Fire Burns My Home Town

This is my Home Town as I saw it last.  This photo is older, but the look is about the same.  There is only one business street in town.  For at least 35 of the years that I lived there, we were a one stop light town.
 
This is the street the parades march down, where the Homecoming Court waves and the Shriner's drive their little cars.


                                  


I got a phone call from Daughter # 2 last night about 10:30pm,  saying Daughter # 3 was on Face Book, along with her 400 closest friends, and people were chatting about our Home Town being on fire.  Soon the pictures started appearing.

This is the little town with only 500 high school students.  This is where you go to the one grocery store and the check out ladies know your name.  Where I lived for 40 some years. 

From reports, the fire started in this upstairs apartment over a new Mexican restaurant.

It then moved to both sides and got the local bar and the florist shop.

                                             And continued to burn on into the night. 

I am  continually amazed at communications. Here I am 1000 miles from there, able to see what is happening in real time.  So three businesses are gone and I'm not sure how much damage went beyond that.  The walls are all connected so I'm sure there is much damage by smoke and heat to others.  3 businesses are half the block. 

What a heartbreaking sight for a small town already hurting from today's economy.  I will update as I hear more.  My sister is gong out there to day to check on our father.  I asked her to send me pictures.

Update : This is from the alley in back.  I'm anxious and frightened, to see it from the street view.

Right now I'm thinking Johnny "Cougar" Mellencamp.... Small Town .. is fitting.

Car Travel in the 1960s

I had a memory jolt the other day about car travel with my parents in the late 1950s into the 1960s.

I'm driving here in 1957.  I have a lot of pictures of myself with my sister but none with the pesky little brother with us.. Believe me, he was there.

My grandparents all lived in the boot heel of Missouri so in July, when General Motors stopped the lines for "change over" to the next model, we would all pile in the car to head south for a visit.  I remember, in my younger years, 8,9 or 10, I would trade comic books with neighbors so I would have reading material.  Archie and Veronica, Superman, Nancy, or Donald Duck.  

My father built a wooden platform that fit over the hump in the back floorboard so someone (usually me) could sleep on it, with another child on the seat, ( my sister) and little brother in the back window.  Can you believe that?  That just screams trouble waiting to happen.  As we got older,  Dad would arrange the suitcases in the floorboard to act as a support so he could put a crib mattress in the back seat and we could lay down on it for the whole trip.  My brother could still fit in the back window, I guess.  I am horrified that we made a 700 mile, one way drive, that way.  Year after year. 

Mom and Dad always left Michigan in the afternoon so us kids would sleep though the night and they could drive straight through without bathroom trip interruptions.  I have to think it was also in part because there was no air conditioning and we were headed south with the windows down and the hot wind whipping in all around.  There were also no expressways.  The route was through towns and around big cities.  I remember drifting in and out of sleep to the radio playing Marty Robbin's El Paso and later Johnny Cash's  Ring of Fire.   I could hear the semis zooming by and the soft conversation between my parents of which road to take next or "did we just miss out turn?"

By morning we were dragging into Kennett, Mo road weary but over joyed to see our grandparents for that once a year visit.  Once there, it was time for  cat fish and hush puppies, chicken and dumplings, blackberry cobbler and home made bread.   (I can't eat catfish today..... I know it tastes good.  They just look creepy.)  But, the little girl in me remembers all of it with fondness.