Fwd: The Blacksmith

So......Dad worked with steel all his life. After the war, he and another man opened a Smithy in Firth, Idaho. I came along 10 years later and life began in Pocatello, where T.L. "Buzz" Tracy was Superintendent at Gate City Steel, a huge fabrication facility. A land of agriculture, mostly potatoes, sugar beets, and phosphate fertilizer, all being the dynasty of the potato King, J.R. Simplot. At the end of his life, Buzz was a blacksmith again, playing songs on his anvils and hammers supported by McNaughton's whiskey in the Quonset behind where he retired in Soda Springs. Home of the natural soda geyser that he capped and regulated with a timer, which goes off every hour on the hour. One can witness this out the back door of Stockman's Bar after having a drink with Buzz, telling war stories....

Buzz could do amazing things with steel, much like a master carpenter with wood. It was so easy for him to throw a welder in his truck and fix a farmer's harvest machine, or snowmobile in return for a bottle and a key to a gate to some of the best stream fishing and hunting on the planet. He had an impressive ring of keys as well a cases of McNaughton's in the Quonset. Listen to the anvils sing....

Dad had 144 medics in his command. When the U.S. stormed into Germany, he and his medics were the first into the death camps. After the war, he would go into bouts of crying where my mother would tell him to "be a man." Mom was a self absorbed and often heartless woman. Dad drank and worked himself to an early death. I miss him as I look at his picture, above my monitor. I am so very grateful he is in me, more so than mother.

As I visited him a few months before his death, 30 below wind chill on the flats of Southeast Idaho, he was a wisp of a man wearing his familiar Red Wing work boots to give him stability. (to this day, my sister wears those boots around the house) He and I spent hours talking about his life. I bundled him up and drove him around town. Visiting old friends of his as he "showed off" his youngest son. The hippie kid from Seattle. Most of these folks were "good Mormons" , as he and I were born into that. Dad pulled us out of the church as he did not agree with the straight and narrow path they prescribed. Two of his brothers were Bishops and he loved them, but told them to "Fuck Off" when they would take another run at him. He spoke his common sense voice, which always made common sense to me. I know I channel him as I show up in the world. I feel him. Feel him now as I write.

I remember hunting once with him. Sitting on some rocks, eating a sandwich with our vest bags full of Sage Hen. As we ate, he took out an ordinary slingshot, and took the head off a grouse that was sitting 20 feet away. His ammo was half-inch steel slugs, punched out from quarter inch steel plate. He was lethal with a slingshot. Over the years, I always sent him the latest technology, as he had a variety of Wrist Rockets and the like. His favorite was a pistol grip I sent him. It had a rubber condom looking chamber that would hold a few or more BB's, which gave it a shotgun effect. He would sit on his deck with a mouthful of BB's and wait for the neighborhood cats to come around the can of Tuna. He and McNaughton's......

It has been just over 12 years now since his passing. I went to the New Warrior Weekend 3 weeks after his death. He came to me there on Sunday, in the darkness. He came to me last night in the darkness of the Lodge I attended with the Squaxin. He always hugs me from behind when we sing the "calling in" songs. I am so very grateful for his presence of Spirit for I know his works through me as many others. I never saw him cry until the end. I played him a song on my CD player, headphones on his head. Father And Son, by Cat Stevens. He asked to hear it again and we both cried, but just briefly. And then he told for the first time in his life, "I love you Son."


I love you Dad,

StevenLoon "Knothead"