GOING HOME

Yesterday Big Bore and I ventured down to Fredonia to do some yard work at Mom’s semi-abandoned abode. We had thought about making the trip the day before but reconsidered because the Tri-Mee is closed on Sundays. God forbid if we went all that way and I couldn’t get a butterscotch shake and BB couldn't get a chocolate malt. Mmmmm good.

The Tri-Mee is a little drive-in restaurant that was opened, I do believe, in the mid 1960s, when I was in high school. The first owners, Mr. and Mrs. Spohn, lived right next to it. I don’t recall much about him, but she was a sweetheart of the first degree. I have fond memories of going to the Tri-Mee in 1967 with my senior beau after track meets, sitting in his metallic green '54 Chevy Bel Air, eating burgers and fries. Ah! Life can’t get any better than this.

Big Bore also has his own happy childhood recollections of the Tri-Mee, even though he grew up in Wichita. It was the midway stop along the highway during family trips to Pittsburg to visit his grandparents. Burgers were and still are his personal preference at Tri-Mee. He has long adhered to that famous Mr. Wimpy motto: “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” But a beef burger is his current favorite.

After we finished working at the house, we hit up the Tri-Mee and then took our sack lunch up to the South Mound for a picnic. I’ve blogged about the Mound before. It’s a hill two blocks from where I grew up, and many a lazy afternoon was spent there seeking adventure…although Mama Bore was always quick to say, “Stay away from the pond!!” There’s an old shale pit on the west base of the Mound, and legend has that it is bottomless. “People have drowned there and a Caterpillar road grader once fell in it and was never seen again.” Now, I never questioned how the heck something as large as a road grader ever plunged into the pit in the first place, but I’d give her the, “Yes, mother” treatment and go on my merry way. Oh, I got close enough to the water’s edge to skip rocks, but I never once stepped a toe into it, and I never saw anyone else get any bolder than I.

The brush has grown up so much around the Mound over the years that exploration doesn’t look as easy as it once was, but a nice playground has been added on the top since I was a kid. When Mama Bore was still at home, my great niece and nephs always hit it up during visits. Maddie was just three when she started jumping off the boulders circling the area, giving the grown-ups a heart attack. “You’re going to hurt yourself!” She ignored us, of course.

There’s a lookout tower on the northeast edge of the Mound, and that’s where BB and I had our lunch before scaling the stairway and looking around. The picture below is my favorite vantage point from the Mound. The house that Mama Bore lived in for 55+ years, and I for over 18, can be seen towards the bottom left--the white one with the screened in porch. I don’t know how many more years it is going to be in our family, but I suspect it won’t be much longer. I just check on it every few weeks, get my butterscotch shake, and motor up to the Mound for a view of the town. It’s always a sad trip that I am happy to make.