A Peak at the Future

Across the highway from his grandfather's house was a water tower, about 250 ft. high. The tower was located on top of a rolling hill. It was nearing suppertime, but he grabbed his jacket and zipped his cell phone into the pocket. The sun was moving lower in the west, and he started climbing the tower anyway. He climbed fast, not because he was in a hurry, but because he always moved quickly, trying to get any and every activity finished.

When he reached the top of the tower, he was happy he had his jacket because the wind was chilly as he climbed above the ground. He gave a sigh and began looking around. Near the horizon from the west to the south, he caught glimpses of the Elkhorn River as it angled southwest to join the Platte. To the northwest, he could not see very far over the hilly Northeast Nebraska countryside, so he was unable to see the town where he was born and went to school, the town where his younger brother had died. He could not see where he had spent his past.

He turned clockwise and could imagine Sioux City straight north behind the hills once called "Indian Country." He could follow the bluffs of the Missouri River from the horizon in the north to Omaha in the south. He knew the bluffs marked the border of Nebraska and Iowa.

As he looked south, he estimated Omaha to be about 30 miles away, if one could travel in a straight line. The town of Fremont, where he was practice teaching, was along the Platte River Plain to the right of Omaha. He again looked toward Omaha and saw the three towers of red lights, now beaming in the twilight, that stood side by side in the northwest part of the city.

Unknowingly, he was looking at his future. The edge of Omaha, in line with the three lit towers, is where his sister would live after she married and had two children. The town of Fremont is where he and his future wife (though he did not yet know her) would start their family. He did see where the hills of Omaha dropped to a valley to the west of Omaha. The western-most bluff was several miles from the Missouri, and hovered above both the Elkhorn and the Platte. It held the home to which he, his wife and two sons would move and love. It was a view he would see many times after he learned to fly and become a flight instructor. He could not see what would happen at the foot of the bluff near the Elkhorn River.

Looking down, he saw his grandfather had arrived home with supper. He used his cell phone and told "Grandpa" to go outside and look up at him. Then it was time to climb down the water tower.

What he would not have seen at the top of the tower when he was looking at Omaha, at the light towers, at Fremont, and at the Western end of the bluffs, was a hillside just north of his bluff area home. It was a cemetery that was tucked into the side of the bluffs. It was the place where he would be remembered and memorialized in just a little more than twenty years.