After a few Nebraska detours, we made it to our first stop, Uncle Jelly's farm. It's kind of hard to see it from the road. It's one of those farms where the buildings and house were at the center of the section instead of out by the road. A section is about 640 acres and in the day when our rural land was filled with family farms and one of those farms was 160 acres-four farms per section. It's still there tucked away in a sea of early spring green.
I have a lot of good memories about that little farm and the gentleness of the residents, Uncle Jelly and Aunt Rebe were two of the sweetest, nicest people I have ever known. I miss them.
Next stop, Hartington. Things have changed. My dad's Ford garage is closed and a new Chevy dealership is out on the highway.Downtown is not the bustling place I remember from my childhood but Hartington is no longer a hub of activity. A sixty mile trip to Sioux City is nothing today but was a major event in the 1950's.
And there it stands. Still the same colors The porch is different. The bushes are gone. The big walnut trees that lined the driveway are gone, too. But there it is. Just about how I remembered it. That house will always be home to me.
The roof was flat when we lived there. That's important because I had a recurring dream when I was a kid. I dreamed I crawled up on the top of the house and stood at the edge of the flat roof, put out my arms to my sides, and stepped off. Just like that, I rose above the trees--even the big Rossiter pines across the street--and flew. That dream kept coming back when I was young and it finally flew away when I became a pilot. Strange, huh.
My other favorite spot was the little shack at the Hartington airport. I use to park right next to that shack and watch for planes. Hartington is no O'Hare. I don't ever remember seeing a plane land there but that didn't keep me away. I promised myself that I would land the first jet there. That was long before I learned that a 3,000 foot runway is not the best choice for a Lear Jet smoking though the skies. I didn't get to keep that promise. A Citation did land there and I wasn't on it. I understand that Citation is by the folks who built the new motel right over the spot where my Mother use to live.
You can measure your life with some things. In my case, it's trees. That's the golf course as it looks today. When my brothers and I worked there as teenagers, it wasn't much more than a pasture. You could hit a monster slice and go across a couple of fairways and not hit anything. (Well, most of the time. I clocked the local mortician on one of my famous shots.
Dad was the "guy in charge" of the course so he bossed us around. One of the tasks was to plant a bunch of trees between the fairways. In the hottest part of summer, he sent John and Roger out on the little Ford tractor and wagon with a tub full of water to make sure those trees got a good nourishing drink. Today, the fairways are as private as a Hillary Clinton foreign back account list. It's all because of my Dad and brothers making sure the trees got planted and watered. Beautiful, isn't it.
After a nice chat with my old friend Tim Kuchta and some quiet time at the cemetery with Mom and Dad, it was time to go.
You can go home and I am glad I did. If only for a few minutes, I reached back and found the boy in me and I can only wonder, why was I in such a hurry to leave?
Thanks for the love, Hartington.
