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In 1963, at age 65, my grandfather, Erwin,
decided to build a new house. He wasn't quite sure what to do with the old
house since it sat where the new house would be. He finally hired a powerful
vehicle to push it far out into a small group of trees. That old house sits
there to this very day.
Erwin and his wife, Elida, passed away, and
I purchased the farm from their estate. My wife and I raised our sons on this
place and have lived here for more than 30 years. When we first moved in, my
wife took one look at the deserted house and declared it a hidden danger. I
agreed and planned on a large bonfire. But I thought it appropriate to check
out the house first, just in case something of worth had been left behind.
I walked through the tall grass in the
meadow where the old house sat. Time had worn it out. The entrance floor had
fallen down on itself and most of the windows were gone. We entered through an
open window. ①Here lay the reminders of my
grandparents' lives: a broken chair, some old clothes ... But the thing that
drew my eye was a cardboard box stuffed with papers. I dug through its contents
and was instantly transported back in time. There was a tax return from 1957.
Greeting cards from old friends and relatives, now all dead and gone. An
uncle's third-grade spelling book. So sweet were the memories that the old
house was spared the torch.
As we hurried through our lives, my visits
grew infrequent. I might catch a glimpse of the house through the trees and
remembered how, as a child, I would struggle to walk in my father's footprints.
Even then, I could imagine no nobler calling than farming, just like Dad. Then,
one April morning, my father was felled by a massive heart attack, at age 68.
The entire family was shocked by his passing, none more than me. Why I visited
that old house on a day shortly after my father's funeral is still beyond me.
It was as though it were calling; even the trees seemed to whisper an
invitation to come, to visit, to stay awhile.
②As I stood once again on that ancient
floor, my eye was drawn to a pile of papers on the floor. An envelope, yellowed
with age, lay on top. A blue stamp on the envelope read "Passed by Naval
Censor" How could I have missed this treasure? My father had served aboard
the USS Washington during World War II and had written home whenever he could.
My grandmother saved all of his letters.
I
removed one letter carefully from its envelope. ③It was dated September 1944. My father
would have been somewhere in the South Pacific at that time and all of 18 years
old. T studied the familiar handwriting. Dad wondered how the com harvest had
been. He supposed that his youngest brother was starting first grade and
imagined that he was becoming quite the little man. He asked his mother to
greet everyone and said that he missed them all.
It wasn't hard to read between the lines.
Here was a homesick young man, a kid really, who had spent his entire life
living upon a sea of flat land grass. Now he was on a different kind of sea, an
ocean that was being disturbed by the thunder and the lightning of a world at
war. At the bottom of the page, my father had passed on one last message. ④Tears burned my eyes as I read those
words he had so carefully emphasized: "All is well here. Please don't
worry. I am doing fine."
As I left the old house that day, I took
one last glance back at it over my shoulder. I don't care what any one thinks,
I decided. That old house gets to stay there until it rots into the earth.
