HOME ON THE RANGE

Despite my affinity for the Pacific Northwest where I’ve lived most of my life, I admit to a love for the Great Plains where my parents were born and raised. This is probably because of those month-long trips the family took every summer while I was growing up. We’d wake at sunrise, drive to just over the Montana border the first day, singing songs or playing highway bingo or the license game on the way to spend the time. We usually spent a night in eastern Montana and then arrived at Grandma and Grandpa Weatherly’s farm (my Mom’s parents -- they homesteaded in the early 1900s) the next afternoon. Grandpa and Grandpa finally got electricity when I was very young but they never did have running water so we went from the modern conveniences of the late 1950s/early 1960s to living life like Laura Ingalls from my favorite Little House on the Prairie books. We used the outhouse, carried water from a well/windmill, and took baths in large metal tubs in the backyard. We helped Grandpa milk cows (well, we thought we were helping) and rode the one horse he had left (Ranger) bareback to visit friends on neighboring farms. We would go visit other friends and relatives in the immediate area before leaving for South Dakota to spend time with my Aunt Ruth and Uncle Albert at their farm where we had more modern conveniences. Despite those modern conveniences when I yearn for those wide open spaces, it’s the farm of my grandparents I wish for the most. After Grandma and Grandpa sold the farm and came out to Washington to live we didn’t go back to the Dakotas. So, in 1996 when the cousins from my Dad’s side of the family gathered for a reunion in nearby Carson, I knew the first thing I wanted to do. My parents and 15-year-old daughter had made the trip together. Mom and Dad wanted to rest at the motel in Carson, but I had one thing on my mind and one thing only – Grandpa and Grandma’s farm. But could I find it? The house had burned down over 30 years previously. Would I remember the old landmarks? After all I had been a pre-teen the last time I had been there. But I remembered the old directions, “2-1/2 miles south, 2-1/2 miles east” and off I went. The dirt roads were rutted and lined by abandoned houses and farms. The nearest town was all but a ghost town – the only business still open being a bar. The directions were from the middle of town and I looked at the odometer and went south. In 2.5 miles was an even more rutted road to the left. I took it. Nothing could stop me from my mission. Soon in the distance I could see a rounded hill – something stirred deep in my memory. The hill in front of Grandma and Grandpa’s house!! There it was. Soon I took another left and could make out what was left of the trees grandpa planted as a wind screen near the house. Then the steps – all that was left of the simple clapboard home Grandpa had built after first living in a sod house. But there was more –rusted farm equipment Grandpa had used littered the farm. I opened the window and heard a meadowlark sing. I had come home.