In which Green Bay provides some good news

My co-worker is getting the car this trip, and since I got into Green Bay about 7 hours before he did, if I was going to get groceries it was by people power.

I came to Green Bay with a check in my pocket that needed to make it into my checking account this weekend. It's the upper-midwest, where US Bank is based. I figured that I'd not have any trouble finding a US Bank, and the good news is that there is one on the corner about a block from my hotel. Check deposited.

But wait, there's more. I don't think I've ever used my Yellowstone card in ATM before. I had to memorize my PIN, which meant that I had to get my PIN before leaving the house this morning. And when I punched it into the ATM, I had the option of my account or the joint account! Very cool! What's more, the receipt gave me an accounting of how much money the Yellowstone card had donated to the Yellowstone Foundation. I am so impressed.

Moving along on my walk to the grocery store. I was amused that the ladies at the hotel's front desk thought it was too far to walk. Well, it was, once I was laden with groceries. But the trip over there was a good walk, and it went past a garden center, which had tall bearded irises on one of the benches out front.

Like a moth to the flame, I had to go look. And they have Before the Storm, one of the iris that I've been wanting. And Batik. I'm trying to figure out how to get them home. I suppose I could just wait till summer and order them, but where's the fun in that?

Next to the garden center is a cemetery, established in the 1860s. Had I known that was there, I might not have slept this afternoon, and gone photographing cemetery art instead. There are four more evenings in Green Bay, after all. And maybe the light will be better later this week. Looking at the map, I see that the Catholic cemetery is a block or two south of the hotel as well. This is gonna be good.

It's gone.

Here's a picture of my grandparents' house. It's the white rubble in the picture on the corner just to the right of the grain elevator. I have drawn a circle around it.


It's taken me awhile to blog about it - it was really a blow to me. Greensburg KS is kinda like my ancestral home. Both of my grandparents were born there. (You're looking at their families' farmsteads at the top of the picture.) We went there every summer for family reunions. I have a lot of family there - great aunts and uncles; second-, third- and beyond-cousins. Thankfully, no Unruhs or Koehns were on the list of the dead - at least not the last time I checked.

My memories - as recently as last summer - are of tree-lined streets; of the hospital where my eye was stitched up after the cousins' dog bit me at a reunion; of the nursing home where we said goodbye to Grandpa for the last time; of the house, both different and the same as the Grandma's and Grandpa's house of my childhood; of the Big Well where Grandpa bought me the Kansas plate; the water tower now crumpled; the Senior Center where their 75th anniversary party was held. (I still have the pack of sunflower seeds with their picture on the front.) Pictures of the town show that what I remember is all gone.

All that is left for me are my pictures from Greensburg and my memories.

In which Evan picks it up and starts over

I have the only child who falls off a bike when he's walking it. I suppose he tripped over it, but still....

We rode bikes to school today for the first time. His training wheels are too high, and he's wobbly. Turning corners is often a disaster. And this morning I failed to put pads and helmet on him on the way out. Of course, the tight turn in the park spelled disaster. He did OK - only a scrape on the back of his calf. And he got back on the bike. As he was rolling down the sidewalk, he told me how much he loved riding bikes to school together.

We had just arrived at school and dismounted (school rule: no riding on school grounds), when he tripped over his bike and went down again. It's not going to curb his enthusiasm. We can learn something from five-year-olds.