Charles M St Clair

Your Faithful Correspondent Charles M St Clair

Thomas "Tommie" Cronkite (no relation) is the Walnut Shade correspondent for the Miller County Ledger. He took over the duties when Arlene White, who had held the position for sixty-eight years, passed away. Tommie is the only male correspondent for the weekly paper in Miller County, but he's been accepted, finally, by Lydia Marks, Sarah Graves, Ruth Harwood, Joyce Hanks, Mabel White, Patsy Buchanan, and the Miller sisters - Sharon, Freida, and Sandy - who report on the daily life in their own small communities. With a population of just 287 people, you'd think Walnut Shade would be easy to write about, but every week, the revolving cast of characters -- and there are characters here -- has new and important information that they need to share with the rest of the world. It's Tommie's job to do that, which he does with a sense of wonder and amazement, admiration and appreciation. Walnut Shade is, as you will find out, no ordinary small town on the Kansas prairie. It was a stop on the Oregon Trail and Pony Express riders changed horses here. It has a park designed by Charles Olmsted and an orchard planted by the son of President James A. Garfield. Two members of one of the most famous rock and roll bands of the 1960s grew up here and it is home to artists, musicians, writers, and philosophers. It has been visited by the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, Oscar Wilde, and Harry and Bess Truman. President Barack Obama is going to make a stop here in the coming months. But these celebrities haven't gone to the heads of the denizens of this place. The Main Street/Pride committee is working hard to revitalize downtown; the Prairie View Extension Club is always looking for exotic dishes to try; the ladies of the Catholic Church publish an Irish cookbook every ten years, even though no one in town has Irish ancestors; and, Billy Thornton is as down-home as it gets. Perhaps most surprising of all, it was the home for the final years of... Well, you'll just have to read the book. Walnut Shade -- It really is like nowhere else.