Well we sadly left our journey through Kansas today. It has been a wonderful experience seeing 7 of 10 of Bill's cousins and reminiscing about their youth and childhood experiences. We have begun a trek through the Quick, Dulley, Miler, and Bullis family trees looking at hundreds of old pictures, newspaper articles, and other artifacts. There is still so much more we need to learn. There is a rumor that we may be related to Jean Harlowe and Joan Crawford--but I personally think we'll need to check that out. Deb and Kaj say they are related to Abe Lincoln by their father's lineage.
Thursday and Friday we were back in Kansas City--but this time on the Missouri side visiting Deb and her brother Kaj (rhymes with "by"). Deb has a huge house on five acres. It feels like it is in the middle of nowhere--but in all actuality it is only five minutes from the city. She has a barn, pool, pond, basketball hoop--all of which are presently not being used. The house is huge (and the full basement makes it even bigger) but will need lots of work to get it up to par. She and her boyfriend Carl have been moving into it this past year and still have not completely moved in due to health and other issues. But the house has great potential. An interesting aspect is that a huge spa (like our outdoor spa) was put into the bathroom--but there is no drain for the water! There is a long staircase going upstairs--but it is so steep my whole foot does not fit on the step--I had to turn my feet at an angle to walk up the steps.
Kaj took us into the city on Friday to see the Norman Rockwell display at Grand Central Station. Deb wasn't feeling well so she wasn't able to go. The railroad station is very elaborate and grandeur. I could just visualize all the people in the early 1900s scurrying about trying to catch their train.
I couldn't get over the enormity of the hallway and the beautiful decorative ceiling. It reminded me of the ceiling of the Capitol Building.
We LOVE Norman Rockwell and the display was so fun. Not only were the Saturday Evening Post magazines displayed--but the photos were re-created using look alike scenery and mannequins. We were even able to hold some of the relics.
Next we went to the art museum to see the French impressionist display--which the three of us thoroughly enjoyed. The free headsets tour made the experience even more enjoyable. Kaj makes his living as a painter (he even gave us one of his prints) so Bill brought Kaj an unfinished painting of their grandfather's. Hopefully Kaj will want to finish it one day.
We found the area where their grandfather lived when he lived in Kansas City. We have the address but we think they renamed the street.
It was Kaj's birthday (Happy Birthday Kaj!) so Deb made a nice angel food short cake and we celebrated.
Deb had an abundance of photos of the Miler-Bullis family so we spent an entire evening going through the boxes trying to decipher who was who and who was related to who. After going through four family trees it became quite confusing to me! We did find a picture of Bill's baby brother Jack who died only a few hours after birth.
Today while driving through Witchita we tried to find Jack's grave--but no one was at the cemetary to help us. We'll have to try again next year.
We drove by two of Bill's childhood homes in Witchita. One house was all boarded up and surrounded by tall overgrown grasses. The other (Bill's favorite) looks so much smaller to Bill. He says the the "crick" (creek) next to it also looks different. The trees are gone (especially the tree they used to swing across the "crick.") The elementary school is still across the street.
Oklahoma is very green and expansive with small rolling hills. There is lots of grass with trees on the hills. You can easily see how easily a tornado could come through. With the floods that recently came through here, we were surprised how low the river was.
Our hotel is in downtown Oklahoma City. Our room has a beautiful view of the city. We went to the hotel restaurant for dinner. My dinner was very good but Bill had a piece of glass in his fettucini so we had our meal and breakfast tomorrow comped. Bill walked over to Sonic to grab a hamburger. There are Sonic drive ins everywhere in the midwest. I miss our old drive in restaurants with the waitresses on roller skates. Bill passed by Hooters to get to Sonic-but he told me he didn't go in.
Bill has just learned that we have no internet service at our hotel in Dallas. We will be there with Kiersten and Nick Saturday through Tuesday. We will try to go somewhere to get on line to keep this Blog posted. Til then...
No comments:
Post a Comment