Twice a year, Nancy Curry drives from her home in
Cheney down to Wilson Creek, Washington, to put flowers on her parents’ graves.
It’s a beautiful drive through flat Palouse wheat country. She explained that
the little towns were purposely built every twenty miles or so along the
railroad for hauling both people and produce. I was delighted to be included in
her October 2022 jaunt.
We drove south from Davenport, through Harrington,
roughly paralleling Crab Creek, past Krupp-Marlin (originally was Krupp but
that was too German sounding during World War II so it was renamed Marlin). We
slowed through Odessa (remembering the October German Fests we’d attended there
in the past), and on to Wilson Creek and nearby Stratford.
Nancy recalled fond memories: at about age 7, and
with her brother and cousins, walking the 3.6 miles one way from the farm to the little store in Wilson Creek, with a
dime tightly clutched, to buy a popscicle. The dime was earned by digging
dandelions: 100 for 10 cents. Her parents had grown up together in nearby
Stratford (big old 1902 brick school house) and had retired in Wilson Creek.
The house where they lived was built in 1909 and once was white with green trim
but still has the green metal roof over now a blue-with-white-trim façade.
Nearby lived Nancy’s grandparents. Memories of her visits there are still vivid
in her mind.
Her father grew up in Stratford and told her how he
played, fished and sailed boats on Stratford Lake. (The family had an apple
orchard and her father told how he carved his and her mother’s initials in all
of the trees.) Other cousins walked down from the top of the coulee down into
the Crab Creek drainage to where Stratford was to attend school. A 2-3 mile
walk one way to school, outdoors in
all weather, never fazed students in those days.
The Wilson Creek cemetery rests on a bluff above
town and appears well mowed and cared for. A recent fire had blacked the area
around the cemetery but was mercifully stopped at the perimeter. A few
scattered pines frosted the grass with needles; Nancy wished she had brought a
whisk to clean off her family’s grave sites but happily used her hands. She
brought and placed stems of yellow-and-orange fake flowers to replace the pink
ones from last spring. She pointed out that her plot is next to her mother for
when her turn comes.
Just a mile down the road from Stratford, and in the
middle of a corn field, is a square plot of cemetery where two of Nancy’s
uncles (who died as babies) rest. She always remembers them too. The cemetery
is just plain dirt, not a green blade of anything growing. Nancy thinks the
ground was poisoned for some reason. We agreed; it was a sad, sad sight.
Happy to leave that sad cemetery, we drown past
Ephrata to Lakeview and Soap Lake (so close together as to seem one town). We
lunched with her cousin, Sharon, at the Lakeview Golf Course café where the
Chicken Taquitos were delicious. Was fun listening to them swap and share
memories.
Thank you, Nancy, for sharing your family trip with
me.
