To Kansas

 

On our way to South Dakota, we stopped to see my parents.

It's a long drive.......we don't mind it though.

I love the red Mountain Dew....it tastes good and helps keep me awake.

Actually, it keeps me awake all night.

Even when it's OK to sleep.

So this is what I looked at.

The bottom of the top bunk.

I don't like bunk beds.

Just sayin.

When we're in Seward,

we stay in a *Hunting Lodge*.....

it's really just a house that a hunter bought....

and if it's not duck or pheasant season, we can stay there.

That's about the extent of my care for hunting seasons.....

 



 

 

I still find it kind of funny to see *towers* in the middle

of fields.  They seem to be as necessary as wheat.

 



This was about the extent of Autumn in Central Kansas.

 



 

This house is behind my mom and dad's house.

Loretta, an old lady that used to run the liquor store, used to live here.

Then my friend, Robert B.

Then my Aunt G. and Uncle B.

Now the house is empty.

The sun was shining on it so pretty the Sunday morning

we were there.

 



 

This broken glass was in sandy/grass drive way

where my mom and dad live..

Hmmmm.

Can't think why there would be so much broken glass here.

Doesn't make sense.

 



 

I hung out some stuff on the line for my mom.

There is a world of difference from my line and hers.

Mine is in a still, humid, damp, shady back yard.

Her line gets the full sun and a Kansas breeze.

 



 

Here are the beautiful Cottonwood trees in the little town

where I grew up.

I love these trees.  You can smell them after it rains,

you can see the leaves move in the wind....

kind of sparkly like.

You can also hear them when it's breezy......

which was most of the time in Kansas~

The leaves are heavy and waxy.

Cottonwood trees played a big part of my childhood.

They put off cotton and I gathered it like snow.

I played with the beads full of cotton.

Somebody bigger than I, would hang swings from high branches.

I would swing on them, and one snapped....

and I about bit my lip in two.

Three or four got cut down one year, and were left in the lot

next to our house.....we played all summer on them.

The day the city burned them was very sad.

We lost a litter of kittens in the fire.

 

 



 

My mom makes Jello.

She puts weird things in Jello.

I think the worse thing is grated carrots and raisins.

Or red hot candies.

I have started making Jello.

But I won't put weird things in it.

Just Cool-Whip on top.

Everybody is safe.

 

 



 

A storm blew in late Sunday afternoon.

It was fun to watch.

If you've ever lived far away places from where you were raised,

or  another state in general....

you realize storms are different,

clouds are different,

weather is just different.

This one knocked out the electricity.

That would be the kind of storms I don't like.

 



 

I never tire of looking at the things my dad has collected over the years.

Did you, as a child, ever call a store and ask if they had....

Prince Albert in a can?

If the store owner said yes....

then YOU said....

YOU BETTER LET HIM OUT!

 



 

This is inside the *Gazebo*.

It's not a normal gazebo like you see in a park.

Or probably anywhere.

It's just what it's always been called.

 

The black and white picture is my dad walking up steps to the

maintenance department at the hospital where he worked for many years.

My dad could build anything,

and fix anything.

He has this sign under the picture....

I don't know if he wasted time or not....

I just know that he was always making something,

fixing something....or planning something.

I loved being around my dad.

 



 

The little town has changed lots since I lived there.

OF COURSE things are going to change....

it would just be fun to go back to a bike ride on the broken

sidewalk on our block,

a bottle of pop for a quarter?

a snowball fight with the friends outside of town,

a walk to the end of the *mile* to the highway,

lilac bushes and mulberry trees,

getting mail on Summer  mornings,

listening to Woodward work on tractors next door,

hearing the honk of a Plymouth Roadrunner going down the street,

and walking down the street we all called ~~~Heaven~~~

.....and even being scared of monsters in the basement......

 

 



 

There was a big rain one Summer,

so big that underground rivers were woke up,

which meant water came up in basements.

That meant we needed to make a change.

Two bedrooms were built off of the front room,

two steps down.....two steps our kids loved to play on.

Every house ought to have two steps down for kids to play on.

With Carpet.

 

Somebody, wall-papered the little area where the stairs are.

They also wall-papered the light switch plate.

Ha.

 



It's harder, each time I say bye to my parents.

I talk to mom on the phone all the time.

I still call her when I'm not feeling good.

I called her after I got my wisdom tooth pulled,

cause I knew she was thinking about it.

And I've never known what it feels like to

not have a dad.

There was never a dull moment.