Take Me Down to Paradise City

For as long as I can remember, I've always had an overwhelming sense of Pride and Protectiveness of my hometown, Paradise Kansas. Even as a very young child, I was extremely interested in the history of the town, and I was always saddened by the dwindling population. I dreamed of time-traveling back to the hey-day of the town, imagining what it would have been like back in the early 1900's when pioneers optimistically built their homes, stores and businesses there hoping that the town would blossom into a city. I tried to picture what it was like when my dad was a teenager there, and Paradise had its own high school and the students would drag Main Street on weekend nights or my uncle Ronnie's band would play downtown.

By the time I came around, Paradise was little more than "a wide spot in the road," as my mom used to say. There was never much to do there, but I still always found plenty to fascinate me within the modest town limits.
Perhaps the most fun activity was exploring the old houses and abandoned buildings. Back in the mid-80's, there were about 13 old houses that were long since vacated, and a handful of other buildings. Most of these were extremely easy to enter, having been broken into years ago by older kids, or simply left open. Some of them were empty, their owners having uprooted and moved elsewhere; others seemed untouched by time, filled with furniture and personal possessions as if the owners had died unexpectedly or simply vanished off the face of the earth. Each house held mysteries and it was up to my imagination and interrogations to piece the stories together. I know my parents got sick of my constant questioning regarding people and places long forgotten to most residents.
With time, the houses grew more dilapidated and decrepit, and the powers that be took it upon themselves to tear them down to reduce blight and potential dangers. I was deeply saddened and angered each time I saw one of the houses being torn down; the houses were my friends and I had taken their memories as my own. The empty, bare lots that were left said nothing of the people who had lived their lives there. But the people had moved on, and there were no new people coming in, and kids like me who liked to play in the old houses surely contributed for the need to have them razed.
Looking at a map of the town now, I remember fondly those dwellings and what sketchy outlines of their former residents. Today, most of the remaining houses in town are occupied, with large, empty spaces between them.
It has always been my dream to one day breathe new life into the town. My wild imagination has, over the years, created a laundry list of aspirations for the burg which include a Performing Arts Academy, a night club called Paradis, restoration of the downtown area back to it's original "grandeur", and of course my current pet project, The Kansas Casserole Co. The latter is to be my own restaurant/catering business specializing in family-style dining inspired by local cuisine and church potlucks. I would like to build it in the old bank building, completely restoring it, with a banquet hall on the upper level.
As the line from a Voice of the Beehive song goes, these are just wishes, and I am just dreaming, but at least I know what I would do if I ever struck it rich or won the lottery. I can already imagine the billboard on I-70, directing traffic twenty miles north of the beaten track to a little town called Paradise.

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During the summer of 1991, before we moved away from Paradise, my siblings and I published The Paradise Post which was a small newspaper we would put together mainly for fun. I was interested in journalism and page design, and my siblings went along with me, often somewhat reluctantly. At the end of our stint as publishers, we put on the first ever (and last!) Paradise Awards Ceremony. Originally, we had advertised and written about a Miss Paradise Pageant (inspired by the Miss Twin Peaks Pageant storyline from the doomed early 90's TV show) but when we couldn't get any contestants for our (read: my) beautifully planned pageant, we switched gears and instead organized a general awards ceremony which was tied in with a church ice cream social. Not exactly the magnificent gala I had envisioned, but looking back now I'm pretty impressed at my event-planning skills considering my age and what I had to work with. Here's some pics from that day!