J.D. Smith

I became an orphan at the age of 78. Three first cousins and my two kids are the only other living pieces of either side of my family. But memories survive. Here are a few of them recently retrieved from the maxed-out flash drive that is wedged between my ears.

One: My Uncle Darius (pronounced Dare-us) and I are watching a Roy Rogers movie on early television. He is half-cowpoke, half-electrician and wears a 38-inch inseam on button-fly Levis. I am maybe 11. Darius has a five-horse pack string and has twice taken me into the high Rockies on fishing expeditions.

On the little roundish black and white screen, Roy and Dale and Trigger and Bullet have exposed and nabbed the black-hatted banker who was trying to cheat an older couple out of a chunk of land where oil has been found. Somehow, a half a dozen average ranch workers turn out to be expert musicians, so everyone is gathered around in celebration of the triumph. Roy fires up his guitar, the others chime in, and he and Dale break into the opening stanzas of “Happy Trails to You.”

Darius stands, then ambles over and turns off the television, saying, “You know, J.D., I don’t know what I would do if anyone ever came up to me and actually sang right in my face.”

Two: My mom and dad and I are headed up the canyon between Loveland and Estes Park, Colorado, in a 1946 Ford sedan. I am in the back seat, engrossed in a stack of comic books and oblivious to the splendor of roadside nature despite my mom’s constant “Looky there. Isn’t that beautiful?” We are coming around a long left-hand corner when my mom yells “Stop, Red, stop.” My dad, who’s real name was Kenneth but I never heard him called anything but Red, complies with her request. She hops out and scurries back about twenty yards, then comes running back to the car holding a wrapped and ribboned package, saying “Go, Red, go.”

She rips off the ribbon and begins tearing at the plaid wrapping paper, then plunges her hand into the box, where some prankster has carefully packaged a couple of pounds of chicken guts. This did not deter her from always hoping for the best. My mom was a lifelong optimist. She had Lotto tickets for a drawing held the day after she died at the age of 101.

Three: I am a recent high school graduate waiting with my folks in Alliance, Nebraska, for a train that is to carry me to a very snooty college in the Boston area. Both of them had worked hard to be able to send me, as the first person in either side of the family, to an institute of higher education. For my part, I had been a good student, or at least had been given good grades for minimal effort, and in those days East Coast universities were searching for geographic distribution in their student body, hoping that some of us from the absolute boonies would get rich, and increase their endowments. I had a good scholarship and a work-study opportunity.

My mom worked as a secretary for a rural electrification district and my dad as a railroad fireman. They both had survived the depression of the 1930s in Nebraska.

As the train approaches to carry me into the future we all hug. The parting advice from my mom is, “We don’t care if you end up digging ditches for a living as long as you are happy.” My dad grins at me and says, “You are probably going to be eating with some folks with different manners than ours. Remember, don’t pick your nose with your fork.”

Four: I am 6 feet down in a ditch with a shovel, working behind a trackhoe, laying 10-inch blue brute sewer pipe through a church camp in Idaho. It is rocky mountain soil. The hoe has been walked back to its carry truck for a tooth replacement. Above me appears a woman with a Friar Tuck haircut, long woolen skirt and brown granny shoes and I hear her say, “Before you dig any further, I would like you to see my mayonnaise jar.”

It is difficult to express the fear that this statement generated. What icky stuff was this person hoarding in a mayonnaise jar? Would it be out-of-range rude of me to decline the offer? What if I had stumbled onto some strange cult where people kept their waste in jars? Should I run?

At the upper limits of my fantasies the woman appears again at the lip of the trench, this time accompanied by a fellow with the same haircut and a guy version of her outfit. She says, “This is Father Damian, my manager.”

Five: My dad and I are sitting in the bleachers at a rodeo in Council, Idaho, west one main drainage from where I am living in a teepee and cooking in an Airstream while tending 700 head of light steers. It is a warm high country afternoon. We have hot dog mustard on our fingers. My dad bumps my shoulder with his and says, “You know, I am really happy that you didn’t turn out to be that stuffed shirt sumbitchin’ lawyer I always wanted you to be.”