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.