Top of the Stairs

Top of the Stairs,
originally uploaded by redboots@sbcglobal.net.

Downtown Pawhuska, Oklahoma lies on a flat and fairly even surface. Downtown is where the business section was and is, where city hall and the police department are, where the doctors, dentists and lawyers are; in short, most of the working part of Pawhuska. Grandview Avenue, with its severe hill heads directly into the city hall building and runs in front of the Osage County Court House. This marvelous old building sits about half way up the hill and faces towards downtown, towards the east. On the west side of Grandview hill were once a number of stately residences. Many of them are gone now and even as a boy, I wondered how they stayed on the hill. My Uncle Franklin Revard and his wife, Aunt Manzie, had such a house not far from this stairway. It was old then, almost as old as they were, and I loved to go there as we did for many family things. I would go down below, in the cellars of the house, and the earth had begun to move under it and I had concerns that it might slide down the hill. A cousin, Bobby Revard, told me that this could not happen but I was never sure. One day I went by and the house was gone, razed, I'm sure, but those early memories returned to me and I wondered, did it slide down the hill? There are three of these stairways that connect Ki-He-Kah Avenue, down below, to Grandview Avenue, atop the hill. One is about a third of the way from Main Street up the hill, this one is at the top of the hill and a third likes about two-thirds of the way from Main, near the other end and where a house stood that was occupied by the Post family. Others will remember other families that lived there, but for me it was Charolette of my class, her brother Richard Post, who would later play professional football, and their younger sister, Susie. Things change.