Before you knew him, he slept in the fields where he and his family worked, just a few yards from the road. The wind blew hard during those harvest days, especially there on the plains. What they were harvesting didn’t matter; it wasn’t their crop, and they were hungry. During a depression like that, a man couldn’t be picky about how and where he worked.  
	
He watched the Model Ts [i]put-put-put[/i] on by, loaded with furniture as their occupants escaped to the coast. Supposedly there’d be work there, and they could save enough money to buy better lives. 
	
He wouldn’t escape to California; too many family members lived right there in Sedgewick County. In that time and part of the country, family took precedence over all things except Jesus and farming. In his case, the three often intertwined.    

No, he would stay there for a long time. All he could do was gaze out over the plains, eyes squinting as the dust smacked against his head and obscured the setting sun. The harvest moon would be rising soon, glowing orange against the dark night. 
	
Work would begin again at sunrise. For now though, he could stare up at the sky, dreaming of a better world. 

[hr]
	
Ten years before you were born, he’d found himself occupying former Nazi territory (I think it was Nuremburg, or maybe Cologne). He’d been one of the fortunate soldiers, keeping towards the sidelines of the war and getting no serious injuries.
	
On one of those streets, he looked around with a vague uneasiness. Two years ago, the Americans fired artillery shells straight into the town. Now, the citizens wandered about with other things on their minds, ignoring the destruction that still riddled their streets. 
	
At a street light, he paused. He reached into his left pocket and fished around for the Attikahs he’d bummed off a friendly officer. With a quick strike of a match and a steady hand, he soon breathed a warm and wonderful smoke into his lungs.
	
He closed his eyes, and images of home filled his mind. 

The silent plains, when the wind stopped blowing and the dust finally settled. 

The golden grain fields that covered all of Southern Kansas. 

The open spring sky, where not even one cloud dotted the eternal aqua that hung above him.  
	
He opened his eyes and looked out at the shattered metropolis before him. At that moment, he knew only one Eternal Truth: he could not live amongst these concrete tombstones any longer. 
	
He stood there for a few minutes more, breathing in rhythm with the low wind that snaked through the bombed-out ruins. Then he wandered back towards Command, counting the days until the journey home.  

[hr]
	
When you were seven years old, he took you, your mother and your siblings on a Christmas trip to Oklahoma. Some distant cousins had invited the family to their homestead, so you all piled into the faded 1962 Chevy that sat in your driveway. Familiarity had bred boredom, so you and the rest of the children were eager to get somewhere away from home.  
	
For the first few hours, the wind whooshing past the car provided the only noise. But maybe an hour or two after you crossed the state line, he turned on the radio just as a new song began. I don’t know if it was “Jingle Bells” or “White Christmas”, but whatever it was, he started singing to it. He didn’t have an especially grand voice, but he held the notes well enough in a rough baritone. 
	
Then your mother joined, her smoother voice mellowing the harmony. 

Then you and the siblings hopped in. By some Christmas miracle, the resulting cacophony didn’t throw the adults off their rhythm.  

You sang along that empty highway, your voices the only thing resounding in that darkness. And when the song was done, you all laughed, giddy at the merriment that permeated your souls. In the dark rearview mirror, you could just make out the grins that filled his and your mother’s faces. You smiled back, as did the rest of the children. 

The smiles persisted as you sped down that dark road, until you and your siblings fell asleep. Your father stayed awake the whole night, guiding the car into the eternal darkness that hid the better world from his sight. 

But he would make sure the rest of you were there in the morning.