From the Alvin and Rosalie Sara Check studio, PBS Kansas Presents Positively Kansas, It's Time for Positively Kansas, coming up the heart of Turner's Corner, a journey back to a time when a vibrant Wichita drugstore served as a sanctuary and gathering place for the city's black community during segregation, also beating the Kansas heat.

We dive poolside into Cheneys brand new $2.4 million aquatic center as it transforms summer fun in Sedgwick County.

Plus, from England to America with a smile, we meet a Kansas author who reveals how Cockney wit and a good sense of humor helped her perfectly assimilate into the heartland and drama The Waterhole.

Mike Blair takes us into the Kansas Wild Edge to witness a seldom seen frenzy as a drying pool creates a survival showdown.

I'm Sierra Scott.

Join us for a half hour of information and inspiration right now on Positively Kansas.

And.

For decades, a small drugstore at Ninth and Cleveland in Wichita was more than just a place to fill prescriptions.

Turners corner drugs served as a gathering place for the city's black community during the years of segregation.

A soda fountain, lunch counter and neighborhood meeting spot all in one.

Now, a new illustrated booklet is helping bring those memories back to life.

Senior producer Chris Frank takes us back to a time when Turners Corner was the heart of a thriving black business district.

Today, the corner is quiet, but for those who grew up here, Turners Corner Drug was the place where a community came together.

I have one of the few photographs of Turner Drug.

This would have been from probably 1985, maybe.

Steve Woodman is a retired Wichita High School history teacher.

Back in the 1980s, he saw local neighborhoods fading, so he tried to save as much history as he could.

What I was teaching high school and I decided to kind of, document small corner markers, little drug stores, drive in movie theaters, soda fountains, all that was going to go away.

And that's when he met Robert Turner, owner of Turner Corner Drug.

The pharmacy once stood in this building at ninth and Cleveland.

The pharmacies were simply known as Doc by customers and friends, and he was so much more than just a drug as fill in prescriptions or maybe loan people money, gave them credit, cash, their paychecks.

For 30 years, 1960 to 1990, Turner's Corner Drug was part of the fabric of Wichita's black business district.

Go to nice and clean.

Former customers, now senior citizens, remember coming in their youth to Turner's and the Dunbar Theater next door, going down to ninth, and Cleveland was going down to the Dunbar Theater on a Saturday afternoon, probably paying a quarter to $0.50 to get in and spending most of the day there trying to get the candy that would last the longest during the movie.

And I think during that time I thought it was Milk Duds.

Across the street was Dunbar Elementary School.

Students often cross ninth Street to get to Turner Drug.

When you were at school, sometimes if you had enough time at lunchtime, you could go over there to get the cony or for the cherry limeade, which was what he was known for.

I was always a kind of a storyteller as a classroom teacher.

Recently, Woodman set out to capture those memories in an illustrated booklet in a storytelling style reminiscent of Charles Dickens.

The Wichita historian imagines returning to the neighborhood on a long pass Christmas Eve, walking once again into Turner's corner drug as it might have appeared decades ago.

I always loved Dickens.

One of my favorite stories was A Christmas Carol.

You know, New Year's Eve 1961, and Jingle Bell Rock was on the, jukebox that he used to have in there.

And that was a new song.

Then jingle Bell, jingle bell, jingle Bell Rock.

Woodman managed to illustrate not just Turner's drug, but images from the neighborhood, including building murals and a visit by Santa to the former Phillis Wheatley Children's home nearby.

The home cared for as many as 60 orphaned children from troubled backgrounds in a family style environment.

It closed in 1980.

The booklet is a reminder to those who live or used to live in the neighborhood.

What a respected man Doc Turner was shown here in a rare photo from a newspaper article.

Turner brought his family to Wichita during segregation.

The family dealt with all sorts of segregation issues of the day.

For one, Turner had to get a private loan to purchase the pharmacy because banks weren't lending to blacks.

Through it all, Turner encourage others to pursue their dreams, no matter the obstacles.

So he's always encouraging to go beyond what you would normally see everyone else is doing.

Pursue your dreams to do what you can do, and that is one of the ways is to go into business, which requires you to have a lot of faith in yourself.

Have faith in what you're doing and to trust that you can make it a success.

Before the 1958 dot.com sit in, blacks weren't able to sit at downtown lunch counters.

So coming to Turner's was a special treat.

So we didn't have a place where we could sit down in Art city.

And so it was just exciting to come in there and see other black people.

Charles McCaffrey recalls when the San Francisco Dons basketball team came to play Wichita University.

McCarthy says he took some of the Dons players to ninth and Cleveland to visit this drugstores lunch counter for ice cream.

The three black guys who came to Turner drove like the world to go to Turner, and we're all standing there talking.

Their fraternity brothers, who were little kids, came in the door and looked up and saw Bill Russell looked and oh, and ran out the door.

And about five minutes later they came running back in the door to say, look, look, look.

Well, Chamberlain.

Well, Bill Russell almost had a heart attack.

So those are some of the cover stories and things.

But I guarantee everybody that banana split was oh so.

McAfee also remembers Shattered Grocery store, which sat across the street from what was once Salone Strug, the store that later became Turner's Corner Drive.

He says there was a shoe shop, barbershop, gift shop, restaurant and more in the black business district.

So what's your dorm life in Cleveland?

That was where it was, for many, many years.

That was a major.

This.

There is little left but the memories of earlier generations.

And because so much is gone.

These members of the Emerson McAdams historic Association are hoping to preserve what they can.

Starting with the Overture School.

The Wichita School District has plans to close the overture School at the end of the 2026 2027 school year.

As we look at what we're trying to do right now and looking at one of the last black schools that that we had over a year.

Preserving that memory, preserving that history, putting opportunities in there that uplift our community and and putting opportunities and education into that building.

It is history, she says, that needs preserved.

So younger generations could learn from it.

Members here have already seen so much of the past fade away, including the former neighborhood YMCA, where games can be played indoors.

Even Doc Turner had his own limitations.

Faced with neighborhood crime when he went out of business in 1990, having had an armed robbery, he just decided, that's enough.

That was the second armed robbery at Turners Corner Drug within two months.

Doc Turner, frustrated with the changes in the neighborhood, closed the day after Valentine's in 1990.

He went to work for another local pharmacy.

He died a year later in 1991, at age 66.

Over time, several other businesses disappeared and the neighborhood began to change.

It's so very important that this group of people continues to still is still a story.

We need everybody participating in the story.

Like the memories in a Dickens tale.

The neighborhood may have changed, but for those who grew up here, Turner's Corner Drug will always be part of Christmas Past and remembered as the place where a neighborhood came together.

This is Kris Frank for Positively Kansas.

The Christmas Eve at Turner's Corner sells for $20, with proceeds going to the charity.

It's part of an ongoing effort to preserve the history of Wichita neighborhoods that might otherwise be forgotten.

The heat of a Kansas summer has official competition in the town of Cheyney.

After years of planning a $2.4 million aquatic complex has officially opened its gates.

Transforming a traditional swimming hole into this state of the art water park.

Chris Frank takes us poolside for a first look at the region's newest hot spot for cool recreation.

I know.

The splashes from the diving boards or the screams from going down the slides.

These are the sounds of summer for generations of Cheyney residents.

Summer meant heading to the town swimming pool.

It's a great investment for our community.

Small towns revolve around schools and pools.

Honestly, schools in the school year and then the pool in the, in the summer.

But after nearly seven decades of service, Chinese old school had reached the end of its life.

Our old showing pool, was built in 1957, and, it had been through many years of of needing some repairs.

And so this was a vision that we've been working on since 2020.

The old pool was simple, she says.

For swimming lanes, a baby pool, and not much else.

Today, swimmers expect more.

And so our new facility has six swimming lanes.

We added in a zero entry area.

That's something that our old pool didn't have.

We have we still have two diving boards.

That was something that our community really wanted to see.

And then we added in two large slides.

The new aquatic center represents a $2.4 million investment and is the result of years of planning and community input.

Residents wondered a facility that would serve everyone from toddlers to grandparents.

I think it's all about quality of life.

And it's not just for young people, it's for families, it's for grandparents.

It's for all ages, really.

And judging by the crowds, the community was ready.

The facility is drawing more than 100 visitors a day.

Parents say the new features give children more reasons to spend their summer here.

I think it's great.

It's a lot safer and the slides are a big bonus for the kids.

But this one gives.

There's just a lot of different activities where you can kind of spread out and, kind of you don't get bored as quickly, I guess.

Of course, the most important reviews may come from the kids themselves.

I like how bouncy the diving boards are, so they're really easy to like.

Candy bar.

I really like it.

It's very fun.

The slides are really good quality.

The old pool is gone.

But city leaders say its purpose remains the same, providing a place where summer memories are made.

We've had lots of people make comments on our social media about.

I was two when the original pool was open, and I still remember my summers at the old pool.

So really it's just about creating memories for for the kids and changing.

The hope is this new aquatic center will serve families for decades to come, just as the old pool did for nearly 70 years.

This is Chris Frank in Chaney for Positively Kansas.

The new Aquatic center open Memorial Day weekend.

Consider this if the new aquatic center lasts as long as the old pool did.

It will be open until 2093.

Author Leslie Johnson is one of those people who agrees that laughter is the best medicine.

She's a native of England who moved to Kansas many years ago and says humor helped her assimilate into the local culture.

If you'd like to get a sense of her style of humor, you just need to pick up a copy of her book.

As Jim Crow shows us.

Just like the characters in her book, Leslie Johnson is a character in her own right.

There's a certain element of crazy about some of we, should we say Mitchell, are those fearless Freddy and his fanciful friends is a book of what she calls light verse.

Another way of describing it is a collection of off the wall poems about odd characters, 26 of them, one for every letter of the alphabet party.

Pat.

I love the way the turkeys dance when they are full of cold, said potty pad 1st August night as the meeting waxed bold.

They sneeze and wheeze and snuffle too.

And trot about most quirky.

That is when I know they have an illness called cold turkey.

Oh yo yo yo yo yo.

A native of jolly old England.

Johnson married in American and moved to Kansas several decades ago.

She worked as a teacher and semiprofessional singer and found that almost any situation is made a little better with laughter.

Humor is a survival tool for me and a communication tool.

I came to Kansas from a totally different culture.

Now, how am I going to work my way into this culture?

How am I going to be acceptable?

Because even though we think we're open, you know, even with a white face and speaking a similar language, it was a challenge to, to be integrated, shall we say.

And I was in schools, many different people that I met.

And I just found a little humor was helpful and from Armenian Albert to zealous Zachary Zander, this book is all about quirky characters with flawed personalities.

It just sort of.

I guess it says something about my brain and maybe I should say adult has been Harry, as bright as the sunshine and quick as a wink has been.

Harry.

It was not what you think.

How did he acquire his curious name?

When he went to restaurants?

He played a strange game.

He always would order a liquid or dove.

Then someone, the waiter was soon getting unnerved.

What is this concoction, this porridge, this bilge?

Pray tell me it's secret.

You'll swiftly divulge.

It's bean soup.

The waiter would sigh with mock bow says.

How so?

It has been.

But what is it now?

You might wonder if at least some of these characters are based on real people.

Disclaimer no, my no, not my turn to know.

Jonson's clever and delightfully dark humor is accentuated by the illustrations of her friend and self-taught artist, Victoria Beasley.

I've never illustrated a book of poetry before.

I was down for it, but I wanted to make sure that my style is what she was looking for because, like Lesley, I had this heightened view of poetry as like something like esoteric and very colorful and ethereal, and my style is more cartoony and so I was like, are you sure?

And then she sent me some of her verses and I was like, oh yeah.

And it says on the cover for children of all ages.

So anyone who still retains an adult that still retains that kind of like childlike cheek, but also younger children who want to feel smart because there are a lot of big words in there that they can learn from this one called Querulous Clinician's Indian.

It's a that's a mouthful.

Everybody after me.

Querulous, convenient.

He's again, I liked the word.

What the heck does it mean?

Well, I should I'm going to tell you to look it up, because that's an extra part, isn't it?

And what about the book's namesake?

Well, this, of course, is Fearless Freddie, and he was an acrobat, and he wanted to try more and more exaggerated and fantastic feats.

Unfortunately, he overdid himself.

He's got a little bit of, as you can see from his expression, he's rather he thinks he's brilliant, you know, and he is, but he's not quite as brilliant as he believes.

So he tried one trick too many, fell off the high wire and died.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Sorry.

They don't all die.

Fearless Freddie and His Fanciful Friends is a quick read and a hoot and a witch star for Positively Kansas.

I'm Jim Gray with Fearless Freddie and His Fanciful friends is available at Amazon and other online retailers.

In this week's Kansas Wild Edge, a drying water hole strands gobs of tadpoles and local snakes start feasting.

Bullfrogs and other predators also get in on the act.

Mike Blair shows us this common but seldom seen predicament.

A water hole bubbles in the heat of a late spring day.

No, it's not boiling.

It's surface is alive with breaching tadpoles, gulping air.

Their water nursery is evaporating and the drying pool crowds them ever closer.

It's a race to develop before their crucial habitat is gone.

But that's not the only problem.

Bunched together with nowhere to hide, they're an easy mark for area hunters.

And today, snakes come calling garter and ribbon snakes, small reptiles that prey on frogs, toads and developing tadpoles.

These snakes live in moist, grassy areas, and they never miss the chance for easy pickings when water holes dry up.

They slither into the prey periscopes up to spot the closest meal.

Snakes see well both in and out of water, and they vigorously writhe and twist to catch frantic tadpoles.

Their small, curved teeth grab the slippery victims so that escape is nearly impossible.

And then, with mouths full, they race for sure where they can better consume their dinner.

Some stop at the water's edge.

Others race into cover to protect themselves while eating from even bigger hunters.

Not often does finding food come this easy.

Snakes work their jaws from side to side muscles, forcing the tadpoles down their throats.

And then they return for more to gorge on the natural buffet.

It's a grisly party.

Bullfrogs and leopard frogs watch the feeding spree with disinterest.

They are safe from snakes this size.

But they are predators, too.

And bull frogs also relish large tadpoles that come close.

They eat constantly.

Ducks visit the waterhole and join the hunt for this easy protein.

And even baby turtles like this red eared slider use the drying waterhole to hunt for smaller prey.

It's a common feast of hot summer if you find the right place and time.

It's nature's way.

A fascinating glimpse of life in the wild.

I'm Mike Blair for Positively Kansas.

That's a wrap for this week.

With federal funding cuts, PBS Kansas has to decide which shows to keep.

If you are positively Kansas to stay on the air, you can go to kcpt Dawg and make a $100 donation as a thank you.

Your name will appear at the start and end of future episodes.

I volunteer to host for free because these stories are important and bring us together as Kansans.

And if you would like to see more positive and inspirational stories like these, you can also watch me on fierce, feisty and 50 plus.

You can find the podcast on Spotify, Apple or Google, or you can watch it on YouTube or on our website at fierce, feisty and 50 plus.com.

I'm Ciara Scott.

See you next time.