Bark at the Moon.

My dad grew up in a remote Iowa town not far from John Wayne's birthplace. We visited my grandparents there every summer, and while it wasn't like visiting my mom's mom who lived in glamorous Riverview, Florida, it had its allure.

Up the road from the modest house built by my grandfather, a carpenter, was the town's main street. There was a hotel with an ice cream shop on its lower level, a restaurant that served memorably-tasty onion rings, a beauty salon, a post office, and a general store called Criss'.

We spent our days staining our fingers and feet trying to pick mulberries, snapping green beans from my grandma's harvest, and dragging my grandpa's saw horses from his workshop to play cowboys. We delighted in the remnants they held on to from earlier years: a wringer washer that my grandma still used for laundry and a hand-operated water pump in the front yard that we patiently filled wash basins with, then soaked in for hours to offset the dry mid-western heat.

When we tired of these antiquated activities, we marched up the street to Criss' to buy bags of penny candy, which actually was no less antiquated, but, nevertheless, seems not to go out of style.

When we returned for the last time, in May of 2008 for my grandma's funeral, it was nothing like we remembered. The old house was still there:

But Criss's had been deserted for many years and the building's deterioration was startling to us:

Why tell this story? Well, I found out this morning that the floor above Criss' was where the Lorimor Masons held their meetings. And my grandpa was a Mason—a fact I'd forgotten, but that makes perfect sense considering his trade. What I did remember is that my grandma was a member of The Order of the Eastern Star (I'm sure the mystical name is what sealed it in my memory), and I asked my dad about it yesterday.

He was able to recall a few details: that they held joint meetings (the Masons and The Order) at this location, that my grandma wore a formal white dress to some of the gatherings, and that they they had a process called "installment" when new members were accepted. In his message, he wrote that there wasn't much else to tell, "as they tended to be somewhat secretive." Yes, I'm starting to get that!

That's all I have, except this really old pic taken in the winter of 1972 in Des Moines with my grandpa, the mysterious and dour Mason:

Oh, and that my dad also said that when my grandpa was leaving for the Masonic meetings, he would say, "This is my night to howl!"