Greensburg

A couple weeks ago I talked about reclaiming my basement and about the pictures of the kids I hadn’t seen in more years than I care to admit. It reminded me of what a wonderful life I‘ve had. A huge part of that life was our adopted hometown. I say adopted because we lived there for about twelve years. But that was seventeen years ago. After going through the pictures, my daughter and I planned a trip back to our hometown where most of them were taken. We never got around to setting a date for our trip. I mean, what’s the hurry? It’s only about 6 hours away, any weekend will do.
Oh, we had big plans. Our first stop was going to be The Kansan Restaurant, it sits right off Highway 54 just as you come into town. Next on the list was Dillon’s, it’s just down the street. Most people around here would laugh if they saw it. It’s one of the first stores Dillon’s built and only had six aisles. I just loved that store. Anyway two of the best friends I’ve ever had worked there. Eric Sears And John Adolph ( Big John.) Anyway I’d let them know we were in town and offer to buy them a beer at Larry’s after they got off work. In the mean time we had other things to do.
We wanted to see the pool, it had this concrete island thing in the middle. The kids loved that. I wanted to see the State Lake right outside of town, stop by Coastal Mart for something to drink and visit the cemetery to pay my respects to a couple old friends and apologize for being gone so long. My daughter couldn’t wait to see her old school, and we both wanted to see the old houses we lived in.
I was so looking forward to meeting everyone at Larry’s, it was the one place I could count on seeing the rest of my friends. It was a really cool place, being the only bar in town you had a huge mix of people. You had the cowboys, farmers, oilfield workers, business owners, lawyers , even the banker. Here, everyone was on a level playing field, and for the most part everyone got along. They were all just people.
Most people had never heard of our hometown of Greensburg before last Friday night. The only thing they were famous for was having the “World’s Largest Hand Dug Well.” For awhile we lived right across the street from the Big Well. Kind of a neat thing, it was in the city park and behind it was the city water tower with the words “Big Well,” painted in big, green letters. I’ve seen that water tower hundreds of times without giving it a second thought.
Last Friday night, Greensburg became famous again when it was completely destroyed by a mile wide tornado. The saddest thing I’ve ever seen was the picture of that once proud water tower lying, broken open, on it’s side with nothing but total destruction surrounding it. This was the neighborhood most of my friends lived in and it answered my questions about whether or not they’d been hit.
We’ll still take that trip. But it’ll be to try to find old friends, apologize for being gone so long, and to say goodbye to a dear old friend. Goodbye Greensburg. Thank you for being part of my life. This old guy’s really sorry he didn‘t make that trip earlier.
Kevin McGinty can be reached at: kevinmcginty@sbcglobal.net