Part 1: A Photo Journal of the Manistee Trip. Words Follow

Part 2: A Photo Journal of the Manistee Fishing Trip...The Words Follow

Genesis 1:28

"And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish..."

I learned, over the course of two days on a beautiful river that "dominion" has nothing to do with bossing fish around. It doesn't even mean our gentle persuasion will have any effect.

The fish on the river on July 10th and 11th, 2008 could not be deceived, cajoled, petitioned, muscled, tempted or prayed onto the delectable-looking flies on the end of my tippet, at the end of my leader, at the end of my line, attached to the Battenkill reel, attached to my Winston rod, whose grip rested comfortably in my hand as I waded the river morning, noon and night hunting one fish large enough to keep, even if I would return it tired, but undamaged, to the stream.

The same could be said of the nine men and boys in our camp who waded the cool waters of the beautiful and pristine upper Manistee River.

When half the Illinois/Indiana group left from Michigan City on Wednesday afternoon, headed to Paw Paw to join the Michigan contingent, we all had high hopes of success on the river and the promise of something deeper and more abiding. The Illinois/Indiana team slept on comfortable beds that night, in my sister's home after going to Meijer's and buying the groceries for the camp. Ross, Joe and I made a friendly wager as to the cost of the full cart. I came nearest with a guess of $127. The cost was actually $148.00. This was still pretty reasonable when considering the food in that cart would feed the camp of from 7 to 9 people, 6 times over the next two and a half days. It was well past midnight when we returned to Scott's home and crashed in his guest-beds.

The next morning we out-of-staters had to get fishing permits so we drove back to the Meijer's which had taken our food money and then had a great breakfast at the Colonial Kitchen at the corner of Drake and West Main in Kalamazoo. This restaurant is a landmark in that town which is likely most famous for it's 6-egg omelets, the best of which, in my mind, is their chili omelet. It and the other items ordered by our group, did not disappoint.

Soon we were driving north on US 131, each dragging a pop-up camper and each loaded down with the rest of the stuff we needed for a successful outing.

We drove to the place where M72 crosses US 131 at Kalkaska where we turned due east toward the M72 campground which overlooked the river we were so eager to wade. We arrived about noon set up camp and ate cold-cut sandwiches for lunch. After lunch we donned our waders, rigged the rods, walked down the steps to the river where we were greeted by swimmers and canoers near the camp. Clearly the fishing there would prove fruitless.

Half the group went upstream and Scott Z. and I went down, under the bridge into the fly-fishing only section of the river.

Soon Scott Z. had moved out of my sight as I was determined there were trout in a calm section behind a dead fall log on the north side of the river. After 20 casts, or so, I decided I was wrong and moved a little farther downstream. I continued casting until my shoulder began to hurt and decided to pack it in for the afternoon to return later that night to hunt monster Browns with big, ugly flies.

I had had two fish rise to look at the Hex I was casting but neither were hungry enough to eat it.

When all but Scott Z. returned to camp, we learned that only Jim had enjoyed a little success when he hooked a dink on a roostertail spinner.

Ross started to cook dinner as young Joe started the campfire with only one match. Big Joe, Al and Cameron had left Thursday morning and were still in route.

As the sun began setting I became a little concerned about Scott Z. so the two Paw Paw people, Jim and Bret got in their truck and went searching. When the returned, they had him. We learned that he had taken a nap on a log on the river and lost track of time. He, like me, had had a couple of rises, but no takers. Ross, in the meantime, had completed the finest spaghetti ever cooked outdoors. It was the best I have had anywhere. We all ate until we couldn't eat any more.

About the time dinner was wrapping up, it was late and we were all too tired to hit the river again. We gathered around the fire to engage in that ritual ab aeterno, where men remember aloud, their past, share stories that entertain, inspire or terrify and where boys learn how to be men. That circle, as sacred to me as any prayer circle, forges friendships and families. It creates memories that keep old men warm when the snow is deep and the winds are howling.

We talked of prophets and pioneers, of grandfathers, uncles, deer camps, hiking adventures, marathon canoe trips, Indians, the Northern Lights, large bonfires, monsters, mothers, and great dogs. At one point Ross leaned back in his collapsible chair and said: "It doesn't get any better than this." He was right.

The next morning I arose early and started making breakfast: eggs any style, maple sausage and venison sausage provided by Big Joe and Al; all washed down will ice-cold milk and orange juice. I rousted the roustable (Bret slept in), fed them, watched them clean up and prepared to drive to a remote stretch of the river where we were not likely to fight campers playing in the stream. There were 8 of us attacking the section. Again, the majority waded upstream while Scott Z. and I waded with the current. It was early and beautiful but the fish were asleep.

I had been casting Hexes until I saw hundreds of Mayfly corpses washing downstream. Clearly, the trout were not longer interested in Hexes. Scott Z. had left his fly rod jammed in the top of his waders and was fishing with a green and pink roostertail spinner when he caught a Brookie all of 7" long. I found a bug in my fly box with a little pink on it and caught a little Brown on the first cast. For the next three hours Scott and I worked the river; casting in places that would have held trout in any other body of water in the world, where trout lived, anyway. We both came up empty and decided to call it a day and promised to return later that evening, after 7:00 PM. When we got back to the truck, of the others, only Cameron had caught anything; yet another tiny Brookie.

Lunch consisted of Johnsonville Stadium Brats on buns with all the fixin's. Nothing could have been better. We all ate more than we should have and settled into our camp chairs for an afternoon snooze. Young Joe went back to the river. He was determined to catch a carp he had seen and the rest of us talked in muted tones until we drifted into our naps.

Young Joe did not catch a carp even after throwing corn, bread-balls and a piece of Brat that was left over from lunch. Not even the carp were eating...

It was Bret's turn to make the BBQ chicken for dinner, along with the fresh corn-on-the-cob. It became quickly apparent that we had forgotten but buy BBQ sauce. There was a partial bottle in one of the pop-up campers but it wasn't enough. Jim added some ketchup and mustard to it but the taste was off so I suggested adding a little maple syrup and orange juice. The sauce became as near perfect as any BBQ sauce can get.

At 8:30 PM we went back to the river. Bret became our photographer as the rest of us tried one more time.

Joe, Ross and I fished for about an hour. I caught two dinks and that was it. Scott Z. had one on after dark and Jim had a big one go after his casting bubble but they fished longer... way past 10:00 PM.

Around the fire, Scott Z. told of two of his cases when he was a detective with major crimes. They were perfectly gross. I told of hunting the swamp at Nana's on Christmas as well as the story of Jack and the Bear. Ross shared an amazing experience where God's intervention literally saved his life. I invited Cameron and young Joe to share a memory or two and they both did.

Neither were practiced in the art of story-telling. Their tales were full of youthful vigor and crazy vernacular but both told stories which were the seeds of greater tales when they mature and have their own campfires.

Ross explained how it was legal to paint a true story with colors more vivid than they really were for the sake of entertainment, inspiration or terror. I quoted the William Fox quote at the bottom of this blog: "...of all the liars among mankind, the fisherman is the most trustworthy. "

I have complete confidence that both boys will become the best of campfire story-tellers.

The last campfire of a trip is always full of unspoken melancholy. All of us were eager for the comforts of our homes, with their soft beds and hot showers, but we also knew something special was drawing to an end; something that we would never be able to exactly duplicate.

Next year, when we head to Upper Peninsula and the Tahquamenon River, we will all be a year older. Of the old men, we will all struggle a little to remember new stories. The boys will be nearer that magic age of adulthood and, perhaps, more interested in girls than they are in trout. But they will go with us, nonetheless, because they will remember this year and how it made them better people and stronger men. They will remember how easy it was for the old men in our camp on the Manistee to remain faithful and righteous when no one was watching; how we had a great time without beer or bawdy stories. They will remember how the men, unabashedly, expressed their love of the Lord through their kindness to each other and the love we all felt for each other.

I started this blog today with a snippet of scripture so I will close with one as well. This one comes from the Book of Joshua and it gives me strength and courage when I need it. It may appear to have nothing to do with the fishing trip or the campfires or the camaraderie but it has everything to do with them all, when you stop and reflect:

"...Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God [is] with thee whithersoever thou goest." (Joshua 1:9)

It was around the campfires of my youth than I learned how to be a man. It was surviving in a tent during a storm that first taught me the value of prayer. It was listening to my father, my grandfather and various leaders talk of important and frivolous things without shame or fear that taught me to rely on the angels around me, whether they be angels from heaven or those dressed in dirty trousers and who haven't showered in several days.

The preceding photos are a visual example of fishing the Manistee when the fish are not interested.

Fishing the Conejos with Uncle Walt

The last time I went fishing with my Uncle Walt was the best time I went fishing with my Uncle Walt.

The tradition of fishing with Uncle Walt began when I was about three years old when Fred, my biological father was still around and living in Pueblo with my mother, although their matrimonial bliss was nearing its end; likely because my father preferred fishing over going to the local honky-tonks and dancing to Country-Western music with her.
Uncle Walt, Walter Hood, was married to my mother's half-sister, Nadine; although until she died, I called her Aunt Denny.

She was a serious chain-smoke who had a new Camel going before she rubbed out the old one. I cannot recall a time when I saw her without a smoldering cigarette handy. The emphysema finally got her when she was approaching 81 years old.

Uncle Walk smoked too, but he was not obsessive about it. In fact, every adult I knew smoked; my mother, my father, all my aunts, uncles and grandparents, even a few of my cousins who were not quite adults.

They all drank too, except, of course, my Uncle Walt.

His tee-totaling was not attributable to either addiction or religion. It never bothered him that everyone around him guzzled beer, wine and the hard stuff at every reasonable opportunity. Aunt Denny, in fact, generally washed down the ashes with Coors after 10 in the morning. Before that it was coffee, which Uncle Walt drank with style. No, Uncle Walt's decision to forgo alcohol after an incident early in his marriage to my aunt where he very, nearly shot her and their children.The couple had gone out with my Auntie Eileen and one of her husbands to a local blind pig called "Boskers" to dance to cowboy music and drink whatever booze they could carry in as Bosker's did not serve alcohol but merely provided a venue for drinking it and drink it they did. Uncle Walt, however, was never much of a drinker and, it turns out, because mean when he was drunk.

When the couple returned home, Uncle Walt put a gun to her head and told her he was going to kill her, the kids and, I assume, himself. Somehow Aunt Denny got away and went to her mothers where she called the sheriff. When the law arrived at the Hood home they found him passed out on the floor and a single bullet hole in the ceiling.

Uncle Walk spent a couple of nights in jail trying to remember everything but he never did, but he swore he would never touch any kind of alcohol again and he never did. It should be mentioned here that I never heard my Aunt Denny raise her voice at him either...

Aunt Denny and Uncle Walt lived in a small, stucco house on Belmont Street in Pueblo. I spent many of my preschool days there because she was my babysitter half the time and her sister, my Auntie Eileen, watched me the other days as my mother worked at Woolworths and my dad at the National Biscuit Company... Nabisco.

Our house was similar, if my memory serves, with the address of 136 St. Louis. Our house, however, didn't have Concord grape vines growing from vines on the back fence like Aunt Denny's, nor did it have a little neighborhood store across the alley, behind the house, where a boy could take a nickel and buy a Nehi Grape from an ice chest that was so cold drinking it cracked your teeth and gave you a headache.

I should take another moment of interruption to explain that Pueblo is not your typical, Colorado postcard city. Although the Arkansas River runs right, smack through it, the town sits in a desert with the Colorado Rockies only visible in the distance horizon and then only if you stand on a big rock. It's also a dirty town and this because the largest employer - at least before the Government Printing Office confiscated some of Pueblo's land - was the steel mill. Pueblo was, in those days, also pretty ethnic.

There weren't many blacks that I can remember, but there were tons of Italians for some reason, and a huge population of Hispanics - called by the locals "Messicans" when they were being nice and worse when they weren't. Local lore proclaims there were lots of "good Indians" in the local graveyards.

Uncle Walt worked in the mill. I remember him dressed in his work clothes - dark blue shirt and matching trousers - and with stained hands that were rough and calloused.

By the time I came along, my grandfather was locked up in the Colorado State Hospital because of his alcoholism and Uncles Walt's kids were grown and gone. His oldest grandchild was still too young to do the things grandfathers like to do with grandsons, so I was his surrogate and he was mine. So, at least once every summer, he, my dad, my Uncle Tommy and I would squeeze into Uncle Walt's Willy's with tents and tackle and head into the mountains in pursuit of wild trout.

This tradition continued, almost annually, through my parent's divorce, my Uncle Walt's first heart attack, my mother's remarriage and several other significant family events. It changed a little here and there. Families became invited and my new dad, when he could. Since he was a soldier and we never lived in Pueblo again, it was not often he attended and all the trips were limited to his annual 30-day leave when he would take my mother back to her home town.

None of my aunts liked my new dad. Frankly, it took me a long, long time to warm up to him - about 40 years to be accurate; but my Uncle Walt seemed to like him well enough.

With the addition, however, of estrogen and little girls to the fishing trips, they evolved from rugged, week-long adventured into the wilderness to daytrips to a local reservoir where we would catch more crayfish than trout and eat hotdogs blackened from too much fire.

During this time my parents became active Mormons and, thus, I did too. No more tobacco, coffee, tea or booze. No more "colorful" language or nasty jokes. No more sundresses for my mother. It was a serious shock to her sisters and they blamed my new dad even though it was more my mother's idea.

By the beginning of the summer of 1966, I was pretty sure the annual fishing trips with Uncle Walt had decomposed beyond any resemblance of what they looked like when they were born.

I was 15 when my mother, my three sisters and Sharon - a kind of foster sister of sorts - left Kalamazoo and headed toward California where we would pick up my dad upon his return from Vietnam. We had more than a month to kill before we had to be in San Francisco, however, so my mother, with a fractured neck no one would learn of until we made it to Burbank, drove to Pueblo with Sharon as a back-up driver when my mother grew weary.

I have photographs of myself during that time and I testify that I was gawky and geeky. I thought I was much cooler looking than I actually was and my pants were always too tight. This did not seem to bother my aunts who smothered me with sloppy kisses or my Uncle Walt, who waited until the slobbering was over.

His dark hair was graying and he had the pallor of a man who had survived two heart attacks. He had been long retired from the mill but he wore the same clothes and his hands were still rough and dirty. He still smoked, unafraid of what the things were doing to his heart.

I was not going to bring up any idea of a fishing trip but he did. He added some rules... well, one rule. No girls.

By this time his grandson Denny was completely old enough to go but had begged off as he hated fishing; a fact that was clearly painful to my uncle. My Auntie Eileen had divorced whomever her latest husband had been and my dad was still in Southeast Asia. It was just me and my Uncle Walt.

We loaded up his Jeep with tents and tackle and headed toward and the fabled Conejos River. This was not to be a daytrip but the real deal. Things had come almost full-circle.

During the ride we talked of life and shared memories as we left the flat, dirty desert around Pueblo and entered the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It was a drive of several hours and it was beautiful. During the last year in Michigan and the two before that in Texas, I had missed the mountains and the chilled streams that cut through them. I didn't worry about when he would get there - wherever "there" was. I was confident my Uncle Walt knew the territory and knew the best places to catch the best trout. I was not disappointed.

We stopped near a bend in the river and pulled off the highway. We had arrived.

I determined I was going to do all the heavy lifting and let my aged uncle just take it easy. The first thing I extracted from the Jeep was a folding lawn chair and I invited him to sit down. He mumbled something about me needing his help so I informed him that I was a "Life Scout" and that I knew how to make a camp. Within an hour, I proved my worth to him.

The tent was pitched, a dining fly was stretched between two small trees and a fire was going. He was leaning back in the chair gently snoring. I determined we would have fresh trout for dinner and that I was going to catch and cook them.

I rigged the fly rod he had loaned me and tied on a stonefly nymph because it was early in June and I suspected the nymphs would bring home the bacon. I caught a three-pound Brown on the first cast. With the exception of a few Brookies, Browns were the only species I caught all week but I caught a lot of them.

That first evening I counted them. Between the first cast and the last, two hours later, I landed 18 fish and went through 6 flies. Not one of the first evening's fish was stocked fish. That was almost the case the rest of the week. The river was loaded with wild Browns and Brookies and, where we were, we never saw another fisherman until the last day we were there; a Saturday. I remember him joking with me when he asked if I had left any fish in the river for him. I was too stupid to do anything but just grin a big, dumb grin. Uncle Walt assured him there were plenty enough for everyone.

During that week I cooked every meal except one. On about the third morning, Uncle Walt rose early and made breakfast. The aroma of coffee wrested me from my dreams. Uncle Walt smiled when he told me I had a lot to learn about making coffee. I never did.

We had 16 trout on ice in the cooler, the legal limit in those days, as we loaded everything back into the Jeep for the trip home. Once there he would take half-gallon milk cartons, clean and fill them with water and the trout for freezing. He would have trout in the winter and I...? Well I would have a memory for the winter and unnumbered seasons in the future.

I never saw my Uncle Walt again. Life just got in the way.

Two days before my father died in 1988, my Uncle Walt had his last heart attack. He was 84. My dad was 63.

As I remembered this today, I came to realize that every fishing trip I ever took from that summer in 1966 was an attempt to recreate that week on the Conejos. I have had many trips but they have all fallen a little short.

It is during these moments of reflection that I realize that my love of fishing has little to do with flies, water or fish and everything to do with connecting to my family and my friends. Every cast helps me regurgitate a memory of something bigger than the moment; little events that have defined my life.

I never had a trip like that one in 1966, with my father. Not my bio-dad, but the man who, when he never really had to, adopted me, and was there as I grew up.

Perhaps time has softened him in my memory. I know it's harder to feel his harshness or the times he was downright cruel and brutal. Mostly I remember him as being pathetically weak as his illness beat him down until he lost his last battle in that hospital bed in Kalamazoo.

I had received the call that he was fading and that I should come home. I had received so many similar calls before that proved to be false alarms so I waited until later in the day before I made the three hour drive. I arrived at the hospital late. When I found his room, I found my mother there; sound asleep in a chair next to my dad. He was sleeping too, but the fitful sleep borne of unlimited morphine. I didn't want to disturb either of them so I quietly kissed my father's forehead and left. He died after I left.

I never got to tell him anything important.

I never got to tell him I no longer was afraid of him.
I never got to tell him I would like to really get to know him.
I never got to tell him that I had figured out how to love him.
I never got to tell him how sorry I was to have embarrassed him by bad choices.
I never got to tell him how grateful I was for the one time he rescued me with no questions asked.

There are many great doctrines in the Mormon Church but my favorite and, I think, one of the most hopeful is that we believe there is a spirit world where we go when we die and that that world is merely another dimension of this one. While I don't know for sure, how much access they have to our dimension, I suspect it's much more than we have to theirs. Thus I have a hope that my father can read this, somehow, and know that nothing else matters to me except having his love and his having mine.

I have a small hope that he and my Uncle Walt are friends and that Uncle Walt might share with him, the memory of our river adventure on the Conejos, in 1966.

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Lick the Toad!

I survived...

Perhaps that says it all for some, but not for me, of course.

A few months ago I volunteered to spend the week at scout camp with the troop sponsored by our ward; Troop 988. I had nothing to do with the scouting program in this ward but there was no one available to spend the week there with the boys who is a part of the program, so I raised my hand.

The day I raised my hand I had not attended a scout summer camp for 7 years. I turned 57 in May of this year so I must have been 50 when I traveled with my Broken Arrow, OK troop to south-central Oklahoma to spend a week with the boys. The seven years had clearly dulled my memories of that camp and I ignored the additional seven years I was carrying around. As I raised my hand that Sunday, there was only the romance of it all that I remembered, and none of the torture.

In Oklahoma, I actually had the help of several other adults, but not here; not last week.I suppose one could count as help the one adult who helped deliver the boys with me last Monday. He stayed until the afternoon but all he did was set up his own son's tents. He did not stay the night. There was another troop of another ward in our stake sharing the campsite. They had 7 boys the first night, and three adult leaders. On Tuesday morning two of the adults and one of the boys left. I had nine boys and the other scoutmaster was a novice at both Boy Scouting and summer camping with them. That left me to prepare and present the nightly troop campfire events designed to slow the boys down after a day of activity and to, inspire, entertain or frighten... sometimes all three.

In my troop there were two 12 year-olds who had never been to summer camp before. One was very interested in Scouting and the other would have preferred being anywhere else on the planet. Both were a little scared but they seemed to be able to comfort one another and naturally buddied up for the week. For the rest, save one, it was, at least their second year but for one, the oldest by far, at 17, it was his last summer camp as a scout. I believe the only reason he went was to wrap up a couple of merit badges he needed to qualify for his Eagle. I appointed him the Senior Patrol Leader, or, in other words, the top boss among the boys. He graciously accepted and did a fantastic job all week.

I saw our troop as a little disjointed on Monday. Perhaps it was my imagination as I had not really done much with these boys beyond seeing them during Church and occasionally on Wednesday evenings when they attended their Young Men's activities. Whatever the reality, I determined we needed a unifiying event; something powerful and memorable; bordering on dangerous or, at least, disgusting. The event was handed to me late in the afternoon on Monday, in the form of a captured toad.

I took the toad and without hesitation, I licked its back from tail to head and yelled "LICK THE TOAD!".

The boy who had found the beast was a little shocked but when I said: "Now it's your turn." his eyes bulged as he screamed his refusal followed by asking me why.

I said that licking the toad was representative of doing something difficult when no one expected it. I told him that there weren't a hundred people in the world who would lick a toad and that he would be among the elite courageous who did. I handed him the toad and he slowly, timidly, placed his tongue on its back. He, like me, spit immediately.

Toads are bitter. When I licked it, I discovered why snakes don't eat them if they have a choice of any other morsel. Nothing else even tries. Not wolves, not foxes, not hawks; not even Gila Monsters will keep a toad in its mouth.

I should add that this toad was tiny and that no one enjoyed any hallucinagentic experiences by ingesting the venom because these were not Colorado River toads, the only toads that have 5-MeO-DMT in their venom, which drug can send a man into la-la-land.



So, one of the 9 braved the warts and joined the team. One by one, all the boys in my troop took their turn; even the new boys. Out battle cry for the balance of the week was "LICK THE TOAD!" Everyone outside our camp became confused when we yelled it out.

I promised the boys I would provide T-shirts that would have a picture of a toad and the caption: "I Licked the Toad in 2008!". This promise motivated the other troop where all but one joined the club. Of the 6 leaders they had in camp, however, only one decided to join the boys.

My boys then, added another challenge. That was to place an entire toad in one's mouth. I did it and found it far more pleasant than licking one. This act added a star to the name of the boy which would be on the t-shirt.

This single, unifying event, brought our boys together. They walked around camp with more confidence and they accomplished more that they would have without the toad. At least I would like to think so.

Once unified, the campfires became awesome.

To inspire them, I asked the boys to share three serious wishes they had for their future lives. This after teaching them the purpose of Scouting where the Church is concerned. We have scouts to strengthen to quorums. Some LDS scout leaders think it's the other way around, but they are wrong. I said that the quorum could only grow close if the members knew each other.

The wishes that were shared were incredible, righteous, valiant, humble, timid, poignant and, sometimes, sad. Testimonies were shared and burdens lifted.

On another night missionary experiences were shared by the men around the fire. We had all served, incredibly, south of the border; one man served Guatemala, albeit two decades after I had returned.

To entertain them, I told funny stories, some true, some not so true, and to frighten them, I pulled out the ones that never fail; the Severed Hand, the Rainy River Raptor, Old Bugeyes and the Ohio Strawman.

I was a little kinder this year as I let up a little when it appeared someone was about to cry.

The boys accomplished much in their pursuits of merit badges and rank; all that is, except the one new boy who would have preferred being at his desktop. Our SPL was asked to be the MC at the All-Camp Fire Bowl and Order of the Arrow Call-out. His dad showed up for the final fire and beamed when he heard what his son was doing.

We rose early Saturday morning and broke camp. I was home by 9:00 am, unpacked, showered and laid down for a little nap. I felt every minute of my 57 years.

On Sunday all the boys were in Church and each whispered "Lick the Toad!" when I shook their hands. One mother seemed a bit appalled but the others were cool. The bishop's wife, whose son was a second-year man, told him and me, not to tell her anything about camp.

She was happier in her ignorance.

I was tired. I am still tired; but I am fulfilled in a way.

I had always liked these boys but at Camp Tamarack, I grew to love them. I wish only the best for them and will do anything I can to help them achieve righteous goals.

Historical statistics say that a third of them will leave the Church never to return. Half will divorce and one will die before his time. All will face trials I can't even imagine. Hopefully, when they are deep in the muck of it; just when they are about to give up, they will remember the last week in June, 2008, when they, with courage and gumption, licked the toad and know that toad lickers are unbeatable!

Joy in Being Wrong

It only happens once in a great while where I find myself pleased to have been wrong about something. I wish it would happen more often.

A little over a week ago I wrote about my concerns about the then upcoming visit from my oldest son and his family. Those concerns, it turns out, were unfounded as the visit was delightful, without a trace of anxiety to be seen or sensed.

I got to meet my granddaughter who is a charmer.

She is smart, happy and healthy. She also loves the camera.

Before the family got out of site as they headed northeast to Ludington, I was missing them with a heart swollen with gratitude for the joy we had and a little sorrow that it ended so soon.

Later, I began thinking about why I had made some assumptions that ended up being bad ones and I was reminded that whenever I think selfishly, I make bad assumptions and worse decisions.

For the past few years the only time we have seen our son and his family was at Christmastime. It was during those times I felt the tension and anxiety. It dawned on me on Saturday that the anxiety had nothing to do with being with the family and everything to do with the fact that Christmas, for my son, is the most stressful time of the year because he works in retail where fortunes are made and lost during the season for giving... and getting.

It was common for him to fly into town on Christmas Eve and fly out either on Christmas day or on the morning of the 26th. No one on the planet could find a spirit of peace with that schedule.

So, though I don't drink alcoholic beverages, I raise a toast to my error, my wrongness, my selfish stupidity. I would that it would happen more often.

Courage

Last evening I was talking on the telephone to one of my grandchildren in Utah. I mentioned to him that his grandmother and I had seen "Kung Fu Panda" on Saturday and that we had seen both the new Indiana Jones movie and "Prince Caspian" in the last two weeks. He complained that his parents didn't think he was old enough to see the second two but that he was looking forward to seeing "Kung Fu Panda" soon and, as soon as he was old enough, he would buy all the Indiana Jones movies and watch them in one day.

I told him it was probably good that he wait to see the second two as they could be a little scary in places. He responded with the seriousness of a judge: "Scary doesn't bother me. I'll have you know that I sleep on the top bunk!"

It was all I could do to keep from laughing, but I held it back, knowing he would have been devastated if I laughed. I also resisted the temptation to ask him if he was riding his bike without the training wheels yet. I was worried, though, that he was not and I didn't want to embarrass him.

Later I thought about the perspective of courage and how life's experiences can both reduce one's fear at things once found to be terrifying, and increase it for things for things about which he rarely even considered at one time.

When I was young, I was never afraid of driving in traffic or speeding in the process. I was never afraid of walking alone at night in the city because I was never really alone, or getting sick or getting hurt in a fistfight. I was never afraid of strangers. I was never afraid of the deep end or big waves or sharks in the ocean.

I was afraid, however, of both my mother and my father - although for very different reasons. I was afraid of getting a poor grade as I was sure it would ruin my future. I was afraid that everyone might not like me. I was terrified of being alone in the country where I was truly alone. I was afraid I would never please my parents. I was terrified when someone came close to learning the truth about my family and, therefore, about me.

Now I am older and I get nervous in traffic and when I speed. I feel nervous if I have to walk by myself in a city. I worry about getting some deadly disease and about what might happen if I were forced into a fistfight. I worry if the deep end is deep enough and I no longer surf or swim in the ocean... and not just because it is not nearby.

I am no longer afraid of my father - who is dead, but I am afraid for him. I am not scared of my mother, even knowing she is emotionally unstable and quick to rage. I feel sad for her. I wish I had not worried about my grades because I know now how little they really mattered. One of the most pleasant experiences in life is to be absolutely alone in the woods or on a stream. It is not only refreshing, but healing.

I no longer am concerned with pleasing my parents but only my God, who I do not fear in the way we generally speak of fear nor do I worry so much as to hide the experiences that came in a broken family. They helped make me who I am, for better, I think, than for worse.

Somewhere in the deep recesses of my memory, I remember being timid about sleeping on the top bunk. A fear I must have conquered as I had a set of bunk beds for my middle school years and alternated between the top and the bottom at my whim of the moment as I had no brother with whom I needed to share. My grandson has conquered that fear at a younger age than did I.

He remains a little timid about new things and I am as happy as I can be about that for, while he may take a while to enjoy some of life's great prizes, he would also be quicker to avoid its dangers.

I pray he will not only learn to recognize the Goliaths and the Bathshebas in his life but that he will know which one to fear and which one to confront and defeat. All of us, will meet our share of uncircumcised Philistines as well as feel the allure of a bathing beauty. Too often we run from the giants and to the woman on the roof. Too often Goliath walks into our camp unchallenged and Bathsheba accepts our lustful invitations. Both lead to personal ruin and great lessons which might be better learned by doing the right, rather than he wrong thing.

May we, like the servant of Elisha, have our blindness removed when we fear that we might see that they that be with us are more than be with them; that we might know of the angels God has posted to protect us when we love Him more than these...

Loyalty

Last evening Barak Obama claimed victory over Hillary Clinton in the Democrat Party primary.

As I listened from my office to the blaring speech on a blaring TV in another room, my thoughts turned to the idea of loyalty; what it once meant, what it means now and what it could mean in the future.

There was a time I was a loyal democrat. I was absolutely loyal to the party when the party principles were absolutely loyal to mine. Then abortion on demand was legalized by the courts and the waters were muddied a little and my loyalty to the party weakened some. I still could not align myself, however, with Republicans. It just wasn't in my bones as my Americanism has always been more defined by Benjamin Franklin than by Thomas Jefferson. I am and am for the working person. When Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal, he really meant all white men of high birth to counter the popular notion that kings were given divine rights not offered to others, not to suggest that common laborers, merchants and teachers were as privileged as was himself or others, like George Washington. When Franklin made such statements, however, he meant them to apply to everyone (with the possible exception of women - but even that is questionable), including black men and Indians.

Now I see elitists taking over the party and really losing the connection with the people. Bill Clinton might have been the last of the common men to hold the highest office in the land.

Obama pretends pretty well, but the only people he is convincing are African-Americans because, in my opinion, his race offers them a kind of hope they have never before had in the nation; but he clearly has never shared their struggles.

I am surprised there has not been more backlash from that community over his abandonment of his church. First he slightly distanced himself from the good Rev, Wright but he didn't abandon him, then, after a visiting minister grabbed the media attention, Obama flushed 20+ years of loyalty down the toilet in the name of political expediency.

Any thinking person living in Chicagoland knows Father Pfleger to be a media-grabbing nutjob who doesn't represent the majority of the Catholics in the area. His parish does a lot of good, but he is eager to shout his goodness from the street corners rather than following Christ's admonition to do good secretly.

I have a lot of respect for Rev. Wright, even if I don't agree with him on many things. Unlike Obama, Wright didn't change to expedite a politically smooth road for Obama. He didn't apologize for being who he has always been. While I don't think the pulpit is the place for much of his rhetoric, it's only because my Mormon culture makes me see such things as inappropriate. I do know one thing. I know what it's like to be abandoned by people that were thought to have been friends when my life didn't fit well into theirs.

I was thinking about one of them yesterday and I was saddened that I couldn't call him and have a "remember the good old days" chat. He was my favorite companion in the mission field and the best man at by marriage to Deb in 1972. He was always an example to me of someone who could resist temptation and make good choices all the time. I thought he was a friend, but it turned out that my definition of friendship was different from his.

I have not read anything about Rev. Wright throwing Obama under the bus. Have you?

So Wright isn't as smooth or universally appealing as is Obama, but he is loyal.

I thought then about all those super delegates who once blew the trump of victory for Hillary Clinton that were found sharpening their knives and waiting for her back to become exposed.

Truly, there is no such thing as loyalty when it comes to politics.

So, I am going to vote for John McCain who, among them all, has demonstrated his loyalty to both men and the nation in ways Obama can't even imagine.

I would have likely voted for Obama until he dumped his friends to placate bloodthirsty voters.

I would also invite my friend in, were he to show up at my door in need, even after he slammed his in my face all those years ago... but that's just me.

Newton's Third Law

One of my most vivid memories is my first home-run.

I was 10 and playing shortstop for the Orioles sponsored by the 14th Infantry Division - The Golden Dragons - at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. It was the second game of the season and the last inning of the game.

Since I started playing in Little League just after my 8th birthday, I had always maintained a good batting average which was only topped by my on base percentage as I was walked or beaned almost as often as I hit for bases. At that game in June of 1961, I had been at bat three times before the final inning and had hit a single, a double and a triple, although not in order. When it became obvious I would bat a 4th time, my coach taught me about hitting for the cycle.

I had never heard of the phrase, let alone the event. My coach, a former minor league player, told me he had never witnessed anyone hit a single, double, triple and home run in a single game - the cycle - in his entire life. At that time, I was 10 and he was an old guy; probably all of 25.

I have since learned that in the history of major league baseball, there have been only 277 times a player has hit for the cycle, beginning in 1882 until this moment. Only 23 players have done it more than once and only 3 players have done it three times. I did not know it in 1961 on that sultry Hawaiian afternoon that I was about to join a very exclusive club.

The coach's final words were "Don't think about it; just hit away."

Easy for him to say...

I swung at three pitches, missing the first two. As the third pitch was being delivered, I decided that three hits that game were enough and that a strike-out wouldn't kill my average. I decided to really, really strike out and swung harder and faster than I had ever remembered swinging the bat before... CrrrRRRackkk!

Now let me tell you about that ball field.

The diamond, backstop, dugouts (that's what we called them but they were really only benches) and bleachers were located on one corner of a large parade field located in the center of the base. This meant there were no fences that would facilitate a walk-off home-run. Lot's of speedy players turned doubles into home-runs because they could outrun the outfielders. I was not a speedster. My top speed has never been faster than pathetically slow and on that afternoon, with the heat and humidity, I had settled for one double and one triple that others would have turned into home-runs.

My last at-bat, however, produced the hardest hit ball in my short baseball history and I was able, by only a few seconds, beat the throw from the cut-off man to home plate.

I had hit for the cycle.

My dad was there but he didn't really understand what hitting for the cycle was, nor, apparently, did anyone else except my coach.

My dad was proud, of course, because I had actually hit a home-run. The rest of my team did the expected cheering for the run and the families in the bleachers either cheered me or booed me, depending on the team to which they were loyal. My coach, though, actually had a tear in one of his eyes as he thanked me for allowing him to witness such a sacred event. I was ten and thought he was a little queer.

I finished that season as the league's MVP. I hit 31 home-runs (all the others were produced on fields with fences) and closed the season with a batting average of over .800. I also managed, as a substitute for a pitcher who got the flu, to pitch a no-hitter after which my right shoulder has never, to this day, been the same. The Orioles won the state Little League championship.

It was a great season where I learned a lot about baseball but turned into a cocky, little punk.

The next season, we had a different coach as our old coach had served his time in the Army and went back to his dream of playing in the Bigs. I don't think he ever did but since I have long ago forgotten his name, perhaps I am wrong. I had a good year but not as good. I made the All-star Team and our team won the base championship but we lost to a team from Wahiawa in the first round play-offs.

I played baseball every summer until I graduated from high school but never came close to my best year; the year I hit for the cycle. My dream of playing pro-ball was never even approached, although my best friend in 9th grade, Leon Roberts, went on to a successful career that started with the Tigers when he made the show and ended as a Kansas City Royal before becoming a manager in the Minors.

So what's all this have to do with the title of today's entry?

I learned, at that third swing at my last at-bat in that game in 1961, that the harder I swung the bat, the farther a ball would travel assuming a solid hit was made. I later learned that it's easier to hit a home-run with a fastball than it is with any other pitch. Then, finally, in 9th grade, I learned why. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction... Newton's Third Law of Motion.

I have also learned that Newton's Third Law can also apply to things having nothing to do with motion, but rather, with emotion.

In yesterday's entry, I wrote of a the tension that generally accompanies the close proximity of me to my oldest son. Some may have taken my words to mean that it is my son who creates the tension and that I didn't enjoy being with him because of the anxiety. Nothing could be further - or farther - from the truth.

I love him with all my heart and look forward to seeing him whenever it's possible. Any pain he feels, ever, I inflicted. Any distance he feels that is between us, I created. Any anger he might ever feel I caused. I was never a good father to him and, at times, I wasn't a father at all.

If I could shoulder his pain and remove his burden, I would gladly do it.

While I have changed and repented of my evil past, I began that process after he had left home. He has never experienced the fruits of either my repentance or my affection as a repentant father. I can and have, talked to him, but we all know how cheap talk can be.

Frankly I owe him a debt, I doubt I can ever repay but I can continue to try.

Some may think, because of my entry yesterday, that I am not looking forward to his upcoming visit. They are wrong. I wish, in fact, that he could stay longer. I wish he would want and be able to join me on the trout fishing camp in July. I wish we were neighbors. I wish, with all my heart, that we were friends. I love him. I respect him. I honor him. He, unlike me, has never been anything but a great father.

I wish him every happiness and pray daily for his life to be filled with joy.

I am hoping that the terrible at-bat that wounded him, took place in a field where there are no fences; where there are no walk-off runs from which there is no chance for a tag-out at home plate. I want him to catch me there and tag me out.

I want him to love me as much as I love him, but more than that, I want him to be happy.

Last evening my wife wished out loud that I would be less inclined to write such personal feelings in this blog. I considered her request but determined that it's really good to reveal my warts, my sorrow and my joy. If I offend or anger, I apologize. It is not my intent and I hope, someday, all who read this will understand that I am merely drawing a caricature of myself that highlights my weaknesses with the hope others, who might be tempted to do things I have done that bring sorrow, might think twice.

Anticipation

In a little over a week, my oldest son and his family will be visiting Deb and me. I am looking forward to seeing my oldest and youngest granddaughters, the second of whom, I have never met. I am also happy I will be seeing my son, even if our meetings are always awkward, at best as he continues to both irritate and lick the wounds I inflicted when he was young. It will also be good to see his wife.

Visiting with him always comes at a price. I am forced to measure every word so as not to "offend" him. I do this less for him than for my wife as I refuse to be responsible for causing a rift between those two.

Thus the upcoming visit will be both enjoyable and emotionally arduous.

In a little more than a month, though, I will be leaving for the trout fishing camp-out attended only by men or men almost as 14 is the youngest allowed on the trip. We figure if a 14 year-old breaks his neck, cuts off a finger or drowns, the men have no real culpability as no one is there to babysit. The Indiana/Illinois group will include:

Myself - Committed

Joe - Committed

Al - Half-way Committed

Travis - Maybe Committed

Charles - Checking his calendar

Colton - Committed

Brayden - Likely

Ross - Committed

Hector - Committed

Hector's 14 year-old son - Committed by his father.

The Michigan crew includes:

Bret - Committed

Andy- Committed

Lance - Maybe

Scott - Maybe

We will rendezvous in Paw Paw and travel north on 131 to the Deward Tract where we will camp as near the river as we can.

This is the place the Manistee is born; where the water is crystal clear and the trout wild.

While we all hope to catch fish, I am not sure that is the main purpose for the excursion.

Everyone going is a Mormon so we don't have to worry about things said or done that make us feel guilty. Guilt born of either weakness or too much strength. As Mormons, we all have a common headwater. There will be no shortage of conversation and in those conversations bonds will be formed that will last forever.

Where we are going there is little to no cell phone signal and only an occasional modern toilet. In the process of this "roughing it", we will all leave the world we worry about to its own devices as we create memories that will sustain us until the next time.

My one regret is that none of my sons will be going. One because of distance and expense and the other two because they would prefer being somewhere else - although they can both use distance and expense as an excuse.

In spite of that regret, my plan is to wallow in outdoor indulgence as I forge new and deeper friendships. I also plan to sleep in and nap between casting flies, feeding myself and solving the problems of mankind in our small council of men as we exchange ideas around a campfire.

I will write a lengthy report after I recover from the adventure.

Myth Busters?

Yesterday, as I was reprinting an entry I wrote years ago during my first attempt at blogging, I came across the following comment offered by someone I don't know:

"Quanah died 23 Feb 1911 and Mah-Cheeta-Wookey died 02 Jan 1914. I ahve [sic] reviewed all of the Kiowa-Comanche Agency census files, one each year from 1894-1937. All of Quanah's children and all of the orphan Indian and white children are accounted for. None were taken by any of the missionaries. According to census files 1900-1920 and Rodney's WWI draft registration - Rodney Herbert Yarberry was the son of John Milton Yarberry (1854-1945) and Cynthia R England.

Uh-dah (Comanche for thanks)

Jim Yarbrough

Member/researcher Quanah Parker Historical Preservation Society"

Now, I am reasonably certain that Mr. Yarbrough had the best of intentions here, even if I can't imagine what they were. Still, why would anything think it proper to make an attempt to destroy a family legend just for the sake of accuracy?

I ask this question given the fact that in the blog I stated clearly that the Parker references were part of "family legend".

Since Rodney Herbert Yarberry was my grandfather, I think I might already know the facts, as boring as they might be. The facts, however, are not all that great a story.

Then I had a thought. I wondered how accurate the information offered by Mr. Yarbrough could possibly be with regard to the children of Quanah Parker since so much of Quanah's life is a mixture of hyperbole and legend? The claim is made, for example, that he never lost a battle against the white man. I guess his surrender to General Mackenzie after being threatened with extermination doesn't count as a loss.

He is credited with starting the North American Church Movement, famed for its use of peyote in its rituals but his son White Parker, became a Methodist minister which, in my mind, underscores the possibility of a Methodist connection to my grandfather's father.

One source claims Parker had 5 wives and another is adamant that he had 8, still another claims 7 and yet another claims he had 6. All of these sources make claims of being experts on the life and genealogy of Quanah Parker. All of the sources state he had "at least" 25 children. This means that 25 have been accounted for but clearly leaves open the possibility of other for which there has been no accounting.

So, with all due respect to Mr. Yarbrough, his claims are really no more provable than are mine and mine make a better story...

So, perhaps the family legend was invented by my mother to create some sensation of celebrity in her life; a life marred by dysfunction and mental illness; an early life of an abusive, alcoholic father and a vicious mother. She, perhaps, finds some value in being an Indian princess.

I want to offer my thanks, though, to Jim Yarbrough, for his eagerness to correct the record. I should be grateful because it's quite likely Jim and I are distant cousins since the name "Yarberry" is a derivation of Yarbrough. Of course, if that's true, and since he is related to Quanah though Cynthia - Quanah's mother, perhaps my mother is a princess after all.

I promise that the next time I wrote a story about the Yarberry clan, I will include a tale of the snivelling mythbuster, Cousin Jim.

Of Comanches. Methodists and Strangite Mormons

Written originally on Wednesday, December 21, 2005. In the original entry I made up names I did not know for the sake of the narrative. I have since learned them and they are correct here.

Quanah Parker was an active polygamist. There is historical proof he had seven wives and, at least, twenty-five children but my mother's father and his brother claimed to be the twin sons of his 15th wife. But they also claim to be the younger brothers to White Parker whose mother was Mah-Cheeta-Wookey, Quanah's third wife. The second claim has more historical substantiation as Mah-Cheeta-Wookey died in 1902 and left the care of her remaining small children to her oldest son White and his wife Laura Clark who began as Methodist missionaries to the Comanche Nation in 1914.

Family legend attests that a Methodist preacher named John Yarberry and his wife Sarah (Gambel), en route from Benton Country Arkansas to the Colorado territory in 1854, adopted two sons of Quanah and Mah-Cheeta-Wookey who had been left in the care of White and Laura. There is no record of the boy's Indian names but their adoptive names were Thomas, and John Milton Yarberry, my great-grandfather. He was older than Thomas by 4 years.

As the boys matured, John Milton Yarberry was said to have headed to Colorado looking for a man who was "borrowing" his name. A man going by Milt Yarberry had been a rather notorious gunfighter in Southern Colorado and New Mexico and had been hired in 1880 as the first town marshall for Albuquerque. After shooting to death, an unarmed citizen, the city hanged old Milt on February 9, 1883. Before John left, however, he married Cynthia England in Beton Arkansas in 1870. He took her with him and they eventually settled in Avondale, Colorado where my grandfather, Rodney Herbert was born on October 1, 1896.

My grandfather married three women, although he was not a polygamist. His first wife was Helen Fulton. They were married in May of 1915 and had three children, Robert, Rebecca and Helen. His second, an Indian woman known only as Tillie - as far as anyone knows they had no children - and finally my grandmother, Leota Winona Park (Miller). Together they had two children, but the first died young and the second was my mother, Roxana Lee who hates the name Roxana and goes by "Lee".

Grandpa inherited two stepdaughters, however, my Aunts Eileen and Nadine - known to all as "Denny".

My grandmother and grandfather met when their two husbands decided to meet weekly to play cards with the wives. Apparently Helen fell in love with Mr. Park and Mrs. Park, Leota, fell in love with Rodney and both couples divorces and remarried each other. They continued playing cards together until my grandmother died in 1955, when I was four years old. The whole thing caused quite the little stink in Pueblo, Colorado which, while pretty wild, was not all that progressive in their thinking!

My mother is the family genealogist and has determined to follow the Yarberry line since the Parker line is pretty muddy before Quanah's mother (who had been kidnapped by indians when she was a child and raised with them). The Yarberry line wades through the generations and melds with the England line which eventually takes us to a serf with an unpronouncable name before it stops cold.J

John Milton, a great uncle, became the state superintendant of schools in Colorado as did his son.

My grandfather became a raging mean alcoholic who spent 9 of the last 11 years of his life in the Colorado State Hospital for the Insane from whence he walked away boarded a bus and arrived on our doorstep in Killeen, Texas in 1957. I was six years old and had never met him.

I was very afraid of him from the stories my mother told. When he arrived he was clean and sober and, although my mother told him he could rot in hell, my father invited him to live with us. Mom eventually pretended to forgive him and he spent the last two years of his life sharing a bedroom with an obnoxious me. He has various and sundry grandchildren spread out over the nation but I was the only one who he ever got to know and I count is as a special blessing to me.

His was the first funeral I ever attended and his remains now lie many miles from anyone who even heard his name, in a cemetary in Lampases, Texas.

My mother and father each joined the Church in 1953. She was married to my birth father and lived in Pueblo, Colorado (also my birthplace) and he, married to his first wife, lived in Kalamazoo when he wasn't stationed somewhere in the world. They both went immediately inactive and each got a divorce. They would not meet until 1956.

In that meantime, my mother decided to attend the church where her former in-laws went because she knew it was somehow associated with the Mormons. She went once and there she saw some long-bearded men with chaw-stained lips, preaching a weird religion while they made the women-folk sit in a section apart from them. These were one of the last enclaves of Strang's followers who had escaped from Beaver Island in Michigan and started a few branches of that church in Colorado. It was this connection of which I learned years later, that sparked my interest in studying the life of King James and found him to have been an extremely fascinating man.

My father, after his divorce, returned to the church in which he was raised. It was my Nana's church and the church in which I preformed my first musical solo for money (Nana paid me 10 bucks to sing 'Rock of Ages' when I was 9). She belonged to what Joseph Smith once described as the second-best church. She was a Methodist.In 1956, my father went TDY to Fort Carson, Colorado and my mother had moved with another single mother, to Denver where she worked in a Woolworth store by day and did some modeling in the evening. Her roommates best friend was a the sister of my father's first wife, who remained a close friend of my dad's even after the divorce. She thought my dad might be a good catch for my mother's roommate and hooked them up. The roommate was nervous about meeting a GI on a first date, so she invited my mother along. So my mother and dad met in a Colorado honkytonk and in that same honkytonk, 6 weeks later, after they had become engaged, they discussed religion for the first time. This is how my mother tells it:

"Bob (my dad) said that since we were going to be a family, we ought to have a church. I was smoking a Lucky Strike and drinking gin when I told him he wouldn't believe what I was because I wasn't a good one. I told him I was a Mormon. His eyes widened and he smile that famous Bob Quantz smile, took a drag and said I would be more surprised to learn that he was too."

Bob left for Germany but returned a few months later and he and my mother were married in Dallas, Texas, in route to Fort Hood, Texas is what turned out to be a stolen Studebaker with a curly-headed brat in the back seat. Once at Fort Hood, as Providence would decree, my father's CO was the branch president. Dad and I were playing catch in the street in front of our house one Sunday morning when his CO drove up and strongly suggested that my dad get his wife, himself and me ready for church and be there in an hour.

We went and never looked back. Bob adopted me a year later, just weeks before I was baptized and then we were all sealed in the Hawaiian temple a few years later. So from my mother, I inherited a legacy of drunks, outlaws, preachers and wild indians; from my birth father (who remarried a Mormon, became active, had 8 kids and was just released as a temple worker in Ogden) a foggy connection with the early LDS Church and from the man who raised me.? Well, that's another story.

I Found the Old Blog!

I am adding here, now, some older stories from my first blog.

I will try to edit them to make things more current when speaking in the present.

Bury Me Not On the Lone Prairie...

Driving home from Ludington on Sunday, during one of those stretches of silence, I thought of the cemeteries I have visited, for various reasons, over the years. While some are etched in my memory for valid reasons, others are there reflecting the mundane and even frivolous.

The first cemetery I remember is one located in Lampasas, Texas. It's the Oak Hill Cemetery and happens to hold the title of "Largest in the County" with "over 5,000 identifiable graves" (The Lampasas County Historical Commission). One of those identifiable graves is home to the bones and dust of one Rodney Herbert Yarberry; my maternal grandfather.

Given my mother's deep and painful issues with her father, I suspect being able to identify his grave is unimportant as I doubt anyone has ever visited it since the funeral and interment.

My memories of the man, however, are all sweet but I never really knew him until after his stint in the Colorado State Hospital that finally "cured" him of his alcoholism and he showed up in Killeen looking for a place to lay his weary head at his daughter's house.

My mother would have refused without guilt but my father - who hadn't know him "then" either - convinced her that he recent reactivation in the Church really demanded she relent and even forgive the man that had caused her so much pain. Since he died in 1960, I wonder if she has managed to forgive him.

When she speaks of him in public, it's always with warm accolades and the pretense of affection as she has never been able to reveal the truth of her life in public. This is a trait she passed on to me and one that has taken me decades to overcome and finally find some semblance of peace with who I am and the turmoil created by a broken family.

My grandfather and I shared a room for the last two years of his life and he shared with me all the stories that had survived in his pickled mind. I am sure that some of them were true, even if they were embellished.

The tornado in Colorado last week reminded me of one.

When he was a young man, he took a job as a cowboy in western Colorado. One spring day he was riding the range when a storm exploded, seemingly from nowhere. He told me of riding full-gallop toward some shelter and being intercepted by a funnel cloud that lifted him and his horse into the air and set them gently down several miles away; him still in the saddle and neither he nor the horse any worse for the flight. When I was 8, that was the critical part of the story. Now, however, I find it so fascinating that he was a real cowboy at as time when the cowboy life was fading into history. It is wonderful to me that the part of the story that is true, is now the most important part of the tale.

I remember him telling me about a time he and his brother were playing in a barn when a bucket of kerosene tipped from a shelf and the liquid poured into his brother's left ear and out the right. I also remember being extremely disappointed when I attempted the recreate the event with a cup of water in our bathroom sink and all I got for the trouble was water in my ear that took two days of intermittently jumping up and down to release.

I remember three women singing "O My Father" at his grave site just before they lowered his coffin into the hole. I decided to write a song called "O My Grandfather" but I never got around to it.

I have also never got around to returning to his cemetery, but I want to. I hope wanting to, counts in my favor.

I don't think I have ever seen his wife's - my grandmother's - grave. I am not even sure where it is.

I have only one, very vague, memory of her. I was on a lawn outside of a hospital and she was on one of the upper floors, waving at me from a window. I am not sure why, but I have no real desire to search her out. She doesn't seem like she's a part of me or my history. I am not bragging about that feeling. It's really wrong of me and something I ought to change.

The only woman I have ever really considered my grandmother is not related to me at all, by blood. She is the mother of my mother's third husband, the man who adopted me and raised me as his own, William Quantz. Her name at death was Alma Holstein and she is buried in Kalamazoo. I have visited her grave only once since her burial. I should drop by the next time I am in town.

Her son, my dad, is buried in Fort Custer National Cemetery near Battle Creek. I have visited his grave many times; generally around Memorial Day, but not this year. This year we visited my wife's father's grave in Ludington where his widow placed a flower arrangement next to his headstone and I watched her cry. Her home is a shrine to their marriage and her memories are always colored by the fact that he is no longer living.

One of my favorite cemeteries is the one located on Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is where my brother is buried.

It took me years to build the courage to visit the grave as I felt, for years, that I was, in part, the cause of his early death at 3 years old. When I finally screwed up the guts, it was a wonderful, cleansing experience. As I stood and wept at his grave I almost heard an angelic choir singing:

" And should we die before our journey's through... Happy Day! All in Well!"

He died early in his mortal journey but I walked away assured that his work there was more important than his work here.

Two years ago, Deb, Sam, Kathy and their children and I visited Robbie's grave. When we got there I noticed a dry, faded rose on top of his stone. Someone unknown to me or anyone in my family, had visited Robbie's grave. I was deeply touched by this action and have, since, made a small effort to look at the stones of strangers when I am in cemeteries and to offer a small prayer for them and their families.

When we were leaving the cemetery in Ludington on Saturday evening, I noticed a young man stretched out on the ground near a headstone and he was talking toward it. A thousand stories flashed through my mind as I watched him. I settled on one that identified him as the only son of a parents who loved him; a son who was rebellious and who tested the patience but never the love, of the man and women buried there. I imagined him to be the prodigal that returned too late for the fatted calf, the ring or the party. I pretended that he turned his life around after their deaths and visited their grave often to give a report on his life and achievements.

As unlikely the story is, it still is a good one for me.

On the trip home, Sunday afternoon, Deb and I took a side trip, off the expressway and onto some country roads. Somewhere on that side trip, we passed a little, family cemetery, ancient and weathered, on a farm somewhere between Pentwater and Silver Lake.

Wouldn't it be grand if families could be buried near each other again?

I would like to be buried next to my wife and near by children and their children so, in the Resurrection, we might embrace with our newly perfected bodies. As it is, Deb and I will probably be together but we'll have to travel to see the kids.

I am pretty sure, however, that travel then, will be quick as thinking it and that distance, like time, will mean nothing.