Saturday, September 23rd, Inman held its annual Santa Fe Days celebration in honor of the Santa Fe Trail which passed just a few miles outside of town on its way through Kansas, and played a major role in Inman’s history. This seems like an opportune time to retell another story that helped shape the history of Inman, Kansas; the legend of Sink Hole Sam.

Once upon a time near a town called Inman, in the land of Kansas, a legend was born; a legend that nearly 70 years ago would bring this sleepy little town notoriety for a season. The legend became that of Sink Hole Sam.

Prior to the 1920,s, a string of small freshwater lakes stretched across part of central Kansas, coming within a couple miles of the town of Inman. It’s widely known that back then people from all around the state came here to fish and hunt ducks in those lakes. Eventually the lakes were drained, leaving Lake Inman and a few low pockets of water that became known as “sinkholes.” Inman Lake remains as the largest natural lake in the state of Kansas.

The largest of the sinkholes became known locally as” the Big Sinkhole,” and here a legend was born in the form of a large serpent-like creature that became Sink Hole Sam. People speculated that Sam had been living in some prehistoric underground cavern that had somehow filled with water from the sinkhole, allowing him to finally venture forth. Or maybe Sam had lived there in some of the lakes all along, and now with them drained had nowhere else to go. Evidently no one got close enough to see if the creature should be named Sam or Samantha, but I’ll stay true to the legend and call it “Sam.”

Two unidentified Inman men fishing at the sinkhole first reported seeing Sam, and soon after, local “Inmanites” Albert Neufeld and George Regehr spotted him also. The story goes that Albert sought to save the town by taking pot shots at poor Sam from a nearby bridge (I suspect the bridge was not really all that nearby!) Of course descriptions of the beast varied according to the audience and to the time of day, but Sam ended up being a very large snake-like creature, about fifteen feet long and the diameter of an automobile tire.

Now everyone likes a good legend, and the discovery of Sam was no exception. The story spread like hot peanut butter! Newspapers caught wind of the tale, (no pun intended) and locals started getting calls from strangers all across the country .Today, some residents still recall seeing hundreds of cars parked around the big sinkhole hoping “Sammy” would make a curtain call.

In an attempt to quell speculation about their new prehistoric mascot, (here the legend takes a slight southern detour) some “great scientific minds” were brought on board in the persons of Ernest Dewey and his assistant Dr. Erasmus P. Quattlebaum. Earnest D. and the Dr. informed Inman that Sam was a “Foopengerkle,” one of a species thought to be the “extinctest” creatures ever to inhabit the Kansas Plains. This must be where he became Sam rather than Samantha, because Ernest D. and Dr. Q. maintained that no female “Foopengerkles” ever existed. Their final report urged caution, since Sam did not seem to realize he was extinct. Sam soon disappeared from sight, never to be seen or at least acknowledged publicly again.

Perhaps Sam still comes out at night to prowl the waters of the Big Sinkhole, frolicking and doing whatever else it is Foopengerkles do. Tromping through the wetlands there I’ve heard strange sounds I always figured were muskrats or beavers rummaging around through the cattails, but maybe it was really Sammy out for a stretch and a snack! Each time I’m there and I get that feeling that someone or something is watching me, I peer optimistically over my shoulder, hoping to catch a glimpse of the big lug. But now with the wetlands and the sinkholes nearly dry again, ole’ Sam has probably for sure retired to his cavern until he has water enough to swim once more.

Millions of dollars have been spent attempting to prove or disprove the existence of Bigfoot and The Loch Ness Monster, and as far as I know, all such attempts have failed at both. Sink Hole Sam put Inman on the map and in the news those many years ago, and no one has yet disproven his existence to me. Like I said, everyone likes a good legend; after all this is America, and stranger things have happened! …Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors!

Steve Gilliland, Inman, can be contacted by email at [email protected].

By the time you read this, I should be in west-central China trying to sleep-off an 11-hour jet lag. This is trip number 19 to Asia, counting the entry stamps in 50 years of passports. During that time I have taught in schools in mainland China and Hong Kong, visited schools in Taiwan and worked with fellow teachers from Singapore, South Korea and Japan. No region of the world values education and respects teachers more than East Asia. Even if you are poor but educated, you are honored as a scholar.

We know this when we take our children to Asia and find they are several years behind grade level. And when East Asian families move to the United States, their children are often one or two grade levels advanced. While American-born populations are barely above 40 percent in college graduation, Asian-American students are already completing college degrees at 60 percent.

So the Lumina Foundation and educational leaders set the goal of 60 percent or more of the U.S. working population reaching or exceeding a tertiary education by 2025.

I taught in Hong Kong 1975-78 and my students from the affluent corporate and consular communities were high performing. But their study ethic was kicked a level higher by the one-third of Chinese students attending that international school. Since then, Hong Kong overbuilt their university capacity. About 15 years ago, Hong Kong found their college-going population to “top out” at below 60 percent of their high school graduates. And that included tertiary technical schools. So they opened up their empty university seats to mainland students who faced a shortage of higher education facilities.

Taiwan overbuilt university capacity 10 years ago and found empty seats when they approached the same 60 percent graduation level. Taiwan is now undergoing a dramatic downsizing and consolidating its universities.
South Korea has also rapidly grown its university capacity and sure enough, having overbuilt for 60 percent of their high school graduates, they are now desperately recruiting foreign students.

And just last year, Thailand found itself with more university seats than qualified students and is facing downsizing of its higher education campuses.

Singapore is an exception to this 60 percent wall. Singapore is well below zero population growth (ZPG). So it is actively recruiting the best students from surrounding countries and especially China. Singapore offers free tuition to incoming students who score high; but these students must then reside in Singapore after graduation for the same number of years they took free tuition. This pushes their level of college-degreed population to the highest in the world. But they are paying to import them from the surrounding regions, causing a brain drain on those other countries.

All of these Asian countries use high stakes tests for coursework and gatekeeping. They have no intention of diluting the academic value of their high school diplomas or their college degrees by lowering their performance standards or rigor of coursework.

But in the United States, in our panic to reach higher rates of college graduation, we are accepting high school dual-credit and other questionable coursework without test confirmation. We are letting a one-day test score replace a semester of coursework in “competency-based” learning in both the G.E.D and at Western Governor’s “University.” If the American public wants 60 percent of high school graduates to go on to college, our educational system is quite able to lower the bar and graduate anyone.

Our tuition-driven public colleges are moving toward accepting every student with a heartbeat and a credit card. Pressure to inflate grades and lower standards is evident from kindergarten to graduate school.
For several years now, international education conferences in Europe and Asia openly discuss whether the U.S. public university degree is losing value. Despite the ITT and Corinthian debacles, our online diploma mills are expanding. High school graduation rates keep going up while test scores fall.

The lesson from Asia is that about 40 percent of our youth have neither the ability nor desire to complete genuine college level work. Efforts to force our system to go beyond the 60 percent level simply water downs or destroys the value of a bona fide degree.

John Richard Schrock is a professor at Emporia State University.

As I mulled writing about devil’s claw plants for this week’s column, my thoughts skittered across a dozen bunny trails. So, hang with me. Folks who grow up on the plains frequently repurpose seemingly unrelated items into functional uses.

Stephen Ambrose noted this ability in his book Band of Brothers. He praised the ingenuity of American farm boys who welded metal to fronts and undercarriages of tanks and other military vehicles, permitting them to plow open centuries-old hedgerows. Their problem-solving saved lives and permitted the U.S. front to advance across Europe. Though nowhere as dramatic as Ambrose’s story, I’ve watched friends and relatives turn what seems unusable into functional objects.

Consider those nasty stickers that thrive at the edges of corn and milo fields. Once they dry, they split into two wicked hooks that attack intruding humans and beasts. Like Norman hedgerows, this natural armament prevents hunters and farmers from getting where they want to go easily. When one embeds itself in the calf, ankle, or foot of you, your hunting dog, or livestock, it’s difficult to imagine them as anything but excruciating torture.

This did not hold true for Grandmother’s creative friend. Southwest Kansas has as many of these evil thorns as we have in Northwest Kansas, so this woman transformed them into art. She’d wander borders of fields carefully collecting them. Somehow, I never thought to ask how often they tore holes in her flesh. She’d dry them further and shake out their seeds so they didn’t expand territory before she turned them into magical creatures.

Following the summer molt, this artisan explored near the artesian well and other springs where a large flock of Meade Lake peacocks quenched their thirst. The noisy, pretty males dropped iridescent tail feathers. Instead of collecting them in a pretty container, Grandma’s friend recognized their potential for combining with her collection of devil’s claws to create tiny replicas of exotic birds.

Somehow, this craftsperson stabilized each massive thorn so it stood on its own. Then she trimmed blue, turquoise, and green feather eyes to fit inside the now dry claws. Satisfied with their fit, she glued each one in place. I know she spent time on this because they survived each of us grandkids’ close and frequent inspection. I’m guessing more than one adult handled them as well. When she finished, she had folk art renditions of courtly birds who dance prettily with fanned tails.

I looked forward to visiting Grandma and Grandpa’s each year for many reasons, but one was to see the new little peacocks lined up on Lottie’s shelf. Granddad had already introduced the grands to his favorite birds and entertained them with his imitation of the males’ obnoxious call. This combination made it easy to fall under such a beautiful creature’s spell.

The carefully crafted peafowl imitations in Gram’s house changed my perspective about thorns. A local artist’s imagination and skill increased my appreciation for beleaguered farm boys’ ability to adapt equipment and win WW 2. Funny how something as simple as creating folk whimsies out of what most consider trash connects dots across time. Head down the hole, bunny. Don’t come out until next week!

Native Kansan Karen Madorin is a local writer and retired teacher who loves sharing stories about places, people, critters, plants, food, and history of the High Plains.