me,” said Karen.
Denise capped her lens. “I’d like to go to the cemetery next. I want to get some of the old headstones, but it can wait if you’re not cool with it.”
“I’m good,” said Karen. The women piled back into the trucks and headed south, passing the beaten sign that marked the town of Lefor, or what remained of it. “It’s kind of pathetic,” said Lorraine. “Little old sign whipping around in the wind for nothing.”
“But people still live here. Look, there’s laundry on that clothesline.” Karen imagined herself stepping outside with a basketful of wet laundry on a balmy spring day.
“I think it’s depressing. I never come out here.”
“I would,” said Karen. “It’s peaceful.”
“We’ve got peaceful right in town. You don’t have to go anywhere to get it.” Lorraine followed the cars ahead as they turned off the highway and rumbled up a dirt road, dust coating the fence posts as they passed. The yards were overgrown and the homes looked tired. Lefor was a museum piece, a colonial village that seemed almost to exist solely to demonstrate how life worked in the olden days. The disparity between her perspective and that of Lorraine’s made Karen feel like an outsider. She felt the pull of homesickness for California, while at the same time knowing she’d feel as disoriented if she were back home. With her parents gone and her marriage kaput, nothing felt like home anymore. She and Lorraine fell silent.
“There’s the old bank,” said Lorraine. “Somebody burned it down in the twenties, but by that time, Lefor was deteriorating, so they never rebuilt.” She drove slowly past the rock-walled structure, no bigger than a one-room jail.
Karen studied the old building. About the time Butch and Sundance committed their first robbery, the first Model-T chugged out of Henry Ford’s factory, and San Francisco shook and burned to the ground, forty-two German families fled Europe for the Great Plains. They arrived here, sometimes living in dugouts scooped from the earth until their fortunes improved sufficiently to allow the building of sod houses. Later, if they were especially prosperous, they built homes from the abundant rocks dredged from the farm fields.
The caravan stopped in front of St. Elizabeth’s, and the women piled out and climbed the two flights of cement steps to the unlocked entrance. Inside, the aroma of old incense and candle wax reawakened Karen’s memory of daily Mass, and she felt lightheaded. The wooden pews were cool and smooth to the touch, and the hardwood floor was so old it dipped in places. Along the wall and under the stained glass windows, the Stations of the Cross were inscribed in German, barely understandable and yet deeply familiar. Denise snapped discrete photos as the rest of the women moved quietly to the door, where Karen touched her fingertips to the bowl of Holy Water, made the Sign of the Cross and went back outside.
Following her friends up the path towards the cemetery, she wondered how often the early settlers walked over this specific stretch of packed earth? How many of her relatives had preceded her toward the burial grounds, their eyes focused resolutely above the graves, their grief assuaged by a firm belief in a glorious future?
In order to feel more at home after leaving Europe, the immigrants chose homestead parcels in the same configuration as in the old country, so one’s neighbor to the south in the Banat occupied the same placement in the new town. They built a church and named it after the one they’d left behind. They fenced off a cemetery, and unlike the original church, the burial ground endured, welcoming generations of settlers and their children and grandchildren.
At first Lefor had thrived, with a post office, a mercantile exchange, and even a primitive bowling alley. There was talk of a railroad, and funds were raised, but World War I interfered, and the town began to decline. Over the years the younger
Denise capped her lens. “I’d like to go to the cemetery next. I want to get some of the old headstones, but it can wait if you’re not cool with it.”
“I’m good,” said Karen. The women piled back into the trucks and headed south, passing the beaten sign that marked the town of Lefor, or what remained of it. “It’s kind of pathetic,” said Lorraine. “Little old sign whipping around in the wind for nothing.”
“But people still live here. Look, there’s laundry on that clothesline.” Karen imagined herself stepping outside with a basketful of wet laundry on a balmy spring day.
“I think it’s depressing. I never come out here.”
“I would,” said Karen. “It’s peaceful.”
“We’ve got peaceful right in town. You don’t have to go anywhere to get it.” Lorraine followed the cars ahead as they turned off the highway and rumbled up a dirt road, dust coating the fence posts as they passed. The yards were overgrown and the homes looked tired. Lefor was a museum piece, a colonial village that seemed almost to exist solely to demonstrate how life worked in the olden days. The disparity between her perspective and that of Lorraine’s made Karen feel like an outsider. She felt the pull of homesickness for California, while at the same time knowing she’d feel as disoriented if she were back home. With her parents gone and her marriage kaput, nothing felt like home anymore. She and Lorraine fell silent.
“There’s the old bank,” said Lorraine. “Somebody burned it down in the twenties, but by that time, Lefor was deteriorating, so they never rebuilt.” She drove slowly past the rock-walled structure, no bigger than a one-room jail.
Karen studied the old building. About the time Butch and Sundance committed their first robbery, the first Model-T chugged out of Henry Ford’s factory, and San Francisco shook and burned to the ground, forty-two German families fled Europe for the Great Plains. They arrived here, sometimes living in dugouts scooped from the earth until their fortunes improved sufficiently to allow the building of sod houses. Later, if they were especially prosperous, they built homes from the abundant rocks dredged from the farm fields.
The caravan stopped in front of St. Elizabeth’s, and the women piled out and climbed the two flights of cement steps to the unlocked entrance. Inside, the aroma of old incense and candle wax reawakened Karen’s memory of daily Mass, and she felt lightheaded. The wooden pews were cool and smooth to the touch, and the hardwood floor was so old it dipped in places. Along the wall and under the stained glass windows, the Stations of the Cross were inscribed in German, barely understandable and yet deeply familiar. Denise snapped discrete photos as the rest of the women moved quietly to the door, where Karen touched her fingertips to the bowl of Holy Water, made the Sign of the Cross and went back outside.
Following her friends up the path towards the cemetery, she wondered how often the early settlers walked over this specific stretch of packed earth? How many of her relatives had preceded her toward the burial grounds, their eyes focused resolutely above the graves, their grief assuaged by a firm belief in a glorious future?
In order to feel more at home after leaving Europe, the immigrants chose homestead parcels in the same configuration as in the old country, so one’s neighbor to the south in the Banat occupied the same placement in the new town. They built a church and named it after the one they’d left behind. They fenced off a cemetery, and unlike the original church, the burial ground endured, welcoming generations of settlers and their children and grandchildren.
At first Lefor had thrived, with a post office, a mercantile exchange, and even a primitive bowling alley. There was talk of a railroad, and funds were raised, but World War I interfered, and the town began to decline. Over the years the younger
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