Muenster -- "I love to go, I hate to leave."

We got to Muenster about mid-morning.  Muenster is a small town, about 1400 people, that has a solid German Catholic heritage.  It’s right on highway 82 15 miles west of Gainesville and was one of our very favorite stops on our journey.

We lived in Muenster from 1980 to 1983.  We found it to be a warm, tight knit, self-reliant community.  There were two small grocery stores, a couple of restaurants, two or three beer distributors and two churches, Sacred Heart Catholic and First (and only) Baptist Church.

Marty did her Speech Pathology thing in a small school district in a small Oklahoma town I can’t remember.  I did customer service for Texas Power and Light and Erin was born at Muenster Memorial Hospital.  We were good friends with a couple of the nurses in the delivery room and Marty sang in the Cooke County Chorale with the doctor who delivered Erin.  It’s that kind of town.

Matt being a blonde haired and blue-eyed kid fit right in and attended a Montessori pre-school there.  We were great friends with the owner and operator of the local newspaper, the Muenster Enterprise and it was painful to leave.  While we were there we immersed ourselves in the community and the civic organizations associated with the town and made fast good friendships.  Marty did not want to move when we did and she told me, “I love going to a new place, I hate leaving the old place.”

Every year in Muenster they hosted the German fest in April or May.  Some 80000 people would come and polka, eat sausage and drink beer.  It was a huge party and Marty and I waltzed and two-stepped with the best of them.

I also remember sitting in the majestic sanctuary of Sacred Heart with it’s high ceilings and huge gray beams rising to the ceiling.  It was Christmas season and I watched and listened to the chorus Marty was in sing the “Hallelujah Chorus”.  I didn’t know you were supposed to stand during the Hallelujah part of the chorus.  Some old lady explained it to me succinctly and I’ve been standing ever sense.

When we got to town that morning Skip and I drove to the park and let some of Marty’s ashes drift to the ground amidst some tall old oaks close to the creek that runs through the park.  I didn’t say anything, I let the memories of this place that was such an integral part of ours, wash over me.  It was just about perfect.  

After the park I drove us through the little town.  We drove past our old house.  It was the first new house we ever had, and we put in the yard and hung drapes.  It was here we decided if we wanted to stay married we should again hang drapes together.  Marriage lessons learned.

We drove past Rohmer’s Restaurant, Fischer’s Market and the little motel I stayed in for six weeks while we waited on our move from Paris.  I stayed in the same room that whole time and finally brought my own light bulbs, no one can read off 20-watt bulbs.

Skip and I stopped at small bakery that used to sell the best Apple Strudel.  We got a cherry strudel, stopped at the Muenster Enterprise, now on it’s 3^rd or 4^th owner since we left, got a copy of the paper and headed to Lubbock.

I met Marty in Lubbock.

On the Road (Did You Know there isn't Cell Service Everywhere?)

We (Skip and I) are on the road, on the trail, on the tour, seeing the world and dropping some ash.  We are on a 10 day trip to remember and enjoy my bride as we sprinkle a little of Marty in all of the places she and I have lived and loved, with a bit Utah magic in the middle.

Thursday night, we were in a dodgy little motel in Paris TX.  I’m sure it had once been nice, but not so much anymore.  We already been to Hillsboro, dropped Sharon off in Mansfield and driven to Paris.

In Hillsboro we scattered ashes at our church there, First Presbyterian.  This was the first church where we fully participated and reaped the rewards of that participation.  It’s the first church where I really came to understand grace, it was the first place I began to feel God’s grace.  It was the first church where we worshiped as a family every week.

The pastor, the Rev Bob ‘by-golly’ Moon, was an exceptionally good man and a remarkable pastor who exhibited all the grace and love you expect from a minister.  Sermons?  Not so much, but we never cared, the man always exhibited love.

Marty was involved with Christian education at the church.  She was a member of the choir and she loved, loved, loved the pipe organ and loved the organist.  We saw Easter egg hunts, went on trips to Mo Ranch (a church conference center in the Hill Country), cleaned windows, put on plays, made butterfly wings and brought food for potluck lunches after the service.  We made friends, life long, loved and loving friends.  That church was a touchstone for us.

I went to the front of the church told Skip about the church and how it had impacted our life and how Marty had felt at home at this church.  This is where Marty became a Presbyterian this is where she said, “I like being a Presbyterian, it’s Christianity lite, all the religion and a 1/3 less guilt.?”  Yep, exact quote.

As I walked away it felt good and I walked up to a single flower, a weed, a long plant in a patch of dirt.  It stood out against the dark brown of the earth and reached to the sky.  Marty was present.

We did the Hillsboro tour.  We drove by our old house, went to the park, went downtown, past the cemetery and back on the road to Mansfield to leave Sharon with my parents.  After a quick lunch Skip and I hit the road again headed to Paris.

We got to Paris in the late afternoon and checked into the dodgy motel.  We then set off for goal one, to find the cemetery and the monument to the Babcock family, a sculpture of Jesus wearing cowboy boots.  Marty loved that little bitty somewhat insignificant part of Paris.  We took all our friends that made their way to Paris there.

After a little searching we found it and I sprinkled some ashes there thinking of Marty, her laugh, her sense of humor and her love of the off-kilter parts of life.

I had to use Waze to find our old house.  Remarkably the road to the house was completely unfamiliar, I didn’t recognize a thing.  As we got closer I saw the house and knew it, the window to our bedroom, the still visible crack in the outside wall of the garage, the huge oak in the front that was not that huge when we lived there in 1978.  We stopped, left some ashes and hoped we didn’t get a visit from the Paris gendarmes.

We drove around, some things familiar, a whole lot not.  The movie theatre where we say Star Wars was closed and our old church looked particularly huge and eastern in its architecture.  We eventually wandered our way around and back to the motel.  It had been a really, really good day, no tears, a lot of laughter, that’s good.

Next destination…Muenster then Lubbock.