Andale, Kansas

Andale, Kansas, is a town northwest of Wichita, where the Jaax family’s Thanksgiving gathering took place in Ada’s ranch house near the grain elevator. Its bare winter-wheat fields and quiet domestic setting frame a family trying to share an ordinary holiday while grieving John Jaax.

Setting

Andale lies northwest of Wichita. Ada, Jerry Jaax’s widowed mother, lived alone in a ranch house at the edge of town, looking out across fields planted with winter wheat. The fields were bare, and Ada sat in her living room chair staring outdoors. She was afraid to watch television because she feared seeing a gun, a detail that brings the recent violence into the family’s otherwise rural domestic surroundings.

The Jaax Family’s Thanksgiving

After eating Thanksgiving dinner with Nancy Jaax’s father in Wichita, Nancy and Jerry Jaax drove to Andale for a second family meal at Ada’s house. The Jaaxes served roast beef rather than turkey, then gathered in the living room, told stories about the old days on Ada’s farm, and tried to laugh together. The effort repeatedly faltered when someone mentioned John Jaax: the conversation fell silent, family members looked down, and Ada’s tears prompted her to leave the room and close her bedroom door. The family later watched a football game while Nancy and the other women cleaned up and helped with the children.

The town’s place in the account is bound to this brief gathering rather than to any broader civic history. Andale’s farm landscape and Ada’s home hold the family’s attempt at reunion alongside the silences and grief that keep breaking through it; after staying in Wichita for several days to help Nancy’s father reach his cancer treatments, Nancy and Jerry returned to Maryland with their children.