This Blog is to reflect on a Family Legend or song or prank or something that is a part of our family that endures and is continued. Because my family is splintered in some ways, many of our family traditions and legends are not so old as in other families. My children made me a blanket for Christmas a few years ago and the blocks contain sayings or reminders of this old man. Some of them, like "shortcut", will have no meaning to others. To my family they are very much a part of who we are. I have chosen a tradition that is repeated year after year with my boys and now with their families. In the fall of the year, as the sunflowers reach their prime, we pick sunflowers and then we get on one knee and we sing " You are my Sunshine, My only Sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. You'll never know dear, How much I love you. Please don't take my Sunshine away."

This picture is a Teddy Bear Sunflower. It has multiple levels of importance. First, this tradition has caused my beautiful wife Lesa to become fascinated with sunflowers of all kinds. She grows many varieties each year and uses them to decorate about anything. This particular species was found in Cortes, Colorado on a family outing. It contains several layers of significance. These flowers are short and fluffy. The actual flower is very full and we have found that they only enjoy a couple of weeks of vitality. They also remind Lesa of a wonderful outing enjoyed with our kids and grand kids.

This particular species is called a Chocolate Sunflower. It is very large and as it matures, the leaves begin to take on brown colors and the seeds are a brown color as well. Anything that draws attention to sunflowers is a good thing. One year we decided to spread the joy so we went to several widows homes and sang for them after presenting a sunflower from each member of the family. Judging from all the smiles and tears of joy, I believe that it was a great success!

It has become so ingrained into our family fiber that the past few years my wife has received metal artistic sunflowers for Mothers Day. These are just a couple of ones she has been given. This tradition has so much meaning that it is most common to take sunflowers as the flower of choice to place on graves of family members that have passed away. Perhaps the reason that this has taken hold so strongly with my family is because of how much love there is for Lesa and when her family sees the joy this brings to her, they automatically want to repay all that she does for us by making her a little bit happier with a sunflower. Any way you look at it, this is a tradition that I hope lives on for many years in my family.

The  Legend of Graves Creek

            As a young man growing up on a dairy farm in Idaho, one of my favorite memories was when the chores were finished and we would end up in my grandmothers’ living room listening to my grandfather and my uncles and my father tell stories of their days gone by. Many of these stories were centered in a remote mountain valley called Graves Creek. My parents spent the summer there when they first got married and it is possible that I came to be there as well.

There was no home for my parents so they slept in a granary. The story is told of how they would drive the old cat tractor well into the night and being newlyweds with nothing else to do my mother would end up riding on the tractor with my dad. Instead of headlamps as we now have, there were head lanterns on this tractor and they put out a much less focused beam of light. The result was that they often reflected off the eyes of any wildlife that was near the tractor.

The story goes that there was a cougar that seemed fixated on following them around and keeping them in constant fear. Eventually the cougar would win out and they would park the tractor for the night and go sleep in the granary.

For many years this mountain valley remained a mystery to me and all I had was visions created in my mind. This summer my eyes were opened! My wife and I ended up staying in a condo in Lava Hot Springs thanks to a dear friend. One day we decided to take another back road and drove past Chesterfield Reservoir on a little dirt road that took us through the Fort Hall Indian Reservation. To say that this was just a little dirt road was probably an exaggeration! Two lines drawn in the dirt might be more accurate. This road led us up through a mountain valley that was mostly sage brush and grass on the bottom with the Portnuef creek running down the bottom. As the mountain got higher you could see trees engulfed with the colors of autumn. There was an old abandoned home in the middle of no where that offered false hope that we might be approaching civilization. Not true. The road continued on forever.

Just as we were about to declare ourselves lost we came upon an older gentleman leaning upon his pickup, parked on the side of the trail. Out of desperation, I pulled over and asked if he knew how to get to Graves Creek. He asked why I wanted to go there. When I replied that it was a place of historical value to my family. His reply stunned me. “What are you? A Womack?” I answered that I was and he said that he knew my grandparents and my great-grandparents. How cool was that?! He gave us directions and we eventually found ourselves on Grave Creek Road. There in the middle of this desolate little valley stood an old granary. There were not trees as I had pictured in my mind but rather a light covering of grass with very few sage brushes growing out across this barren valley. Family had lived her for months at a time.

It was not how I had pictured it but I could hear the stories echoing in my brain as we stopped to take pictures of that building and any other building in the valley. The next step of the journey was to see just how far it would have been to drive the cattle home at the end of the season to spend the winter in more developed settings. That day we drove well over one hundred miles on dirt and gravel until we eventually came out of the mountain and drove into Blackfoot Idaho. Once there it was impossible to pass by the cemetery without stopping to see the grave sights of those amazing ancestors who had the strength and fortitude to endure these hardships just to provide for family. The legend had become real!