The Ranch

This was a place where I spent an incredible amount of time with my dad, and the strangest part of the whole thing is how on some winter nights in Idaho Falls, I hear the mournful sound of cattle lowing in the distance.

It's then that I look about me, see the cobalt blue skies above, feel the chill of night air, and for a brief moment, think of my dad at times when we fed cattle on the ranch during the winter.

In the spring, I buy bologna from the store at least twice. It reminds me of the sandwiches we took in the mornings when we did spring work.

My son Cles usually was with me when we worked during the summer, at least when he was old enough to go with us. Whether riding with me in the cab of a tractor or a grain harvester, it was something that Cles enjoyed.

My son still laughs at the way I cursed when going up a steep hill in the old John Deere '95 Hillside. We had a Crenlo Cooler instead of air conditioning, and it's filter needed water to keep the air clean, but sometimes water would pool inside the cooler, and on a deep hill, it would pour down over the front of my shirt.

The cold water was filled with chaff from the filter.

My daughters were not as lucky in that regard. I began my studies at ISU when Lydia was only one year old, and Kristin came along a few years later.

There were things they never had a chance to do. Kristin still hopes to ride a horse some time.

For Lydia, it's not a big deal. Horses smell. When you don't grow up on a farm, it's not a source of pleasure.

During our recent trip to Disneyland, I asked to pat the horses on Main Street, just so I could smell that scent of the animal.

Some things never change. For me, it's like hearing the sound of cattle, although at the time when I was young, I hated horses and cows. I liked doing other things on the farm.

Cultivating, planting, harvesting were all things I enjoyed doing. Dad taught me well. There was an art to knowing just what worked on that ranch.

On February 11, 1992 I sat on the couch in our front room watching snow blow over a ridge in the far distance. I don't remember whether it was a "snow day" or a Saturday, but I was home. The phone rang. Although my dad had been gone for a year, for a moment I thought he was calling. I actually stood up, just like I once did when I hadn't realized my dad would soon be in the driveway to pick me up to go to the ranch. He would appear in the truck and begin revving the engine and honking the horn.

My heart pounded for a moment in 1992, until I realized that ride would never show. My eyes welled with tears, and when I answered, it was my mom calling on the day of the year after my dad passed away after his fight with colon cancer. It took me a minute, but I eventually was able to talk to my mom on the phone, and I told her what had must happened. We both share a moment of missing someone, who made such an incredible impact on our entire family.

The ranch was a place that will always exist in my mind, but I will see it as I remember it with my father in his straw hat and white T-shirt. That's the place I'll always think of from my youth. It's where I learned how to act like a man, where I learned how to work like a man, where I learned how to succeed in life.