Peace amid the storm

MINNEOLA KANSAS

By Angie Peirce

With all the craziness going on in the world today, I am so very grateful to be in a place that gives me peace of mind and a break from reality.

The Farm, as my family refers to it, has been in the family for decades.  This is where my grandparents settled to raise a family as they grew wheat and tend cattle.  They always had a few horses around for the kids to ride. My love for this place is deep in my heart.

I spent so many summers here at the farm and in town that it gave me a sense of ownership. It was OUR family’s place. I rode my bicycle around town for hours and hours, until I knew almost every square inch of the area. I could tell you where most people lived and I even knew some of the scuttlebutt. Minneola became my second home.

Life here was so different from our home in the city. I remember checking cattle and watching my petite grandmother waving her arms in the air to look bigger and whooping up a storm to move cattle.

During Conversations Grandma Angie often held her finger to her chin.

My grandfather Herschel took me along in the combine as he harvested wheat. We rode horses on the farm, and sometimes I just sat out in the open to feel the ever-present Kansas wind blow my hair. 

I long for those days and their simplicity. There was no Internet, no 24/7 news channels, and a world without concerns or fear. We watched the news, mostly for the weather, but we also

watched soap operas before a short afternoon nap.

I fondly remember helping Grandma Angie as she made the daily noon meal. She always prepared a big meal - usually fried chicken, mashed potatoes and corn, my grandpa’s favorites. 

The men (most likely women too) would come in from the field, chow down and go back to work, then Grandma Angie and I would wash dishes, side by side.

When my grandparents moved to town into my great-grandparent’s house on the highway, Aunt Erma and her family moved to the farm.  She had 5 boys and when I came to Minneola, I was a spoiled little girl.

She painted my nails, taught me to sew (we even made matching dresses for my cousin’s wedding), she took me to get my ears pierced at the home of a local nurse without mom or grandmas approval which I thought was pretty cool, and we just hung out. 

Erma worked at the Pyramid Diner at the intersection of U.S. 54 and U.S. 283. It was a small place with five or six booths and a counter. I loved to visit because she would always get me a treat and then shoo me out to make room for the real customers. To this day, I prefer small local diners to chain restaurants. The homey feeling and the banter and laughter of the local friends was so fun to watch. As we travel, those attract our hunger.

I was 13 when Erma died unexpectedly. I was at summer camp in Nebraska and my paternal grandfather picked me up.  The drive to Minneola seemed to take days. I grieved for myself, but also for my cousin who was just a year older than me.  I couldn’t fathom life without a mother at such a young age.  

My grandfather, Herschel, had died just 2 years earlier while I was visiting.  I remember waking up and seeing a note on the table that they had gone to the hospital and I was to go to Mabel and Jolly’s, close family friends. 

About the time the swimming pool opened, I went to the window of the hospital room to ask if I could go. Everything seemed OK then. After swimming, back at Mabel and Jolly’s, we got the call. 

Herschel was gone. I ran to the hospital a block away and they let me see him. That was my first experience of death. He looked so peaceful, like he was sleeping. Everyone came for the funeral and afterwards they laughed and told stories.  I think mom and dad took me home early that year.

During our childhood years in Omaha, and then later in Lincoln, we always looked forward to the annual Minneola Memorial Day celebration.  It was a pilgrimage for the far-flung family, and everyone swarmed in and caught up on the news since the last gathering.

Grandma Angie laughing while preparing for the annual Memorial Day weekend parade.

We watched the parade and then went to the community dinner at the school where my mom bragged to her classmates about us, as if we were going to remember her classmates’ names.  

Some years we had a picnic at the farm and the kids drank iced tea generously loaded down with sugar. The adults enjoyed a good laugh and even had a few heated conversations about politics or the Nebraska-Kansas football rivalry. 

The kids were shooed out of the house so our entertainment became shooting BB’s at the grain bin or jumping from the bunkhouse door into the horse tank. We were always up for a card game of “shit on your neighbor,” the only time cussing was permitted. WE didn’t name the game.

When I got bored, I took long walks in the tall wheat, or went into the kitchen and rummaged through grandma’s junk drawer for treasures. Oh to open that junk drawer today.  

As life moved on, all the cousins got busy with jobs and families. Our Minneola trips became few and far between and, as with all families in time, too often it was a funeral that pulled us into town.

I’m eager to share my Minneola experiences with our kids, who are launching their own busy lives. I’m sure that when I introduce them to the folks I know, they feel the same way I did at my mother’s class reunions. I’m grateful that they let me tell the history.

Our visit this spring will last until at least mid-May, and with all the uncertainty, maybe longer. It will be my longest stay in this special place since my childhood.

While this pandemic situation is sorted out, we are grateful to be here. It’s a scary world out there, but the farm and the warmth of our family takes some of that fear away.

It’s tough to find the words for my gratitude to be so close to my family history and reconnect with the cousins I grew up with.

The Minneola cousins, my siblings, parents, Erma & Herschel. I'm the cute one on the bottom right.