San Fernando Valley

The highest point in Kansas is Mt. Sunflower, almost 4,000 ft. above sea level. It's less than a half mile from the Colorado state border and is close to bring the lowest point in Colorado. Privately owned by a middle-age couple, there's a monument at the peak consisting of a dead tree and a plaque that reads, "Nothing happened here in 1897."

In southern California, exiting 101 North (Ventura) at White Oak, heading past the Trader Joes's and proceeding east to Sherman Way, you will arrive in the heart of the San Fernando Valley.

At night, it's difficult to determine where the heart of the place might be--there doesn't seem to be a right or a left, an up or a down. There's certainly appears to be no beginning to a place like Reseda, for instance, implying there may be no end. All relational landmarks are reduced to a series of post-war apartment complexes in which space aliens might be living with their aging mothers in one-bedroom units adorned with posters of Liberace and Dame Edna.

To say the San Fernando Valley is another world is to greatly underestimate the world we live in, but it does give the soul a little comfort while it's searching around for its heart. And the heart is a monster drawn up by cartoonist's employed by Warner Bros. that rises up from the sea to scare the living shit out of 10 year old boys in the 1950's.

Some of those boys grew up to be men and went back home to Kansas, and some stayed in the San Fernando Valley, bitter about the past but also remembering it fondly.