Hope, KS

Nothing good ever happened in Hope, Kansas. To be fair, nothing terribly bad happened either. Hope was just a run-of-the-mill small town in the middle of America with a Walmart, a Dairy Queen, and a Main Street that had seen better days. Most of the residents of Hope worked either at the Walmart or on one of the local farms - Davey’s Turkey Farm or Macon’s Dairy Farm. Some traveled out to towns like Abilene or Chapman to sell cars or tractors at the dealerships or wait tables at the Applebee’s or Chili’s. Hope was shrinking, to be sure. Job growth over the past decade was in the negative numbers. None of the young people wanted to stay past high school, and those who could, left within three months of graduation to attend college or to find jobs in Topeka or Kansas City.

Sophie Harris was one of the few who stayed in Hope after high school. Born and raised in town, she was an only child to a single mother who was also born and raised in town. Her father had died on active duty in Afghanistan before she was born, and her mother, pregnant and alone, had been too afraid to leave her hometown. Sophie was planning to study art at the University of Kansas but with her mother's cancer diagnosis in the summer after high school, she put her plans on hold.

As a young child, Sophie had spent a lot of time by herself while her mother worked long hours as a nurse at the hospital in Herrington, but she never felt alone. Her mind was filled with characters and images from the many books she read, and she was constantly drawing, painting, and fashioning little sculptures from leaves, twigs and rocks or bottles, ribbon and scraps of cloth. Each creation had its own fantasy story and all seemed to come alive and coexist amongst each other in their little house on Maple Street.

Sophie’s first inkling that art was something that adult people did in real life was on a day trip she and her mother had taken to Kansas City for her ninth birthday. Visiting the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Sophie was struck by the spiritual feeling of this temple built to the importance of what art could say about the world and the emotion it could convey. Of course, she didn’t have the words to describe what she felt at the time, but the soaring openness of the building, the spotlessly shiny black marble floor, the striking work against milk-white walls or on giant plinths, the stillness and reverence in the air made her feel as if she were a visitor in God’s own house. She half expected him to amble down the halls in his long gray hair and beard, white gown flowing, his hands clasped behind him.

Sophie was quiet on that drive home from the museum, immersed in the colors and shapes that exploded behind her eyelids. She began to dream of her life surrounded by the vitality and energy of what she had just experienced, and as she looked out the window at the washed-out landscape, it seemed as if a giant brush held by an invisible being was painting bright murals across the lifeless winter trees, the austere metal silos and drab rural buildings - what were once shades of grey and brown became vibrant, lively and inviting.

From that day on, Sophie would see brilliant visions of color and designs in the ordinary places and objects all around her. She envisioned light posts wrapped in brilliant yarns, bold graphics on blank walls, light-refracting mobiles hanging from electrical wires and tree branches. She drew her visions in a souvenir notebook she had purchased at the museum gift shop - it had a soft black leather cover with the museum logo embossed on it, and a string tie enclosure. She carried it with her everywhere and its pages became filled with images of her reimagined Hope.

Her mother’s illness changed things, though. Sophie began working at Alan’s Grocery to pay the bills, taking her mother to chemo treatments and doctor’s appointments, and cooking fresh, healthy foods daily. She had no time for art or visions. Her promotions at work didn’t help either. She’d started as a stock person and bagger, then moved up to checker and then assistant manager. Although the money helped, each promotion seemed like another march toward an amorphous, inescapable darkness. Through it all, her notebook became a forgotten artifact.

One day, as Sophie was rushing from her shift at the grocery store to her mother’s doctor’s appointment, she collided directly into a man in the parking lot, her purse and its contents flying everywhere in the impact. She gathered up her belongings as quickly as she could, mumbling an apology at her clumsiness, and quickly jumped into her car to drive away. In her haste, she barely registered the man, only vaguely aware of his tall, lean figure with gray hair and beard and a long white coat, and she didn’t hear him as he called out after her.

Sophie didn’t have much time to dwell on the random incident as she continued her daily life of responsibilities. Her mother’s condition began to improve quite rapidly, however, and within a few months, it seemed the cancer was in full remission, much to the oncologist’s surprise. Life at home began to return to normal and Sophie felt her burden being lifted.

One day, Sophie received a small package in the mail. It contained the notebook she hadn’t even realized she had lost, a letter, and a check for $20,000. The letter read:

Dear Ms. Harris,

I apologize I was not able to return your notebook on the day we ran into each other. I looked inside to find your name, and I could not help but be captivated by your stunning illustrations. I know that you have been taking on a lot of responsibility in caring for your sick mother, but I hope she is beginning to feel better. I have enclosed a check for $20,000, which I hope you will be able to use towards transforming Hope as pictured in your notebook.

Warm regards,

A Friend

Stunned, Sophie sat staring at the items in front of her, unsure of what to process first. There was her precious notebook. Although she hadn’t known to miss it, its surprise return overwhelmed her, reminding her of how much that notebook meant to her and how long it had been since she’d had anything to record in it. The past year was a blur of work and caretaking and worry and exhaustion. There had been no room for inspiration, no ability to dream.

Then, there was the money. Twenty thousand dollars of money! She inspected the check, looking for a name or address. There was none. The date and amount were written in small, neat script. The signature was less neat and quite illegible. It seemed like a legitimate check, but the thought of cashing it seemed frightening. What were the consequences of accepting money from an unnamed stranger?

And then there was the note. She read it again. A lovely note, seemingly authentic and from a good place, but who was its author and how did he know about her mother’s cancer? She tried very hard to picture the stranger’s face, to remember anything about him that would identify him, but she could not. She only had the feeling that this was meant to be, but how could she be sure?

As she looked through her newly recovered notebook, her illustrations seemed to have been drawn by someone else, but over the coming weeks, Sophie began to reconnect with who she had been before her mother’s illness. Slowly the illustrations began to come alive again. Bright colors and bold shapes danced before her eyes and the world seemed to turn from shades of grey to brilliance once more.

Energized and invigorated, Sophie was thankful for the mysterious stranger's generosity and decided to make the most of it. She began to turn her creations into reality all across town. Blank walls became murals telling stories of adventure, lamp posts became magical tree trunks, fire hydrants and electrical boxes became animals and mystical creatures. Run-down parking lots became little parks with houses for the birds and squirrels. She created an art program at the local school so that children could paint and sew and build in the afternoons. She enlisted anyone who wanted to help, and it turned out that many people did.

A newspaper from a nearby city published a story about Hope with the compelling, if not predictable headline, The Audacity of Hope. Soon visitors began to arrive, first in a trickle, then in a steady stream and the town began to flourish. Restaurants were busy, the motel experienced full occupancy for months at a time. Several Bed and Breakfasts opened to accommodate the overflow. Artists from all over the world contacted Sophie asking if there was a residency program they could apply to, and so she turned the abandoned mill on the outskirts of town into an artist center. Instead of scrambling to escape, young people found opportunities to stay, and families thrived.

Over the years, Hope grew, not just in population or jobs, but in self-expression, in imagination, in, well, hope. And so it seems, good things did happen in Hope, Kansas after all.