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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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