Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:
Rozel (pop. 161) must mean “town of many benches” as they have plenty.
The Lumberyard Bench
When we were kids, my friends and I were bench bums.
Of course, we would’ve loved to have been beach bums, but beaches are hard to come by in this landlocked state.
So, my gang and I hung out at the lumberyard bench in downtown Pawnee Rock.
When the Clutter-Lindas Lumber Co. was still in business (I think it closed in the early ‘70s), the bench was occupied in the daytime by lumberyard customers, farmers and retired guys mostly, who sat there to catch up on gossip and rainfall amounts.
During the evenings and weekends, the bench was the hangout of pre-teens and teenagers. Even after the lumberyard closed for good, the bench remained.
When I drive into a small Kansas town these days, a downtown bench is one of the things I look for. Some might underestimate the value of a bench, but in a small town, it’s not just a place to sit, it’s a destination.
A bench is like the community’s front porch where adults can sit in twos and threes and share the stories of their days: tomato production, the granddaughter who has just started college, next week’s pancake breakfast at the church.
In my hometown of Pawnee Rock, we had that fabulous sitting spot. And heck, ours wasn’t just an ordinary bench, it was a full-service bench. As kids, we loved that place.
Attached to the front of the lumberyard, sitters could lean against the building. And there was a wide roof over the bench which made it a fantastic hide-out from summer rains. Two cottonwood trees grew between the sidewalk and the street, so it was a green spot of sorts which provided extra protection from the late afternoon sun. Plus, one of those trees was climbable, which meant additional seating for group conversations.
And best of all, between those two trees was a red water pump. The handle made a hee-haw sound with the up and down motion. Fresh, cold well water splashed out of the spout which was great for cooling off on August days, water fights, or just for scooping hands under into the stream for a drink.
Our bench was located at the main intersection in town and since the business district was only two blocks long, the bench was in the center of it all. From there we had a panorama of pretty much all that was going on downtown.
On the four corners of that intersection were the lumberyard (and the bench), the post office, the grocery store, and my dad’s woodworking shop. One could also see the comings and goings at the Pawnee Rock Dress Shop, Willard’s Welding, the self-service laundry and the beauty salon. Down the street, one of the taverns, Betty’s Café, was visible, so we could observe who visited Betty for a cold Schlitz.
The lumberyard bench gave us teenage girls a great location for watching “the wheaties.” Dreamy boys, tanned and slender, from Oklahoma and Texas worked on custom cutting crews and drove grain trucks during wheat harvest. They would line up on the side street next to the lumberyard for their weigh-in at Farmers elevator. This was definitely a highlight of the summer.
One might think that hanging out at the bench was just a way of killing time, but it gave us a chance to sit and watch our town in action, to notice things, to pay attention. We knew every resident’s car by sight – and by sound. When a stranger pulled into town, we could spot it a block away. We were friendly (well, desperately lonely) and we’d wave to the travelers who drove through town to visit Pawnee Rock State Park.
I enjoyed our spot so much that when I see a community without a downtown bench, it seems as if the town has declared, “Move along, there’s nothing to see here.”
A town is always changing and there’s always something to observe, something to learn.
From that one location, we watched the community evolve and change. We monitored daily life, small-town life. There were no big events that happened on Centre Street, but there was a lot of interaction, simple everyday connections. A bench is good for things like that.
Copyright 2010 ~ Cheryl Unruh
Cheryl columns, life on the ground, small towns
