No more to Topeka

My grandfather has been buried. The house has been cleaned out.

He received a military honor guard. I found out he had received a Bronze Star and a Silver Star while working on aircraft support for several battles - namely Battle of the Bulge and D-Day. For several of the battles, his plane was the only one in the squadron that made it back to base.

Other things I didn't know about my grandfather. He had to hunt to support his family (parents) during the depression. Their family was literally dirt poor. He and his sister were shuttled around to various relatives because their parents couldn't afford to feed them. So, he learned to hunt - it put food on the table and it could be sold. They moved from Nebraska to Kansas because there were supposedly more opportunities there.

After the war, he tried to get work as a mechanic (which is the skills he got in the Army, plus he was good at working with his hands). But there was no work available. Instead, possibly because he was wearing a suit, he was asked while in line at the unemployment bureau if he wanted a job interviewing people in the unemployment lines. He accepted, and eventually worked his way up to director of job services for the state.

I now have several photographs of my family on that side. A few of my grandparents, my great grandparents, one of my great or great-great grandmother (its labelled grandmother P. at age 17), although the dress she's wearing seems more 1890s than 1910s. But it could be the 1910s. It is dark, to the floor, bustle skirt, bowler-type hat (forget what the women's equivalent was called).. Actually. For a good idea of what it looks like, think of the woman in the Seurat's Sunder Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte ("The Seurat" at the Art Institute of Chicago), which makes the dress style to be 1880ish, at least in Paris.

My grandmother had wanted to be buried near the ducks, and she was. However, in the 6 years since she passed, they filled in the duck pond with rocks.

My family was commenting to each other as we left, we will probably never go to Topeka again. There is nothing there. It is a depressed city. There are just two graves of my grandparents, next to what used to be the duck pond, and what is now just a river of rocks.