Kansas 2010

Just returned yesterday from Kansas. I had the opportunity to take my parents back to their home town. My Aunt Joyce had passed away and they wanted to be with her family to celebrate her life, so I cancelled the week and drove them to Kansas in their car. Two days of driving, thru Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and up thru Kansas, there isn't a N/S running interstate thru Kansas so it's all 2 lane country roads....just us and the semi's! First night into Texas, tornado's all around us. Second day should have been short day but for the torrential rains, wipers on highest speed, driving under 50MPH all thru Kansas, just me following the semi's ! But we made it safe and sound to our destination Russell Kansas!

It was great to get my folks back to their home town....which hasn't changed much. Wilson is where they both grew up and was the town I'd visit my Grandparents from little on. So it was great seeing it again.
This is one of my Grandparents homes, the other burned down years ago. The house looks great, it's now painted a light powder blue, many a fun evening spent on that porch watching the storm clouds and cows in the pasture across the street. My sister and I used to sleep on the floor on a pallet behind that upstairs dormer window, it was at the top of the stairs and just right for us. The little building off to the left was the "wash house" where the very scary cellar was and behind that was the chicken coop.
Only big change was that the old stone Opera house burned down this year. What a loss for that community. And as you see it's not been cleaned up as there isn't funding for it, amazing to me as around here within a week the hazardous area would have been cleaned up. Everything is as is, all the burned timber fallen into the basement.
We were able to spend some time one day at the cemetary, putting flowers on loved ones graves. My Dad where his parents are buried and our dear Aunt Annie.
We had time with family the day we arrived, the Visitation was that evening and a cousin brought a lovely meal into the hotel for everyone traveling so far. What a treat to be come reacquainted with cousins I havn't seen in so long. My Aunt had 4 children, Judy and Sharon ( front row) I've stayed in closer contact with over the years and have seen them periodically, Carol ( front row left) and Steve ( center back) I havn't seen for decades. Never have met any of the spouses so it was a nice time to reconnect.
These are all the grandchildren and great grandchildren of my Aunt Joyce, I had only met a couple of them, and it's the first time all have them have every been together on one place. I was very confused that first night figureing out who went with whom! I could connect some by looks, then we decided we just needed family pictures so that helped tremendously to put which child went with whom!!!!

Here is Judy's family, daughters and grandchildren.

On a side note her daughter Amy ( second from left) just got back from Ethiopia and brought her mom this fabric. It was lovely, felt like a bit of rayon in it, so for my quilter friends you'd have loved seeing it, only about 38 inch wide. It was a wonderful reunion for Judy too as she hadn't seen her grown daughters in a long time, She's my cousin in Farmington that is a quilter too !

Here is Sharon, her boyfriend Jerry and her 2 children and new son in law. They all live in Texas.

Here is my cousin Steve with his family, all from Texas.
Here is Carol and her family, I had never met her husband Larry or her children, John goes to Purdue clear to little Rachel who is about a year older than our Garrett. What beautiful children.
It was wonderful to get to see my Aunt Kay. Some friends drove her thru Kansas to be there for the service. Here she is with my parents.
She road with us to the burial in Wilson so we had a bit of time to visit then, also stayed for the lovely luncheon in Russell, so nice the church was to do that for us all. Aunt Kay just had her 90th birthday !
We were able to spend one evening with my Uncle Butch. He came from Wilson to Russell to meet us for dinner at Meridy's. Here are the 2 brothers walking back from the restaurant,
We got to meet Butch's Grandaughter Isabella, what a darling child ! She was very outgoing and would put her arms out to all of us to hold her. She's a few months younger than Ethan. Here she is with my Dad, her great Uncle !

Butch and Isabella

Here is Butch with Lisa and Brandon and Isabella, it was great catching up with my cousin Lisa and getting to visit with Brandon who is a volunteer firefighter, all the towns around there only have volunteer fire departments. Amazing ! He was on the scene for the opera house that burnt down, 17 surrounding towns fought that fire and they were able to save the rest of the block from burning down and only lost 2 buildings. We that live in the city have no clue how different life is in these rural towns, they had to send tanker trucks out to the nearby lake to get water to fight the fire.
After our day and a half we started our trek home. My Dad the official navigator with map and magnifying glass in hand decided on a different way home, a less traveled route than thru Dodge City with all the cattle yards and semi's after semi's going that route ! It was just me driving that van on the little country roads past all the green fields of wheat waving in the wind. We were able to stop in Great Bend at a little country cemetary and find where my Great Grandparents were buried. It all happened with a bit of luck as we headed to the town cemetary and realized it was wrong but a nice maintanence man gave me directions out of town to find this one and it had a directory posted so we found it.

Here are my parents giving it some loving family care.

So these were my Great Grandparents, the original people to come and winter in Arizona, thus my parents followed in 1960.
Next we drove on thru all the little towns, lots of time for hearing stories from the old days of farming and learning all the details on what in the heck is a "drill". I always thought that was for wood but actually it's the thing that plants the wheat. Also did you know why in the heck are there so MANY little towns....they are positioned 8 miles apart, all a government and railroad agreement to let the railroads thru if they'd establish towns every 8 miles. We came to Haviland Kansas to look at the old Hardware store that my Great Great Grandparents family built. A wonderful brick building, the name Phillips 1911 is over the top. We went in to inquire about where the cemetery was and saw the wonderful tin ceiling, it's still a hardware store and as we discovered...the local hang out for coffee. And as fate would have it one gentleman ( of course they all know you are a stranger) that was there heard us ask about directions and is in charge of the american legion and placing flags at the cemetery and he just happened to have a plot map in his truck of the cemetery so he was able to look up the name and give us a hint at where to search for my Great Great Grandparents burial site.
And we went right to it, talk about luck, that was all meant to be or we'd have been searching everywhere looking for them. Here is my Dad by his Great Grandparents site. We have a few mementos from this far back in the family, that quilt that I showed you last week that my parents received was made by the lady that is buried here.

So our drive continued late into the evening, until we got thru Albuquerque, so our drive home the next day ended by 3 in the afternoon, thank goodness no rain or tornadoes came with us! It was wonderful to see Kansas again and enjoy the time with my parents as we drove along. Sure glad I could take the 5 days off and get my parents there and see family and celebrate my Aunt Joyce with them. I tried to take lots of photos since I was the only "representative cousin" there from the Frederick family that is spread all across the US.

A final shot of the stone posts you see everywhere, one of the surviving symbols of the Kansas pioneers.