Eunice Boeve

CHILDREN'S SERIES IN KANSAS TRAVELER by Eunice Boeve

The summer issue of the Kansas Traveler at 147 N. Dellrose, Wichita, KS 67208 will begin the first story of a series of stories for children about past times in Kansas. Titled THE TIME MACHINE, in each story, the reader will find nine-year-old twins, Jack and Julie,in some part of Kansas experiencing a part of history. In the first issue, they will be among the Kansa (Kaw)Indians in a time before the white settlers moved onto the land.

In the fall issue, the twins will be a part of the Orphan Trains that carried children from the eastern cities to the midwest where they were placed out in homes along the route.

The winter issue puts the twins in the time of the Thirties and the Depression where they witness a Kansas dust storm.

The Kansas State Song is "Home on the Range" and for the Spring 2007 issue, the wonderful time machine whisks Jack and Julie to Smith County in the year of 1873 where they hear the first public singing of the song and meet the man who created the words, Dr. Brewster Higley.

"Do ya'll know how to spell Council Grove?" The boy was seated on the ground beside a huge canvas-covered wagon, his back against a wagon wheel, knees drawn up to cradle the paper laid over a slate, a pencil in his hand. So begins the fifth in a series of the children's time travel series printed in the Kansas Traveler's summer edition. This time Jack and Julie find themselves in Council Grove, a gathering point for wagons traveling on to Santa Fe, NM and are surprised when the boy leaves the letter he's penned to his mother in a small cache at the foot of a towering oak tree for someone to carry back to Missouri. Today the Post Office Oak as it is called is now only a 12 to 15 ft tall stump.

The Sixth Adventure in the Time Machine plunged the twins back into the time when Hays was an Army post. On the top of a windy hill overlooking the prairie, they meet a woman in a long, blue dress who tells them there is cholera at the fort and the men are dying. Later they learn about Elzabeth Polly. According to legend, she nursed the soldiers until she too took sick and died. Some say her ghost still wanders the hill. Some say she was not even a real person. Real or not, Pete Felten,a Hays artist, made a sculpture of her and the city of Hays established an Elizabeth Polly park.

(continues in the column to the right)

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I’m sure my mother carried me into my first library, for she loved to read, and I imagine by the time I was of reading age, myself, she had checked out many hundreds of books from our local library in Libby, Montana. My father, a forty year old cowboy, when he married my mother, wrote a book length story of his cowboy days and the horses he’d known. It was never published. He died when I was five and in a move after his death, his manuscript was lost. Perhaps both parents influenced my desire to write, but I didn’t consciously begin the process until many years later.

My first experience with the writing world was in the sixth grade when, at my teacher’s urging, I submitted a poem to the Weekly Reader. It wasn't accepted and although I received no formal notice, I consider it my first rejection. We moved from Montana to Bonners Ferry, Idaho, when I started high school, and I fell in love with journalism class. I dreamed of a career in the newspaper business, but time and circumstances have a way of casting long, dark shadows over dreams until, like plants without light, they shrivel and die. Perhaps the biggest blocker of the light of encouragement came from a school counselor who told me I had no aptitude for anything at all and he recommended I set my sights on marriage.

I married a native Kansan and except for a year in Beaverlodge, Alberta, Canada have lived in Kansas ever since. I have four children and five grandchildren. I have worked as a paraprofessional in a school for special needs children and as a secretary/bookkeeper in our family owned funeral home.

As I approached my middle years, dreams of writing began to sneak back into my thoughts and, timidly, I began to act on those dreams. My first sales were of children’s short stories. An article about my dad for the Montana Magazine followed and, soon afterwards, I began a ten-year on-again off-again working affair with my first young adult novel, Trapped!. It was published in 1995. Later, I sold another article to the Montana Magazine about a black woman named Mary Fields, who lived at Cascade, Montana. Currently my young adult novels are: Trapped!, The Summer of the Crow, A Window to the World, and Maggie Rose and Sass. (Among other sources, they are available through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Publish America, or through me.) My first adult novel is a western titled, Ride A Shadowed Trail. It was released just this spring. I am currently working on a sequel called Crossed Trails which will find Josh in Montana.

I am a member of the Authors Guild, SCBWI, the Kansas Author’s Club, Women Writing the West, a Kansas Center for the Book Fellow, Friends of the Kansas Libraries.
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The Kids Time Machine story in the Kansas Traveler, continues with the twins making a visit to Chanute, Kansas where they are house guests of Osa Johnson. Osa and her husband, Martin, traveled to the Solomon Islands and Africa in the 1920s and 30s to film the people and animals of those remote areas. Back in the states they showed their films and gave lectures on their travels. The Martin and Osa Johnson museum is located at 111 N. Lincoln Avenue in Chanute, Kansas.

The Spring issue of the Kansas Traveler finds the twins at Alcove Spring, a stopping off place on the Oregon Trail. It is one of the places on the trail where the wagon ruts are still visible. Just north of Blue Rapids, Kansas, it is a beautiful area with a hill, trees, and the spring which falls over a rock ledge to make a lovely falls. The Time Machine sends the twins to Alcove Spring in late May of 1846 to meet the members of the Donner Party, those unfortunate pioneers who followed bad advice and were trapped in the snows in the Sierra mountains through the winter. Jack and Julie meet the Reed girls and a Donner girl and are shown the falls and rocks where the Reed girls' father has carved his name and date and where another member of the party has carved the words Alcove Spring. The Reed children's beloved grandmother died while they were camped there and today a monument stands in her honor.