"We've got to find the papers for my grandfather's farm!" my husband said as he pulled out folders from the file cabinet. "I'm looking for a purple plastic folder!" he exclaimed. Our son had just offered to take us to look up the historic homestead, and Howard was searching for computer data our daughter-in-law had researched and given to us several years ago.
When his hunt was unsuccessful, I remembered some makeshift files of my own. The leather volumes I was thinking of were boxed in a storage closet, which I didn't want to go through, but in looking through some keepsake papers in a flimsy pocket file, I caught a glimpse of the words, "United States Census, 1900 for George F. Summers," at the top of something official looking. Other pages included a historic map and location of the townships in a county west of here. Howard's eyes grew wide as I nonchalantly pushed the papers in front of his face while he was on the computer.
"Since it's rainy, do you think Greg will really want to go?" I mumbled sleepily to my groggy husband this morning, to which he responded, "Oh, yes, we are going," getting out of bed and checking the weather. Sure enough, our son was here at 8:00 a.m., despite my misgivings. Shortly we were on the road for our big adventure. Ever since we moved back to Oklahoma 6 years ago, Howard has had a fixation with re-visiting the land where his grandfather had staked his claim in the Cherokee Strip Land Run in 1893.
True, our maps showed the area and the different sections of land, one marked with the words, G.F. Summers, but it didn't show the names of the roads to get there. We had to stop at the courthouse for that. After going a few miles in the wrong direction, we got on the right path and found the roads marked on the courthouse map.
"What do you expect to see?" I asked my determined spouse. "A vacant field?" After all, after having been in the family 50 years, the property had been sold in 1943. His grandparents had raised 10 children there, and Grandpa George had lived there as a widower from 1917 until the time he made his home with his youngest son's family, Howard's parents.
I got my answer when we did indeed stand in a plowed field and Howard breathed deep and said, "I feel like I'm finally home!" A lump came in my throat, because I remembered feeling the same way when, in a genealogy search, a picture popped up of an old cemetery in Tennessee where my mother's ancestors were buried. I'd never been there, but seeing the terrain and hills of Mama's roots filled me with a sense of familiarity, and a poignancy I couldn't explain.
Our journey today ended in a cemetery, too, when we searched for the graves of his grandparents. We had no idea where to start looking, but as Greg and I wandered along a path, Howard suddenly cried out triumphantly from several rows over, "I found them!"
Suddenly the sun came out, and a beautiful day shone through the parted clouds, just in time to illuminate words on another tombstone: Cherokee Strip Land Run of 1893.
"That should be on your grandpa's headstone, too!" I said. Howard didn't seem to hear me. He was still back on the prairie a hundred years ago, visualizing a young couple pioneering a home in a tent, then cutting down trees on the property to make a log home, clearing the land and enduring hardships and losses to live out the dream of a plucky young man brave enough to ride hard in a race and claim a future for his family.
And I am a part of that future! I have been blessed with a husband who grew up with the same strong work ethic, sense of responsibility and integrity that has been carried on to our own children. God is faithful from generation to generation! He is the Road Map by which we chart our course. And when we have finished our race, we won't have to build a log cabin in glory land, because Jesus has gone before us to prepare us a dwelling, "that where I am, there you may be also," John 14:3. Then we'll be finally home!
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