my sister's new house
my nephew and his family
my niece's son Vinny
my mother
downtown Ft. Scott
old Fort ScottBarton and I recently took a trip up through Kansas and Nebraska following the Pony Express Trail. Up there were the land is vast and the people are sparse. Stopping to visit my family on the way, home, where I came from. Memories of my childhood steeped with the histories of the hardships endured by generations of Americas past were waiting for me outside our car windows as we drove up and down the highways. We made so many stops its hard to name them all. We would stop at Emporia first, driving up through Missouri and crossing over to Kansas into Ft. Scott. I went to college in Pittsburg which is just a few miles south, this is a road I had traveled many times in college going back and forth to Emporia on holidays, and recently Barton and I got the chance to stay in Ft. Scott exploring its historic downtown and fort. Driving onward through Iola, this small town used to have a Harley dealership and I would stop often and by t-shirts and stretch my legs. Iola was my halfway point home when traveling from Pittsburg, I had even met my mother here and spent the day with her a couple of times when I lived in Pittsburg. We were getting close and I was and still am never quite ready to arrive home and start begging Barton to stop for a moment to stretch our legs and catch my breath, the tension in my family always puts me on edge and I've never been in a hurry to get there. I finally get him to stop for a potty break, it's only for five minutes but its five minutes that I feel like I'm not hurtling into the brink of some sort of disaster. Onward we travel to Yate Center, I once went to a big party close to here. They called it the Woodson County Blowout, I rode over with a group of guys that formed a band and practiced in the attic of my Apartment that I shared with a friend. I can no longer remember most of the guys names or the name of their band, I do remember that it was a very long and wild day and that it was the first time I ever ate goat. I still have a t-shirt tucked away from this day, packed away with some old Harley shirts and my jean jacket with the big Harley patch on the back. Yate Center is also were you have to decide whether or not to turn North and travel up to catch I30 or continue on West and travel up 99. Barton chooses 99 skimming the Flint Hills traveling through Madison and Lebo. I had a boyfriend way back when that lived in Madison. I was 17 and he worked at the Beef. The Beef, Iowa Beef, that sticky old building, was the reason we moved to Emporia from Marysville. My dad was a veterinarian and had a practice with my grandpa, his dad, in Marysville until I was around 11. He lived in Emporia for a year or so, working at the Beef as a Government employee, traveling back and forth on the weekends, we moved to Emporia midway through my 9th grade year . I was working in the cafeteria on the freezer side of the Beef when I dated this guy and several other of the guys there. It was 1978 and I believe his name was Mike, he was shorter than me and wore his hair in an "Afro", he had an old pick-up and an even older Harley,and one of the biggest stereos I have ever seen. Now Lebo, just a mere 10 miles down the road from Emporia, Lebo was where everyone raced to on Friday and Saturday nights to the liquor store, to replenish your supplies of alcohol after Emporia's liquor stores closed at nine. I once again convince Barton to stop a moment at the little city park and to travel onward on a country road a few miles, quietly steeling myself for Emporia.
This time we stayed at my sisters house, she had just recently moved into he new house after many years of renting from a high school friend of hers. Before that she had lived on 10 acres out on the little country road we traveled on between Lebo and Emporia. She is the sibling I am closes to, we grew up sharing a room together. During my stay I get to meet her grandchildren, How on earth can I be old enough to have grandchildren, when it seems like just yesterday I was laughing and crying and trying not to puke my guts up while changing her daughters diaper? That night we (her, her boyfriend Bob, Barton, and I) meet up with my mother at the local Mexican restaurant. My mother and I have a relationship that at its best can be described as complicated and as of recently I have come to the conclusion that if I'm to have any kind of relationship with her before she passes I'll have to lend a deaf ear to her side of our conversations, my mother is beginning to look old and frail. She can be so cold and stiff and it's almost humorous to hug and kiss her hello, she tries to lean away from you. We spent 2 nights in Emporia, spending time with my mother and sister. I have a brother that lives in Emporia too, but he has not spoken to me in a civilized manner in almost 20 years, I don't even know what I did to piss him off that bad. He arrived at my sisters house "not knowing I was there" riding bikes with his wife Sunday, I went outside to say hi and he wouldn't hardly look at me, he's such an asshole. Oh well. I have 2 other siblings, the five of us are pretty screwed up when it comes to "family" and I have distanced myself over the years pretending to be an orphan for the most part so I could live a somewhat uncomplicated life. On Monday we would pack up and make our way to Kearney Nebraska,traveling up through Marysville on the way.
