My Job Forced Me to Love Kansas City

A year after moving to Kansas City I landed a new job with a large landscaping company. Now, up to this point I hadn’t seen the city. My wife and I would go out for dinner or movies but I wouldn’t say we hit the town. Our work schedules never matched up either, which was the main hindrance. We had plenty of friends and family that we visited but doing suburb tours doesn’t exactly make us city slickers. This changed for me instantly, well not instantly.

My new job consisted of visiting each location where we maintained the landscape and evaluate how well the crews performed. The job itself was fine, nothing mind blowing. The perk though was literally being able to see all of Kansas City. Kansas City is one the top 50 cities in the world for land area and has one of the smallest population densities on this list. This means KC is very spread out with the population scattered throughout the city. My list of properties matched this spread out theme.

I had properties from Liberty to Bucyrus and Bonner Springs to Oak Grove. If you aren’t familiar with those look at a map of KC and make a circle around where you think the boundary of KC is and then move out about 10 miles. Needless to say there was a lot of drive time. One of our consultants called it “Sitting on your ass, behind glass, burning gas.” Wit and rhyme are limitless.

While driving between locations I kept seeing new things and the more I drove the city the more I wanted to see more. I was able to see everything awesome in all four seasons. I watched buildings go up and others come down. At the time this job downtown was still becoming what it is, Legends was still being built up, other shopping centers went up and over this four year period the city really did transform.

It’s one thing to go out and see something new but when you see the progress of a city day by day you can’t help but become connected. I would even see the same people going to work or waiting for a bus. I felt part of the city just by witnessing it.

I remember back in college my parents moved and they would talk about the routines of their new neighbors, wildlife and people passing by. Certain birds and squirrels would stop by at the same time each day. They noticed when they wouldn’t be there for a few days. They talked to and met new neighbors, watched their houses when they were out of town. I remember thinking, why do they know this stuff or even how? It wasn’t until I spent so much time doing my routine that I found myself picking up on my surroundings more. It wasn’t purposeful but more organic.

The feeling of being connected to my community was drawn out just by being in the community. I wasn’t walking down the street striking up conversations with everyone I passed but I saw people often the same ones many times and just by seeing them, they became familiar. This familiarity formed a connection. This connection formed my love for the city.

My love for Kansas City didn’t come about overnight and wasn’t expected or even thought of but besides my family it is one of the things I’m most proud of. I am proud to be from KC!