my Mom as an only child on a small wheat-farm near Dresden, Kansas.  My dad’s parents were tenant farmers four miles east of where my mother was raised, but Dad and Mom never met until she was out of high school.

            Dad and Mom had five children.  All of us have left Northwestern Kansas.  That is happening throughout the High Plains, the National Geographic piece explains.  In fact, most of my brothers and sisters migrated to cities for their work. “Scores of remote rural counties have hemorrhaged population at rates of 10 to 20 percent over past decades,” writes National Geographic writer John Mitchell.  “In some communities the median age of residents is already creeping into the 60s.”

            The 350-mile trip in a Model A in 1933 didn’t keep my mom from growing to be five-foot-eight inches tall with a large frame, an outgoing personality, a strong work ethic and a fear of the Lord.  Even today, mom’s home in Colby, Kansas, is full of day-care children and her own great-grandchild.

            Dad didn’t stray either.  He spent 45 years in management with the same High Plains public utility company, and he’d still be there if they would have let him.  Mom wanted Dad to move to Arizona in the winters, but they never have.  The desolate High Plains has it tentacles tightly encased around my Dad, and he shows no signs of moving anywhere or quitting anything.  For the past 10 years he’s worked full-time for a big construction company, helped plant a church, led a weekly Bible study in his home and served on the city council.

            I asked him the other day when he plans to retire.  “When I’m ready to retire, I’ll tell you.” 

            “But Dad, you’re 76 years old,” I countered.  “I worry about you.”

            “Listen son, there are a lot of old guys out here in their upper 80s who are still working.  Anymore questions?”  Nope.

            The National Geographic story ends with a section saying that about 15 years ago some demographers thought the information age and suburban sprawl would bring reverse migration to the rural communities of the High Plains.  So far, that predicament has not come true.

            Does that deter my Dad?  Are you kidding?  “People will move back here.  They’ll get tired of living in the cities.  They’ll come and create jobs.  Until then, Mom and I will keep making the most of our time, so that we may grow in wisdom.”