Pumpjacks, wind farms, grain silos, rotting boxcars, and drowsy cattle march across the neverending Kansas plains. I head west on Route 4 and then dip down to 400, shifting from 85 to 35mph and back again, scrolling through vintage towns like White City, Dodge City and Garden City.

Here is Monroe Elementary School, the segregated school in Topeka which sparked the landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education decision that formally ended the practice of ’separate but equal’. This only happened 55 years ago.

The little yellow smiley faces floating inside the word ‘life’ really help to clarify this side of the debate.

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Big Brother and the Holding Company – Turtle Blues (Live Version)
from The Lost Tapes, 1966-1968 | buy it
Some dirty American dive bar music that sounds damned good with the car pointed west and big cornfields blurring past the open windows. Previously unreleased, this version was recorded a couple of years before Big Brother’s landmark Cheap Thrills album threw Joplin into the spotlight in 1968.