White Open Spaces

As the pudgy millionaire guided his aircraft to an uneventful touchdown in front of a few thousand cheering dopes at the Salina airport, the Strip couldn't help wondering.

What is it about Kansas?

In the past couple of weeks, the Sunflower State has become the center of the news-media universe more times than a middling central-plains province deserves.

This pontificating porterhouse struggled to put things in perspective as Steve Fossett climbed out of his cockpit after his solo flight around the world and had his puffy flight suit drenched with champagne by fellow millionaire Richard Branson. Why, we wondered, were these two overgrown frat boys who chase world records no one cares about being treated like they were the new Lewis and Clark?

But that was only one of several newsmaking events that had kept Kansas on front pages around the country -- and around the world -- for several days.

And as we watched Fossett accept all the adulation, it began to dawn on us how the events of recent days were connected.

The common thread, we realized, was the nature of Kansas itself.

Sure, the state is the butt of countless jokes about being the middle of nowhere, scorned for being too uptight, too unsophisticated and too dry.

But Kansas is also powerfully seductive, calling to certain men like a siren.

We suspect it has something to do with the land's fertility and its flatness. Kansas is a state that beckons to ambitious men. Men who become convinced that the place is like some kind of gigantic blank slate that begs to be inscribed.

And Kansas has a particularly strong pull, apparently, on middle-aged guys who maybe love themselves a little too much.

There's Fossett, for example, who became obsessed with circling the globe in various contraptions more than half a century after anyone thought that was an impressive feat. Kansans were grateful that the rich dude with nothing better to do had chosen Salina for its long runway and lack of terrain. It would be a great honor to host the takeoff and landing of such a daring adventure.

Not that Fossett would be hurtling through space at a breakneck rate. He'd be traveling at about 250 miles an hour, which is about half the speed of a typical commercial flight.

And although the plane looked a little flimsy, it would spend most of the time at such high altitudes and with a steady enough tailwind that flying it wouldn't be particularly troublesome. The hardest part would be getting the gas-heavy flying fuel tank off the ground to begin with.

This wasn't an aviation challenge. It was a test of fuel efficiency. Essentially, Fossett's stunt was like flying a Toyota Prius with wings to see how far it could go between fill-ups.

So the entire globe looked to Kansas last week for what turned out to be an endurance stunt. Sure, it was a cut above the usual sort of world-record tricks, such as jumping on a pogo stick for days or swallowing huge numbers of hot dogs in less than a minute.

But come on, we were all thinking the same thing: Steve Fossett's real challenge would be to sit in a cockpit for 67 hours without having to take a crap.

Why else was he sucking down milkshakes the whole time?

At least the last time this stunt was accomplished, back in 1986, the human waste considerations were a little more interesting. We still wonder how pilots Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, crammed into the tight space inside the Voyager aircraft, were able to stand each other's stink after nine days without a break.

Anyway, while Fossett's hubris was keeping his legs crossed more than 40,000 feet above the ground, another man had fallen for the allure of Kansas and had come from the East in search of a new beginning.

Who knows what Charles John Juba saw in Kansas City, Kansas, one of the most nonwhite towns in the state, that made him think it would be the best place to set up the Aryan Nations national headquarters. But for some reason, Juba, too, had heard the siren's call.

Juba's self-love was so complete that he figured God must have eyes only for him and his fellow Aryans. The rest of us are mongrels and worse than trash.

But this barbecued brisket wonders when white supremacists became such pussies. Kansas City, Kansas, officials did little more than shake a stick at Juba, and a day later he went running with his tail between his legs. What's worse, one of Juba's Aryan Nations buds reported that Juba had been talked out of his Kansas experiment by his wife.

Obviously, consummating one's relationship with the land of Oz requires more, uh, balls.

This meat patty is thinking, of course, of another of the state's doughy suitors, that shameless Kansas media whore, Dennis Rader.

It seemed obvious to us that, like Fossett and Juba, the alleged BTK serial killer was another self-obsessed monomaniac determined to make his mark, and that he discovered the perfect place to do it.

Wichitans were shocked, naturally, that the man police said was their serial menace turned out to be such an upstanding member of the community. But of course Rader was a church-board president and city employee. Did anyone really think a criminal who taunted the cops, sent clues to television stations and eluded capture for 30 years was going to turn out to be the creepy guy who lives in a van down by the river?