Top City Livin'
What better location is there to kick off a 3 month world tour than Topeka, KS? Right?!? I couldn't think of one either!!
Oh birth place, you are such a great city to visit and be from. I am so happy to have been able to start such an amazing journey seeing some of the people I love the most. My Dad of course, is my numero uno. The second that guy is of age, he is coming to live with me. I kid, I kid.....kind of. We ate as much BBQ as we could fit in our bodies and made sure as much of the other food that we ate was fried, cooked in bacon fat, or covered in cheese. The official All-American Midwest Diet to get our bodies beach ready for our next destination. I know, I know, cart before the horse and all that.
Topeka is strange place for me to visit. It's the second time Frank has been there (first trip was very brief) and I find myself giving odd local, personal facts. Pointing out where I went to school, my dad and aunt went to school, the house my best friend in grade school lived, the street I wasn't allowed to cross as a child because it was too busy. It is mind boggling to me that as a kid I could and did roam within a given area unescorted, and just had to be back after dark. In my mind, I was the master of my neighborhood at that age. Now I wouldn't even walk 10 blocks to The Burger Stand for a dinner and a beer, that's what uber is for!! My how things can change.
My dad was very generous with stories of his youth, he had a paper route when he was a kid. He started on a corner near the Capitol Building, yeah, the pic just above all these words. Once he was old enough he got a route, and that route that included the Capitol Building. He said then, like most things then, that there was more free reign of the building. You could even roam unaccompanied up all the stairs above the inner dome, to climb even more stairs to pop out on top of the outer copper dome. Fun fact, I am terrified of heights. My father, for some reason really enjoys doing high up things. Ever the adventurer, I tag along, despite my fear. Frank has no problem with heights. I like that he isn't, it helps keep me calm and rational as I sift through all the illogical disasters being high up can end with.
The final portion of the 292 steps to the top are brutal. It's hot, there is no breeze and heat rises people! We are on the top of the inner dome, a staircase attached to the wall will take you a ways further up. However, from there, you have to climb a set of stairs about two floors or so up towards the center of the outer dome. It's essentially a freshly painted catwalk with a railing!! You can't not look down for fear of slipping on a step. It sucks. From there you climb, as it gets even hotter, up a spiral staircase that is dangling from the center. Nothing below it but that wretched glorified catwalk and the top point of the inner dome. Thankfully, once you make it up that spiral staircase, you open a door that will put you on a ledge which goes around the outside of the outer dome. Sweet delicious breeze instantly greets you. That outer dome was green my whole life until a few years ago when local powers that be decided that it should be cleaned and copper colored. I find that silly, since the city builders specifically choose copper so it would turn green to match the rolling plains it's surrounded by. It was amazing to be at the tippy top of Top City!
Despite popular belief, Kansas isn't all that flat, we do have bluffs. The bluffs of Topeka are a staple of my youth. The limestone scent of the rocks within the many, albeit small, hills is forever in my memory. Full of old fossils and endlessly entertaining for a kid like me to imagine what creatures swam here when Kansas at one point was at the bottom of an ocean. Perhaps that is why I lean towards more mineral driven wines....
