Anybody Famous?

"This is it.....the bug city of Burnsville."

"So this is where you grew up?"

"Yep...now you nsee why I never come back here."

"Does kinda look like a dump."

"Ouch...oh, look! The Dairy Twist is still here and open. Wanna get one?"

"Sure, shy not. May be the only good thing left here."

"There's the old theater. Used to go there every Saturday morning....

"One blueberry concrete. What did you want?"

"That flavor of the month sounds good. A meduim."

"My old high school should be four blocks away. Wanna see where your old man learned all the basics?"

"Sure. Maybe you can get a refund."

"Ha! Ha! Very funny."

"I suppose you had to walk home come rain or snow."

"Of course. Nothing cancelled school in my day.

"Burnsville Drugs used to be there on that corner. CVS just isn't the same...and that house thereis where my best friend, Jerry, lived."

"Never heard you talk of him before. Did you lose track of him after school?"

"Not exactly. He quit just after Christmas senior year to join the Army. Two weeks before graduation his folks got that dreadful official visit. Jerry had stepped on a mine in Nam and was blown to bits. He is on that Wall in DC."

"Sorry."

"There is the park that the city, town or dump as you called it, renamed after him in his honor."

"If that's your old high school it looks kind of abandoned."

"Probably a new one somewhere. Ipgrades would have cost too much I am sure,"

"I bet so. Air conditioning and indoor plumbing are not cheap.

So how much farther to your old house?"

"A good couple of miles yet. It is just past the landfill on the left and the County Cemetery on the right. After we stop at the house we'll go to the cemetery and I'll show you some old family graves. You can take their picture for your project."

"Anybody famous in our family?"

"Well....one of my great uncles was the Burnsville town drunk for several years."

"That will really impress my class."

"I heard stories growing up of my great-great grandfather losing an arm in the Civil War. It was buried on the battlefield and he was sent home."

"Come on. Nobody famous?"

"Not on my side of the family that anybody knows. Nobody has ever looked past Great-Great Grandpa Asa. Maybe you can find someone since you are having to do your tree for school."

"The library has a free subscription to an ancestry site that we can use."

"That's the cemetery behind that stone wall."

"Why a wall? They afraid someone will escape?"

"The opposite. People were dying to get in."

"Ha, ha. You beat me to that one."

"Here's the driveway. Hope it is passable or it is a long walk back to the house."

"Anybody in the family still own it?"

"It was left to the four of us; me, your Aunt Darlene, Uncle Gene and Uncle Silas."

"So...who has it?"

"None of us. Gene stayed for a while but he left when he got a job in Alaska."

"So it's gonna look like one of those creepy old abandoned houses you see in the movies."

"Maybe. One of the neighbors was renting the fields. Not sure if the house was included."

"If that is it I don't see any cars around except for that old junker."

"Your Grandpa Sam was right proud of that old Hudson. Only new car he ever owned."

"Not as crappy looking as I expected. Give me a quick tour so we can get to the cemetery before it starts getting dark."

"You see that old barn over there?"

"Yeah."

"It's the third one. Lost the first one in a fire....still think it was your Aunt Darlene smoking...but the neighbors helped us rebuild. The second was lost in a tornado. Wiped out the barn but totally missed the house. Again the neighbors helped us rebuild."

"Sounds like good neighbors. Afraid to even talk to our neighbors these days."

"You are right on both counts. Let's do a quick walk through if we can get in.

Front door seems locked. Let's go around back."

"It actually looks open. Suppose someone is here?"

"I would think not. Maybe some animal got in."

"So should we be loud to scare off any animal or keep quiet in case of people."

"Just looking around the kitchen here I think animals can be ruled out. Looks like your Uncle Gene cleaned it out pretty good.

"Well...here is the living room. Many a night began with us all huddled around the fireplace while your Grandma Edith read from the family Bible. That would help you out if we only knew who had it. Grandma kept track of everyone in the back of that book."

"Wow! Indoor plumbing. Thought maybe you still had an outhouse."

"Moving along...here is the parlor and this was mom and dad's room. Let's go upstairs. That's where us kids were."

"Did you have any hidden compartments like a loose brick in the fireplace that maybe his something?"

"Not that I recall. Wait a second. Gene had an air vent he could take out. He used to hide his cigarettes and dirty magazines there. Here...this was his room. There's the vent and..."

"Looks like he forgot to pack everything for Alaska."

"Don't remember this box. Shall we see what he left?"

"Why not."

"Cigarettes...expected those. This looks like a picture of the old sugar house back down in the woods - when it was working. Here's great grandpa's obituary. That should help you. And this stack of pictures all seem to have description on the back...Gene's lucky rabbits foot...his Ernie Banks baseball card collection...cannot believe he forgot about this box."

"Can we take it with us?"

"You bet we can."

"Great..let's get to the cemetery so I can get some pictures before dark."

"You gotta see my room before we leave."

"Okay."

" That room was your Aunt Darlene's and then here your Uncle Silas and I shared as we were the oldest."

"I can see why. You can easily crawl out the window onto that roof and hop to the ground."

"You know your old man pretty good. That is exactly what we would do."

"Can we go now? I'm actually kind of anxious to get started."

"Well...if you can get past Great Great Grandpa Asa you may be able to find somebody famous."