Legacy

A good place to be from is different from a good place to go to.  Now I know some of you readers have suggested at one time or another that good place that you thought someone else should go to, but that has nothing to do with this story.

This is a story of Huron, Kansas and its population or at least some of the population between the years of around shall we say 1925 up until 1995.  My first awareness of Huron and all the interesting things and people therein began when I was about 10 years old; which would have been circa 1948.

The reason for my being there were my Grandparents on my mothers side.  So, some of my knowledge is first hand and some of its hearsay.  Anyway let me describe Huron at the point I first can remember it.  One could say it was a hub of commerce to the extent a hub is in the center; but in this case in all directions were larger places like Everest, Lancaster Nortonville, Atchison, Topeka, St. Joe, Leavenworth, and Kansas City.  All those places actually had some commerce.  Not so much with Huron whose population was around 250 assorted souls and characters.

I would speculate that the only real commerce of importance in Huron would be the two Grain Elevators by the railroad tracks.

Then there was following the establishment of the grain elevators two schools built at opposite side of town, a grade school and a High school, about six blocks apart as the crow flies.  The two schools were to serve the kids from many surrounding farms.  Of course with schools you had to hire teachers.  And that would require the recruitment of about fifteen people between the two schools.

Now since these people manning the schools had to obviously live somewhere, a few houses were built.  And that was the beginning of the town of Huron.  Then naturally along came a Post office, a filling station, a Grocery Store, and a Doctors office.  It’s interesting to note that the filling station was also the local one room pool and beer hall in cramped space; but they also sold strawberry pop which was very important to a ten year old.

I’ll take this time to give a little background history of my Grandparents.  My Grandfather was a Paper Hanger, but I didn’t meet him until after he’d retired.  He and my Grandmother raised five children, one boy and four girls.  Those five children also thought Huron was a good place to be from and as they reached adulthood, departed for other towns and even other states.

My Grandfather was very poor and worked very hard to raise and feed five children.  He had no indoor plumbing and Grandmother cooked on a wood fired stove.  She made Lye soap to wash the laundry, the dishes, and her kids.  The last house of the three they lived at in Huron was a two bedroom and was heated by a pot bellied stove.  Poor was right, Grandpa would walk the railroad tracks looking for coal that fell of the locomotive tenders to fire the stove with.

As a ten year old I had to use much imagination to entertain myself while my parents were visiting my Grandparents.  Usually found some fun way to get into trouble.  Sometimes I felt bad about what I did, but mostly felt bad for getting bawled out for it.  The one thing I did that ended badly was chasing the chicks that some one had running loose in their yard.  Of course I probably sensed I shouldn’t be doing that, but you know how kids are.  I felt really bad when I tried to grab the last elusive one that was running for shelter under the front porch of that person’s house and I accidently squished it; guts everywhere.  I high tailed it out of there and was so relieved that no one had seen me.

Then next to my Grandfathers house lived Uncle Bud, yes a relative.  Uncle Bud kept a couple of hogs in a pen out back and I somehow found a stick and a nail and put the two together and was having great fun poking those hogs and making them squeal.  Fun that is until Uncle Bud heard the pigs and then did I ever catch it.  I never poked a pig again.

A man named Gil owned the one room (large room) Grocery Store and it was always a fascinating place to go into.  He had the usual array of penny candy and a meat case that was fascinating with exotic cold cuts.  Gil also had three sons and on occasion they would suffice as playmates even though they were about three years younger than I.  There was an old unused Grange Hall in town that we would get into one way or another and mess around.  Four kids you know can find more ways to get into trouble than just one can.  I guess great minds think alike.

At the edge of town there was a large tan stucco covered old farm house.  Legend had it that it was occupied by a reclusive old mean cranky witch who owned a brass bed.  I guess only rich people had a brass bed.  But I don’t know how the kids that told me about her knew about the brass bed.  That was a mystery that remained unsolved.  Once in awhile I’d cut through her yard, pause for a moment and stare at her door, then I’d skedaddle before she could come out and eat me, or grab me.  Stupid I know, but the power of suggestion was at work.

I spent a lot of happy hours in Huron, getting into mischief here and there, usually without consequence.  Lucky me, but to fast forward, my Grandparents passed on and many a year later after I was grown and married I took my wife to show her Huron, the good place to be from.  It was a shock.  My Grandparents house had been covered with plywood as siding, including where the front porch had been, and painted a hideous green.  That made me a little sad.  But the biggest shock was the schools had been abandoned.  The grade school which had been a three story building, had the top story torn off, and it was a raggedy job.  Then someone built like a small wooden house on top of what would have been the second floor; it was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen.

There were in two somewhat apart places two modern houses that had been built.  I guess if it’s cheap enough, people will commute from anyplace; or again maybe they weren’t commuters.  Little places like Huron tend to become welfare towns where the poor by circumstance get dumped.  That makes Huron an even better place to be from.