The "A" may be washed out in the photo above, but this is where we're from. Granted, my brothers and I were not 'from' Larned, Kansas, but our parents lived there, loved there, married there, moved from there to points across the country, then returned there after they passed.
In and of itself, the water tower is an icon of the Great Plains for many people, but this one stood guard over other icons of my family's past.
The water tower glimpsed at downtown. I do not remember ever seeing a movie at the State Theater, but I do remember it's red brick facade fronted by a red brick road. (The photo is modern, the brick's been painted over, and asphalt covers the road... but it still brings back memories.)
At a closer angle, the tower looked down upon the "Cave House". At first, the place was a quarry for native stone. Soon after, a cave was excavated to store ice from the Pawnee River. An underground house was built on top of the cave. As my family took walks from my Grandmother's house to the park by the river, my brothers and I marveled at it as a place of deep secrets and wonder.
Below the Cave House and the Water Tower, the football stadium welcomed all. I don't know if Dad played football in this stadium, but I have an imaginary memory of my mom sitting in the bleachers and cheering as Dad made a critical tackle or the touchdown pass. This may not be true, but memories do not have to be true to be important.
In the midst of it all, there was this...
Grandma's house...
Where she stood on the steps waiting for us to arrive or depart...
Where she'd be in the kitchen before dawn cracked to make unbelievable buns and noodles for lunch... between the dining and living rooms, there was a grate that rose from the basement broiler that would burn your feet if you dared to step on it..
Where the basement had chambered windows looking up to the sky... during my childhood, my Aunt and one of her husbands remodeled the basement. Later, another aunt lived there...
Where out back there were two garages, each holding a Chevy Bel Air. According to family lore, Granddad never let Grandma drive her's much, so it sat in the side garage, gathering dust until my Dad restored it decades later...
Where, after they'd left the farm, she and Grandad boarded out the upstairs rooms. When we were kids, there were still rough ropes by the windows with hand written instructions about how to climb out the windows if there was a fire. (And of course, there were attic closets stowing Halloween clown masks from my Dad's childhood... they scared the hell out of my brother's and I)...
Where my brothers, Dad and I would play pickup football on the lawn, and during the summer we would sit on metal gliders on the front porch and talk about relatives whose names I barely recognized...
Where on Christmas I received my first bicycle (I still don't know how Dad smuggled it up from Oklahoma, but I like to think that he bought it the day before at Alco's in downtown Larned),,,
Where Grandmother grew peonies and tomatoes in the garden and overwintered geraniums in the kitchen and on the the back patio (sometimes on top of a cabinet that my great grandfather built. Attached to the shelf of the cabinet was a hand-cranked meat grinder that Grandma used to prepare my aging Grandfather's food. Restored, the cabinet now sits in my house, and geraniums overwinter there)...
And where everything looked, smelled, tasted, and felt like a Grandparent's house should look, smell, taste and feel...
Like home.
No comments:
Post a Comment