The Nation: Broom at the Top

Like the weather, the sorry state of Main Street in Cheney, Kans. (pop. 1,200) was something everybody complained about but nobody did much to alter. The trouble began when the town's mechanical street sweeper broke down and there was no money in the budget for repairs. Refuse and dirt started to pile high, trucks carrying groaning loads of wheat to the elevators added to the mess, and so much sand from a water main project drifted around Main Street that Cheney began to resemble a grain belt Sahara.

What to do? Other mayors might have applied for state or federal aid and filled out forms until their streets were as buried as those of Pompeii—or garbage-strewn New York (see page 16). But not Kit Irby, 58. Taking broom and shovel into her own hands, she has set out to clean up the streets of Cheney ("A Community with Pride") in time for the county fair on July 31. Numerous citizens have joined in, many of them teenagers, but none has matched the mayor's daily dedication.

"This is the way we do things out here," says the exuberant Mrs. Irby, who doubles as a housewife. "That's the way we were raised." Comments a Cheney resident: "She ain't afraid to work, which you can't say about a lot of people around here."