The Green Hill

It had been twenty years since I had been back to the family farm outside Bayard, Nebraska. My daughter was five years old and I felt she needed to spend some time with her great Grandparents. We spent several days on the farm when I asked my grandfather if we could drive to my father’s old farm near Hemingford, Nebraska. It had rained for several days prior and the clay dirt roads were a slick mess but my grandfathers Oldsmobile 88 cruised along quite nicely. The old one room schoolhouse where I attended first through fourth grade was now a wheat field. All trace was gone except for a lone tree that I remembered standing next to the school house.  A few miles away we stopped in front of the farm which brought back faded memories from my childhood. It was time to head back towards Bayard but we took an alternate route via a 30 mile dirt road that my father would take us on to visit my grandparents. The area is flat and quite barren except for the small farms between open rangeland. As we took a bend I noticed a hill in the distance that stood out as a green island of trees. I asked my grandfather what he knew about the place. He told me that there was at one time a family farm house on the hill. That the whole family played musical instruments and would have impromptu dances at their house. Youth from all over would make their way to socialize, sing and dance and how he and his brother would ride one of the plow horses from their farm to the hill with the hope of meeting some girls and how they would spend hours having the best time. They would also get into a lot of trouble with my great grandfather as the plow horse was usually too tired to work well the next day. This green oasis was a place of joy and gathering and I could feel the amazing good energy of that hill. I always thought it would be a special piece of property to own.  Hemingford, Nebraska

Elmer Hood (1911-2010) at age 16