Dirt and Memories
Today I wrote a check for $12.52, payable to the Bent County (Colorado) treasurer. This covers the yearly property tax on my portion of my grandfather Smith’s estate, of which I own two parts. However, $10 of the check goes to cover the filing fee. The actual taxes were $1.08 for one parcel and $1.44 for the other. It is unused, and almost unusable, dirt. Clearly, the Bent County Tax Assessor agrees, as reflected in the assessment.
My Dad died in 2008. My stepmother, May, inherited his property, including his interest in the Colorado land. May is in her nineties now and has outlived yet another husband, Cal, who died in 2022. Dad and May married in 1989, and I was the officiating minister. Not many men get to say they married their father, but I did! I married Dad to May.
Last year I contacted my stepsister, Debbie, May’s daughter from her first marriage, about the Colorado property. Debbie took May to a bank, where a notary public witnessed May’s signing of a “quit claim” deed, transferring Dad’s interest in the Colorado property to me. Previously, I had contacted my sisters, Debbie Heeren (not to be confused with my stepsister Debbie Florie), Gail Wentworth, and Crystal Smith to make sure they approved of me taking the property. No one objected. After all, it’s just worthless dirt.
In October 2022, Sarah and I visited the old farm, accompanied by cousins Lois, Sandy, Larry, and Betty (with spouses). The cistern is lost under the sand. The house is falling down. It had been relatively wet recently, so the ground was sprinkled with weeds. To the untrained eye, there not much there.
We cousins had memories of the farm. Betty lived there for a time in the 1950s. Lois remembered sitting on the porch steps as a punishment (before the invention of “time out”—Grandma Smith was ahead of her time). Sarah called Uncle Don while we were there; he made comments on things as they were when he was a boy eighty years ago.
The next day Sarah and I visited Hasty Friends Church. I had worshiped there before, on family visits in 1967 and 1970. Fifty-two years between visits! The Hasty Friends welcomed us to a potluck meal after church. Sarah and I met a woman who remembered Sunday School class taught by Grandma. Grandma died in 1975, so that memory is also five decades old. We also met a man who remembered riding the school bus with Uncle Don, a memory which probably dates to 1945 or 1946—seventy-five years ago!
My cousin Kathy, who was not able to join us for the reunion, has a dream of somehow uniting the ownership of the property in one name. Then we could build a memorial to pioneers, or we could erect a sign with our grandparents’ names. Maybe we’ll get it done. After all, the dirt is worthless. The memories matter.
