salt of the earth.

We can be happy underground.
-Ben Folds Five

People are naturally curious about Kansas. The most common question is "What are you going to do there?" However, they don't mean it the same way they do when they're asking about your upcoming trip to the Bahamas. They really mean, "What is there to do there?"

There is stuff to do in Kansas. I know, for I have done them.

In the town of Hutchinson, known as "Hutch" to natives and visiting North Carolinians, there exist two sites that may interest any wayfaring wanderers. In fact, both of them have been nominated to be one of the 8 Wonders of Kansas. I have no idea why Kansas in particular gets a whole extra wonder than the rest of the world, particularly since none of the Wonders of the World are in the Sunflower State. One of these Hutch-based, wonder-worthy sites is a space museum, and the other is a salt mine 650 feet below the town, leaving one to believe that Hutchinson isn't that exciting at ground level. The town is also the home of the largest and longest grain elevator in the world. I viewed the grain elevator in question, and was heard to remark, "Man, that's a big grain elevator. Uh, honey, I think we're lost." I guess I was less than amazed.

Hutch is the Salt City, though it used to be called Temperance City. Perhaps the name change came when the townspeople started drinking a lot of margaritas. More likely, it came when the salt mine was discovered and ten or so salt companies suddenly popped up.

I've always thought that your guide could make or break a tour experience. A good tour guide is interesting, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic about the subject matter. A good tour guide is willing and able to answer follow-up questions. A good tour guide makes you want to spend lots of money at the requisite gift shop.

In case it is not obvious yet, I would like to state plainly that we did not have a good tour guide. He was not interesting, knowledgeable, or enthusiastic. He was unable to answer follow-up questions. Not only did we not want to spend lots of money at the gift shop, we wanted our $13.50 tour fees back. Our experience was so bad that we purposefully voted against the Underground Salt Musuem in the 8 Wonders of Kansas contest. We filled our ballots with checkboxes next to sites we'd never been to, just to make it clear that the salt mine should not get a vote.

The Underground Salt Mine and Museum tour started out well enough. We were given hard hats, a safety lecture, and a personal rescue device meant to allow us to breathe for up to ninety minutes in case of a gas leak. We were advised not to lick the walls. As far as tours go, that's pretty hard-core. We boarded a two-level elevator and descended down, down, down towards the general direction of China in the pitch black. Someone asked how long it took to get up and down, to which our guide replied, "About a minute. It's the same going up or down."

"Only if you take the elevator," I said.

Once we reached the bottom, we found ourselves in a long room, hundreds of feet long. The ceilings were high and patterned, as if cut by machine. The walls were striated various shades of gray, and never before have I felt such an urge to lick a wall before. The floors were smooth, the air was cool. We boarded a small tram and waited. I was excited at the time, because the idea was so neat. A museum! UNDERGROUND!

Had the ballot for the 8 Wonders of Kansas included a category for "Site with Most Wasted Potential," I would've given it to the salt mine. It's such a great idea and very different from any museum I've ever been to. Where else do you get a personal breathing apparatus? What other place recommends that you do not lick the walls?

So sitting in my tram, taking goofy pictures of Josh and me with our silly hard hats, I had no idea that the best part of the tour was already over.

I'm about to say unkind things about our tour guide, who I'll call Steve. If he gave us his name, I didn't catch it, which is bad form, I think. How can I be your friend on this, our underground journey, if I don't know your name? However, since I am southern and therefore don't wish to seem like a mean person, I'll be sure to throw in a "bless his heart."

Steve, bless his heart, had a speech impediment.

I feel for those who stutter, I really do. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to be unable to express yourself fast enough that people will listen to you. How irritating it must be for others to constantly finish your sentences for you! Even if a stutterer is never cured, I do hope that one can find people who are patient and understanding as well as a career where one can thrive and be happy.

Don't be tour guides. Other careers to mark off your list: disc jockey, telephone operator, TV weatherman, auctioneer, President of the United States.

I think that I could have been okay with St-St-Steve as a tour guide had it been worth it to listen to what he was trying to say. I could probably be patient if I was rewarded at the end of it. But Steve did not reward listeners. He talked, badly, and said nothing.

"Up here, on your right, up here, you'll see, a, uh, well, it's what's called, a, uh, a wall, uh, the miners call it a...gob wall, and it's called a...we call it a, uh, a gob wall, because you see, it's called a gob wall, and the miners, they, uh, well, they just gob things together to make...it, the gob wall, they gob together stuff to make the, uh, gob...wall. In the, uh, mine. They do this, they make this gob wall, what is called...the gob wall, to close off part of the mine, with the gob wall, and that's done to control air...to control air flow. So to control the air flow in the mine, they, the miners in the mine, build this, what's called a gob wall, to control the air flow."

AAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

A tour guide should answer your questions, not create more. Going down, down, down in that elevator, I had one question. Just how do they mine salt anyway? After that one speech in front of the gob wall, I had a bunch more. How do they decide where to build the wall? By control the air flow, does that mean control where the air goes or what kind of air comes in? How do they know if bad air is there? Does bad air mean poisonous air or just too much or what? Where does the air come from? Is the bad air caused by the sighs of frustration from tourists? Also, just how do they mine salt anyway?

Every stop was like this: a mangled speech about something that we were looking at that left me more confused than before. It was painful. I wondered if my personal rescue device would give me access to some sort of air that would put me in a better mood, like pure oxygen or laughing gas. It seemed like Steve had simply glanced over some information before starting - perhaps he did it in the elevator on the ride down. Later, Josh and I toyed with the idea of doing the research ourselves and sending them a script with strict instructions to use it exactly.

At one point, we were allowed to vacate the tram and dig through a big pile of rock salt. We were given tiny canvas bags and told to fill them with as much free salt as we wanted to commemorate our visit to the Kansas Underground Salt Mine. I wondered if this was how the miners did it. I could've asked Steve, but he might have tried to answer me.

By the time the guided part of the tour was over, we were left to wander through some exhibits. One of them was the display created by the marketing minds at Underground Vaults and Storage. A long time ago, someone came up with the brilliant idea of charging people to store things in the salt mine for them, where their valuables would be safe from weather, natural disasters, theft, and slugs. A lot of movie studios and some governments make use of the underground storage; in fact, the master copies of The Wizard of Oz are there.

The display was basically a timeline of twentieth century events that could have caused damage to items stored in traditional methods. However, it all seemed pretty irrelevant. That is quite impressive that the storage units were unaffected by either the 9/11 attacks or Hurricane Katrina, but I bet that had more to do with the fact that they were hundreds of miles away. Now that I think about it, nothing in my apartment was harmed in those events, either. Perhaps I should get into the storage business. I understand that the point is that the units are immune to the general idea of terrorist attacks, but couldn't they just say that? It irritated me that the whole thing was a sales pitch, when it could have just been fun trivia. I'm just Jane Kansas-Tourist. I don't have anything worth saving underground.

And then finally, it was the underground gift shop, where they had t-shirts and hats that said things like "Salt of the Earth" and "Where the sun REALLY don't shine." I am related to people who would enjoy this kind of humor, but they didn't have my dad's size. Okay, fine, I thought they were kinda funny, too. Back up, up, up the elevator, where Steve encouraged us all to vote for the Underground Salt Museum to be one of the 8 Wonders of Kansas. It was dark, so I felt free to roll my eyes.

It's not that I'm saying you should never visit the Underground Salt Mine and Museum. I would just, you know, wait a few years. Give them a chance to do a little research, train some tour guides, get speech therapy for Steve. They've got a fantastic space down there, if only they'd figure out how to show it. Go now, and you're just setting yourself up for disappointment. Someday, I hope to have a wonderful time 650 feet below the town of Hutchinson, Kansas. Sadly, that experience has not been (groan) mine.