Special Dispatch from Matfield Green, Kansas

I made a pot of beans the first morning of my residency and wondered when was the last time this space held the aroma simmering pinto beans. I wondered when was the last time someone  sliced a jalapeño into the pot, when was the last time someone sopped up their bean juice with a freshly made tortilla. I didn’t go that far, but having just spent the previous five days with family, I was the beneficiary of a few New Mexican Frontier tortillas from the special delivery Mama made to my Tía’s house in Emporia. A touch of Albuquerque in Kansas, a tale that has shaped the contours of my life story. Do you think these walls remembered these smells? Well, not exactly these walls, but the bones of this place? Having undergone a complete renovation process by the current tenders of this space in the early-2000s, Bill and Julia saved it from certain collapse. I like to think the bunkhouse felt similar joys as I did. This building in its new configuration, with different amenities within, different colors of paint adorning its walls, welcoming me and my pot of simmering beans to my first artist residency.

Why am I’m starting with beans? Kansas might be known for baked beans. An important and delectable side for barbecue. But, pinto beans? Simmering on the stove? I’ve been on a nearly two decade obsession with the ways we remember or don’t remember the Mexican railroad laborers who came to Kansas in the early 20th century to continue laying track, building and maintaining the railroads. And the place I’m currently writing from, Matfield Station in Matfield Green, Kansas is one of the few physical markers (that I’m aware of) that serves as monument to these laborers and their families’ presence in Kansas. I’m here because of a series of events that brought me here, probably also true for the original 13 Mexican-origin people who moved into this building built by the Santa Fe railroad in the 1922. I am here because I dreamed of going to an artist residency in my January 2021 Passion Planning session. I’m here because my amiga sent me a listing of possible residency opportunities and this one at the Tallgrass Prairie stuck out to me since the description noted it was in the Flint Hills of Kansas. I am here because I live in a mixed-prairie ecosystem in West Central Minnesota. I am here because I was born in the Flint Hills. I am here because before applying to the residency I watched all the zoom artist talks from 2020 to see what others worked on and how they connected to this residency and in an aside, an audience member asked an artist “what did you think about the place you were staying” and the artist replied something to the effect - “oh it’s lovely, is there something more specific you’re asking about?” And the audience member said, “well you’re in a bunk house for Mexican railroad workers, there’s a story about it on the wall in your room.” And the artist kind of shrugged like they hadn’t given it much thought. I am here because my Great-Grandfather left Léon in the 1930s to begin working for the railroad in Nebraska first, and then ultimately settled in Northern Kansas. I am here, as a third generation Kansas Mexican American.

I’ve been working on a book exploring this history in Kansas, particularly focusing on the role of women in these settlements. Partly recovery project, partly looking to push the interdisciplinary boundaries of oral history, archival research, and autoethnography, the book is held together by the history of Mexican railroad laboring families’ presence in Kansas. A topic still under-explored even as my stalled manuscript projects collects the equivalent of dust in my computer’s hard drive. In my requests of the residency staff to meet with or learn more about the Mexican-origin folks who are connected to the history of this place, they reached far and wide connecting me to the people who might know more. On the constant hunt for images of Mexican laborers and their families, many of the responses from contacts replied, “I’m not so sure about the history of the Mexican railroad workers…” And so I’m foiled again, or am I? I've been privileged to grab fragments here and there, adding to my deep well of knowledge I've sought elsewhere, coming together in new ways for me now. I thought that the reason people don’t know much about this history was the lack of monuments, but it’s clearly deeper than that. I should have known that given our nation’s current reckoning with monuments as a means to remember. Who gets remembered, who gets left out is always the question as statues mark people, events or eras. I should have known that even given this structure is a testament to the Mexican presence in Kansas, it still continues to reflect back our absence. Unless, we dig. And demand remembering, and call-in the ancestors whose lives shaped our present even as we may not know it all.

According to Julia and Bill who were integral to the rebuiliding of this dilapidated structure, and the current caretakers, there are only about five railroad laborer bunkhouses still standing enough to be recognizable, and this is the only one that has been renovated so as to be fit for human habitation again. The Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe (ATSF or the Santa Fe as it was once known) railroad had a variety of bunkhouses they would build often a mile out of town for their Mexican laboring railway workforce and their families. The bunkhouses were rather the most humane structures of the lot, being actually constructed from brick and concrete with plastered walls instead of old boxcars or railroad ties like were common amongst other Mexican settlements across Kansas. All that structurally remains of the settlement of Mexican railroad laborers in Emporia are dilapidated, half rotten railroad ties once used as foundations for retired box cars. The fact that the Santa Fe bunkhouse plans were specific in their placement to town also implies a level of separation, of segregation on behalf of the ATSF corporate powers that be. There was no indoor plumbing, no running water or electricity in the bunkhouses. The twenty-first century renovations makes the bunkhouse a lovely place to stay, especially for the train enthusiasts because they tracks are fifty yards from this structure. They jostle by reminding the current tenants of their power of transportation as they rumble the windows. I’m grateful I don’t have to run out there quickly to fix the track before the next one rolls by, or, as many once did push the handcart up the rail to fix something before the trains came through. I am grateful that I get to experience the trains moving through, It’s a BNSF line now, the merging of Burlington-Northern and the Santa Fe in the mid-1990s this aspect of railroad history is easily located and shared. Still hidden in the shadows is the history of the role of Mexican laborers in this space.

When I walked in the green door to unit 3 there was a train rolling slowly by which I could hear but not see through the drawn curtains over the door leading to the outside seating area on the other side of the bunkhouse. I was immediately struck by the energy of the place, the care and love of twenty-first century renovations while also feeling a deep reverence for the history of this place. The ghost of the walls that once separated rooms into five units instead of the three renovated apartment rentals for artists and others to stay and connect with the prairie hugged me as I began to get to know this tiny Kansas town. Don’t blink or you’ll be through it. I sat in the aroma of a fresh pot of beans for the entire first day of my residency. It was my attempt to share with the space, a connection back to the people who once called this structure their home. It was my attempt to time travel back, to shorten the distance between me and them. To let these ancestors, kin to my ancestors, know that their backbreaking work on the rails was worth it. That some of us made it. That some of us hear the trains go by and know it’s only possible because of their manual labor that kept these rails working. That some of us are committed to upholding that labor with the dignity they did not receive during their lifetimes. The cricket sings outside the window and I think about how many generations of crickets have been here, who also sang to the workers as they rested after a grueling, physically demanding day of work replacing track. The Willowleaf Sunflower waves at me though the window, sometimes casting a shadow as it blows in the wind. It catches my eye as it sways even as she’s still just a green stalk, not yet flowering. These sunflower descendants of the ones that kept Cipriana Enríquez company while her husband Lalo fixed the track. And Lucita Tetley while her husband Jesus worked outside the bunkhouse while she toiled inside. And, Sr. Melchiadoes Mesa, Sr. Alfredo García, and Zacahrías Beltran, and Patrocina and Severiano Palacíoz who rounded out the first residents of this bunkhouse who expanded families here. ¡Presente! Who would have thought an artist whose interest in Mexicans in Kansas would be here a hundred years later writing their names in a newsletter? Are the Willowleaf Sunflower, and the other Tallgrass Prairie plants the best at remembering the presence of those whose lives intertwined with theirs? Are their root systems the ways to better recount the intertwined and interconnected relationship my people have had with the prairie? The plantcestors who survived the installation of the track, who blow in the breeze of the wind of mother nature and the wind of the trains as they zip by so very fast that the windows rattle and the Matfield Station shifts in response to the force of that steel. What does the prairie remember that we cannot seem to hold ourselves?

What I’m Reading

Braiding Sweetgrass

If ever a perfect book to bring with you to any ecosystem you’d like to know better, make it Robin Wall Kimmerer’s beautiful collection of essays. Part memoir, part biology lesson, part Indigenous recovery history project, this book will help you reevaluate your relationship to the natural world in each and every chapter. I am late to the book that was published in 2015, and even later given it took me a couple of years to find the right time to visit it from my TBR pile even after it joined my bookshelf in 2019 according to my Moon Palace Books receipt tucked inside. The premise is simple, we as humans have much to give the natural world, and in good relationship, the natural world will share its gifts with us. I’m committed to take these lessons with me as I continue to evolve in my relationship to the land. The book itself is a true gift, one that I hope you too will be open to receiving if you have not yet already. I convinced Vaimo to read it with me while I was away, and she "loved it," so if you don't want to take my word for it, take it from her. 

Creative Ritual

I have never been on an artist residency before and so, not knowing what to expect before coming to my first one, I could not have possibly known how I could be transformed from the experience. This dispatch reaches you while I have just a few days left of my ten-day stay. I’ve so deeply cherished my time here. I have written everyday. I have painted everyday. I have walked in the prairie everyday. I have paused when the train goes by everyday. I have been reignited by this place to return to my book manuscript. I have been reinvigorated by this place as a restful site and as a place to renew my faith in rural spaces that center growth, change, art, beauty and connection. I will be giving a zoom artist talk on Thursday July 15th at 4:00pm (central time). I hope you will join me, I’ll be talking about my relationship to this place, my artistic inquiries, and what has emerged here at Matfield Station for me as a result of my presence in this place. Register to attend here.

Questions to Ponder

What can the prairie teach you? Whether or not you are in a prairie ecology, what has the land you occupy taught you?
Who is begging to be remembered right now?
What foods are currently bringing you comfort?
How have you pondered your relationship to plants or land lately?

Thanks for journeying with me. I hope, as always, that you take what you need and leave the rest for someone else, or for another time.

-KCF

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