Kansas Notable Books, Part Two - Encore

i'm kenny the holiday shopping season upon us how about a good book or two for the readers on your christmas was i'm j mcintyre and today on k pr for them the best new books by kansas or about kansas each year the state library of kansas flights fifteen books as himself multiple winners in the second of a two part series we'll hear from a two thousand seventeen kansas notable authors including fiction nonfiction poetry young adult literature and more it's my favorite show of the year it seems to read some good works and meet the authors if you missed last week's show part one with arthur's alex greece and dennis betts often more it's now archived at our website a pr that k u dot edu but now it's on to part two of the two thousand seventeen campers notable books jamal diller is the author of never enough flamingos the story of a mennonite family in rural kansas

this book really is about what people do when the selected choices and so early on the family is faced with some very difficult moments and the fear they're going to lose their farm and then there's another piece of precious them over the edge and it ultimately they are saved by the very wealthy church member who provides alone pulls a family from the brink literally it living in a ditch starvation and town so in the short term everybody wins because the family can stay on the farm and it stays intact any and everybody loses yet benefactor get a foothold into the family the son goes out and works for this man and gains lots of new it as hannah father feels like he no longer is a provider and it's everybody loses and what happens and throughout the book then the ss just a slow discovery that this man was not who people think he is

and so that that's why the book is he's very charismatic he is very generous his wonderful warm spirit and even the best people can have a dark side tell me about the title never enough flamingos here is a reference to the mother to mama quaye it was a flamingo in a few turkeys she she's some things that people didn't think she had intuition now just because he sees things doesn't mean you act on them that said we are shipping were coming to like and whatever it is that we do what was the spark of the impetus behind this story this story i was pregnant with the story for thirty years before i ever wrote it the cesar this story started in nineteen seventy my sister had an assignment she was a freshman college she had an assignment to interview

family members to create a family history so i tagged along with her she went to interview our grandfather the only living character we had at the time and she was asking him questions about world rwandan world were chewing what was it like in the dust bowl and the depression and all of this and essentially told us these stories and he talked about the dust clouds rolling over the hills and picking up picking up on so much stress that at night they would go to bed with a white kerchief over their mouths and wake up to the rings of of dust around or there'd be an engine test on the window sills and it was whatever the dust storms didn't take away the grasshoppers finished family was poverty stricken they lived on the average through those years and the only thing that kept them from truly starving was that they had a small herd of knockouts five or six and jam my grandpa started to hunt story where

he walked out of the pasture one night to bring in the knockouts and he didn't see them in the field and then he looked up he saw the buzzards circling and as he came over the novel there was a small herd of milk cows dead imploded by the creek they'd gotten into some local weed and they had and as he told a story forty years after it happened he began to stop the credit his hand he said i didn't know ellis can provide for my family i didn't know and to seek him beats so emotionally moved about that moment forty years after the fact he still couldn't talk about it without sobbing it wasn't just hears was sobbing i am you that was going to be a story for me that i have to write about it said that with that was really the beginning and literally for the next thirty years the story played around in my head and there are other components

beyond the book is about such what used to and those stories i mean we're women we all know women have experienced that and then to a primarily women and as i ate as i listened to those stories over the years i thought here are these farmers who had no means to provide for the family and what did they have their sons and daughters and what choices did they made so that they could keep the family farm so they didn't have to call in a ditch so that they wouldn't be destitute and i think this sort of thing happened then a lot more than people admitted you know we often just on an hour and said the story also parallels what's happening in europe at the time and so if you think about people don't wanna know what's happening to the cheesy there

because if you nero then you have to do something about his daughter's you had to do something tell me about the protagonist in your book how peter's curtis reviews called or sarcastic and i was kind of disappointed because i like that word i think she just she's pretty honest time she's self deprecating that he's self deprecating as a much better word than sarcastic but i didn't tell kirk has refused that yes as she starts at about age six seven and by the end of the trilogy because this is a trilogy are two more books that looks after the us and by the end of the trilogy she is twenty twenty when something like that and it kind of a story for her what she experiences and what she experiences with her friends who've also an experienced signing up for the arab league the netherlands and not a benevolent janice min

she's she's pretty independent and i like that she's got a lot of spunk then she's so i grew up a mennonite this is about midnight and so there's a lot of action now in care act in terms of her theology and her perspective about organized religion and at the end of the day she is she is she still embraces what she grows up where and yet there are so many ways the question is not write a lot of people look and mennonite in there and they think oh you know i don't read us or they'll say so is this typical mennonites you know sexual abuse and what i always say is it's no more and no less difficult than any other group i the way i look at this is this really it i had metaphor that the mennonites the mennonite part of the story is the print and fabric and that approach could be

catholic that we know can be catholic but it could be back to sit could be more music to be really anti social construct where there is a hierarchy and power set the pro it can be anything but the work and the weave are about power and hierarchy and anytime you have that you have people who are vulnerable and they are always children and often women to me some discussion simple classic onto really setups start talking about all women and women in the thirties and even women today and how there is a hierarchy and so many theologies and mennonites are in the thirties were very much that way today not necessarily it varies by by congregation to congregation that it's really my congregation has been a pastor and i love her dearly that even today there's tears quite are women should be silent they should be submissive certainly in the thirties there is a mindset that the dumbest me on it's

more capable than the smartest woman and then gets people into trouble to help you have burned and zippy read for me you know i come from a long line of storytellers which is that my fault the burden of this is that i can never just tell you something i have to give you the context that frequently begins with i was born in a small town in kansas just before the depression you'd be surprised how often that bit of information is important when we were children you could have asked me and my brother band but we had a separate and he's somehow stick a family curse would've told you potatoes and ham gravy for words of course likes detail substance and nuance even if it doesn't actually answer your question i on the other hand what it felt driven to tell you about the drought the price of pork the relatives he gave up and moved to california and the surprising ways you can stretch something into not much but enough to get full on i didn't remember to circle around it tell you

about the potatoes and ham gravy but then the after ailsa talk about the piano lessons i never got that always wanted and the fact that my brother was a terrible speller and for its entire life spelled women we've only been used to say when you ask cat that's me something you'd better have your knitting along i speculated about why ben doesn't talk much back in the twenties we use to bands of gypsies that would change along the back roads between here and know where we're going i think they still don't literally up north in harney county and when they realize he's never going to be able to distract people and the witty conversation they got a muffin on their doorstep thinking the minute we never even notice he was boring i should've after he gets although my mother always deny my version of things i'm not convinced of course i'm like tell me this so you'll forgive me if i tell you more than an offer about that awful day in the early thirties when the sweet home bank host which is really the start of things and that if you want answers those years here it is the

depression nearly destroyed of the war was worse my version well i think you need to know a little more that's danelle beller reading from it never enough flamingos it's the first if today's kansas notable book winners the best new books by kansans or about kansas selected by the state library of kansas gregg olsen's kansas notable book is it a way of life reservation and reform eighteen thirty seven to eighteen sixty it's the story of the iowa way tribe they're forced resettlement from missouri into northeast kansas and the role of a great name of a sub agency that was the name of the well it's basically a government designation made it became known as you note i were a reservation and the next it was a second fox reservation but the agency was named after a river that goes just north of the reservation that the agency was the government entity then that was the head daily control over the

islands and the second fox how successful was the sub agency at their stated mission which was preparing the aisle ways to enter mainstream american society of wealth initially not very successful in that part of that was their own fault because government agents got their jobs because they were the they had political patriots and so in fact i'm just now doing some work where one of the agents that they had after this book takes place was very tied to gin lane that senator here and so because of that it was just rife with graft and all kinds of political shenanigans so it really interesting as a result an interesting result of that was i think that they're presbyterians who had a mission on the reservation ended up having a lot more control because of these because you're you know you're having a new

government agents come in sometimes every eighteen months and there was a period of eighteen months where there was no wage at the agency just because of politics and very much tied into what was going on in washington that the time whoever might be in the white house had an effect on who was manning the agency so as a result the presbyterian missionaries have a lot more control because they were there for the entire time let's jump ahead to eighteen fifty four the kansas nebraska act is passed by congress i'm talking about the effect that has on i always who were then living in kansas right in what was then kansas city kansas territory and yeah immediately kansas as an interesting land history and it took me a long time inc not being from kansas to serve the sort that out and i'm still not sure i'm right but but now with preemption laws and and squatters associations and things like that there was a lot of pressure for comment on the us government you know a lot of whites wanted

their land and they wanted the native people gone completely in fact a lot of the donations that were up there were forced out completely but four of them were able to hang on but duh because hunger will be a white settler hunger was so strong for that land all the tribes that lived up to the aisle is the second fox's a kick of cruising upon a lot of these all give up major parts of a lot of the small but reservations they have to begin with so today they're just little dots on the map really compared to what they originally one of the stories that you're talking about the iowa way life is the sad story of poor lucy yeah better project found that story when i was working on another project about a folklorist from st joseph and then it was confirmed to me by a tribal elder who said that when he grew up he's heard stories of white settlers taking native children to

work as domestic basically domestic servants one and there are things that kind of a coincidence of history is at the oregon trail ended up going right through the middle of both reservations and and so it created a real conflict of cultures that that happen really quick happen quickly more quickly than it would have otherwise because suddenly the highways have i mean thousands of wagons going right through the middle of their settlement and these people are leaving trash america take cutting would you know their cattle are eating up all of the all of the a grass and and forage and then on to top it off children are being kidnapped and we have no way of knowing how often this happen but the fact that mary alicia cohen in the nineteen twenties wrote a story about poor lucy being taken to california but with a family basically to you know work for the family taking care of the kids and then the fact that they sell their own the two thousands told you know had said that as a kid as a

child he'd heard similar stories and what happened to poor lucy is she went with a family out to california and a family was going to strike it rich in the gold fields and of course as so often happens they didn't strike it rich and so the family came back to defeat it and when they got to the reservation they dropped poor lucy off where they found her but of course several years had intervened in between lucy was older and her family was nowhere to be found and she didn't know whether they had died or maybe they'd move to another alive happened in those years so it is a sad story and apparently even though it's folklore there is there is some basis of truth we bring to it talk to me about white cloud and careful line he walked between native americans and and the white people in our bike club frances white cloud and just that's an interesting thing right there his name because his name carries both his you know the fact that his father would have been known as simply whitecotton

marc with that is that i we work for that and he was a revered leader and then frances white cloud already you have the fact that he carries a christian name and on highway name and that's a great symbol for the fact of that the way he had to leave his life he he wanted to be like his father his father was an assimilation host and then thought that really they had no choice but to go along with what the whites wanted because the whites have the power in his view to kill them but frank had really bad and you know he had it he was he resented i guess is the word he resented the way his people had been treated as much as he wanted to do what his father had told him to do and follow along with what the whites wanted his heart just let him do it and then he to make matters worse he found his role in the tribe diminished because the government agents became more powerful and took over a lot of the roles that the chiefs would have had originally i am

so in the end frankfurt really scrub struggled to try and maintain his leadership to the point where he launched an ill advised ambush basically on some party one reason to nebraska and among the few that were killed were upon want me girl upon oil reach up her child woman and of course that was the end of one of frank's leadership role and then of course there's the whole story of the highways going to europe with that with george catlin this show basically kind of an early version of the wild west show and anne frank white cloud thought that it would be accountable and had invited him what happened as george catlin took about five hundred portraits that he had painted of native americans with him to europe and a p t barnum backed him in a show that they were sure would make a lot of money and the beginning countdown would show these paintings in a hall that he would read and then he and some of his family and

friends would dress up a native clothing and they would explain they would do a little show and tell about the native life and of course in your people just loved that just to be clear we're talking about two white people dressing up right his son i think of it were so yeah because they collect a lot of clothing over the years and at a certain point and it occurred to someone in the show that hey this would be a lot meatier freaky gets real native people tend to show instead of dr catlin in his predecessor yeah so and because cabinet traveled widely widely in the west he had a lot of connections he'd met highways in the eighteen thirties and knew frances white clouds father so first summer job always came over and they were there for years so and that business relationship soured for whatever so caplan invited some highways to come over and four and because he knew frank why covering got to be it was that sort of the head of the libya tripoli got to choose

fourteen people to go with him forty nine boys and what's interesting wakeup thought that if he went he could bring something publicity to the plight of the highways you know they were poor they needed money they needed food they just they were really in a bad way and so he thought that this would be a good trip a good way to bring attention to the problems they had what to me is really fascinating about it is once they got to europe they were able they were actually encouraged to do a lot of things for show that they were discouraged from doing in the united states so they they could wear their traditional clothing they could sing their traditional songs they could do their dances for the benefit of europeans and back home they were discouraged from doing any of that and of course the sad part of the story is is that time they didn't make any money they add another day that they

came back poor and in fact a couple of missionaries of the really the only thing they gained on that trip was a trunk full of bibles and a couple missionaries came back to join with the presbyterian so it didn't work out as well as as frank had hoped it would go and in his he never really did gain the leadership that he gave that he really by tradition deserve to become interested in the story that's kandahar just say i'm from ohio i grew up in northwest iowa and going through public school i never quite latched onto the idea that there was a new highway people there were were i always around there around somewhere and we were always told that it was when i when i'll admit beautiful land or something like that i was and it was really only i was an oscar lose iowa doing another research trip on a sculptor and there's a beautiful statue of white cloud moscow in this in the courthouse square there and it was done by alice culture sculptor named sherry edmonson

fry and i read the plaque and it said my house girlfriend of the white man i've never heard a mascot and furthermore i was really kind of a gun affected or even a highway people so i got back and started researching one and find out who this guy was and there but i figured some rather just be a book about him and but there wasn't and so i wrote an article on just got interested in these people and i think the thing one of the things that really fascinates me about them is that in not i always and i'm not native but they are sort of geographical our ancestors to me because it turns out that they had lived in a lot of the same places i lived in and lived in northwest iowa i live in missouri now they live at a certain point not too far from where i live now so that was kind of kept me going and i'm just sort of following them through history and writing what i find in doing the research for this but what's most surprising thing you learned about the tribal for their treatment

well i think initially when i started this i have to kind of we face a lot of misinformation and the biases i had and i always was that it was under the impression that the american indian people were defeated are decimated or however you want to say that by military force you know you always see these movies he's westerns about in the indian wars which are you know the most popular part of the conflict you know that really that was just that happened after the city after the civil war mostly the thing that was surprising to me in that i'm still sort of trying to sort out in my work is that the warfare of the settlers are inflicted on native people was cultural it was changing the economy the natives have to deal with it was changing their religion that they wanted the natives you experienced changing the education changing the way they didn't want native people to farm communally anymore they wanted them each to have

their own sixty acres of live on their own farm and change farming that's a method so to me it the most surprising thing is it is is that the warfare the indian wars were really more cultural than they were military craig bolten is the other of iowa way life reservation and reform eighteen thirty seven to eighteen sixty if you're just joining us it's part two of this year's kansas notable book award winners the best new books by kansans or about kansas selected by the state library of kansas i'm j mcintyre you're listening to katie our prisons on kansas public radio support for katie are present on kansas public radio comes from the le comte and historical societies christmas and the compton over one hundred thirty christmas trees with vintage and antique ornaments at the territorial capital museum now until the new year details outlook compton kansas dot com

and from first presbyterian church in lawrence on sundays offering a reflective worship service at a thirty am sunday school at nine forty am and a traditional celebration at eleven am more information at it for three forty one seventy one what makes a small town survive and thrive julianne couch is the author of the small town midwest resilience and hope in the twenty first century i met up with julianne couch at the two thousand seventeen kansas book festival in topeka in writing this book you picked out nine different small towns to visit and research and really try to capture the flavor of those two papers nine communities what you're easy because i picked a place that i lived currently and i keep the place i went there from so i consider that sort of rocky mount and mississippi river parentheses around my life and so

i'm sitting here wyoming is actually a little bit outside of re live but it represents the flavor of your eye was in laramie so that was easy to write about or is a starting point a way and then bellevue iowa where i currently live mr inspired to write about you know what was like to be a newcomer they're in a community where literally anyone other than my husband i knew nobody and a realtor when we moved there and so what was that experience like and i was like that for me what would it be like for others says well you've picked to kansas towns sedan and norton norton tell me about each of those shore well norton is out on the high plains of northwest kansas and i picked it because it really has a lot of influences from on the west so it's very near colorado it's on the nebraska border as well so people ranch out there more often than they do no rope crop agriculture and so consequently they see themselves as western in a way that that people in eastern kansas really don't

so i wanted to see what that community was like a film from that sort of self image but also the influence of the of the state prison that's there in all that diversity that that brings in in in terms of family members to make trips other all time to visit their loved one who's incarcerated in and what that influx doesn't help those two big groups of people interact with the finest common ground and how they have a defined community once they are all met one pot together speaking of the present they're talking about the haven well behaved and i came across that i just stumbled upon this one lone the course of reporting you just fine people and cat see her husband a mission to the prison teaching bible studies and so forth she became aware that when families would come out they had nowhere really that they could afford to stay in that didn't help the family unit did not help the man who's incarcerated and help the community so they found a home that they could purchase for almost nothing volunteers worked to renovate it and fill it with these little

little bit of bedrooms and now people can come out and make a reservation but it's free and they have a roommate might share with their mobile know several kids in of growth it's nothing fancy but it could provide a place a safe place for the families of inmates to come as just a very loving acting thing for them to do for really no no reward other than doing the right thing for them for the communities my story let's go from norton down the southeast kansas tell me about the band i love sedan it's very it's just a wonderful people place geographically landscape wise to score just a couple little ozarks and so it's predictable it's got problems in that the thing that that that may put it on the map which are as oil and gas doesn't last forever and they have found that out they have to have it and individual put quite a bit of personal investment into the town in renovated a bunch of buildings and said okay let's see what we can do you start a business you can be in this place

and and try to make things happen and we should mention that person was bill curtis person as bill curtis oddly enough that his radio start at kplu the flagship station of kansas public radio more and we definitely made you know when he's from independence kansas so that's what gave him i think that impulse to want to do something many sauces and just you know kind of kind of crumbling city but i love brazil doesn't necessarily a rancher buffalo the grass fed bison ranch and things have been just writing but you know you just got to change or definitions of what writing means and i think people are learning that what the quotes you have from someone in sudan is you can live here if you want but you've got to know how to do something the first thing he said before he said that was somebody better have a job please somebody had a job and so we went to what he's referring to is now fox look at you know where they will live a look at a community accepts it and where the housing prices are very depressing think

awesome night aboard a leather i can rent a house or to trailers than that it's fine i'll come down here be part of our community but somebody instead job one of you if it if your family somebody is just come here and sit and that's the same that ties into what you just read of you better know how to do something either better people a fix things or make things or sell insurance or you know grow your photo you got to know how to do something and i think the fact that you mentioned that is an indicator that not everybody does not do something what studying these nine communities teach you about what it takes for a small town to thrive moving forward i'm everyone's doing the same sort of thing in a lot of ways you know everyone is working on economic development everyone is china's interstate come home to wherever programs you know honestly there was a program that it and the state of kansas have in place that was one of the earliest inspirations for me that they were

opportunity zones and i did a story about that for a publication i write for an answer really wanted to know i mean is that it does this work and i'm of the mind can just tell me well you know it's a great idea but they wouldn't meet those people but is really hurting because people because unless someone told me top down programs don't really resonate as much and if you're already thinking and doing something to take advantage of it but it is now impulse behind thing so but that everyone is trying something and it's really just you know the chemistry of the right mix of people but it's also that they've got to be in infrastructure in my community had a progressive city government that viewed internet as icky not just as a utility but as a necessity and so we have a fiber optic so consequently i can go there and do my work as a writer and as a teacher and have it be no different but my town was set up so that those things were possible

and that in kansas now the walls between the buildings are such fixed all that they did they can't have stuff and their county commissioner it were real excited about trying to move forward that because i was aware they saw their future so it's just a mix of getting lucky but having that kind of farsighted and of governmental help people understanding like you know world transportation costs are inside of schools and and but people locally to say that they'd and run four committees and serve anybody willing to do that id have your life organized well enough that there's a possibility for you i'm coming down to just saying he'd be like him being in the right place and being able to move forward and recognize when things are going well and it will move forward in a dancing that i get you to read an excerpt from your blog in spite of the media's or location or planning sometimes no amount of good intentions can protect the town from people's need to live someplace else taken to the extreme sometimes a town literally dissolves itself and turned its functions over to the

county where it resides so called this incorporation it happened when the town no longer has the tax revenue for services for police and fire protection or for streetlights and snow removal or when no one is willing to run for counsel or to be the mayor just because a town does all says government doesn't mean it cannot carry on though in an ad hoc way yet people who've been through this incorporation report brings a profound sense of loss with residents feeling a workhorse stewards for the hopes of long gone town founders who still keep watch on a quiet hilltop cemetery like other forms of life communities have a cycle in transition actually from hopeful beginning to thriving to struggling to ending their days as vessels for installed and reflection but also for rebirth every day two acts of stubborn resilience this region seems poised to reinvent itself to growing hope to teach new lessons those lessons might be as simple as finding resilience to thinking locally but acting as a collective be mindful that you know long traditions are not infinite

taking steps like investment in education housing entrepreneurship infrastructure and civil public discourse are important everywhere in communities of all sizes possibly no more then in the rural areas of this region which by many measures is in deep trouble but the world has always been full of readers and rangers people to plant themselves in one spot permanently and people who make a sale out of their mobility and let the wind be their guide it will be a finding in this region by the way to sustain those routers and tend to some of those rangers to settle here at least for a time that's gillian couch reading from her book small town midwest to liane thank you someone's think he's so much assistance of fun next up a book for all huge a hot basketball fans forbid the most influential man in basketball is by award winning sportswriter scott morro johnson scott joins us by telephone from his home in seattle thanks so much for joining us and

you say played james naismith invented the game of basketball but it was followed allen who brought it to the masses talk about the complicated relationship between a father a basketball and the father of basketball coaching yeah there are the word that come up at all of those men would probably argue about the used his game it called it a game and more i mean you weren't doing jim's know around common core education class and cut away then check and amid ongoing him on lending money like are galloping along and writer on the turn of the century when the young manager to realize the little planet grow it turned into a multimillion dollar business and it's become so james naismith been about the vote still being played in a little auditorium like springfield massachusetts when we would never won james eure michael jordan areas people are but because of todd

on a kind of grew into what's come to that talk about how that affected that their professional and personal relationship wait for i think it's not for your mom and then they're at the end of that year on there was a school down south of view of baker university town in baldwin city i called in that letter and what the mekong coach about the multiple you know anywhere you can coach on james naismith was technically to coach its debut at the time it literally coach basketball agreements are directly against him on you really think there was a need for a coach or a pre game like basketball so he left and we don't toss a leather flight and told bon album and on down the ballot at khost again so he went out there to coach and they're eventually came back to kansas and so you always kind of live nation its own protege our word around nineteen twenty one on our came back about like director actor reading school for about fifteen years and

try not to pass he coached in the northwest missouri for a while acknowledging that at a bad time bob sears mr bakshi boards against anyone to be motivated by money om ny story short their first you know ten years together the agreement but it had about you know whether a basketball in sports in general should it is moneymaking endeavor whether it should just be something it's just that the students to do and clyde aman advani cutting back together and thirties one sport in the olympics for the first time mom to put together a national campaign and raised money and the money for a nation to go on actually be three years before a clip that's about how they're brought them back together but there's a debate about fifteen twenty years together you just alluded to five gallons that his time as an osteopathic he really pioneered the use of sports medicine well before that was a

thing yeah the one thing that is common clear in my research was why he went to ask you about a school mama know the prevailing thought is party in those days that i'm coaching basketball and encouraging sports in general didn't make a lot of money i'm eighty one what are you going on an image about twenty three years old he might have been you know moving on another career on another area that made you realize that come together nothing else nadal is a visionary and so he could speak out and think that that nobody else could you like that of overcoming our big time sport big time a one quarter million dollar spending cuts physical training when he went back there because you realize that only those injuries that can be dealt with and coached players and treat their injuries are like me that much rather have it all back injury like cornstarch the ballpark with a k u inadequate record after that attack i got interested in and alternative medicine and occupy other technical

and why yeah i'm going down that path with that clarity get it because we want to give back about a bar and change careers but coming back to our show you mentioned that at the time and it's hard to believe now by our basketball coaches were not very well paid well some of the other ways that fog allen supplemented his income in the early years he actually out you know usual young coach who coached at three different colleges on enabling volunteered court warrants wiley with coach nick cave you and the baker almond it also i want to be coarse you sort of course usually private moment to have the basketball ahmed he got older into toys became kind of you know a national treasure whenever you a name and you know they could become about the ball i don't make a lot of money in the depression and have gotten on some other way then they started marketing they are now and chew it mr

graves markets started game called ago i would i like basketball both of utopia that even if you find the backyards with all that's good on three trial also spends try make money and actually i'm good enough that during the depression you are ill can stay afloat while people like james naismith or worst of them in nineteen twenty four he even tried his hand at writing he wrote a book called my basketball bible three different arm over the course of the next twenty years or so you might ask a more viable candidates an introduction to people of how to coach basketball or put on a basketball than com it really kind of you know you're pretty much with everything about the body without ever have a house where should the country injuries how to run a practice how they won a game all that not only did he tell them what to eat but how the e day one of the things i thought was really funny about

him his basketball bible wasn't even gave instruction on how to properly sen hatch yet you're probably well what if a characteristic of audio and also have some pretty odd interesting personality traits and i think it became so you know things were happening for me because that's a big part of the sport you became a spokesman tony way that he thought he was always better than it was and so you know you teach people argue eating an orange you adopted on a diet that he created something else than that basically i'm would kill bacteria and they should do it but not all on the us and they secured other element in his grandkids can give your children about stuff in between all he knew about management and on you about what was going on what the smartest man in the room and kind of the latino adults that he would be willing to help you

for the part and he was also the justifiably proud of his physique yeah your mom what you have come up with it r n e r and there are stories about how are you the incredible momentum if you take off the church office where you can start rolling in on their future walking by a question since shirtless old man you know your loved one in the world my mom chico and you know that i was

never learned it through a crowded that's why he will the long way why that people in the administration are you or scared in the year afterwards you said that writing this book was both a joy and a frustration how so a revival of its huge joys for a lot of the biggest shows that you know my grandfather played for fargo on an old drug and part of the shoulder watson you get a passion about why kids i love stories of frustrating part was there were so many parts of god's wife that had never been documented to actually have a little bit of kind of rhythm to a book although the march to watch you a lot of that to have three books on a certain story that call a lot but there were also some really important things that happen in life what his mother diane dimond the teenager on that you didn't have to talk

about though harpo was the lingering open it or negative book about is all the stories that fall down loved about one story about all the stories that make the water that's really hard to try and there's nothing to talk about and find a way to tell the story without a whole lot of information so on a long awaited and it got to me and i think that was just and research that stop and they make a lonely tell his entire life story scott murray johnson is the author of flawed the most influential man in basketball thank you so much for joining us today fat from the basketball court to the baseball diamond our last book on today's program of kansas notable books tells the story of topeka native my torres who pitched for seven different teams over the course of this eighteen year professional baseball career including the st louis cardinals the new york yankees and

the boston red sox his story is the subject of my torre as a baseball biography by dr jorge eve or dr bieber joins us by telephone from texas tech university in lubbock texas is a great ballplayer he one hundred eighty five major league games which is not a particularly our leafy to accomplish any had a very long and i would have a very distinguished career in the majors all unfortunately because of one page on october the second of nineteen seventy eight r he was labeled as dr as a scapegoat and in part ii argued that he not really a scapegoat the research for the book goes well beyond that what i focused on in my own research is the role of sport in the lives of latinos throughout the

united states from a historical perspective so you know i remember seeing michael writes give up this other's homerun when i was in my teens never did i envision the possibility that i would actually be able to get to sit down with him and talk about that particular event but also to talk about his life in the oakland barrio of topeka and the significance of sport to the mexican american community in that thirty minutes why things are surprising when i was reading your book why is the assertion by many people in the early nineteen hundreds that letting us were not good at sports that argument really comes from gay and frankly i just back up for a second it's very similar to the argument that was made

about african americans primarily that they would not intellectually capable of being successful in certain all athletic endeavors with looking nose in particularly with mexican americans the notion was that all because all the arrows native background in spanish created a very unhealthy makes and that they were of a farmer curt i think one of the quotes that i used in the book was that point they were proud to full audit they were not intellectually capable that they were poor losers are so so yes there is this stands among many more often in the majority population that look she knows are not going to necessarily be interested

in participating in athletics be cause it really doesn't hold an attraction for them they are not willing to put forth the effort to be good at to be successful at complicated sports such as baseball basketball or football and of course the research that i have done the research that that some of my colleagues in the field that you know goes against that idea completely you know one of the things that you find very early on here in texas for example is that as football for example comes into the state in the latter part of the nineteenth century by the time that you get to make you know five nineteen ten on near our high school teams and other teams playing football participating in football in the border regions laredo a paso so

that part of the state and the same thing happens with baseball you have mexicans and mexican americans crossing the border going back and forth and playing baseball many of them are pretty good on very early in the twentieth century and eventually as mexican americans begin to move again to places like the people and making food making twenties they take those sports wait no i would argue in and i think again the historical record bears this out the reason enough to have a whole lot of mexicans or mexican americans playing high school sports in topeka or in other locations is simply because the families many of the families needed as many if not all of the air all spring towards in order for the family to make ends

meet so therefore by the time that you're working fourteen years old if you're in fourth or fifth grade eighteen in some cases very obvious to many people in the family well look you're not going to be able to get very far you're not going to graduate from high school so you might is what is quaking in help the family make ends meet in what way did my torres served as a role model and an eye hero to topeka is sizable mexican american population well you know that is a very interesting question and here i would say that he was very much of a role model for the mexican american population in topeka and in other parts of the midwest where i would also argue that towards the end of the book i compare and contrast mike horror as with fernando valley as well who is the individual who really the latest rules for

us mexican mexican american athletes on a course might never played in a haiti that had eight very very large mexican american population so he played in st louis he played in montreal i guess we were the only steel the community that you played where there was a fairly substantial mexican american community was awkward but he was only with the a's for a very brief amount of time then they get traded to the yankees so he was not in a position like fernando valley is why a little bit later and in making at making eighty one where he became the center of the mexican mexican american baseball universe so he was definitely a role model that i think that role very seriously he was willing to do go to speak to community groups he was willing to visit with people in in indiana in the

oakland barrio where he he was very active in that regard was he never really had the opportunity to do that to the level that a fernando violins willows able to do a few years later sang i think the chicano movement in government of the nineteen late nineteen sixties into the early nineteen seventies is a very important context for mike's career you have oh oh activism taking place in topeka and of course in other places during the time that he is moving through the farm system with the st louis cardinals and eventually get into the major leagues a lot of these individuals who are involved in various aspects of the chicano movement are looking for walmart and white because i think a very handy

individual in that regard they're mike is you're doing art participating rallies or anything like that he's always willing to go in for the you know for the festivals for the new events that are taking place at our lady of guadalupe all the things along those lines he is very much the community leaders the civic leaders these chicano movement leaders can point to have here is an example of a person who has been able to take his talents and has been able to achieve certain things your talents may not be an in athletics but it may be an academic setting if mike towards can make it if other individuals from our communities can make it

here's a here's a role model that you can look to as someone to try to model your life in your career i hope that when people get from the book and i hope with the poorest family get out of the book is an opportunity to live these wonderful stories occasionally it gives i think people into people an opportunity to see all part of their community a part of their state that may be a lot of folks are not familiar with the mexican american community in the or when mario is a very longstanding and they have contributed a great deal to the development of the state to the history of the city to the history of the state air i i hope that in just some small way this is at a mechanism that gets people to read about not only my story but the story of their community as well dr

jorge e bird teaches history at texas tech university in lubbock texas specializing in the role of like he knows in sports he's the author of mike torre as a baseball biography you can find a longer version of each of today's other interviews at our website k pr that k u dot edu there you can also find part one of the two thousand seventeen kansas notable books that take a pr that k u die edu i'm j mcintyre kbr presents is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas