The archivist was an elfin woman, barely big enough to appear above the stacks of documents on the desk in front of her. She nodded briskly as I explained what I wanted to know, told me to fill out my forms and she’d make sure that one of her research associates would get back to me as soon as possible. I couldn’t persuade her to let me look at their old phone books right now, while I was in the room.

“If I let everyone come back here without an appointment, I’d never get any work done. Melvin or Cady will get back to you, I promise.”

Short of lying on the dusty floor and holding my breath until my face turned blue, I couldn’t think of any argument to budge her. I left with as much grace as possible—if I argued every point with every obstructor, I, too, would never get anything done. At the gift shop by the front desk, I bought maps of the town and the surrounding county: I always do better in a strange place when I can see the whole place laid out, instead of the bits you get from computer apps.

I also picked up a history of Lawrence. Much of it dealt with the antislavery fights of the 1850s and the Civil War era, when many of the men in town were slaughtered in a raid by some pro-slavery guerrillas, but it covered a miscellany of other topics—chief crops (sorghum, alfalfa, wheat, corn) and other notable events in the town’s history—such as the creation of basketball as a game and Wilt Chamberlain’s arrival in the early fifties. A happening place indeed.

8
On the Hill

Frustrated by my lack of progress downtown, I went up to the university. The police and the people I’d encountered in the coffee shops had talked of “going up the hill” or “being on the hill” when speaking about the campus. This had led me to believe that if I drove to the top of the hill, it would be easy to find the offices I wanted. Instead I arrived at a town within a town. A guard at the entrance told me I couldn’t drive onto the campus, but he gave me a map and showed where the administration building was: they could direct me to other departments if I needed them. He also pointed out nearby streets with student apartments where I could leave my car.

Like Fort Riley, downtown Lawrence had been clean and well tended, but the area bordering the campus looked less like a storybook town, more like the dilapidated streets of my childhood—small houses whose foundations had settled at rakish angles, apartment buildings put together with the barest nod at building codes, trash mixing with weeds along the verge.