{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Ask A Kansan","title":"Cowboys, UFOs, and Distant Horizons with Jim Gray | Kansas Space Cowboy","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3333,"description":"For centuries, history has been passed down through the stories of our lived experiences. And in this episode you’ll get a taste of the remarkable life of Jim Gray — The Cowboy — and this conversation might just be the most unexpected one we've had yet.Jim Gray is a rancher, historian, author, and director of the Jansen Museum in Geneseo, Kansas — a town of about 220 people in Rice County. He takes us from the wild cattle towns of 1860s Kansas all the way to a blinding white light on a rural road in the summer of 1972. Whether he's riding the Chisholm Trail or piecing together a collection of UFO drawings in a repurposed farmhouse museum, Jim sees the Kansas prairie as a place that communicates with those willing to listen.HighlightsA severe hailstorm recently devastated Salina — lost movie theater, closed mall, shattered pool railings — and the aftermath brought a wave of out-of-state dent repair hustlers trying to bribe Sydney at the permit officeJim Gray grew up three miles east of Geneseo and comes from a long line of livestock people whose family ranch in Rice County is still operating todayA music teacher once told young Jim to ditch the cowboy hat — his voice would take him farther. He didn't listen, and he has no regretsJoseph McCoy's stockyards in Abilene (1867) transformed Kansas: cattle shipments went from 35,000 head to 300,000 in just four years before the town literally ran the drovers offIn 2011, Jim helped organize a modern cattle drive from south of Caldwell to Ellsworth — 300 head, three weeks, chuck wagons, and a near-runaway that cost him his canteenHollywood cowboys (think Yellowstone) don't match reality — real cowboys Jim has known are shy, polite, and would never cuss around a womanJim's book centers on Ellsworth, where the phrase \"a man for breakfast\" meant killing someone — and where Civil War veterans once dragged outlaws out of their beds to restore orderIn late July/early August 1972, Jim and his wife-to-be experienced a blinding...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/31uDhQmE-73zaqpWjXtwnyYffNMsUnDPiL6GtjTddEQ/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9mNzBm/YzFkNDBkODVjNGM2/MzMwMGViYjhmZTY4/Nzc0Mi5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}