Saturday the weather was clear and the temperature rose into the upper 50’s. I’ve never been in Missouri at this time of year. It was beautiful; I couldn’t see buds on trees but, I imagined them. I needed to get out of town after a week in the office. My father came from Holt County in the Northwest corner of the state. It’s about 80 miles from Kansas City. It was time to get in touch with my roots. I drove north on I-29 across the waving countryside; the world was shades of lingering winter dust and yellow, fallow fields.
I found only the traces of ghosts, faint echoes; without remembrance, they will soon disappear entirely.
The last time I was in Forest City, Dad’s hometown, I was 14, Kennedy was dead, Vietnam was getting worse. We lived in Florida in those days. That summer I was to spend about six weeks visiting family.
Getting there took pretty much 24 hours. I went by train, there was an airline strike. It must have been just about the end of the era of private passenger trains. At St. Louis I changed for Kansas City. This was not planned, the train was to have run directly to Kansas City. The connection time was long, six hours or so; the airline strike must have strained the railroads and there were disruptions.
I don’t know why that world has gone; we were well into the 1960’s but in places the ‘50’s hung on. My family was as protective as any yet in those days I could take a train trip as a fourteen year-old – it was an adventure, not a risk. In the event, nothing much happened. During the wait in St. Louis for my connection to Kansas City some traveling soldiers took me under their wing and I ate with them at a coffee shop and we played pool. They were country boys and had been drafted. It was cool to hang out with guys in uniform (I think it was the first time I ever played pool). I guess they probably ended up in Southeast Asia. My Dad made me call him every hour while we waited for the train. Years later when I thought about it, it dawned on me how worried he had been.
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