Graveside

We arrived in Bennington, Idaho, on Thursday night after a fun but long Wednesday. It was nice to see everyone again, and it was fun to watch my daughters so easily fit with their big cousins.

Ah, those big cousins. Kayleigh went along with James and Daniel to do some errands. She said it was the most fun she'd ever had running errands. James, I'm told, is almost as crazy a driver as I am. Later, we took turns on James's motorcycle, which, fortunately, doesn't go very fast, but it does go through ditches quite nicely. And after that it was time to go shootin' in the orchard. We blew Mountain Dew out of trees, at which point, Kayleigh was feeling like she never wanted to go home again.

Kelsey was a bit more sedate, choosing to make bead jewelry after she burned her leg on the motorcycle. She regrets not going shooting now, but at the time, her leg really hurt.

More family arrived later, and it was getting to be quite the reunion. I told Lee, my sister-in-law, that it bugged me it took Clint's death to get us all together, then I started to cry. She said that's the way it always is, which I suppose is true. But Clint would have enjoyed himself with everyone around, and it just reinforced what a raw deal he got.

The next day was the graveside service, and Lee was very nervous. I just hoped I could keep it together. One look at the hole in the ground and a rock with my brother's name on it and that was blown to hell. I wandered toward some trees away from the group and started tearing up. The harder I tried to stop, the more I cried. Kelsey came over and held my hand and rubbed my back, the sweet thing, so I just blubbered.

After mostly composing myself, I turned back to the assembly to find the small kids peering into the hole and shouting about how deep it was, and one of them took a seat and dangled his legs in, ready to jump. I thought it was kind of funny, but the parents of those involved did not.

Lee's sister Lyona offered a shoulder, literally. She said if I needed someone, I should just go stand shoulder to shoulder and we'd hold each other up. Then she pressed into me, and we held each other, shoulder to shoulder, our eyes getting red and drippy.

I won't say too much about the service itself. Mostly because I can't remember what people said, but I do remember it was quite nice. Lee spoke about their courtship, marriage, and family and some about Clint's last day. Each of Clint and Lee's kids did their part. Daniel sort of ran things, Sarah said a lovely prayer, Ben consecrated the ground and James lowered the box, which he had to drop because the hole was so deep. After that, I sprinkled some Wisconsin dirt over the box, and that was pretty much the end of it. Ah, the bishop was there, too, but he didn't say a lot.

We took some pictures, then went back to Lee's for food. Lee's cousin Susan brought her scooter over for people to ride. Kayleigh took it around the back yard a bit, but didn't venture onto the streets. I gave Lee's nephew Cole a ride. Cole was hilarious. He held on so tight and giggled as soon as we got going. At the end, he proclaimed, "I was brave!" My sister Martha has a scooter story now, too, but that's hers to tell.

I slipped away to Lyona's house around the corner for a visit with Lee's sister Jackie and her partner Dorothy. When we met last December, I felt an instant bond with them, and it was nice to have some quiet time together.

The evening was spent in front of a fire pit just talking and enjoying each other. After a while, a couple of neighbor friends stopped by and talked about their time in Russia farming. The man, whose name I can't remember, asked Kayleigh where she was. She gave her 14-year-old "huh?" as a response. He said, "Are you pre-mission, post-mission, married, high school...." She said, "Um...." So Lee asked her where she'd like to do her mission, which also got an "um." I said she'd like to go to Pixar. In the dark after a day like that, it wasn't the place to explain our nonconforming ways. We just had a laugh and moved on.

And that was pretty much it. On Sunday, we shared a pancake breakfast, then, for the most part, went our separate ways. The girls and I went on to Boise to visit a friend of Kayleigh's for a few days. Much of my family went to Salt Lake City, but my sister Cynthia headed to Las Vegas where she won $1,000 on a penny machine. Nice.

Have credit card, will travel

Home again, home again.

In the last 12 days, I've stayed at six different motels, and I can tell you, you get what you pay for. I don't need a fancy room, but crickets in the bathroom and mattresses that have seen more action than Hugh Hefner start pushing up the sphincter factor.

Speaking of sphincter factors, my brother (the live one) came down with a nasty case of E. coli a few days ago. His stay in the frontier has been prolonged while he recovers. I have never seen a man – and he is a big, strong man – vomit with such force, intensity and length. The poor guy.

I think the next time I travel, instead of noting license plates from different states and provinces, I'm going to keep track of museums. There are a lot of museums in the world, and some are truly bizarre. Like the Danish Immigrant Museum. The SPAM museum. Or the Bob Feller Museum. Who the heck is Bob Feller? Why does he need his own museum? Ever been to the Museum of the Fur Trade? Or the Museum of the Mountain Men? I haven't.

Anyway, I'm tired.

Way Out West

Greetings from the land of Larry Craig, who is not and never has been gay.

On our way to bury my brother, the XX-chromosome van wound its way through Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming and Idaho. Soon we'll be on our way to Utah. We shared the road with about 500,000 bikers on their way to Sturgis.

South Dakota is still my favorite. I like the lumpy hills in the east and the Black Hills in the west, and the Badlands are fun to jump around in and so alien.


My mom always told me she hated the Badlands. I could never understand why, and when we got there, she said, "I've never been here before." She doesn't know what she thought of as the Badlands, but she had the wrong place in mind. I don't know how much she enjoyed it, but she was interested at least for a little while. Kelsey and I could have stayed all day.

I was worried about my mom. She's 83, overweight, can hardly walk, and was terrified she was going to die getting out here. She didn't want to do anything fun, but when I said that meant driving through Nebraska, she changed her mind.

She might change it back after driving through Wyoming. I was fortunate the last time we drove through Wyoming, as it was dark much of the time. Wyoming is mile after mile of a nearly unchanging landscape. Ugh. It's interesting at first because it's so vast and so different from anything at home. But after several hours of hills and sagebrush, it gets pretty dull. At least in Nebraska there are cities and traffic. Wyoming is just desolate.

Take, for example, Lost Springs, Wyoming.


The last time we went through here, the population was 4. I wonder what happened.

Anyway, we also hit Wall Drug, Mt. Rushmore and Custer State Park while in South Dakota. When I was a kid, the Wall Drug bumper stickers said, "Where the HELL is Wall Drug?" Now they say "heck" instead.

Kayleigh ragged about going to Mt. Rushmore. She wasn't too impressed when she saw it when she was younger and hated how touristy it was. My niece Estelle, however, said it was the most exciting thing she'd done all year. I had always wanted to see it as a kid, and my brother Clint, the dead one, said, "It's just a big rock." I guess now I think it's interesting to see, nowhere I'd need to return to, and nowhere I'd really spend a lot of time. I'm glad Estelle got to see it, and my sister, too. My mom stayed in the car.

We drove past the Crazy Horse monument. It's not done, and they were going to charge us $27 to get in. We said no thanks and turned around.

The highlight of the day for me was driving through Custer State Park. We took the Needles Highway through some spectacular rock formations and fabulously twisty mountain roads. We saw loads of wildlife – buffalo, pronghorn, deer, prairie dogs. We had a picnic by a little lake, where Kelsey ate Fritos and a nasty Little Debbie cake and declared she was going to barf. She did not barf, thankfully.

Finding a place to stay was hard with all the bikers around. And because all the bikers were around, prices were jacked up. We drove and drove and drove, hoping to find a place cheaper down the road. We finally got on the phone to Eric at home who called every motel in every small town in southeastern Wyoming. We got gouged, but we got to sleep.

My mom was pretty beat, and I worried. But she seemed to recover pretty well over night. We arrived in Bennington, Idaho, the following evening, grateful to see our family.

And then the real fun began....

Out of Town

In approximately 35 minutes, I am headed to Idaho with my kids, my mom, my sister and my niece.

Normally, I enjoy getting out of town. This trip is to bury my brother. And it's a long drive with a lot of people. Pardon me if I'm a little bummed about the whole thing.