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Cowtown Rehab

By: Steven Rinella

In the winter of 2001, Kansas City took a step away from its heritage as a cowtown by removing the large, brown and white plastic bull from a ninety-foot pylon that had for forty-seven years held this symbol of American beef in the city’s skyline. When the synthetic cow was delivered to the American Hereford Association’s downtown Kansas City offices in 1954, the organization had seventeen thousand members and employed several hundred people, most of whom sat at desks tracking Hereford pedigrees. The offices of The American Polled Hereford Association were nearby, at once a rival and brother-in-arms of the AHA. Since then, changes in American eating habits, farming practices, and technological efficiency in handling data have shrunken that industry and moved it to small suburban offices and distant feed lots, and the bull has gone with them.
Many in Kansas City see the bull’s relocation to a park across from FBI regional headquarters as a necessary adjustment to the city. A lot has happened there since one record day in 1943 when 64,000 head of cattle were processed in Kansas City slaughterhouses and holding pens. The daily number of butchered animals has been steadily approaching zero, so KC boosters felt the city should enter the new millenium with a more polished up image that suggested cosmopolitan glamour instead of farm animals.
Whether or not this new image will stick is to be seen, but for now it’s safe to say that Kansas City, Missouri is performing a balancing act between its past and future. (In all fairness to Kansas, it should be pointed out that half of Kansas City is in that state. However, it is generally agreed that that half is residential and not too interesting, and the heart and soul of KC is found in Missouri.) So, what that balancing act means to the average Joe is that he can get the world’s best plate of barbecued ribs (or, of course, Kansas City strip) and then catch a good play. That latter may be surprising, but Kansas City claims to have more professional theaters than any city of comparable size (about a half-million residents) in the United States. There are more than 20 equity and community theaters and numerous theater departments at high schools and colleges in the city. For ongoing performances there is the acclaimed Missouri Repertory Theater. The Midland Center for the Performing Arts features Broadway shows. The Folly Theater, a turn-of-the-century burlesque house, now features plays and concerts. Symphony, opera, and ballet presentations are staged at the Lyric Theater.
It’s also surprising to note that Kansas City has over 200 public fountains and more miles of boulevards than Paris. While KC’s main claim to cultural fame is the “Barbecue Capital of the World,” there’s an argument to be made for calling it the “Booze and Good Music Capital of America.” To understand the nightlife scene of today it’s useful to know a little background of partying in KC. While teetotalers were shutting down purveyors of spirits across the country during Prohibition, Mayor Pendergast tried to keep the party going in his city until he was locked up for tax evasion. The atmosphere he created in Kansas City, however crookedly he did it, allowed musicians, like Count Basie and Duke Ellington, to do their things. As early as the 1920s, Kansas City jazz had its own distinctive musical style, using more saxophones and background riffs. In 1997 the Kansas City Jazz Museum opened, with collections focused primarily on the contributions of jazz greats Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Duke Ellington, as well as Parker and other Kansas City musicians. The facility also includes a live jazz club and is located in the 18th and Vine Historic District, the center of jazz music development. Every August the Kansas City Blues and Jazz Festival takes place in this historic part of the city. It draws nationally known performers and is widely considered to be one of the top concert series in the nation.
Economically, Kansas City leans heavily on it’s position at the dead center of America’s heartland. As a commercial center, Kansas City has an economic influence extending northward into the corn belt and westward across the Great Plains. Livestock, grain, and other agricultural products from these areas are shipped to Kansas City for marketing and processing. Kansas City is one of the nation’s leading centers for flour milling and millions of bushels of wheat, corn, and grain sorghum are shipped each year to domestic and foreign markets from the city’s huge grain terminals, located on the waterfront.
Like many Midwestern river cities, Kansas City is built on two levels. Much of its industry is along the lowlands, where it has easy access to river and rail transportation and cheap water for manufacturing processes. The Kansas City business district is on the uplands, and so are the residential areas. The city is also a wholesale storage and distribution center and an important retail and mail-order market. Underground manufacturing and storage have been developed more extensively in Kansas City than in any other city. Most of the developed underground space is in the Bethany Falls limestone, a rock formation that has been quarried for more than a century. Even a foreign trade zone, where goods from other countries are stored and prepared for distribution, is located under the ground. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the brown and white plastic cow was interred in one of these underground spaces while it waited for its rebirth as a relic. Only time will tell whether burying the cow and then transplanting him to a new home will end his reign as KC’s best known symbol.