Amoret

Amoret

Past, Present, Future

   Back in January of this year I wrote a story called the Simple Life which appeared in this column. It was about my grandparents place in the country just south of Amoret, Mo.

   I received a beautifully hand written letter from Amoret resident, Martha Pieratt a couple of weeks later. I love nostalgic things and in this day and age of computers and email, the hand written letter is quickly becoming just that. Martha just wanted to let me know that the story brought back good memories for her and wanted to know exactly where my grandparents lived in the 1950s. We exchanged a few letters and agreed to get together some time soon and talk about how life was in the Amoret area when she was a child.

  That time came in early July. I live in Independence, Missouri and don’t get down to Amoret very often so my sister and I decided to load up a few garden tools and spruce up my grandparents and father’s graves at Benjamine cemetery just East of town. An added bonus would be a visit with my Uncle and Aunt who live in Amoret.

   Our spirits lifted as we got off the boring four lane 71 highway and began the final 14 miles of the trip on the winding, scenic 52 highway.  As we crested a small hill a few miles from town we could see Martha’s two story white house.

    If there was ever a farm and a woman that were meant to be together, this was it. They go together like bread and butter. The place just oozes the rural way of life from the 50s and 60s.

    As we drove up the gravel drive to the house we noticed a lot flowers growing in the front and side yards. None of those fancy new flowers for Martha. Good old fashion, dependable, solid, reliable flowers like Peonies, Sweet Williams, Hollyhock and Iris filled her yard.

   Martha greeted us at the back door and told us to come on in. She’s a petite woman who doesn’t look or act any where near her 91 years. In fact, the words I used to describe her flowers could probably be used to describe her too. Other than her eye sight she is in remarkable shape as she demonstrated by easily keeping up with us when we went outside to walk around her huge yard.

    I would say the yard is probably five acres or so. The grounds are worthy of a photo in a magazine with four giant pecan trees standing guard over nearly perfect grass. The gravel drive winds its way from the back of the house to a pasture where a pond soaks up the day’s warm sunshine. There are a number of out buildings that aren’t used much anymore but are still in good condition. I’m sure the reason Martha is in such good shape is because she still cuts part of her grass with a push mower and spends a lot of time working on her flowers and yard. I pity the foolish weed that rears its ugly head in her yard.

   Martha does her own cooking, keeps her home clean as a whistle and drives her pickup to Butler on errands from time to time.  It was hot outside but not to bad inside her house considering she didn’t have air conditioning. Lots of windows lined each wall through out the house and shade trees completely surround it. A few strategically placed fans is all this delightful woman needs to be as comfortable as any of us with our modern air conditioning.

    Martha was born on an 80 acre farm about six miles east of Drexel, Missouri. A farm free of electricity, indoor plumbing and natural gas. A horse and buggy is how they traveled to the nearby towns of Burdett and Main City for supplies. Both towns are gone now but Martha remembers them well. “Main City had a church, grocery store and a total of five houses” is what she told me when I asked her to describe them. I’ve often wondered why small towns disappear and put the question to Martha. “Once the automobile was invented, it enabled people to travel to larger cities where they could get better prices on pretty much everything” was her response. She added that young people couldn’t find work in small towns and had to move to bigger cities to raise their families.

   They say time flies when you’re having fun so that explains why our two hour visit with Martha seemed to be so short. Before we left I asked her one last question. What do you owe your long life to? That’s easy, “The lord, no smoking or drinking and lots and lots of hard work” replied Martha. As we pulled out of her driveway I could see her in my rear view mirror pushing her wheel barrel towards a fence line to wreck havoc on some unsuspecting weeds. I thought Martha’s answer on why the two small towns of her youth disappeared was excellent. But what about a larger town that is still around but has shrunk in size over the years? That answer could probably be found in town when I talked to my Uncle Pat Castle.

   No matter how many times I drive past the Amoret city limits sign my childhood memories come rushing back. I remember it as being much bigger and a lot more people around town. Of course I was a kid then and everything does seem much smaller when you go back as an adult many years later.

   As we turned off 52 highway on to Fourth Street I could see Uncle Pat’s single story home on the right, directly across the road from the Christian church. Pat is a man of many talents and you don’t have to go far to see two of them. He is a retired carpenter and built his home in 1976 and the Christian church in 1995. A short walk around his house will reveal another of his talents. Gardening. His vegetable garden is always perfect. Relatively few weeds can call it home and it produces mounds of beautiful vegetables year after year.

   Other than spending four years of his life in the United States Navy fighting for our freedom in world war two, he has lived there his entire life.

  As a child in the 1920s, Pat can remember Main Street bustling with activity on a Saturday evening. “You had to actually weave your way through people because the sidewalks were so crowded with people” Pat said. “If you came into town after five o’clock you could forget finding a parking place on Main Street” he added. I asked him what brought all these people into town.  “Well, most of them were farmers and they always brought in their eggs and cream to sell to the stores in town. The cream had to be run through a tester which took some time. While this was being done they would do their shopping and maybe get in a few games of checkers or horseshoes”

  Amoret was home to four grocery stores, a grain elevator, a dry goods store, a 5 & 10 store, four gas stations, two garages, a bank, a general store, a livery stable, a blacksmith shop, a telephone office a saw mill, a bank, a drugstore, a beer joint, a doctors office, two cafes, a post office, four churches, and a barber shop when Pat was a boy. All that’s left now is the post office, a bank, one church and a convenience store. The population has dropped from a high of 356 in the 1920s to 211 today.

   Uncle Pat, in your opinion, what caused this to happen? He thinks it was a direct result of the coal company buying up all the small farms in the area. Nearly all the farmers eventually sold out to them. Of course, when the farmers left it meant no customers so the stores in town slowly disappeared.

  Although smaller now, Amoret is still a very nice little town. Two women from Kansas City have bought a very old house in town and are restoring it. It’s coming along very nicely and will be absolutely beautiful when completed. I have recently talked to a young couple in south Kansas City that are also looking into buying a home to restore.  Let’s hope more people do the same and the sidewalks of Amoret will once again be filled with people.