The Town That Built Me

Apologies to Miranda Lambert for the title of this post, but it just seemed to fit.  I’ll share a little of my background.  I grew up in a small rural town in Northeast Kansas with a population of about 1000 people.  My graduating class had 28 people.  There were 5 school districts in our county- that will be 3 next year as the others have consolidated leaving my town as the lone remnant of a community district in the area.  Although I only live about 15 miles away, I don’t often make it back to Troy  these days.  My parents live about 5 miles outside of town towards me, and my in-laws no longer live there.  My wife’s grandmother still lives there, but it’s the rare occasion that we make it over since she comes to our church in our town.  Weddings and funerals are about the only reason I go home, other than the annual Alumni Basketball Tournament (24 straight years and counting- it’s more about keeping the streak alive than winning these days).  The death of my friend’s grandma took me back home this week.

First Baptist Church

First Baptist Church

Funerals tend to make me fairly contemplative, and this one definitely had that effect.  The service was in my boyhood church, the First Baptist Church.  Few things have changed since I was a kid there.  As I grew older, I quit going there and attended church with my then-girlfriend/now-wife and am now a Lutheran.  Being in the pew, hearing many of the same things I heard as a kid, took me back in time.  The pastor encouraged everyone who hadn’t already done so to ask Jesus to be their Savior (something that happened for me in one of those pews in 1981, literally a few feet from where I sat Tuesday).  The hymns were familiar, being sung by the daughter-in-law of the woman who had passed.  She often sang when I was a kid.  Her voice was just as sweet as I had remembered it.  The piano was played by the same man.  The funeral was for a woman who had been a pillar of our church and had a large family that networked throughout the community.  Their family was intertwined with mine throughout life.  She had 14 grandchildren, many of whom I either attended school with or coached when they were in school.  After the funeral, I decided to take a drive around town and take a few pictures as this blog was already simmering in my head.

 

Tall Oak- Peter Toth

Tall Oak- Peter Toth

After the funeral, I drove down Main Street.  It truly is the primary street in Troy.  As a kid, we “cruised” up and down it- of course, gas was 80 cents a gallon.  The county Courthouse is there, across the street from the home that Abraham Lincoln allegedly spent a night in during his campaign. This is also where both banks and the only restaurant, bar, and doctor in town are housed.  Additionally, it  has the post office and the county jail.  The large Indian sculpture was carved by Peter Toth from a large oak tree.  He’s carved one in all 50 states, and I remember when he and his wife lived in a tent on the courthouse lawn for several months one summer as he completed the sculpture.  The courthouse square now also has the memorial to Don Clary, a young man taken too early while heroically serving in Iraq.  His is another family that my life has been criss-crossed with.  The flags were flying in honor of Memorial Day.  Troy’s Main Street is unique but similar to several others in town, in that they are brick.  Many a young person has passed an evening sitting on the wall on the courthouse square.

 

Donald L. Harter Attendance Center

Donald L. Harter Attendance Center

I drove a little more, coming to what used to be Troy Grade School- now the Donald Harter Attendance Center.  Mr. Harter was my grade school principal, my first basketball coach, and one of the biggest influences in my life.  He would open the gym on Saturday nights and allow us to come in and play, giving me a postive outlet for energy that might have gotten me in trouble.  I spoke with him after the funeral, giving him a big hug as he gave me the same greeting he always does, “Hello, Number 22!”   my number in school.  His influence on generations of kids in Troy is beyond measure.  He is the standard I often use to measure my service to others, and fall miserably short.  The world would be better if we all lived a life of servant leadership like Donald Harter.

 

2A State Champions

2A State Champions

I continued on over to the High School and Middle School.  Both are fairly non-descript buildings, but hold many memories.  The plaque on the gym reminds community members of the magical 1984 basketball season in which the team went 25-0 and won the state tournament.  I was fortunate enough to be a freshman on that team and be along for the ride.  I’m sure there’s a book about the “Cardiac Kids” that I need to write some day.  The community literally picked up and moved to Topeka during the title run, it would have been a great time to be a thief in Troy,  because nobody was there.  After we’d won, there were dinners and celebrations in honor of the team.  We were all given symbolic keys to the city and named Grand Trojans (or something like that-it’s been a long time).  A lot of my blood, sweat, and tears were left behind in that gymnasium.  The time spent there kept me from a lot of trouble and the lessons learned there shaped the person I am today.  I drove  around to the football field, where the “Welcome to Trojan Country” sign adorns the bus barn.  I still can smell the grass and wet dirt coming up through my face mask while stretching before practice or a game.  Friday nights, it’s the only show in town, small town football really is king, even if it’s never had the success of basketball.  As an option quarterback, I still think people should run it more 😉

Welcome to Trojan Country

Welcome to Trojan Country

Troy Armory

Troy Armory

I drove on a little more, past the National Guard Armory.  A few years ago, the state decided that they didn’t need so many units in so many places, so they closed the unit in Troy.  It was a sad time for many people in the community as many had served in Vietnam as members of the unit, and others, more recently, in Iraq and other places in more recent deployments.  An old tank has been sitting out front ever since I was a kid.  There used to be a jet plane also.  I served as a member of a Kansas Army National Guard Field Artillery unit for 9 years, several of them at the unit in Troy.  It now serves as a Head Start facility, so it still has great value to the community.

Troy Pool

Troy Pool

I continued on around town, past the community pool.  Leaders in the town had enough foresight in the early 70’s to build this.  It seemed huge when I was a kid.  When I was a kid, I would leave home in the morning with a towel and my swim trunks attached to my bike handlebars with a rubber band.  I’d spend most of the morning either at the ball field (which I drove by and took a picture of, also) or at the grade school playing ball on the playground.  When the pool opened at 1:00, we were there waiting.  I’d go home at 4:30 or 5:00, when it closed for the one hour adult swim.  My parents never worried about me, I didn’t call to check in, and I didn’t have a cell phone.  We didn’t know what the internet or video games were (well, maybe Donkey Kong at the drive-in).  We used our minds to come up with something to occupy our time.  We weren’t obese, not because there was some program to keep us active at school, but because we PLAYED all the time.  The world really was a different place then.  The idea of my kids leaving in the morning and me not making contact at some point for 8 hours just seems crazy now.  That probably lent a lot to some sense of independence.  We learned to compromise and work out conflicts without the aid of adults, even if the only solution was for me to say, “I’m going home and leaving you with an odd number,” if the arguing became too much.  My friends still make fun of me for that to this day, but it usually settled the fight.

Baseball field- grade school on hill

Baseball field- grade school on hill

Then I drove by the house I lived in growing up. We lived there until 5th grade, when my parents moved us to the country.  I slept upstairs with my 3 siblings.  My older brother and sister each had a bedroom on each side of the stairs, and my younger sister and I had a bunk bed in the landing area between them.  We had one bathroom for 6 people.  We didn’t have air conditioning, we’d open windows in each of their bedrooms and one would have a fan pulling in, one would have a fan blowing out, to create a little air flow.  The landing area I slept in had a window, but it didn’t open.  It was hot, but we survived.  I’m sure people would now think it was cruel and unusual.  Lots of memories are attached to that house.  Some really good, some not so much.  Just like the pool, it seemed a lot bigger when I was a kid.

The HOUSE that built me

The HOUSE that built me

John's Market

John's Market

As I left town, I drove by John’s Market- that used to be Knapp’s Grocery store.  Troy used to actually have two grocery stores.  It’s a blessing that they are still supporting one.  The store was just behind our house down the alley.  When it snowed and they would pile the snow at the edges of the parking lot, we’d make forts in the piles.  I’d take bottles that I found around town  to the store to collect the deposits. I’m sure some of the younger people reading this have NO idea what that even means.  I bagged ice to make a little money as a kid.  When I started high school, I was hired to work there.  I worked there all through high school and part of college.  The Simpson family was very good to me.  John’s son, John-Michael, now runs the store.  I worked there with Jeff, Julia, and John-Michael.  They each own a store now, Julia in Eudora, KS and Jeff in Baldwin City, KS.  One of the best learning experiences I had in the store was going to work on Saturday mornings after a football game, especially if it had been a particularly bad one on Friday night and I’d thrown a couple of interceptions.  The fans at Troy games stand on the track and are literally about 6 feet from the players.  Having four-letter words thrown at you by adults with a few beers in them was NOT uncommon.  Having to be nice to the same people on Saturday morning as you sacked their groceries was a good life-lesson, in fact, I think it helped shape how I now deal with unreasonable parents but maintain a professional demeanor with them 🙂

Troy was a good place to grow up.  I really don’t have any desire to  live there now, and that’s not a knock on the town.  I’ve been used to living somewhere different for a long time, and if things had gone differently, I might still live there.  I applied for a job teaching middle school science in Troy right out of college.  The superintendent at the time felt like they had been hiring too many local people to teach, so he wanted to hire someone else.  If he’d hired me, I would probably still be teaching science there and trying to recreate the 1984 season as a coach.  As often is the case in life, things work out how they are supposed to.  The experiences I had as a kid in Troy shaped me, made me who I am.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Main Street

Main Street

Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda

My apologies to those not familiar with the vernacular that a small-town Kansas boy might use.  My background is splattered with family and friends who have always used different little colloquiolisms as a regular part of their vocabulary.  Spend more than 5 minutes at a family gathering, and you will find that “I’ll be durned” is used early and often.  “I’ll be durned” can mean a variety of things, ranging from, “That’s interesting”, to “That can’t be true”, to “You really did that?”  My dad has often claimed that my mom is a Missouri hillbilly, and she reinforces his claim with statements like “wrinching a warshrag” and stopping at “Walmarts”.  “Coulda, shoulda, woulda” could be added to that list.

I pause at this time to explain a little about how the writing process works for me.  I’m not an “on the clock” blogger.  I can’t sit down at a specific time each night and write.  I’d be a horrible newspaper writer with deadlines.  A post floats around in my head for awhile before I’m ready for it to come out, what I have jokingly referred to as “dumping my brain”.  I told a friend the other day that it’s like cheese, it has to cure and ferment, otherwise, it’s just spoiled milk.  Blogging for me is more about quality (hopefully) and less about quantity. 

Pressed Lemon Cheese by Susy Morris

Pressed Lemon Cheese by Susy Morris

 

This one has been bouncing around in my head for a couple weeks.  There is a hint of avoidance, because I’ve not wanted to tackle the subject.  A couple weeks ago, a middle school student  in my community died tragically due to a gunshot wound.  I coached the young man on my son’s team in baseball for the last 5 or so summers.  I’m friends with his family, and his older sister is one of the top athletes and students in our entire community, not just our high school.  I know I haven’t really dealt with my feelings about this incident.  I’ve worked through loved ones dying often enough to know that actually realizing I haven’t dealt with it is a good first step.  I know that I’ve really been on auto-pilot about this whole situation since I first received a phone call that morning at about 5:30 AM.  That’s when I started calling others in our district to let them know so they could  prepare to help kids that we knew would be hurting that day.  The entire day literally seems like a distant memory of something I watched, and it was only about 2 weeks ago.  What made this even harder to comprehend and deal with was the fact that a classmate of this young man had also died tragically about 1.5 years earlier, a young man who also played on the team I had coached that previous summer.  The amount of grief those boys have dealt with is more than many of us have dealt with in a lifetime.  My heart hurts for them and my concern for them is genuine.

Baseball no title by ericdege

Baseball no title by ericdege

 

Last week, the grandson of a my high school coach died in a similarly tragic way.  I didn’t know him personally, he lived several hours away.  Today, I attended his funeral.  Again, I saw the pain that people were dealing with as someone was gone from their lives way too early.  Again, I heard stories about this young man in happier times.  Sadly, it was all to familiar.

Consolation by allspice1

Consolation by allspice1

Mental health is something that I have been acutley aware of for a large part of my life.  I have had family members suffer with mental health issues, both when I was a kid growing up and also in my adult life.  I had a family member that had to spend some time in an inpatient clinic during my high school years.  That was difficult in many different ways.  Though it isn’t now and it shouldn’t have been then, at the time, it was embarrassing.  There is this stigma attached with mental health.  If my family member had to go away to be treated for cancer, I would not have shied away from talking about that, but words like “loony bin” and “psycho ward” help attach shame to this type of illness.  And in retrospect, how sad is that?  Part of what makes mental health treatment so frustrating is that we really don’t know a lot more now than we did years ago.  There haven’t been the advances like we have had in other areas of medicine.  When I was 4, I fell from a tree and broke my arm.  I spent 18 days in the hospital in traction.  When my son was little, he incurred the exact same fracture when he fell down.  Within 36 hours, he had surgery and was back home.  Medicine had advanced. 

L:istening for brain activity? by Daniele Oberti

L:istening for brain activity? by Daniele Oberti

 

With mental health, other than newer drug treatments, even the professionals are often left scratching their heads, trying to figure out how to treat an illness that we still don’t understand very well.  So the frustration we face as educators trying to help young people who may be suffering from these type of issues is overwhelming at times.  If I see a student limping down the hallway it is obvious to me that they are suffering in some physical way.  Seeing a student who is suffering mentally is so much harder to ascertain.  A lot of it takes opening our eyes and our hearts to being receptive  to seeing that.  In our rush to do the things in our task-oriented world, we can miss that sometimes.

So at this point, you are probably wondering about the title of this post.  Even though I have had more exposure to the mental health world than many, I am still, very much so, a layman.  In my attempt to be at peace with these tragic situations, I think of that phrase:  coulda, shoulda, woulda.  I saw the young man who passed two weeks ago two nights before he died.  He was at a baseball game for our high school.  He was sitting up behind home plate and laughing with a group of friends.  It’s the memory of him I will always carry, besides ones of him on the baseball field.  Sometimes I think I “coulda” gone over and said hello, or I “shoulda” at least waved up at him to say hi.  Knowing what I know now, I wish that I “woulda” done one of those.  Regret sucks, but I also realize it is a fruitless emotion.  We need to make sure we take the time to tell loved ones how we feel, how much they mean to us.  We need to reach out to others that may be hurting.  My hope is that instead of thinking “coulda, shoulda, woulda” we can be proactive with “can, shall, will” and possibly ease the hurting that others may be feeling.