Again, this final volume in the series has not been reviewed by anyone, and it has potentially only been read by two or three. My family had gathered in White Cloud, KS, for the second time in less than a year for a funeral. We'd been to California in March for my cousin's funeral that same year. This is the opening chapter of Olive Branch:
Chapter One
In early morning, while all of the others are soundly sleeping, Greg quietly eases himself up off the couch where he has spent the better part of a fitful night. This sturdy sofa has never been the most comfortable place to sleep. Either he is a couple of inches too long or the sofa is a couple of inches too short. However, he refuses to find fault with these meager accommodations, especially at a time like this. His mother’s family has been forced once again by misfortune to come together, and now is certainly not the time to complain about trivial matters.
Chapter One
In early morning, while all of the others are soundly sleeping, Greg quietly eases himself up off the couch where he has spent the better part of a fitful night. This sturdy sofa has never been the most comfortable place to sleep. Either he is a couple of inches too long or the sofa is a couple of inches too short. However, he refuses to find fault with these meager accommodations, especially at a time like this. His mother’s family has been forced once again by misfortune to come together, and now is certainly not the time to complain about trivial matters.
Carefully, he steps over his partner, Paul, still asleep on the carpeted floor. The floor was the only other option to the narrow couch, what with all four double beds in his aunt and uncle’s cozy house already claimed before they arrived. The two of them could easily have slept in the crew quarters of the ship, along with their four closest friends; but remaining here with his relatives seemed more appropriate and comforting for everyone directly involved.
He can tell by the gray glow from the picture window, just across the narrow living room from the sofa, that another glorious dawn is upon them. He slightly cringes, though, when he notices that several spiders have spun their intricate and highly successful traps outside, between the upper frame of the wide window and the low eave of the roof.
Greg ruefully reflects upon how there never appears to be a shortage of meals for hungry predators in this rural part of the nation, where nature seems forever in a state of mass profusion, especially during the full bloom of May. While he may have the remarkable ability to glean the most compelling motivations in all living creatures with his wondrous telepathic powers, to peer into their very psyches fully unhindered, he still finds these raw instincts a bit disconcerting when they involve matters of survival or death.
Instead, he quickly focuses his thoughts upon the front sidewalk and lawn, trying to ignore the helpless victims dangling just above his averted gaze. The lush green grass quickly segues from lying flat for a few feet to plunging steeply downward, toward a thick row of stately trees far below, which anchor the wide base of this scenic property.
“It must have been difficult for Uncle Hap to mow that steep hillside year after year,” Greg sighs to himself.
He also spies the North-South, two-lane Highway 7 that lies immediately beyond the tall trees below, at the very base of the hill; but no passing cars can yet be glimpsed through the thick foliage at this early hour.
A narrow width of graded land, forming a rough stretch to a rudimentary concrete boat landing, divides the paved roadway from the wide, swiftly flowing, Big Muddy River that effectively separates White Cloud, Kansas, from Missouri, in the extreme northeast corner of the Jayhawk state.
A long, dark ridgeline, well to the east, beyond countless acres of rich farmland in the neighboring state--mostly planted in soybeans and corn this time of year--easily delineates where glaciers, several thousand years ago, carved this five-mile-wide swath between the several low hills on this side--where the modest, single-story house surveys the panoramic view--and those black bluffs.
Because the meandering Missouri River enriches the soil, gives life to this land with bountiful harvests, year in and year out, settlers arrived in sufficient numbers throughout much of the 1800’s, to eventually found a modest town on July 4th, 1857, four years before the outbreak of the Civil War.
Most migrants continued west, however, in seemingly endless streams of rugged wagon trains, first through here and then through St. Joseph, Missouri, where the pony express began its brief but fabled service in 1860-61. In the 19th century, enough of these early visitors stayed and built homes--a few elegant, though many more barely adequate. But those who did remain fruitfully multiplied, regardless of their economic status; and the town reached its apex with a population of 1,100 souls in 1910-11.
For a time, the rich bounty was sufficient lure to keep them and their descendants tilling the land. Unfortunately, these humble farm folk may not have always been satisfied with the results of so much hard labor, what with crop prices forever fluctuating, mostly downward, especially throughout the 20th century.
Named for a chief of the local Iowa tribe, White Cloud is a small town that Greg’s mother, Anita, knew as a little girl. Born here on July 4th, 1921, she, her two younger sisters, Norma Jean and Doris, and younger brother, Robert, were raised amidst the straitened circumstances of the early-to-mid 1920’s, after farm prices had fallen after the end of The Great War. Moreover, prices fell further still from the acute strictures of the Great Depression in the 1930’s, precipitated by the stock market crash of 1929.
Eventually, yet another significant war came along and took most of the able-bodied men away to military training camps in Texas, California, Florida, and elsewhere. After nearly four years of violent, incessant conflict, no straightforward form of inducement could continue to keep enough of them down on the farm.
They had all experienced the seductive attraction of so many faraway places, where a man didn’t have to work the stubborn land to make a decent living. So many more of them wanted to live in the expanding cities and developing suburbs of what had become the world’s most prosperous and powerful nation. As an even more profitable alternative, they could labor in contemporary factories or fancy office buildings rather than on these outdated farms, where modern conveniences were still few and hardships frequent. Most of the veterans soon had post-war families to provide for, and the latest post-war dreams to realize. Small backwater towns such as White Cloud could no longer entice enough of them to stay. The population swiftly declined after WW II, and today there are only 250 residents remaining.
As anyone now can readily see, the majority never did come back, at least not permanently. Periodically, some do return, but mostly to pay brief visits to friends and relatives. Typically, the few days spent back here are merely to participate in the inevitable class reunions, weddings, or funerals, for those who had been left behind or for those whose bodies were brought back for burial.
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