Metal-Scott City Gray Fancy Flower TB

This trackable has the modest goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by at least 25 cachers.  That is a rate of five drops per year for five years.  As of 11-May-20 it had survived for 2.1 years and had been moved by 11 cachers.

No permission is needed to leave the U.S.  While in the U.S., please drop it in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event where there is no security.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take the trackable anywhere you wish.  No permission is needed to leave the U.S.

Trackable photos are appreciated and will be re-posted here.

While I have lived in Texas for nearly 50 years, I was born and grew to an adult in Kansas.  When I tell someone of my origins, they almost always respond in one of two ways:  “I have been there but I don’t remember much about it” or “that 400 mile drive across the state on Interstate 70 is really boring.”  There is more to the state than that.  The wheat grown there feeds the world, and the people are really nice.

Kansas achieved statehood in 1861, but it was far from civilized.  From 1850 until 1900 the region was a frontier, and at the center of important events in US history:  there was the westward movement of pioneers from Europe and the eastern US and the subsequent conflicts with Native Americans; the Santa Fe Trail crossed the state and the Pony Express and the Oregon Trail passed through a corner; there was a border war because Kansas was a free state and a center of the abolitionist movement, whereas neighboring Missouri was a slave state; and finally the several new railroads were extending westward into hostile territory and furthermore some of the railheads were the destinations of cattle drives from Texas.  Each trackable in this series of metal travel bugs is named for towns with interesting histories (at least to me), some of which have connections to my youth.

Well, Scott City is not where I was born, but I call it my hometown, having graduated from high school there.  In high school, I had a blue ’51 Ford equipped with fender skirts, lowering blocks and Walker glass-pack mufflers. The US Highway 83 is Main Street. We would drag Main on the mile-long strip between the bowling alley and the railroad tracks. Sometimes the loop could be extended almost another mile, south, out to the drive-in road and, north, out to the fairgrounds road. For some reason, we rarely cruised east-west along Kansas Hwy 96. Until the 1960s there was a four-way stop sign at this intersection. In addition to hanging out with friends, part of the ritual of cruising was also to see, and to be seen. One’s presence was acknowledged by brief taps on the car horn by all the cruisers encountered. I will note in passing that the factory car horns in those days were serious attention-getters, not at all like the nasal bleats on modern vehicles.