That Great Bend summer of 1961, when I was sixteen, the world was a Kansas prairie that went on forever. It was a time and a place when a boy of imagination seeking glory [and I was such a boy] could spin a summer of stolen freedoms into such high jinks, such high adventure that such a boy might be in danger of losing some vital part of himself when he cut the strings and moved on.
Over the years, I have revisited that magic summer in stops and starts, shared it with friends, then again with my children, then again with my grandchildren. Shook out a sleeve. Emptied some pocket of its boyhood treasures. Anecdotes. Patches. Now something in me wants to see that ragged coat whole against the sky, like some renegade kite caught in a whip of a Kansas wind.
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