A State Worth Spinning a Yarn

Straight up from the storm cellar it comes, rounding the corner, bouncing into our neighborhood. Can you see it? Do you hear it?

Dust on the windshield, wheat stuck to the hood, various other lazy stereotypes belching from the exhaust.

By Saturday it will reach the threshold of our sports consciousness, in the form of its two biggest college football teams.

At 9:30 a.m., Kansas University will host UCLA.

At 3:30 p.m. at the Coliseum, Kansas State will invade USC.

An unusual set of pairings, prompting the usual declarations.

Ah, Kansas.

Dorothy, why?

It’s difficult to imagine why the innocent young Ms. Gale wanted so badly to return to the home of the world’s most famous Viagra spokesman.

But it’s certainly no coincidence that when she finally did, everything turned black and white.

Ah, Kansas.

Home, home on the range.

That is, of course, the Kansas state song.

It is based on a poem written by an Ohio doctor who reportedly moved to Kansas only after his fourth wife drove him to drink.

Ah, Kansas.

A great rock band, no?

The good news for Kansans is that the world-renowned group was founded in Topeka.

The bad news is, their biggest hit was about the absolute futility of life.

“Dust in the Wind” is not only a song, it’s a Wichita weather report.

Enough, enough.

It is not my mission here to introduce a big-city audience to a small-town opponent by way of tired jokes and arrogant generalizations.

Only one person at this newspaper has ever done that properly, and I would never engage in a cheap imitation of Jim Murray.

Besides, I don’t want to risk being denied access to the Worlds’ Largest Ball of Twine.

Located in Cawker City, it is one of the Kansas’ top attractions, a 17,000-plus pound ball constructed as an everlasting monument to the dangers of having too much time on one’s hands.

Which, really, is the intent of this column.

I wish to warn the locals that, irrespective of speed or strength, these Kansas football players are ominously bored out of their gourds.

There is a point in Kansas, near Lebanon in Smith County, that is considered the geographical center of the continental United States.

Which means, then, that the continental United States is a doughnut.

Only through Saturday’s appearance of their football teams will some of us realize that Kansas is even there.

It is a state whose most famous town, Kansas City, is mostly in Missouri.

It is a state whose most famous football town, Manhattan, was stolen from New York.

Even the state animal, the buffalo, doesn’t belong to them.

It is now the mascot of the University of Colorado, as Kansas State chose another animal common to the state’s rolling wheat fields, the ... wildcat?

Kansas University, meanwhile, decided to attach itself to the name of Civil War guerrillas known as the “Jayhawkers.”

There not being many bears roaming Westwood, it is unfair here to criticize nicknames.

Besides, I don’t want to be risk being denied access to state’s most famous birthplace, the Wichita spot where a couple of guys dreamed up Pizza Hut.

Early American explorers once deemed Kansas, with its endless barren plains, uninhabitable.

That would be news today not only to those farmers who have made this the country’s top wheat-producing state, but also to those oddball pioneers who have made this the country’s leading purveyor of the eccentric.

Only in Kansas can you find a museum that contains the world’s largest prairie dog and two five-legged cows ... and a town featuring Big Brutus, the giant earth mover.

Equally celebrated are native Amelia Earhart and Grace Bedell Billings, the little girl for whom there is a monument celebrating the letter she once wrote Abe Lincoln suggesting that he grow a beard.

Fitting perfectly into this genre are the football teams, neither of which, in national polls, has ever finished a season ranked higher than sixth.

Kansas State likes to think it has become a power under Coach Bill Snyder. But USC may be its first nonconference opponent in recent years that actually gives football scholarships.

Kansas, meanwhile, hasn’t had a winning season since UCLA wore their offense out in the Jayhawks’ 51-30 romp over the Bruins in the 1995 Aloha Bowl.

Most expect Kansas State to defeat USC this weekend, while UCLA is expected to demolish Kansas. But in one way, it has long been a Los Angeles sweep.

You know that movie for which the folks of Kansas are most famous?

It turns out, it was never supposed to involve them.

In the original Wizard of Oz book by Frank Baum, there is no mention of any state.

It was added there by Hollywood, which decided Dorothy should be from Kansas, although somehow resisting having her dance the yellow brick road to Oz with a five-legged cow.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

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