My Memorial to My Grandfather: part 7

Thus, it became decided: Oscar would return to Kansas first; Anna Jane would follow a few weeks later.  He knew the only means for him to make the trip was to hobo it on the trains again, as there was still no money for the extravagance of a train ticket, and he did not wish to subject Anna Jane to the harshness of that experience – though, inwardly, he suspected she could have dealt with the rigors quite well.

Instead, she would borrow the money from her brother to follow later.  Eddie offered to buy tickets for them both, as his prospects shined brightly upon him over his short time in California, but Oscar did not wish to begin his life with Anna Jane in debt, even to her brother, whom he liked.  He feared accepting his brother Alvin’s home may have already place him there, and he could find himself already at a deficit when returning to his hometown.

The reception Oscar met when reaching Abilene was one hard to qualify.  He expected no brass band like a Roman general parading in triumph up to Caesar from the battlefield.  There was none.  Yet he hoped some of Anna Jane’s words might prove true, and there would be some recognition of his absence, coupled with an inquiry into all that was new in his life.

People who remembered him, those who saw him upon the streets of Abilene, they reacted like he was never gone, asking him the same typical questions of how his parents were; what his brothers were doing; what was new this year on the farm.  Etc. etc. etc. it went, with Oscar politely responding in kind, never mentioning his time in Colorado or his living in California.

The reaction from his family was somewhat similar.  Though no one asked him anything of Greeley or Long Beach, or even of Anna Jane herself, they did implicitly acknowledge his absence by enlightening him on all the happenings around Dickinson County the past few years – with a special emphasis upon the passing of his brother Alvin.

They told him the story of how Alvin died.  They told him where Sarah and the kids now lived.  She did marry William Gfeller, and now was living in Junction City – though, for some reason, her youngest child Paul, lived with Oscar’s brother Harvey and his wife.  Oscar considered inquiring into why, as it made no sense to him at all for Paul not to move with his mother and her new family, but he decided against saying anything, continuing to hold his tongue, hoping to maintain some semblance of civility for Anna Jane when she eventually accompanied him.

Instead, he turned his focus entirely onto the farm that would now be theirs.  The land was certainly good.  He knew that from growing up here.  It still remained the best of all the brothers had received, as well as some of the best farmland in the county.  He thought he might have picked up on a few wisps of resentment over this fact.  Who was he, after all, to be given such a prime piece of ground?  He was the one who abandoned his farming heritage in favor of those silly automobiles.  Now he wished to pick it up again, when others were more faithful, not to mention capable, of putting the land to good use?

Oscar could not help but wonder to himself what people would think when he never tilled the soil and never planted a crop.  The idea Anna Jane suggested of him building his garage to service all the farmers in the area, he could see how the buildings Alvin left behind could suit that purpose supremely.

These buildings were of not much to speak.  They were all typical farmland buildings of the time; and the house he and Anna Jane would live in, it remained in dire need of some improvements.  Who knows how long it may have sat empty?  Yet this stood as their beginning, and Oscar could see, as with Long Beach, great potential lying over the horizon.