The Like Soul. Lyons, Tigers, and Bears.

While living with my Grandparents I can remember evenings were I would want to be alone and read, or rather I would want to not watch tv for the whole evening. Still there were other times in which my Grandparents would get on the phone and call friends. My Grandpa would dial someone up on the land line telephone and than he would set the phone on speaker and you could hear the call going through throughout the house. “ Hello this is Jim Johnson calling you just to say hello,” the voice on the other end of the call would echo out, “ Is Mary Ann there with you?” Grandma would echo out, “ I am here.” It was at the being on this month that I was able to travel and visit some loved friends of mine. We sat up around the living room late each night talking. It is now in my new living that I find the ability to stop someone and to talk with them a rare quality. Mostly because a good conversation requires a good amount of back story. With no one here to be strongly tied to in prior actions, I feel that story telling about my life would be a prideful venture. I guess I say all of this to give a caution of how you take the journey and who you keep with you along the way.

My dad is working in Lyons, Kansas. I can't even spell Kansas correctly while typing this out. Yesterday my mom told me that my dad was being called out to work on a job in bad weather. In a brief passing the television flashed a update, “ we will have more about those storms in the Mid-West coming up next.” Years back again when I was six to seven years old, our family sat down to eat dinner at the table. One of us kids, I think it was Jenni noticed a spark of light on a hill far out in the distances. We all watched it grow and grow until at last it was identified as a wild fire. Our community that we lived in had a volunteer fire department, which included my Dad and all my Uncles. The call came and Dad began dressing in clothes needed as all of us kids watched the fire continue to grow from view of our sliding glass doors. I can still remember where I was watching the whole event. We were looking at where my Dad was heading. The memory is not laid out in my mind in a clean order. It is mostly just small moving pictures of memory. The whole hill was on fire. It was no longer the question of a flickering light in the night. The fire had engulfed the hill and run down its sides as though water runs off the top of a basket ball. My Dad was down there. I can remember trying to imagine where my dad was on the hill trying to stop this fire. I can remember the feeling of impossible odds coming over me. I can remember my Mom getting a call from Dad and the relief in our little home to hear that he was okay.