moment | Brad Barton

Grandpa was always willing to give good advice. He was very silent and reserved in an old country way, so when he said something everyone listened with more intensity. At a young age I became intrigued with the idea of growing up to be a cowboy just like my hero and grandpa.
It was in the same week that grandpa died when he sat by me on the old couch which was the very center of the old farm house that was built by my great great grandfather over a hundred years earlier. He spoke of his deep desires for me and my future. It was in that conversation that I learned of his own desire to be an accountant for a large firm in a big city. The dreams that he had as a child to leave our small town and work in an office were never realized. His life was a contrast to his dreams because his father advised him to stay on the ranch and carry on the responsibilities of the family business. At the end of our conversation he placed his fingers in my long red hair and told me to runaway from Alton, our small town, and go some place big and to become someone important. The desire for me to tell him of my dreams to become a cowboy remained a desire and not an action, and my secret is safe from him because the next time I saw him was at his funeral.
Years passed and I lost myself in the hard work of ranching in hopes of loosing the memory of my grandpa’s advice. When I began to develop a desire to be educated and important I would work harder to convince myself that I was a country boy and nothing more. The summers were filled with nights on the cattle trails; it was in those nights that I would feel the fear of being uneducated in a century where education is important. Perhaps he was right.
It was on an early Saturday morning of the year 2002. The frost had converted every thing into a world of beauty over night. Though all the other kids my age were doing Saturday activities like duck hunting and four-wheeling, I was moving cattle off the hill by the grave yard. The sound of distant four wheelers and hunting trucks turned my head to the small village from time to time, but I had work to do. I was a real cowboy, and to prove it I worked six days a week instead of five like all my lazy cousins who had plans to move to the city and acquire educated jobs anyway. They didn’t care about the traditions of the ranch, so I had to.
In the glistening of the bright frost I moved the cattle past the grave yard when something caught my attention. Through the tangled oak trees I could see my grandpa’s grave. Though I should have stayed with the heard, I left to visit the beaconing grave that lay beneath cold stretching branches. The frost on the headstone bothered me so I scraped it off with my hands so that I could read his name. In that moment I felt the last conversation with my grandpa come back into my mind. At first it bothered me but in seconds I felt a smile transform on my face. I felt free to leave the ranch and go to school or anything that I wanted. When I let the grave sight, I didn’t finish my job with the heard; instead I went hunting with my friends. As I attend school and look for intelligent jobs, I am thankful for the old frosted headstone that helped me remember a life changing conversation.