House and family built on a strong foundation

We recently returned from a trip "home" to Idaho.

I guess you've arrived, so to speak, when the family is featured in a mural at the regional airport singing amidst towering hay stacks on "A Magic Valley Christmas."

Perhaps arriving is when, as was the case at my sister's wedding Dec. 22, the entire Jerome Fire Department takes leave to attend the wedding and the bridal couple is shuttled from the church in one town to the American Legion Hall in another, in the fire engine.

Complete with lights flashing and police escort through town.

The Karel family in Idaho is akin to the old families in Northern Nevada. But until this trip, I never really thought about it.

The farm or "The Home Place" as the placard on the front door of the house now owned by my parents is the place we've always returned. Regardless of where Dad was working with Forest Service, home has always been the farm.

Uncle Francis built a home across the canal many years ago, and just last year leased the land so some young pup could work it and he could retire.

Farming is thankless, I think. It's something a person does because it's in their heart. Otherwise, who would show up for a job like that?

In 1937, my grandmother asked permission of her mother to leave Nebraska - where their families had lived since the 1880s - and go to Idaho with my grandfather and his two friends.

This is significant, because my grandmother was 27 and still unmarried - an old maid by those standards - and my grandfather was the "younger man."

Her mother gave her blessing and they set off in an old Model A, towing a tiny trailer on which Grandma, in her impeccable lettering had painted the words "Idaho or Bust."

That trailer sat in the garden until her passing about nine years ago, and is now at my aunt's, I believe.

Grandpa worked other people's land and sent the money back to his family in Nebraska, while Grandma worked at a farm keeping the house, cooking and so forth.

It was the Depression and every penny was important. They married in Nebraska that December and returned to Idaho where they began renting the farm we now call home, finally purchasing it in 1942.

Two years ago, my mom and aunts recorded an album, "The Karel Sisters Christmas at Home," that features a drawing by my grandmother of the original farmhouse.

The farm is not much to write home about. A simple, two-story clapboard with an outhouse. Mom tells stories of how, when the wind blew and it was snowing, they would wake to snow drifts in their shoes.

Trust me when I say Nevada wind is nothing compared to the stuff that blows through Southern Idaho. It's relentless and can go on, nonstop for weeks.

Grandpa finally built a new home there, but the outhouse still stands as a reminder of the past. The 300 acres was nothing but sagebrush and Grandpa had a horse and a plow, which he used to produce a functioning farm with a variety of crops.

He also raised cattle and had a Christmas tree farm that today is a mini-forest.

I imagine his first tractor purchase was both a milestone and a relief.

When we'd visit, Grandpa would get me to start the irrigation siphons, all hand done and requiring a particular technique. Otherwise, you drank a lot of canal water. Which I did.

He would allow me to "drive" the tractor up and down the field while he bucked hay bales on to the trailer. He must have put the tractor in first gear and let it plutz along, because my feet couldn't reach the peddles. I was really just steering. But what a lot of work.

But Grandpa never complained. Just got up with the chickens, came in for dinner, napped for two hours behind the sofa, then off again, until supper.

Grandma was busy cooking, keeping the orchards and garden in order, selling produce, berries and her paintings, canning, keeping house. She would work at Green Giant during pack.

Plus she was running the eight children to 4-H, school and church activities, and to performances when the girls had a gig booked. She would be crafting or creating greeting cards with beautiful calligraphy, painting, sewing. If she was sitting still and doing none of those things, she was praying the Rosary.

Amazing people these two, who left a legacy of family, faith, love, music, the rewards of working hard and of being in service to others. The seeds they sowed are still alive in each one of us, four generations later.

If creating something that powerful is not "arriving," then I don't know what is.

Peace and blessings to each of you in 2008.

• Karel Ancona-Henry can be reached at kanconahenry@sierranevadamedia.com or at 246-4000.