Feeling disconnected in Kansas City

COLUMBIA — Usually, it doesn’t take me longer than a 24-hour visit to a big city before I remember why I don’t want to live in one. I feel immediately overwhelmed in places like Chicago, Cleveland or Atlanta. For many years, I felt differently about Kansas City, probably because I spent some of my growing-up years, went to school and worked there during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Over the years, I’ve always told people that if I had to be stranded any place in America, I hoped it would be in Kansas City because it was the kind of place where somebody would always volunteer to help you out. For instance, I remember arriving there one New Year’s Eve by bus, in the middle of a huge snowstorm to find no taxis available and was kindly driven to my destination in an airport limousine. I got back to the bus station courtesy of an empty Metro bus that the female driver was returning to the depot because the heater was broken.