Today in the United States is Father’s Day.  As I drove home from Dallas through the green countryside, I noticed a few places looked like the landscape in Northwest Missouri where I grew up.  My great grandfather from Switzerland homesteaded there in the 1800’s.  My dad lived on that farm all of his ninety years.  A year ago in June, I went back for a long weekend, visited the land I still have on the home place and drove to Rulo, Nebraska, where we used to go eat catfish and carp.  The last flood nearly demolished the place where we went.  Driving along, I reflected on the scenes I saw there last summer.

 

This is the house where I grew up and the building in the foreground my dad built long before he married my mom and I was born.  During the Depression, when it was new, he occasionally held dances there and the sheriff stayed to make sure there was no moonshine. My dad lived in this house 80 of his 90 years.

The following is a poem I wrote about Dad after my visit there last summer.  There used to be a lake behind the house with a large grove of burr oak trees surrounding it.  The lake is still there but the beautiful trees are gone except for one lone tree, the rest bulldozed down.  This poem is in my collection of poetry, On the Rim of Wonder.

 

My Father

He watches:

The house where he was born

gone

Only the old carriage house stands.

The young man who farms the land cannot bear to tear it down.

He watches:

The ancient burr oaks and black walnuts

gone

bulldozed into waste piles or sold for greed.

He watches:

The house he lived and loved in for eighty years

still stands on land his family owned more than 150 years.

Strangers live there.

He sees the well trimmed lawn,

new picket fence

children playing.

He watches:

The pond he proudly built and stocked with fish reflects the summer sun.

The tree filled park between the pond and house

gone

He wonders why someone would destroy such beauty.

He watches:

The walnut grove where he ran cattle

gone

The pond where his grandson caught the giant turtle

gone

plowed over and planted in corn and soybeans.

He watches.

The old carriage house.