Saturday, March 21, 2015

The Indian's Footprint

When I was young I spent a lot of time at my grandparent's house.  I recall one time my grandfather took me up the branch (small creek) past the old barn, outhouse and chicken pen to a fairly large rock  beside the water.  On the top of the rock was a depression shaped exactly in the shape of a foot without toes.  It had a clear heel and ball of the foot.

My grandfather told me it was an Indian's footprint.  Being quite young I believed him.  it was about half a century and a lustrum ago.  For those who did not watch the original "True Grit" with John Wayne, a lustrum is five years.  But, to this day I think of it as the Indian's footprint.

Over the years I have gone back to that rock again and again to just sit on it and look at the "footprint" and think in wonder about past times.  I have always thought I'd love to be able to see the country where I grew up before the white people came and, in their greed, destroyed many of the people who lived there and their way of life.

All of that is gone now, of course.  The old barn was torn down and cut up for fire wood.  They eventually put a bathroom in the old house.  The chicken lot was there until after I graduated from high school but where their garden was was leveled out and one of my older cousins built a house there.   If I remember correctly the back of that house is just about even with where the footprint rock is on the other side of the branch.

I've not been back there for well over thirty years now.  I'd kind of like to go back once before they discard my empty husk just to sit by the Indian's footprint and wonder again.

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