Another Day in the Country
Name-dropping
© Another Day in the Country
Before I ever moved from California to Kansas in 2000, I loved listening to a program Saturday evenings on public radio called “A Prairie Home Companion.”
“Well, it was a quiet week in Lake Wobegon,” Garrison Keillor would intone, and listeners would settle back and smile, ready for a nostalgic tale about people living in a small town.
The stories sounded just like Ramona, and I wished I could spin a yarn about the people in Ramona the way Keillor told stories about the folks who lived in mythical Lake Wobegon, Minnesota.
Being too dedicated to truth-telling in my own way, I never really got the hang of writing made-up stories — even 50% fictional stories. I didn’t think I could add the caveat, “based on a true story, but the names and places have been changed.”
In a small place like Ramona, everyone would know who I really was talking about. Furthermore, changing the names and places ruined the real story, in my opinion.
Even with all the diplomacy and gentle humor that I try to write on this opinion page, you surely have guessed as you read that I am a woman with strong opinions.
Every once in a while, something happens in the world, across the state, or in my neighborhood, and I think, “I should write on that subject. People are ignoring something very important,” and I sit down and write a very opinionated piece.
Sometimes I send them in to my editor for feedback. Sometimes I don’t. I just keep them for my own record of what it’s like to spend another day in the country.
Sometimes I try to soften my rhetoric, and sometimes I can’t.
If you see my column missing, you can chalk it up to my being too opinionated that week.
Meanwhile, this week’s Ramona story could begin, “It was a busy week in Ramona, where a traffic jam is two parked cars and a dog in the road.”
Happily, we saw quite a few relatives and friends who ventured forth from city life this past weekend to visit the country and this quaint little cemetery on the edge of town for Memorial Day.
My cousin Georgia was here from Lawrence with her daughter Shelly decorating graves.
My sister ran to make cookies when she heard they were coming. They hadn’t been able to return for a couple of years because of Cousin Ed’s health, but he is now in a care facility, so they ventured forth one more time.
Cousin Mac dropped by. He lives in Wichita and hesitated to sit down except for one minute while I took a picture to prove he’d been here. He was meeting an old school chum and didn’t want to be late.
Cousin Keith came from Colorado, and the “Schubert girls”— Mary, Kris, and Jeannie — with their brother, Frank, came all the way from Arizona, Texas, and Missouri to facilitate the annual Emil Schubert family reunion in Ramona.
They invited Pat, Jess, Keith, Gary, and Carol — part of the Albert Schubert branch of the family tree — to join them this year, and we went to eat with relatives that we hardly knew.
Even our “other side of the-family” cousin, Joe Fike, visiting us from Lawrence, went to the Schubert reunion potluck because he grew up with Martin and Dorothy Schubert’s kids as if they were cousins.
I love hearing all the stories when a family gets together. Lots of them are funny. We listened and laughed walking down the street; listened and got tears in our eyes walking over to the parish hall; listened and smiled, remembering, as we distributed flowers at the cemetery; listened and stood in silence as “Taps” was played.
My sister and I also enjoy telling stories of the people who’ve lived in and around Ramona. You’ve heard quite a few of them through the years in this column.
Sometimes, along with our older generation of returnees, we struggle to remember all the names.
One day at the table, someone asked, “Who lives in the Clover house now?”
I said, “Billie’s son,” and they said, “Who’s Bill?” And I told them about Billie Alcorn, the guy with a skid steer that did a lot of good deeds around town while he was alive.
Which reminded Jess that we hadn’t heard from our friend Miriam lately. She grew up in these parts, too, and used to live across the street from the Clover house back in the day.
As stories flew around the room, our Rolodex brains were being overworked remembering names. My sister got up from the table. I heard her in the office making a phone call. She was calling Texas to check on Miriam. No answer. Left a message.
“I used to work for Wilbur Hanschu when I was a teenager.” Keith started another story, “and I loved working with his younger brother, Junior, because he’d take turns with me being the one lifting bales on a hot summer afternoon and being the one driving the tractor. All the farmers weren’t that thoughtful.”
We grinned, remembering our own stories about Junior. We in fact have the Junior Hanschu memorial hedge planted along a sidewalk leading up to my sister’s front door. Now there’s a good story. Junior’s parents once lived in that house.
It rained in Ramona all weekend, so we couldn’t have services at the cemetery.
Loren and Orvell Brunner’s son, Tracy, spoke instead at the Lutheran church, reminding us to remember those who have gone before.
Leona Kleiber’s daughter Becky from Augusta sang for us, and we all ate our picnic lunches in the parish hall instead of the park, on another day in the country, bringing the town and its past generations of inhabitants to life again at the mention of their name.