Memory Lane

I’m spending the holiday visiting my dad on his horse farm in Kansas. The horses have been gone for years. This place floods my memory with long past days watching the kids play hide and seek all over the property. Annual Easter egg hunts were held out on the front lawn when all the kids and cousins were little. The old barn cat is still around. She won’t let you hold her. She showed up years ago and the folks began feeding her. The cat never left. She does her job keeping the mice away and is paid with room and board.

Dad still manages the property on his own. God forbid the suggestion of hiring a crew to mow or trim. As long as he is capable, that man will be on the rider every week for hours and hours. He's a little too proud...and too financially conservative to hire out work. So my visit this weekend is that of a spectator, watching my dad catch up on trimming/mowing that was put off due to a couple weeks of Kansas storms. While I have offered to help, there has been no willingness to take me up on the free labor. I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t trust me driving the big mower or handling a weed eater. So, blogging will be my entertainment this morning.

Yesterday Dad asked me if I had an interest taking a trip down memory lane. I guess he doesn’t realize that driving up the long path to his house triggers hundreds of memories of my younger days.  But the invitation was really intriguing so I accepted happily.

The first stop on our trip was near the east side of Wichita. We ended up in a residential area and Dad asked me if I knew where I was. The blank expression left no doubt that I was clueless. He then explained that my lack of recall made sense because I was only one...or maybe two years old when we lived in the house that he had just parked in front of. 

I’ll back up a minute. I was born on a naval base in Pensacola, Florida. My dad had been in the Navy when he and Mom married. Wichita, Kansas had been home to both my parents prior to my dad going into the service. My mom had grown up in Wichita. The youngest of six, and born when my grandmother was in her early 40’s (oops), she was a spoiled and privileged daughter of an ice cream factory superintendent. My dad had been the son of a Tailor who had worked for high end menswear retailer Neiman Marcus in NY and somehow ended up at Henry’s in Kansas. Apparently, as my dad tells it, that line of work was fairly unique and if you were good, you were in high demand. My grandad was a networking genius. He had made contacts all over the US and when opportunities came up in the industry, they called him.  When my dad graduated high school, my grandfather took his talents back to Neiman Marcus in Houston TX. and that is the city where he and my grandmother stayed until his retirement.

So, back to the house. Here it is, my first home in Wichita. Dad says it looks about the same as it did when we lived in it 52 years ago. He remembered the address. Unbelievable!

After we pulled away from the house, Dad began telling me of re-enlisting in the Coast Guard a year later and our move to Wake Island, where we lived for a few years before coming back to the States.

By the time we returned to Wichita, my parents had added a couple additional siblings to the family. Our next home in Wichita was on Chautauqua St.. I actually have many memories in this home. I was starting the 3rd grade when we moved here. I still have friends I keep in touch with, all these years later, who went to school with me at Hillside Elementary, just a couple blocks over. 

Our stroll down memory lane ended in downtown Wichita. The main thoroughfare is Douglas. As teens we would “drag Douglas”. It was the highpoint of the week. Friday night would be bumper to bumper for blocks and then we’d get to the end of the street and go back the other direction. Hours of my junior year on Friday night were spent in my orange Fuego dragging Douglas. Sweet Memories...

As an adult, I love the revitalization of the downtown area. One of my favorite things to do if we are going through downtown is try to find all of the sculptures that have been placed randomly throughout the area. Here are a few of my memory lane finds today.