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Hometown By Lorraine Hoffower September 26, 2007 She spins up Highway 350, under Blue Ridge Boulevard and past the Dairy Queen she went to as a child with her family in their incredibly long white Chevrolet station wagon that had to be big enough for two adults, five kids and a week's worth of supplies for road trips across the country. They sat in the parking lot eating their vanilla soft-serve cones dipped in chocolate, trying not to get ice cream headaches. Just out of high school, she worked there making banana splits for families a lot like her own and wondered if those kids would remember how cool it is to go for ice cream on a humid summer night filled with the sounds of crickets calling. Her high school friend Angie died in a car crash across from the DQ. It happened a long time ago and the memorial cross is no longer mourning in the median. Angie was 25 years old and seven months pregnant. The 90 year old man who hit her didn't see her car coming over the hill leading into town. A block further up the highway was the Katz Drugstore. She spun her car there on the wet road and bald tires and hit a light pole and a man stopped to ask not if she needed help, but if she wanted to get high. The building was torn down and another drug store was put up. In the same parking lot her youngest brother opened the station wagon door while it was moving and fell out on the way to the dime store, now a health food store. He was a year old and sat in the middle of the parking lot crying, wearing only a cloth diaper, while cars drove by. Her mom retrieved him before he got run over, his only injury a chipped tooth. On the left is Fun House Pizza & Pub, still in business almost 40 years after her mom's water broke there on a snowy January evening. They made it to the hospital in plenty of time and out she came, feet first and noisy as hell, or so her dad tells the story. As she passes the Ford dealership, she remembers when she was 13 and flipped over the handlebars of her 10-speed while riding on the gravel shoulder and braking too hard. The used-car salesman gave her a Band-aid. Years later, she bought a car from him. Sam's Discount Store was across the highway and she thinks of the fascinating winking neon eye on the store's sign and feels a little wistful that Sam's was replaced by a strip mall. Near the highway intersection with Raytown Road was a King's restaurant where her family went on special occasions. There was no "Non-Smoking" section and no low fat menu. Bring on the greasy fries! The building has been gone for 25 years, displaced by an auto parts store. Around a curve and down a hill was the Kroger's grocery store, now a school for teenagers studying automotive technology and cosmetology. When she was a teenager and out of school for a snow day, she used the parking lot for practicing donuts in her dad's Impala. As she drives up the rolling hill, on either side are impressive green fields she wanted to live in as a child. The lush grasses seemed to offer peace and solitude, even next to a busy highway and a crop of duplexes. The YMCA has taken over one of the fields now and there's talk of building a hotel. As she approaches the turnoff to home, she blinks and pictures the faintly shabby Waight's Court motel that advertised kitchenettes and TVs in every room. The sign flashed "Vacancy" most of the time, finally replaced by a dentist's office. She turns onto 78th Street, where her childhood was exhausted searching for crawdads in ditches and fireflies in the night air. She rode her bike to friends' houses and went sledding down the big hill in winter, confident no cars were coming. She held the comfort of her mom and dad and the security of knowing they would always be at home, in her hometown. That much hasn't changed. About the author: I'm married to Fred and mother to Eric, who is 19. I love chocolate and reading and being outside and my family. I have lived in Raytown, a suburb of Kansas City, most of my life. I have moved away twice, but keep coming back. | | | |
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