I have found real meaning to words like abandoned or deserted since working in my present employment as a transportation aide. We travel through a ten county area and visit many small towns in this south central part of the state. Lonely winds blow through more than one ghost town and swirl around uncounted and abandoned farmsteads. Some have become only place names, the town of Arena being a good example. Arena lies just south of Highway 36, about halfwqy between Wing and Tuttle, and a lot of blank space surrounds it on the map.
A pair of small grain elevators crumbles on one side of the road, and train rails that once guided grain cars into place beside them have turned rusty red in the prairie air. To the west of the road the ground rises gradually to a knoll that is capped by a steepled church with boarded up windows. A small school building rests below the rise and sports similar window treatment. No houses remain, but a couple dozen tombstones stand as conclusive proof that life once existed here.
My favorite bathroom reading material recently is Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology, a collection of short poems written in the voices of the town's dead as they rest in their graves. Every time I read those poems I am reminded of those small graveyards like Arena's that I often drive past. Most of the those lying silently in their tombs will be forgotten before a couple of generations have come and gone. The only way they will be remembered will be in the imaginations of those who view their grave stones. I find it sad.
