Searching Old Places

Central Kansas years and years ago helped support a buffalo
 population. They were long gone when my great
grandparents homesteaded there. Central Kansas petroglyph
of a buffalo. Arcylic washes. Phillip Hoyle

I drove to the farm years later, after my grandparents had died, so I could savor the place as an adult. I hadn’t been out there for nearly twenty years and wondered, among other things, why I was moved to go there now and what I might find lying around that could serve as mementos for my sisters and me. I was not disappointed with my discoveries.

The drive from Junction City seemed to move me back to earlier days. Out toward the river bridge I glimpsed the mill where Grandpa and Grandma had sold eggs, milk, and cream. As I passed the historic St. Paul’s log cabin church in a roadside park off Interstate 70, I recalled scenes of Kansas pioneer days I had learned from Mother’s stories and from books that had so enriched my childhood imagination. The rustic, adz-formed logs suggested lives of self-sufficiency supplemented by the interdependence of neighborliness, values that still support farm life in parts of America. The engine pulled hard as the car ascended the steep grade past the rock quarry. I glanced at the gated entryway and remembered going there for target practice with my 22 caliber, single shot rifle, a gift from my oldest sister’s fiancé. As I drove on I recalled a ride two friends and I caught on a road grader one summer day when we were walking the ten miles from the farm back to town. Our ride ended on this hillside when we spotted the car that was coming to meet us.

Beyond the quarry entrance, the road leveled off in an upland pasture and continued a mile or so. I felt a thrill when I came to the edge of the hill above Clark’s Creek that afforded a sight I had always loved: the Flint Hills, their grass-covered tops and wooded bottom lands, their peculiarly flat summits and steep slopes, the results of hard cap rock. I slowed my pace to take in the lush green of trees, grass, and planted fields. Steering down the serpentine road reminded me of Sunday afternoon trips to the farm, riding in Dad’s '54 Ford, the backseat crowded by four kids who like pioneers claimed and defended their territories.

At the bottom of the hill, I turned south up the creek, driving past the newer St. Paul’s Lutheran Church (the log cabin’s replacement) its walls and bell tower built of native limestone and a graveyard out back with the memorial markers of some of my own relatives. I wondered if the peonies were still growing where my grandmother planted them but chose not to stop to investigate, I wanted to get to the farm.
I hoped I’d recognize the turn-off that would keep me running parallel to the creek and felt relief when I did. I turned onto the gravel road trying to stay ahead of the white dust kicked up by my tires. Luckily a slight breeze tended to carry it to the side of the road, but not everywhere. When sharp turns slowed my progress, the limestone powder engulfed me. With closed mouth and shallow breath, I uttered a prayer of thanks for city life and paved streets.

The road took me past Wetzel School with its one room where my mother had attended eight elementary years and, turning two more corners, I saw the Wetzel family cemetery. I was getting close to the farm now. Seeing the terraces in the fields on the creek-side of the road stirred a feeling of satisfaction and a sense of rightness about my choice to drive out to the place. Then, as I rounded a bend in the road, I saw the driveway and turned up the lane.

There it stood—the farm, but it seemed much smaller than I recalled. Most of the buildings remained: house, cellar, smokehouse, well, granary, and tractor barn. The garage barely stood, seemingly propped up by an open door. Gone were the stock barn with its hayloft, the corral with its loading chute, the chicken house with its pungent odor, the brooder house where we kids were amazed at the fast growth of chicks, and the lean-to south of the house where Grandpa fed calves. A new fence surrounded the farmyard, and sumac had invaded the fenced-in area around the house. A large hole gaped in the west wall of the kitchen through which, I surmised, the old wood cook stove had been removed. Mindful of snakes, rats, and rusty nails, I carefully entered the ruin.

I didn’t find much as I walked along the strongest looking boards, just an old pie crust crimper on the cracked linoleum floor. But seeing the painted walls of the kitchen reminded me of sitting at breakfast listening to the farm market report on the plastic radio with the round dial. Seeing peeling wallpaper in the dining room reminded me of eating dinner around the big oak table with Grandma’s crocheted tablecloth, Fostoria glassware, and on holidays, pickled herring. I glanced through the doorways to remind myself of the sizes of the rooms, five in all. Of course, the furniture was long gone, some of it in my apartment and my sister’s homes, stoves in neighboring houses along the creek, pictures hanging on family walls, and the old clock still keeping time but now in Kansas City. I quietly left the house wondering just how much longer it would stand out here all alone.

As I exited through the hole in the wall, I faced Grandma’s rock garden. It was overgrown, but the rocks still were in place along with some plants she had tended. I decided to take a few items with me: an Indian grindstone I had long admired, a strangely shaped rock with a hole in it I found fascinating, and some iris bulbs. I wanted the stone bench as well but realized I wouldn’t be able to lift it by myself—hoisting the grindstone had been challenge enough. I imagined my granddad bringing rocks to Grandma’s garden: the grindstones he had found near the creek, quarried stones for the bench, and more. I had never really thought of him as an individual in relationship with Grandma. He must have loved her to bring such gifts both large and small.

I glanced at the cellar but decided not to go into that pit. It was just too creepy, and I had seen a snake there when I was a little boy. Walking away, I stopped at the smokehouse door, gingerly opened it, and glanced inside. I remembered seeing Grandma’s canning paraphernalia and the old hand-cranked milk separator in there, but they were gone, the room now standing empty. I wandered across the lane towards the ravine. The fence around Grandma’s garden had been removed, the rows that had produced beets, beans, corn, carrots, turnips, potatoes, and rhubarb eroded flat. When I opened the wooden top of the nearby well, I surprised and was surprised by several black snakes absorbing the sun’s heat through the old boards, safe from preying hawks. In the confusion and hurry, one snake fell into the water. I hoped it would be able to climb up the well’s rugged stones so the water would remain potable. I wondered if anyone still drank from the well.

I opened the gate to the barnyard. Cows had been grazing in this area that used to be open when the house was occupied. I envisioned Grandpa’s old wagons, plows, the tractor, the privy, and other now-missing items. The stock barn had five doors on the ground level—three on the east, two on the west; the hayloft had its main opening on the east, a smaller one on the north and, I believe small windows high on both south and north ends. I thought the barn huge when I was a kid but looking at the foundation now, realized it barely had room for Grandpa’s three cows and two horses along with their gear, feed, and mangers.

I remember a muscular man who helped Grandpa once when he was storing hay or straw. The guy stood on the hayrack, lifted the bales, and easily threw them above his head into the loft through the east door. Grandpa then used a hay hook to pick up each bale, moving it to the part of the loft where he was stacking the load. I had played among those bales by climbing boards nailed to the wall and carefully stepping from the crude ladder to the loft floor. I recalled the odor of the bales and my discovery that straw didn’t itch as much as hay.

Turning away from the memories, I tramped across the old farmyard to the garage where Grandpa parked his red and black 54 Chevy sedan out of the weather. I gingerly entered the listing structure afraid it might fall over on me but still curious what might be inside. Not much was there. I saw lumber that was too new to have been my grandpa’s, a few boards and a lathe-formed table leg. And then as I was exiting I saw it—the item I had come for even though I didn’t know it existed. I saw the star, a hand-cut tin star nailed to the outside of the garage door. Grandpa had made a decoration to embellish his garage. I wanted to take that star but had no tool to remove the weathered nail. I touched the cutout recalling cartoon characters Grandpa sometimes drew on pieces of board, his utility with a knife and other tools, his eye for unusual shapes, his clean fields, his singing, his harmonica playing, and his storytelling. My grandpa was joyful and artful. I wanted to emulate him. He was the artist in my background—not the only one in the family, but the only man I knew who did artwork when I was a child, the one I needed to remember. I realized my images of Grandpa had never matured; I knew him only when I was a young child. My own maturing seemed to demand I develop a mature view of him.

When I went back to the farm, I was in my forties trying to sort through my life themes in order to produce stability enough to face mid-life challenges. The trip occurred about a year after my work partner died. Dad was retired, ailing. My children were in the upper grades. Church work was becoming more difficult and less rewarding for me. I had fallen in love with my best friend. My whole world was changing. In this trip I may have been trying to counsel myself in light of a lack of insightful advice from elsewhere.

The trip to the farm was my pilgrimage into a past of my own, woven out of images that I had never before joined.
Those images thrilled me with their moments of beauty and their potent stirring of memories. Sometimes they choked me like the dirt from the gravel road as their meanings wrapped around me. Embracing them, I celebrated past, present, and future.

Now I look back from a changing perspective that surely relates to being over sixty. Perhaps now I’m seeking a way to grow old by somehow accommodating the biblical image of being caught up into the arms of my ancestors, seeking a security founded in the past and one that can allay uncertainties.

The star I discovered on that trip still shines although I never did recover it. In fact, I now own only one piece of furniture from my grandparents’ home and a few old photographs. Sometimes we cannot carry with us all the furnishings of the past, but my life still remains full of memories of the people who lived back then and whose reality continues to grow and transform in my mind and heart. May I continue on the path lighted by that artist’s star, doing my creative work, just like Grandpa.

I sometimes visualize Kansa Indians riding horses out at my
grandparents' farm years before any German and Swedish
settlers arrived. Acrylic washes painting of a central Kansas
petroglyph. Phillip Hoyle