Going "home"

I asked Dad if he would like to go see the wheat harvest.  He nodded in the affirmative.  So a couple of weeks ago when my sister-in-law said they were cutting I went to the home to get him.

 The nurse aids helped load him up and off we took for his "home" country, an hour away.

Old Mennonite country.  You can see the white prayer cap on this girl in the tractor.
(Didn't have my zoom lens on.  Sad.)

 We were really in the boonies with no traffic except farm equipment.

 Dad enjoyed seeing horses and cows!

I took him to the farm home he grew up on.

"No, that's not my home" he said.

But it was.  Just looks so different.

I drove him to Castleton, the little town close by where he went to school.  The school isn't there any more, but he did recognize the mercantile and also the church.  

 On to Pretty Prairie, the town his parents moved to after leaving the farm.

 Our home church.  Dad pastored here for 6 years in between living in Japan.

 I was able to drive pretty close to the gravestone so Dad could look at it.

 Al's parents and grandparents.

 After leaving the church, we drove to Al's brother's place. Harvesters were busy.

 Our place was cut already.

I called my sister-in-law and she encouraged me to go inside the house to see the remodeling that was completed.  I called the house to see if my niece was home.  No one answered the phone and I didn't see the car.  So I unlocked the house and went in to take a peek.

 I guess my niece WAS home and she had gone upstairs to hide from this stranger who was in their house!!  (she didn't recognize our new car)  She called her mom freaking out!!  Sorry, Bailey!!

I took Dad into town.

The Parsonage.

This was the house we lived in when my Dad was the pastor here.  

Dad remembered that house.

Al and I sat on that porch swing many times back in the early 1970s (well, that may be a new one, but we did swing on one there)  And we parked in the driveway talking for many hours when Al would drop me off after a date.  Until my Dad would flip on the light telling me it was time to come on inside.

Around the corner from the parsonage  was my grandparents house.  And Al's grandma lived behind it.  They are either removing the porch or the storm damaged it.  There was some storm damage around town, including the steeple of the New Jerusalem Church that was knocked down.

 We lived in this house for 1 year in 1968-69 when we were here on furlough.  I was in the 8th grade.  My Dad did not recall this home.  It was white at that time, but he just couldn't place it.

Main street.  Pretty Prairie is 1 mile long and 1/2 mile wide.

 I used to work at this cafe for about a year back in the day.

 On our way back to Newton, we stopped at Hutch for some ice-cream.  Dad's favorite!

 What a wonderful drive down memory lane!

We could see clouds building as we drove home.

That night a storm blew through, dumping 5 1/2 inches of rain.  End of harvest around here.  It would have to wait in this county for a while as it rained off and on all week.  Our little stream became a river.  During the night the water level rose to our willow tree.  

 When I fell asleep, I dreampt that water was coming in our basement.

 We've had incredible sunsets with all these beautiful clouds!