G is for...

...Greensburg.

Home of the World's Largest Hand Dug Well, and Largest Pallasite Meteorite!

My mother's family homesteaded just a few miles southeast of Greensburg, Kansas at the turn of the last century. I was born in the local hospital, and spent my grade school years there. All my family, from my grandfather's generation through my older siblings, graduated from Greensburg High School.

I learned to ride a bike around the Big Well Park. I won blue ribbons and a Grand Champion ribbon (I'll have you know!) for a sewing project (a pleated skirt and a crop top) in 4-H at the County Fair one year. I won red ribbons for my chocolate chip cookies. (Go figure!) Momma taught knitting classes in the back room of the Ben Franklin 'Five&Dime' on Main Street. I learned to knit, to sew, to swim in the BEST. SWIMMING POOL. EVER! and the value of a library card in Greensburg.

At Hunter's Drug in 2005, with Mr. Huckreide, who had been fixing soda's for over 50 years. Seriously.

I found my BFF there, and she and I, along with Dearest Sister raised some cane in church, enjoyed nickel cokes at Hunter's Drug, watched parades on Main Street, saw some afternoon matinees at the Twilight Theatre (but only at Christmas when there were special showings and likely friends of the elder sibs who wanted to take us. Lands, do you think we had money to waste?)

On May 4, 2007, a EF-5 tornado all but destroyed this town where I was born and raised.

Just the night before, my sibs and I had been discussing the possibilities of meeting in Greensburg to inter my mother's ashes around Memorial Day. She passed away 2 years before, and her memorial service took place where she lived after leaving Greensburg in the mid-60's. We siblings are spread out over the western half of the U.S. of A., and hadn't managed a time to get back to our hometown to bury Momma's ashes with Daddy. Now it looked promising with certain travel plans and arrangements that we could all be there over Memorial Day.

The Big Well Park in 2005

Friday night, while watching TV, I got a phone call from my brother saying it looked like Greensburg was getting hit by a tornado. Being raised in southwestern Kansas, my experiences with tornadoes were of those skinny little funnels that dip and touch and raise and hit and miss. As the events were unfolding real-time, it was very difficult that night to get any definite news, but as the story developed, it appeared this tornado didn't miss much. Almost two miles wide, it covered pretty much the entire town, Greensburg not being that big.

When I woke Saturday morning, I grabbed a cup of coffee, and turned on the national news while I exercised. I was stunned. As the weekend developed, Dearest Sister and I spent time on the phone, each on our own computer, looking at the aerial photographs, trying to identify landmarks. It seemed in each photo the house where we grew up was just outside the shot. (We found out later the back part of the house was damaged, with the roof, and later had to be demolished.)

The hospital I was born in, where my broken arm was set, and my chin was stitched up...gone. (Incidentally, BFF was working there that night.) The church turned antique store where we were baptized...gone. The water tower that marked the town, symbolically pointing the way to the Big Well, and occasionally overflowed (to our delight!)...on the ground. The schools we attended...gone.

The swimming pool...still there!


We were able to take care of Momma over Memorial Day weekend,burying her ashes 48 years to the day after my father died. It was going to be just Mom's kids, a couple of nieces and nephew, and some grandkids at the cemetary, but word had gotten out. Others started showing up, and kept coming. When it was time for us to say our good-byes, there were twenty or so other people there, some who had lost a good deal, who had a lot of unanswered questions about what they were going to do. Nevertheless, they came to say good-bye to this woman who had been a part of their community years before.

It is almost two years later, and Greensburg has embarked upon rebuilding. Leonardo DiCaprio even produced a TV show about their efforts to rebuild as green as possible. Some left after the tornado, but many stayed. And that is right, and good. But the town I grew up in is only in my memories.

We have another family get-together planned in Greensburg this Memorial Day when Wisest Sister and Only Brother celebrate their High School Reunions there. Dearest Sister and I will be hangers-on, providing comic relief, no doubt, and spending some time with Dear Aunt. It will be interesting to see the progress, and fun to see folks.

But I will miss the old town.