Another Postcard from KC

Hey, at least I'm not "live blogging" the reunion.

Yesterday we went to Pierpont's, a very nice restaurant in Union Station, the old railroad station. The station is very grand and has many shops but what fascinated Tom and me was the hallway that had the doors where you used to board the trains. At night with no people around you really could almost go back in time to when this place was just as busy as DFW Airport is today.

Reinforcing that is the General Pershing Memorial which is on top of the hill across from the station. It is imposing and grand and also done in that 1920's style. Really a wonderful sight to see and reflect on. It was so sad to look at the inscription that talked about "The World War" and realize all the joy of the war being over that was reflected in the monument was so short lived as WWII happened so soon afterwards.

My brother-in-law was astonished that this existed in KC and my mother never even knew it existed despite all the time they spent in and around KC during our formative years. It makes sense, though, because General Pershing was from here, Truman was from Independence just down the street (so to speak), and Eisenhower was from Abilene ... all those people coming from Kansas. And being in the middle of the country with the railroad as the main form of transportation, KC was vital to the war effort during the first World War. You tend to forget that these days.

Today my brother and his brave wife have taken all the kids to Worlds of Fun (local amusement park) while the rest of us are left to our own devices. Tom and I are meeting The Happy Capitalist and Merry Stitcher (check my sidebar) who are my old college friends from KU (we're not gonna go into how long ago that was!

Kind of funny during all this family interaction to look at how everyone has changed and in what ways ... how one family is very much like ours while another kind of reminds me of the family dynamics I grew up in. It's interesting.