A Message from Dad

I was just finishing the morning chores when Mom called. The cows had been turned out to pasture, and the rabbits, chickens, turkeys, pigs, and horses were all fed. The three cans of milk holding our usual twenty-six gallons were on the trailer ready to be taken to the creamery.

I was fifteen years old then, and it was 1936, one of the hard years for our big family of thirteen and one on the way. We lived west of Boise, Idaho, on a forty-acre farm. One of my brothers was on a mission, and eight of us were in school. The rest were home keeping Mom busy.

Mom said, “Jay, I’ll have to keep you out of school today so you can hitchhike to the PFE shops and give this letter to your father. It’s very important or I wouldn’t ask you to do it.” The Pacific Fruit Express shops made up a repair station for railroad engines and cars two miles south of Caldwell, Idaho. My father worked there to supplement the family income.

Mom handed me the envelope. It must have been a matter of extreme seriousness to justify keeping me out of school even for one day. “I’m sorry to do this, Jay,” she said, “but there isn’t any other way to get this letter to him.” She couldn’t call Dad because there were no telephone lines to the farm; we didn’t even have electricity.

The place where Dad worked was eighteen miles away. I walked the mile and a half to the highway in the beautiful, early summer air and soon had a ride to Nampa. Walking through town to the outskirts, I got another ride that brought me to the dirt road leading to the gate of the PFE shops. I stepped out of the car, thanked the driver, and began the quarter-mile walk to the gate, surveying as I walked the place Dad had so often talked about—the place that made him so dirty and so tired, the place of work that Mom had said was so important to our large family.

With a wave of new understanding I thought, This is why Dad is only with us evenings and Saturdays and Sundays. This is why it’s Mom who teaches us how to milk cows, to shock hay and grain, to irrigate, to harness the team and make fences, to build a brooder coop, and, in short, to run a farm. This is why Mom is so good at teaching us the gospel and telling us Bible and Book of Mormon stories while we work with her. Dad was here. And it was important and hard.

As I approached the gate, I could see huge buildings skirting both sides of the many railroad tracks and stretching far to the north and south. The sound was deafening: railroad cars banging into each other as they were hooked together, steam blasting out in peculiar patterns, signal bells clanging, horns honking, air hammers and rivet guns sending piercing shock waves through the air.

Suddenly a loud siren went off, startling me, and all the other sounds died away. It was noon—lunch time. Men appeared from all over and I could hear hundreds of voices. How will I ever find Dad in all of this? I wondered.

I entered the gate and walked toward the closest work area I saw, thinking I might find someone there to ask for directions. There were huge stacks of bulkheads (walls for refrigerator and box cars) and thick decks that were used for boxcar floors, all forming an open circle.

When I rounded the end of the high stacks and looked across the clearing, I froze quietly where I stood. I recognized Dad immediately. There was not another soul in sight. In a world of our own, it was just Dad and me, and for all time I am thankful for what I saw. He was sitting on the ground with his back to the bulkheads, legs stretched out, hat lying at his side. With open lunch pail between his knees, hands folded in his lap, and head bowed, he was speaking thanks to God for what He was giving him—and for many other things, I’m sure, because of the time it took and the feeling I had.

I stood silent and watched intently while the message sank deep within me: There’s nobody here for him to prove anything to. Dad really does believe. When he finished and looked up, he saw me at once. A humble smile spread over his face, and as I approached him tears welled up in his eyes. “Well, Jay, it’s so nice to see you,” he said. “Come and sit down, son.”

To this day I don’t know what the message was that I delivered to Dad, but I’ve never forgotten the one he gave me.