5 hours Ago By Terry Woster
My dad entered this world a few years after the Wright brother’s first successful airplane flight. Perhaps that’s one reason he had such a yearning to travel. When I think of my dad, I think of that song, “Far Away Places.
’’ Maybe you know of it. The one that goes “Far-away places, with strange sounding names, far away over the sea.’’ Bing Crosby used to sing it.
ADVERTISEMENT I think of Dad a lot this time of year. His birthday is Dec. 3, for one thing.
For another, he loved both Thanksgiving and Christmas, and he always made those holidays special. When I think of him, I remember his strong desire to learn about other places in the world. He turned 16 the year Charles Lindbergh flew the “Spirit of St.
Louis’’ across the Atlantic Ocean. Sixteen is just the right age to be captivated by such a solo flight, just the right age to develop a wanderlust that lasts for an entire life. As the song I mentioned says, “I want to see for myself, those far-away places I've been reading about in a book that I took from a shelf.
’’ Dad was born and raised on a modest farm in the middle of South Dakota, a few miles northeast of Reliance. As far as I know, he only left the place a couple of times as a young man — once to ride a rail car with his big brother to the Chicago World’s Fair and once to try to get hired on at the Homestake Gold Mine out west in Lead during the Depression. The whole country wanted work in those days.
Dad came home without a job in the mine, but he got to see the Black Hills. After he married and had children, he began taking his family to the Hills many summers once the grain harvest had been wrapped up. When I was growing up on the farm, I saw that Dad did a lot of his traveling in his mind and imagination.
Many evenings after work and supper, he sat in the living room and read. We didn’t have a television in the early days, so the books and magazines we bought and borrowed were his way of seeing those far-away places. He also did some traveling in the wildly creative bedtime stories he told us.
I wasn’t very old when we began taking short vacations and holiday excursions. One of the first I recall was in 1950 or 1951. Dad’s big brother George invited us to Kansas City for Thanksgiving.
I was 6, I think. “Silver Bells’’ played on radio stations across the country and in department stores and gift shops in downtown Kansas City. We drove home in a snowstorm that year, but I spent the trip remembering the big city.
I thought if I lived to be 100, I would never see a place as magnificent as Kansas City. Dad, even with the experience of having seen Chicago, said he agreed. ADVERTISEMENT We visited the Black Hills often.
My siblings and I pleaded to see the same sites and attractions each time. The folks seemed content to return again and again to Dinosaur Park and Rushmore and the like. A couple of times we toured the country, once heading east as far as Niagara Falls and returning through Canada, another time heading west to the Pacific coast.
I remember long, long days of driving as Dad concentrated on getting a certain number of miles down the road before stopping for the night. We usually stayed in, oh, call them inexpensive, roadside motels. We never made reservations, just drove a certain number of miles and started looking for “Vacancy’’ signs when we got to a town.
Sometimes, when Dad pushed the day too far, we got to a town late and really scrounged for a place with room for two adults and five kids. Those long driving trips took us from the farm for a couple of weeks at a time. For many evenings after our return, Dad sat in his chair in the living room with a far-off look in his eyes.
I’d like to see that again..
