What the others might have found to be hillbilly, backward or old fashioned, I found to be beautiful, spectacular and worth its weight in gold. I found myself hoping my children would meet them, remember them and someday grow to be like them when I think I knew they would not. The best I could do, if I was lucky, was to become like them myself and therefore others might know them through me long after they were gone. I could visit and talk and read with them but the best thing was to listen. That's when the old stories and the advice would come flowing out in a river-in whole chunks and small bits of wisdom, and even genius, which I could cling to.

They were not fancy people. They were not rich though most of us believed that through their years of living with a dust bowl mindset they had probably saved hundreds of thousands. Maybe someday we would know and it would be passed out to our vulture- like claws so that we could buy something shiny which none of us would need. I rather liked to think that, not trusting a bank anymore, they would bury the money in a coffee can out on one of the countless acres and no one would find it. Or, someone who knew what to do would find it and spend it in just the right way to honor them. I never hoped that person would be me as I don't trust myself with a responsibility so great. If I was the reason their years of hard work and saving was lost, I knew I would never recover.

For myself I hoped instead to someday get the house that my grandfather and his sons had all built together in the seventies. The house that was just down the hill from the old place my dad grew up in. The place with the old barn and the fruitful garden and a creek for young ones to get muddy in. The house held together with rocks and stones from the very ground they built it on and the place where my aunt was married. It had a pond, too, that my grandpa dug and always called the "sand pit". You drove right past it when you pulled off the dirt road to drive up to the house. Yes, that's what I secretly hoped for. And I hoped that it would never be sold but handed down from generation to generation until Jesus came back. It was a place with roots and a history so strong that you could still feel the family all around you no matter if they were there in body or not. I knew that we could not be like other families who had to sell the place one day to pay for nursing home care and medical bills. I could not let that happen. Whatever I did, whatever or whomever I had to give up, I would stay with them in that place. I would go to them if they needed me because they would have and did do that for all of us.

They were kind and soft-hearted but strong and so wise. They were uneducated but smart. He was as sharp as the pain he felt in his left shoulder when the weather was cold. He was impossible to win against in an argument or a game of dominoes. He could calculate each players hand and use it against them. He cried when he saw Feed the Children commercials or read a story of heart break. He didn't believe in money, toll booths, divorce, gambling or booze. Neither of them did. He kept a record of every deer he ever killed and he got five just this last fall. He was a guitar player and a song writer. He was as stubborn as the stains on his worn out clothes but he was usually right anyway. He wrote her a love poem for their 50th anniversary.

She was sweet and loving but she would stand her ground. She was a strong Christian influence and a quiet rock. Her voice was high and loud when she was telling something funny, which was often. They both laughed a lot. She sang gospel songs like "Amazing Grace" and "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" all day long. She was scared of swimming and wild horses. She loved to do a puzzle and could make a delicious soup from anything. They both liked to read and she would buy boxes of books at yard sales and then pass the good ones on to me.