At the age of 11, our family moved from Topeka to western Kansas.

That was in 1965.

The truck carrying our stuff kept having flat tires.

That should have been an omen.

So we've got cornfields.

We've got cornfields to the left of us. And a straight road for about as far as you can see.

In June of 2023, Rich flew east out of Los Angeles.

I headed west from Boston, and we met in the middle of the country, Kansas, Western Kansas,

the place that shaped Martin Manley and where the inexperience of two coastal elites

could be on full display.

Some baby cattle, just wagging their tails on the side of the road.

I believe those are called calves, Rich.

When we looked around, all we saw was endless flat land, stretching out to a ruler-straight horizon.

Yep, a hundred square miles in view. Not a person in sight.

Plenty of calves, though.

Martin grew up in a place called Pony Rock.

In the 1800s, the actual Pony Rock was a landmark on the Santa Fe Trail.

As one journalist at the time wrote,

The Rock springs like a huge wharf from the carpeted green of the prairie.

Legend has it, travelers fearing killers or thieves would bury their valuables by the Rock, in hopes of returning to them later.

Some never did, leaving their treasure still buried in the surrounding fields.

Today, Pony Rock is a blink and you miss at spec, what Martin referred to as an oil spot off a two-lane road officially known as Highway 56,

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