~as I find my father~

My father died in early December of 1982, a victim of lung cancer.  He was diagnosed, treated through radiation, and then passed away from it all in the span of 18 months.  As cancer patients go, he didn't get much time.  I miss him.

Today I am going to find him.

For over a quarter of a century, John Scott was a custom cutter.  From early May when the wheat harvest season started in southern Oklahoma to early fall when the harvest season was over in central North Dakota, my father was on the road.  His journey took him and his crew of workers up and down the Great Plains states with stops not only in Oklahoma but Kansas, Nebraska, and both of the Dakotas.  In the fall, he would return home once again but only long enough to prepare himself for the milo harvest here in the far western part of the great state of Texas.

He loved that life.

I have a special connection to this area of the world that we live in now.  From time to time, my father would haul crops into the elevator here in Burkburnett.  Sometimes I drive by that elevator and look up to it and remember him.  It doesn't make me sad, but rather it gives me peace to know that once he looked up at it as well.

This old photo is wearing with age but I love it because it shows my dad at his happiest.  I laugh every time I see the brown stains on the upper part of the door.  He never was very good at spitting out his tobacco juice.  I am now 8 years older than he was when this picture was taken and that always remains a sobering thought to me.

Two small towns that my father used to cut in year after year are located within an hour's drive from us here in our home along the Red River.  I have seen the directional signs for Davidson and Frederick, Oklahoma many times as I've drive either to Altus or to the doctor in Grandfield.  I always said that it would be nice to see them once again but never did anything about it in the nearly two years that Mike and I have lived here.

Today it will be different.
Today we are going to go there.

Although my father has been gone for nearly 35 years, I still find him in the strangest of places. I have seen him as I painfully watched the first wheat harvests without him back in my home state of Kansas.  I have felt his presence when the milo fields around this part of the state were harvested last year.  He's been in the bright and sparkling eyes of my three children when they have spoken to me of their dreams and hopes for the future.  Whenever I have told my students about him and his life, I have felt him deeply still within my heart.  Sometimes a tear wells up in my eye, but I never let it fall.  I smile and tell the kids everything that I remember about him.

Perhaps you are like me and your father is now gone from this earth.  Maybe you too experience the sadness from time to time as you miss them in your life.  If you are as I am, you hope that you have grown to be the kind of person that they wished you would be all along.  

It's how I am.
It's how I will always be.

I'm not sure how I will feel when we drive into those two towns this morning.  There might be a tinge of sadness but my guess is that I will only feel joy at seeing his old stomping grounds once again and oh, one other thing.

It will be nice to see my father once again.

I'm always glad that I have as many pictures as I have of him.  Here are some of us meeting up with him on a break from the cutting near Kinsley, Kansas.  The very young girl on the right hand side is me.  The following year after this picture was taken would be my father's last run. I was fortunate to go along with him that year from start to finish.  My journey put my college graduation date back a year but it was worth everything to be going along.

I love a picture of a good elevator.  This one is back in my hometown of Haven, Kansas.