Yes, SRS I really liked those houses too. There were a lot of them in Oberlin, Kansas. All differnt colours.
Here's the next bit:
Day 15 Oberlin Kansas to Longmont Colorado

We hear that the roads ahead are clear again. I still hope to see snow banks beside the road. We leave the neat town of Oberlin with its red brick roads and travel through green farmland. It's green because of the Winter wheat that comes up fast on the snow-melt. It's not native pasture. It comes from Russia, like the tumbleweeds. There are bright white cows grazing in the fields. The whole landscape has become bright red, white and green. The sky is bright blue overhead but there's cloud in the West. Hildebrand reminds me that you can see the Rockies from 100 miles out, but not this visit. I take over the driving again. I've been driving on the minor roads that offer no choices about which lane to turn into. Just across the border in Colorado I spot a patch of snow beside the road. It does get to what you could call small banks, but it's hard to believe a blizzard closed the road so recently. I find it exciting anyway. So pretty in the sunlight. I suggest a snowman but Hildebrand points out that I'm the only one with wooly gloves and anyway the easiest way to make a snow-body is to roll a ball down a hill and there isn't a usable hill beside the road.   We plan on lunch at "Last Chance" but the "Last Chance Cafe" is boarded up. There is only a rather attractive wrought iron monument to the pioneers, one shade tree and a picnic table beside a pit toilet.
The fields become a patchwork of last years brown stubble, new green wheat and snow. We don't actually see the Rockies until we are almost upon them. Then they appear as peaks above the clouds. We drive along the Front Range to Longmont.   No sign of snow in the town. Motels are predictably expensive but we find a jewel between a pawn shop and a 24 hour liquor store. There is a cemetery across the road. Location isn't everything. "Braidwood Park" it's called. A former desk clerk at the place has just bought it and is full of enthusiasm about restoring it to it's former grandeur. It's clear it once was a classy hotel although he tells us that it started life as an office building. The cost is about half that of the motels uptown and the same as the El Cheapo one further downtown. We book in for two nights. On our bed, below four plump pillows, is an expensive chocolate each. There's a barbeque area with a partly built waterfall outside the window and so many other lavish touches. We wish him well with his venture. He offers us free accommodation if we come back again and entertain his guests.
We are picked up by Hildebrand's cousin and taken to his home for the evening. He and his wife and her mother have us sing a lot and the two cousins reminisce about childhoods spent together. Mother doesn't speak English. Hildebrand can do passable greetings, and not much else, in Rumanian. He's good for phrases like, "Please show me where the toilet is." and "Where can I get a cup of coffee" along with polite greetings in many languages. Handy when he was on the Hippy Trail through Europe and Asia. He's good for more with the old ones like Latin and Greek and can manage Italian, German, Spanish, Albanian and Serbo-Croat. He's fluent in Swedish. None of these are much help so we get by with smiles and cheek-pattings.
I remind Hildebrand about a story from the past when the cousins were both three years old. It's one I've always enjoyed hearing. Hildebrand bit his cousin because, "It seemed like it would feel good to sink my teeth into his arm". No malice. No bad feelings. No motive. Aunt Lucille said, "Did you bite Johnny?" "No it wasn't me!" The ring of tooth marks were three-year-old size. Aunt Lucille grabbed Hildebrand's arm and bit it. Swift retributive justice. I mime the whole thing for Mother.
We get to bed late. The special chocolate gives me just enough strength to undress.