~just like Pond Creek~

The glorious month of October is rushing by us all with little regard as to whether or not we wish for the days to slow down.  Today marks the 22nd day of the 10 month of the year.  As for me, this is day #22,642 of life.  Can that really be?  Seems like just yesterday I was only at 22,000.

Time flies.
Especially if you are living life.

I had a good trip back home to Kansas a couple of days ago.  My journey was quick and full of things to do.  So glad that I had the chance to return once again to reconnect with family and dear friends.  I took a slight detour along the way up north, totally unplanned by me but thanks to a GPS with a mind of its own, I got to see plenty of new sights.

One of them was the little town of Pond Creek, Oklahoma.

It had been 40 years since I'd been there.  In the summer of 1977 during my father's last wheat harvest run, I went along with him to help for the summer.  Pond Creek, Nash, and Jet were all small Oklahoma towns that he found work in.  At the time, they were just little places to me and yet another stop for cutting several hundred acres of hard red winter wheat in before moving on.  Yet when I saw the sign shown above, it was somehow different.  I felt as if I might have found my father again and you know what?

It was a good feeling.

I decided that it would be fun, since I already was there, to find the elevator that we always hauled the wheat to.  It wasn't difficult to locate it.  Those small town Oklahoma skyscrapers stand out in the crowd and turns out I was only a block or so away.  

Although I didn't stay long, I did turn the car off and walk over to get the best picture I could of it.  A couple of folks drove past and waved as they saw me take the photo.  Not sure that they get much traffic in a town of less than 1,000 people that stops for photo opportunities in front of the community's only grain storage facility, but one thing is for sure.

They did on Friday.

My father has been gone such a very long time now.  In the early morning hours of his 21,865th day of life, he passed away from lung cancer.  Now all that I have left of him are sweet remembrances.  Memories abound in my heart of people and places he once knew in small towns up and down the Great Plains of America.

Little towns, just like Pond Creek.