Blue Summit Revisited

Hey, Dylan did it with Highway 61. Never doubt the word of Dylan.

It’d been a while since I ventured in,

Beyond the stares of a people

Lost in time. 

 

Ten or fifteen years ago, when my dad’s mind was still more or less clear, we used to drive through Blue Summit regularly, so he could show me the various houses where he’d lived - where his friends lived.  Before the War.  Before the school house burnt down.

 

This time, though, with his mind not so clear, he wasn’t sure about those houses anymore.  I admit, I couldn’t remember them, either, even though it felt important that I remember them.  There is a flaw in my human material, for sure.

 

So, I’m going through documents that are a hundred years old - some even older - at my dad’s house because it’s my job as his daughter to tend to his remaining things, since he returned to the mother and father of us all.

 

I found a copy of my dad’s parent’s mortgage, which included a house, wood stove, 1924 Ford Touring car, sewing machine, hickory cooking stove, and various household items for $120.00.  Total.  Their payments were $8.00 a month. 

 

So I actually had an address now, and I ventured into Blue Summit again.  I took my daughter with me for protection.  I didn’t find the address, but I saw what had happened to it.

 

Let me say, gangsters of one sort or another have been around forever.  I do believe that.  Seen it too many times in too many places not to believe it.  And I worked for their bureaucratic counterparts.

 

So, Kansas City has this mob boss from back in the 1930’s, I think, named Tom Pendergass. Back there, he has the infamy of Jesse James and Cole Younger, who are also locals to the region.  The people like their Robin Hoods.

 

So, to create all the wonderful, art deco buildings in Kansas City, and the fountains and boulevards and masterful works of art, for a heartland city, was dreaming big in those days. 

 

To create the city of Pendergass’ dreams, large areas of various type of rock were mined wherever they were found, to be used in construction.  And no one gave a s**t about what happened in Blue Summit, where the people from the hollers set up.

 

The land on which my dad grew up no longer exists.  It collapsed from being too heavily quarried way back when.  That collapse of people’s lives - poor southern mountain people, that is - now creates a solid roof over which the remaining underlying limestone caves (the parts that didn’t cave in), are being used for commerce to house businesses and industry without need for air conditioning or heating.  Two birds with one stone, I guess. 

 

And my father is gone.  Everyone he ever knew as a contemporary is gone, save my mom.  Now she is her only contemporary.

 

So his former home in Blue Summit was gone - physically - but his people were everywhere.  I saw the spot where the square dances took place in the fall, when the stills produced and the beer fermented.  I saw the eyes of people who openly said, “please leave and don’t make me get my gun.”  Different things being produced, I’m quite sure, but the people are the same. 

 

And, what I’m really trying to say is that people who think they are all prim and proper and rich and beautiful and powerful and ad nauseam.  Well, I know those people are still in the hollers everywhere, all over the world, and they're not a happy lot right now.