Kansas City's Soccer Success;

                           Union Station

Congratulations to Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, hundreds of area government officials, the Chiefs organization, thousands of volunteers, and countless businesses who did an outstanding job of hosting the FIFA World Cup events. The four teams based in the area, including Argentina and England, two of the final four, were clearly pleased with the facilities and with the hospitality of area residents, and the people of Lawrence virtually adopted the Algerian team based there. KC was the smallest host city but had the most TV viewers for the entire tournament. A world-class job on a global stage. 

Not surprisingly, many of our foreign visitors found KC barbeque tasty. Surprisingly, many seem to have discovered ranch dressing and wondered where it’s been all their lives. Perhaps the most colorful event was the 30,000 Netherlands fans dressed in orange who paraded to Union Station before their team’s match. (The Netherlands is a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarch from the House of Orange since 1815.)

Union Station (pictured), between the Power and Light District and the FIFA Fan Experience, was a center of action with 400,000 visitors in five weeks. America’s second largest rail station, after New York’s Grand Central Terminal, the station opened in 1914 and faces south allowing ample space for a plaza at the foot of the hill where the Liberty Memorial was later built.

Designed by prominent architect Jarvis Hunt, Union Station served 12 railroads and luxury trains like Santa Fe’s Super Chief. From 1934 to 1957, the station was home to the first diesel-powered train, the Burlington’s sleek stainless steel Pioneer Zephyr. Before travel shifted to autos and airplanes in the 1950s, the station hosted more than a hundred trains a day and as many as 300 during World War II when at least half of all service men and women passed through. 

The station was about more than trains. It was Kansas City’s front door and the center of community events. New Year’s Eves were celebrated in the Grand Hall as was VJ Day. Until the 1950s, it had the city’s largest bookstore, largest drug store, and a specialty grocer, all run by the Fred Harvey Company that ran dining services on Santa Fe trains and hotels along the line. The jewel of Union Station was the Fred Harvey Restaurant, for years the best in town and the place to take a special date or celebrate an anniversary.

Below and beyond the Grand Hall were three basements devoted to baggage handling, Harvey kitchens, and mail and express with a tunnel to the post office a quarter-mile away. Unseen by the public, much of the city’s commerce passed through the sub-basement.

By the 1960s, as suburbs grew and railroads dropped passenger trains, the station lost its role as city center and lost the income to exist. It closed in 1985. Amtrak built a small “Amshack” east of the station. There was talk of demolition, but a public-private partnership spent $250 million to restore the station, partly funded by a small sales tax approved by metro area voters. 

Union Station reopened in 1999 with Science City, theaters, museum exhibits, the Irish Cultural Center, restaurants, a planetarium, holiday events, and shops. Amtrak returned with daily trains to Chicago, Los Angeles, and St. Louis. The station now enjoys a second life as a center of community activity where the Royals and Chiefs celebrate World Series and Super Bowl wins and where an NFL Draft was held. The popular World War I Museum and Crown Center shops across the street draw people as will a new Royals stadium nearby. Union Station is a magnificent monument for a world-class city. 

                           A Music Lesson

 

Mentioning Woodie Guthrie’s folk song “This Land Is Your Land” in my previous column struck a chord (pun intended) with many readers. The song has a history that, like all history, is worth knowing.

The Great Depression was still restraining America’s economy in 1940, when Oklahoma-raised Guthrie had had enough of Kate Smith singing “God Bless America” repeatedly on radio. He thought that song’s cheerful vision of America inappropriate when millions were still suffering. As a protest, Guthrie wrote “This Land is Your Land” to highlight the plight of America’s workers while a fortunate few prospered. 

Guthrie, a political activist who often had a sign on his guitar saying, “This machine kills fascists,” first recorded “This Land Is Your Land” in 1944 while serving in the wartime Merchant Marine. The Smithsonian Institution has a copy of the 1944 recording. The song wasn’t well known until the civil rights and anti-war protests of the 1960s when Bob Dylan; the New Christie Minstrels; Peter, Paul, and Mary; and others performed it live and released recordings. It was a huge hit and was often called the people’s national anthem. Bruce Springsteen called it “one of the most beautiful songs ever written” and gave it new life in the 1980s and beyond. He, Pete Seeger, and Seeger’s grandson sang it at President Obama’s 2009 inaugural celebration at the Lincoln Memorial.

As time passed, Guthrie and other artists altered the lyrics to improve rhyming or other lyrical issues, but the most significant change was when some artists, sponsors, and others left out entire stanzas they considered negative but were the heart of Guthrie’s original protest—an example of trying to rewrite history by omitting uncomfortable facts or viewpoints. Here are the stanzas most often performed:

 

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York island

From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters

This land was made for you and me.

 

As I was walking that ribbon of highway

I saw above me that endless skyway

I saw below me that golden valley

This land was made for you and me.

 

I roamed and rambled and followed my footsteps

To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts

While all around me a voice was sounding

This land was made for you and me.

 

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling

And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling

A voice was chanting, as the fog was lifting,

This land was made for you and me.

 

(The following stanzas are sometimes omitted.) 

 

As I went walking, I saw a sign there

And on the sign it said, “No Trespassing”

But on the other side it didn’t say nothing

That side was made for you and me.

 

Nobody living can ever stop me

As I go walking that freedom highway

Nobody living can ever make me turn back

This land was made for you and me.

 

In the squares of the city in the shadow of a steeple

By the relief office, I’d seen my people

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking

Is this land made for you and me?

 

(song concludes by repeating the first stanza)

 

Most of “This Land Is Your Land” celebrates America’s natural and man-made beauty—redwood forests, wheat fields waving—but a No Trespassing sign and hungry people waiting at a relief office were realities of Guthrie’s times. For people not getting a fair share of America’s wealth, the song was a call for action: “Nobody living can ever stop me as I go walking that freedom highway.” Guthrie died in 1967, but his most famous protest lives on as an anthem for his time—and for ours.