If I could just have one more day with you.  Just one day.

I'd hop in the pickup truck and sit on the seat next to you, reach up to that radio dial and turn it to KMER, even though I hated KMER growing up and all that country western music, I loved you and I'd put up with the AM twang again, since that's all we had to listen to anyway crossing the sagebrush.  But I'd do it.  

I'd crank that radio up and we'd drive over to Chase's Drive In and get a big tall Coke or a Sprite with lots of ice to go, and go driving around and just talk like we used to do, about stuff like why some things were stupid, some things were expensive and the rest were complicated.

I'd go over to the office with you, past Grandpa's house, and watch you with the slide rule and graph paper charting oil and gas well production, pretending not to notice all those pinups on the walls.  I'd go look at all the big dusty maps and breathe in the smell of old leather and oil fields. 

I'd want it to be Thursday, so you could get the ads from the Salt Lake Trib that came two hundred miles to your hands, watch as you went from section to section, news, business, sports, then the ads, plan what you were going to buy next trip down, toilet paper in bulk, Cashmere Bouquet on sale at Grand Central.

I'd watch the news with you when it came on, Walter Cronkite or Huntley-Brinkley, and be very quiet while we figured out what was going on in space, or Vietnam or Washington.  We could talk about the Kennedy assassination, or Watergate, and you could remind me how we watched the 1960 Democratic convention together on a black and white screen and you told me why we liked people who championed the underdog.

I'd want you to cook dinner, maybe fried hamburgers or Spanish rice, lots of Tabasco, and sit around the table and laugh.  Maybe we could skip doing dishes that night just so we could have more time together.  Maybe not.  If we couldn't, maybe you could stand there at the sink a bit while we just talked some more, or I could watch you make some homemade butter with cream you'd bought from a local rancher.

I'd hope there was a good movie on, North to Alaska, or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, or Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and sit down on the scratchy sofa to watch it on the blonde wood TV on the other side of the room.   Maybe Laugh-In would be on instead and we could laugh at Tricky Dick saying "Sock it to me?" or Goldie Hawn getting soaked.  We could eat some of Mom's good chocolate cake and maybe have some homemade ice cream.

I'd snuggle up alongside you and put my head on your arm, trying to keep my eyes open until the end.  When it was over, I'd want to shrink right down and get carried down the hallway to bed on your shoulders, like you always did, like you jitterbugged with me.

I'd want you to tuck me in and kiss me goodnight and tell me that everything would be okay.   Then I'd want you to still be there in the morning, so I'd know it would be.

I'd want hot homemade cocoa in the morning and Cream of Wheat, and sit there with you while the pickup was warming up outside in the cold, plugged in overnight.  I'd watch you put on your work overalls over your clothes, your heavy boots, your gloves, your coat, and know that hopefully you'd be home in a couple of hours after you checked the wells, take all that off again, go scrub up with Lava soap to get the oil off.

I'd want you to tell me where you'd been, what you'd seen, and why you'd gone away so soon.  I'd want to hold you close and never let go, smell the Brylcreem and Gilette Right Guard, feel the stubbly beard, touch the big hand, and listen.  

Then I'd close my eyes.

Thirty-one years ago this morning I got the call that Dad was gone. 

January 28, 1931 ~ June 9, 1979