Times have changed in ancestral hometown

Memorial Day is still a big deal in Delphos, Kan., my ancestral home.

Peony bushes — some of which were planted in the 19th century — are in full bloom in the city cemetery, and every veteran buried there is honored by an American flag waving from an individual pole labeled with his or her name.

Small family groups meandered among the tombstones, pausing to lay flowers on relatives’ graves and to share a memory or two.

At noon, the Lions Club hosts a meal at the “new” schoolhouse, which was built more than 50 years ago.

Spending the holiday there, renewing ties with the living and dead, is as pleasant as it sounds.

My first Memorial Day in Delphos in more than 20 years forced me to admit I can’t go home again either, because, beyond the cemetery’s gates, my home no longer exists.

The first inkling I might be a stranger in a strange land came when I passed what was supposed to be the end of Interstate 135.

The signs warning the freeway would end in a half-mile were still there, but four lanes of pavement continued for who knows how far north.

I was relieved to see that the southwest corner of the intersection where I turned west off of what was once U.S. Highway 81 was still marked by a 20-acre native grass pasture.

I stopped in the middle of the gravel road — you can do that in rural Ottawa County — but I could see no sign of the pond that had yielded thousands of crayfish to seines pulled by various combinations of my grandfather, his older brother Lester, their cousin Charlie and I.

“Oh well,” I told myself, “Ponds inevitably silt in.”

I continued driving down what soon became a dirt road and was comforted by the truth that some things never change.

I was looking for memories, but they were hard to find.

The power line that had abruptly ended the flight of a rooster pheasant was still there, but the weedy draw that Joe Davidson had flushed him from was not, and neither were the four hedgerows that had met there.

It seemed that the further I got from the highway the more common missing hedgerows and barn-lot pastures became.

Although the pastures provided nesting and escape cover for a wide variety of game and nongame birds and animals, I was particularly concerned about the hedges.

By the end of the 1940s, solid lines of Osage orange trees had been planted along nearly every quarter-section line.
These trees provided cover for wildlife, but their purpose was to prevent the dust storms that had plagued the area during much of the 1930s.

As I gazed across what, in 2009, was rapidly becoming an endless sea of wheat, I wondered who had decided the wind no longer blew in Kansas.

Had that same fellow decreed that another decade as dry as the 1930s wasn’t as inevitable as climate models suggested?

I sure hope it doesn’t happen in my lifetime.

I’ve heard my mother’s stories of rolling clouds of dust that turned day into night. I don’t need to see it for myself.

The icing on the cake was when I drove past a formerly winding, tree-lined wet weather creek where one of the friends of my youth and I had spent many an afternoon hunting rabbits.

The bulldozer that had ripped out all of the trees and turned the creek into a broad, shallow waterway was still parked there.

I could almost hear Lester say, “The next time it rains, the water’s going to come down that thing like a biting sow.”

Finally, I turned into the quarter-mile-long driveway leading to the farmstead I’ve always thought of as my boyhood home. Nobody had lived there for many years, so my visit should go unnoticed.

I didn’t care. The place was now the legal property of someone else, but I had a right to be there that transcended paper deeds.

The barns, garage and tractor shed were in surprisingly good shape, and so were the three grain bins, one of which I had helped set in place.

On the other hand, the chicken house that had housed my grandmother’s flock of “egg money” chickens had collapsed as had the brooder house in which replacement hens and table chickens were raised.

The house was the saddest.

Its front porch was completely gone and part of the main roof had collapsed.

I knew I couldn’t do it, but I wanted badly to set it afire to give it a decent burial.

As I drove back up the driveway — probably never to return — I did have one happy thought.

The weeds and overgrown grass around the buildings were providing a host of wildlife species with the best habitat to be found in miles.

My grandfather would have liked that.