“There IS a God”

It’s Memorial Day Weekend in the year of 2010. We spent six hours of yesterday cruising across our great state of Oregon in a hybrid car containing three people, three dogs and sacks full of various sorts of travel things, peanuts and potato chips and bottled water and books to read. “Don’t forget the A&W” adds Dell and every so often I’d have to ask the folks “are you sick of me?” and the reply comes with giggles and a loud "Yes!” And so it goes.Richland Oregon, our place of rest, population 200 or so sits close to Eagle Creek. The neighbors next to the homey, but undeniable double-wide, tend the lawn and garden so when we arrived it is laid out, and sprouting the first yields of rich and well tended garden beds. Smokey rolls of hills cascade out in every direction, house free, tree free, sunny and quiet expanses that once were full of buffalo and the Natives of America. My great Grandma White came to this place on the wagon train as a young girl. “She trailed behind the wagon train” mom explains, as she cleans out the refrigerator freezer still in her bathrobe.  Family lore is that “and some Native Americans came toward her and she was hustled back to the wagon train. And she probably got in trouble,” mom chuckles. My great, great grandma called Lizzy “was a cutie” mom says. “She never left her bedroom without being fully dressed, had nine children and worked from four in the morning until sunset.” She married Walter Saunders. “He had this gravelly voice, it was really hard for me to understand him, deep, low, gravelly voice.”In thanks to the neighbors who tend the yard and garden so meticulously, the folks pick up four big pizzas from Papa Murphy’s on our way through Baker City and cook them up for a neighborhood Pizza feed.  The picnic table in the yard, with assorted chairs, and everyone comes with something to add to the table.This year Diane, who is the granddaughter of Grandma and Grandpa Saunders and daughter of my Uncle George and Aunt Clara asked that we all take a turn introducing ourselves to every one since there were some people she didn’t know. Earlier in the day sitting across from me in the living room, Diane explained that her husband Don had received a bone marrow transplant twenty years ago. He had Lymphoma. They lived in Seattle for three months while his clean bone marrow was harvested and when the lymphoma returned, they gave him a transplant with it. It was encouraging to hear this account of someone who had survived for years. Later during the tell-your-story-time, Uncle Jr. the youngest son of Great Grandma and Grandpa Saunders told the story of the day the doctor told Walter Saunders that he had six weeks to live. Twenty years later W.S. happened upon the obituary of said Doctor and had a big smile on his face for having outlived the man who had given him a death sentence that he did not abide.There were thirteen or so people huddled around the pizza feed on this slightly sunny Sunday sharing their stories of how they ended up in Richland.  Toward the very end of the group sat Steve and Sam. “I’m not related to anyone in Richland,” said Steve. And then he began to offer up the story of how he met Sam.While Steve was in law enforcement it was known that a large truck and trailer full of booze had been stolen (allegedly at the hands of two Native American men). As the story goes, they took the trailer up into the hills along with a tractor with a back hoe and a plow.  They dug a hole big enough to bury a truck and trailer and then they drove that truck and trailer into the big hole they’d made and buried it in dirt. Mom thinks the trailers at the time had wood on the side and opened on the top. One day Sam, who was hunting illegally for a dear, stumbled upon a bottle. He opened in and smelled it and it and discovered it was black berry brandy. Just below that bottle, he found another one and said he raised his hand with the first bottle in it and said “there IS a God!” He spent a lot of time, at night, digging up his treasure. Steve said, “Sam didn’t feel bad about it because he didn’t steal it, he found it.” Steve searched for Sam for years and years and even the FBI was involved but they couldn’t nab him. When Steve retired from the service and moved to Richland and met up with Sam one night he said “I’ve been looking to nab you for so long!” Sam says he never sold an ounce “but I had a lot of friends.” Steve added, “Sam and his friends partied for ten years and never spent a dime." As Sam recalls he came up with 700 cases of booze. He hid it near his house. “There IS a God”Good neighbor Sam died this week - 8/18/15