Walter and Jenny

Growing up in the country—

West of Emporia like Connie

Leonhart & Bobbie Ann Kyle

Out there on old Hwy 50

I could still feel the Depression—

A motel lot next door with an

Old lady there since the Thirties

The way things used to be

Funny how history changes—

So many of the farms and

Prairie communities gone now

Ghost towns & decaying ruins

Corporation-run farming—

Satellites beaming down to

Spaceship John Deere robots

On where to spray & harvest

Even downtown Emporia—

Turning into a ghost town too

Boarded-up businesses and

Flint Hills Mall north of town

Some things are saved tho—

The Granada Theater, EHS,

Lowther and Kenyon Heights

Restoration and renewal

All the ruins in Europe—

When William Allen White

Was over there did he think

It would ever happen here?

It’s lucky I had grandparents—

To connect me with the past

To give me a feel for what’s

Slipping through my fingers

Call me stupidly nostalgic—

But I just simply can’t help it

Jenny the G. A .R. Queen Bee

Her father a Union colonel

Pounding on the old piano—

Playing “John Brown’s Body”

Down in the basement there

In Senator Plumb’s Mansion

All the little old ladies—

Having their church socials

Me behind the curtains stuffing

Myself with lemon-meringue pies