Western Kansan brings game to Tallgrass Creek

By Jan Landon
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

Myra Strickert is looking for a hand or two, and that doesn’t mean applause.

She’s ready to sit down with neighbors at Tallgrass Creek; shuffle the deck; and play a hand of pitch, pinochle, or bridge.

“You can get together in groups and play,” she says about cards. “It’s a great pastime.”

Hobbies to share
Playing cards isn’t the only thing she has planned. Strickert wants to find other bowlers. She also likes to crochet, knit, and sew.

More than anything Strickert likes to socialize. She’s looking forward to meeting many new people at Tallgrass Creek and sharing conversation over a cup of coffee or during an activity.

“I don’t like to sit and look at four walls,” she says. “That’s for the birds.”

‘Dirty Thirties’
Strickert will be moving from Garden City in western Kansas, where she has spent her entire life. She grew up on the plains during the “Dirty Thirties”—called that because drought and wind caused massive dirt storms and made farming nearly impossible.

“I remember when we were setting the table, we turned the plates over so they didn’t get dust on them,” she says.

She was one of eight children who lived in a small farmhouse in Gove County, in west central Kansas. When she was growing up the family had no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and Strickert was educated in a one-room schoolhouse.

Strickert is a straightforward western Kansan—polite, direct, and confident, not curt.

Meeting the drummer
At one of the country dances Strickert attended with her sister, the band’s drummer spotted her and asked her to dance. It wasn’t long before they were dating. She married Phil Strickert in 1941 and they raised five children.

The Strickerts were farmers—growing wheat and milo and raising cattle near Garden City.