Then after lunch, my aunt Sheila and I spent a few hours looking through old family photographs. A few brought back memories. Others were of family members I never really knew. We spent the next day visiting with my uncle Tom, who is Sheila's brother, and part of his family, as well as Sheila and my cousin Jennifer. The visit was very moving. I hadn't seen my uncle since I was about 20, and I know he was thinking about his two brothers (one of them my father) who are gone. We had a good time, though, joking and laughing and getting re-aquainted. It was tough to say "good-bye."
After our visit, though, Tony and I cheered ourselves up by stopping for dinner at the Kewpee, a hamburger joint that was founded in Lima in 1926, the year my parents were born. It's still in its original location, with the same linoleum on the floor and the same vinyl countertops. It has a drive-through, and at the end of the drive-through lane is evidence of an old turntable which used to turn your car around in the cramped space so you could drive out.
It was odd to think that this same restaurant is where my mom and dad ate hamburgers as teenagers - long before the days of McDonald's.
On our final day in Lima, Tony and I drove around trying to locate the place where my great great grandparents had lived. They named the area "Vinegar Hill" after a famous battle in Ireland's tortured fight for independence. The location of the battle was a hill called (in Gaelic) "Fiodh na gCaor," which if you say it fast, sounds like "Vinegar." Hence, the name. We couldn't locate the exact area, so we went over to Sheila's house to visit some more and meet a few more relatives. Sheila, Jennifer, Brenna and I took a picture together.
A little later, Sheila took us to the exact location of Vinegar Hill, though we could find no house that might have been the Brennan homestead. Instead, there were several "newer" homes on the property. We drove Sheila back to her house and said another sad "good-bye" as the next day we would be flying home.
It's hard to put into words my feelings about this trip. I loved seeing my relatives, catching up on the past 37 years, laughing and talking about family members no longer here, and also doing some genealogical research. But nothing stays the same, and Lima is not the town I remember - at least, the old area where my grandparents once lived. The homes are in need of repair and I wonder how much longer they will stand. On the one hand, there was evidence of some construction and refurbishing about town, on the other, the industry that had made Lima a thriving city is gone. Lima was once a railroad town, and employed many people. It also had some oil wealth, but all of that seems to have disappeared, except for the occasional sound of a train whistle, as the few remaining trains work their way through town.
It was also bittersweet to be in the town of my parents' birth, childhood and adolescence, knowing they, as well as my grandparents, are no longer with us. There was a definite sense that much had changed and that, as a result of this trip, my memories were also going to be changed. I had a strong desire to find the money to renovate both of my grandparents' homes, and preserve them for another century, but that is simply impossible. You can't go backwards, no matter how hard you wish you could - for just a little while. And so I leave my reminiscing with one more photo - of the house where my parents lived when I was born.
This is my first home, the place where I joined the Mueller and Brennan families for the first time. It is a duplex that my parents shared with my aunt Kay, uncle Pete and their three oldest boys. Jim and I both lived there, as his mother was my aunt Kay, my mother's sister. I don't know which side of the house was ours. The house may be as worn as the other homes, but stories I have heard about it always make me smile. Like the time my 3 and 4 year old cousins got into their father's car, released the emergency brake and rolled the car out of the driveway. Apparently, they wanted to go to the store to buy bubble gum. And the time my mom and her sister let a cement truck dump a huge load of cement in front of the garage, so their husbands could use it to build a fence. It was much more cement than was needed, and it dried before the fence could be finished. The huge mound blocked access to the garage for the next year, until a tornado moved the garage. And the story my aunt Sheila (who was 6 years old when I was born) told me on this trip - that she and my grandmother used to walk to the house to see us, and they brought along Sheila's imaginary cat. Halfway there, she told my grandmother to pick up the cat and carry it, as it was tired.
So when I think of Lima, I will think of all the people I love, living and no longer with us, and I will smile when I remember the train whistle, and when I think of mischeivous kids in search of bubble gum, two young mothers and a pile of cement, and an imaginary cat that used to come to visit.
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