The reason for the inclusion of these few photos in the blog will be explained shortly.
The photo with the Paper Moon reference painted in the background, one with my mom, were my Uncle Robert's attempt to commemorate the exciting time that a movie studio came to town, covered the main street with dirt, and filmed a sequence of Ryan and Tatum's escape from a Sheriff's office. They jump in a car, drive to the river road at the end of town, proceed one way and then the other, and finally escape the clutches of the law. The "Sheriff's office" had actually once been a bank.
The dining table photo with everyone gathered around the lighted birthday cake was in the living room of my Aunt Doris and Uncle Hap. From left to right, sitting is my mother, Anita Breeze (June 2002). Next to her, standing, is my Grandma, Gladys Breeze (1989); behind the other two standing women is my Cousin Jim's wife, Ruth (likely 1990's); standing in front of Ruth is my Aunt Doris Rowe, Jim's mom (May 2003); sitting at the end of the table is my Uncle Hap Rowe, Jim's dad (May 2003); sitting to Hap's left is my Uncle Robert Breeze (2012); sitting on the far right is my Cousin, Jim Rowe. Everyone in the photograph except my Cousin Jim is dead, with the (approximate) date of death in parentheses. Cousin Jim, who is very much alive, still lives in Kansas.
The second picture from the top looks north at the bending Missouri River from the Northern hill above the town. The bottom photograph (with my roommate Gary at the time and myself standing) is of the top of the Southern hill above the town. Uncle Robert owned the hill for years until his death. It passed to his often-estranged son, Ray Breeze, and none of us knows who owns that hill now (Ray attempted to sell off anything and everything he got from his late father before, during and immediately after the funeral). The photo second from the bottom looks across from Doris and Hap's front yard at the town's grain elevator. I have stood on the top on a few occasions over the years, beginning in 1966, and surveyed the town below, from the river end to the closed elementary school at the opposite end.
The photo of my Uncle Robert and mom includes the front porch of the Nuzum house that Robert later owned for a number of years, again until his death. But like most of the historic structures in the town, it became musty and broken down because Robert could not hold back time forever. Again, I have no idea if Cousin Ray (whom none of us knew at all until we briefly met him at Uncle Robert's funeral and did not take to him at all) was able to sell the house or if it's deteriorated well beyond repair. (It is in front of that house where the aged black and white photo was taken in 1921--from a different angle--of four generations of Hook/Nuzum/Breeze women, beginning with Great Great Grandmother Hook and ending with my infant mother in her lap, with Grandma Gladys Breeze and her mother, Great Grandma Nuzum, standing around Great Great Grandmother Hook.)
I currently have not found any photographs of the town's Olive Branch cemetery (though my mother took so many over the years). Grandpa Ray Breeze (Gladys's husband) was buried there in 1954 when he died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 55.
The reason these photographs are included here is because the tenth volume in the series, RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE: OLIVE BRANCH, begins and ends in White Cloud, Kansas. Many of the sites depicted above are featured in the book, including the Olive Branch cemetery. Several of the super-hero characters in the book are staying there for the funeral of Aunt Doris and Uncle Hap in May of 2003.
No comments:
Post a Comment