balloon sticks

For Christmas I received a lovely amaryllis and it has many blooms on it. It is now reaching the end and is bent over. I knew I still had some balloon sticks in my closet so got one to hold it up. It did not work. I was thinking how I got the sticks.

We moved to Shawnee in 1951 and Shawnee was founded in 1856. In 1956 we were celebrating and my cub scouts were to sell balloons at the parade. I don't remember how we blew them up but we stood by the parade route and were assigned a spot on Shawnee Square. It was nice little park. It now has Shawnee City Hall. But then it was a small park in the center of Shawnee. The town jail was across the street north of the park. It had been built by the first prisoner. They later moved it to the new Shawnee park west of the original one but changed it so much it did not look the same. Two blocks south was the street that led to the Indian cemetery. It had been on land that the Methodist church owned during the Civil War. Across the square was the Shawnee Bank on the corner of Johnson Drive and Nieman. Nieman Road was named after the first banker. The second president was named Pflumm and we named things after him also. Of course Johnson Drive is named after the man who started the Shawnee Mission Indian School in Fairway where they taught the Indian children. He was killed by some robbers from Missouri who thought he had money. Cantrell must have camped in the little square before he went to raid Lawrence. There are many springs in Shawnee and I expect there was a good one in the park at one time.