September 23, 2024

Famoda Farm is off the beaten track, even for this area, which is saying something. But a scenic country drive for some might be a dreary, monotonous trek through the middle of nowhere for others.

The farm is a 300-acre homestead owned by the Brown family. William and Minnie Brown bought the land in 1945. “Famoda” comes from the first two letters of father, mother, and daughters. We read that over the years the Brown daughters, Shirley, Doris, and Heather took pride in every blue ribbon they won. At one point Shirley was the Shorthorn Princess, and Doris was named American Angus Queen.

Last week we saw the Famoda booth at the Greenville farmer’s market and stopped to hear the pitch. The friendly young woman stood in front of a display of the farm’s products, but didn’t try to sell. Instead she handed us a brochure. “Come out and see us, we’re in Taylors,” she said with a smile.

A few days later we drove up to Taylors. The farm is out in the sticks, about a 25-mile hike that seemed much farther. It was dreary and drizzling, but we found the place.  The road wound past large lots and wide pastures where cattle grazed. We passed a sign, “Entering Tigerville,” then found the farm a mile farther along.

We drove up the gravel driveway and looked around. We saw no one else and stepped into the “Farm to Table” shop. The place offered grass-fed beef and pork, non-pasturized milk and yogurt, local honey, jams, preserves. The inventory would appeal to the clientele of some hip urban health-food bistro. But this was down-home Upstate South Carolina. We browsed, the only customers, and bought a few things.

The lady at the register was happy to chat. She urged us to walk the property and see the animals penned in a nearby barn, the events venue, the ice-cream shop. “There’s a wonderful meat ‘n three just a couple of miles from here,” she offered.

Having lived in the South for a long time, I know a meat ‘n three is country for a local place where you tuck into your fried steak, fried chicken, or fried fish and a couple or three sides. “You mean the Hungry Drover?” I asked. “That’s it,” she said, smiling. “My daughter took me a while back, she said have the fried flounder, so I did. It was delicious.”

I wandered over to the barn. A half-dozen straw-lined pens were home to a couple of well-fed pigs, a dozen goats, some cows and donkeys. The pigs and goats pushed their faces through the slats and stared at me and whined, as if asking me to let them out.

A fence crossed a wide pasture where cattle grazed. Another barn stood a couple of hundred yards off, framed against the North Carolina Blue Ridge. The hazy rounded peaks extend northeast toward Asheville and northwest toward the far end of the state where the tall mountains rise, eventually becoming the Great Smokies.

It’s pretty country, an alluring quality of Upstate. But then, this is South Carolina. Slaves worked this land 160 years ago. Reconstruction brought years of racial violence and Jim Crow.

That was about it. We headed for the Hungry Drover, which I know is popular, the parking lot is always full. I had stopped there once and picked up a sandwich. It was lunchtime, we got lucky and found a spot. The name taps into the local cattle-raising business, which is all over that part of the county.

We’ve been to Hungry Drover-type places a hundred times. The tables are fitted with black-and white crisscross tablecovers. The patrons enjoy the meat ‘n three menu: chicken fried steak with sausage gravy; grilled smoked sausage and onions, peppers, and potatoes; a pulled pork plate; hamburger steak, onions, and gravy. You could also have tomato pie and bacon tomato pie. Then too, the fried flounder.

We went off-menu and got sandwiches. The place was packed but strangely quiet, serene, even. No large-screen TV hung on the wall broadcasting ESPN or Fox. Patrons, young and old, chatted. The crowd was a mix, women in jeans, guys wearing ballcaps and workshirts, white-haired seniors. A few folks in button-down shirts and dresses stood out. This is farm country, but the suburbs are encroaching, bringing subdivisions and mini-mansions.

Years ago we would visit the Cowan Café in Sandy’s hometown in Franklin County, Tennessee. It was the Hungry Drover of that time and place, the meat ‘n three, the good coffee, the good company, the sense that the world might be complicated somewhere else, but here and now things were okay. You had the same mix of farmers, truckers, and folks from up the street.

Her parents moved away from Cowan, we stopped going. The Cowan Café closed, now it’s a Mexican takeout. But the same kind of place springs up elsewhere, in the next town, in any town. Back east and up north, I think of Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, diners are everywhere, everyone goes, you hear Spanish, Italian, Arabic. The menus offer everything, steak, pasta, pizza—and your basic meat ‘n three. It’s the Hungry Drover in another place.

I wondered about the politics of the place. South Carolina is hard-core red Republican, one of the seven Congressional districts is Democratic. Yet six weeks before the election, Trump signs are scarce. In 2016 I drove across Pennsylvania, every barn advertised for Trump. Same in 2020 in backstate Virginia. Months ago he put on a rally in nearby Pickens. But since then, quiet.

Maybe the folks at Hungry Drover, and the crowd is probably similar every day, are thinking about other things. The bass tournament at Lake Hartwell is always big, now we’re in football season, high school games are a big deal, so is Clemson. The state economy is booming. Yankees are crowding in, buying big homes in new subdivisions.

It’s still quiet out in Taylors and Tigerville, the roads are near-empty, the cattle are grazing. The Brown family is still selling their grass-fed beef and pesticide-free eggs. Visitors like us drift in, look at the animals, stop at the ice cream shop. Then, if they’re up for a square meal, they may head for the Hungry Drover. Meat ‘n three sounds good.

September 16, 2024

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001 I planned to be at the Pentagon for an afternoon meeting. About 9:30 that morning I was in Woodbridge, about 25 miles south of Washington, D.C. I was working at home then, and stopped at the Post Office. A news bulletin reported a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers.

At 7:59 American Airlines Flight 11 left Boston bound for Los Angeles. About 15 minutes later five hijackers attacked and killed one passenger and overpowered and possibly killed the pilot and first officer. At 8:24 Boston air traffic control picked up a transmission from the plane’s intercom: “We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you’ll be okay.”

At 8:46 the plane hit the World Trade Center’s North Tower. United Airlines Flight 175, also from Boston en route to Los Angeles, struck the South Tower at 9:03. At 9:37 American Fight 77, which took off from Washington, hit the Pentagon. United Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania at 10:02.

When I got home from the Post Office Sandy, our kids, and a niece had called, trying to find me before I left for the Pentagon. I turned on the TV and watched 9/11 coverage for three days.

On September 14th, President George Bush visited Ground Zero. He placed his arm around the shoulder of firefighter Bob Beckwith. He said, “I want you all to know that America today is on bended knee in prayer for the people whose lives were lost here, for the workers who work here.

“This nation stands with the good people of New York City, and New Jersey and Connecticut, as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens. I can hear you, the people of the world hear you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”

Later that week the Pentagon reopened. I walked through the Navy wing. The smell of burned sheetrock and masonry was overwhelming. The damaged south side was sealed off by plastic sheeting. Heavily armed security officers patrolled the grounds.

A week after the attack I took the train to New York to visit a friend who then worked on Wall Street. Thirty miles from the city we could see through the train window a thin column of dark smoke curling skyward from the World Trade Center site and spreading across the horizon.

The New York City subway remained closed south of 25th Street or thereabouts, so I had to walk the rest of the way. It had rained the night of 9/11. The pulverized masonry of the towers turned to paste and coated the walls and windows of nearby buildings. From a couple of blocks away I could see the twisted structure of one of the towers protruding from the vast piles of rubble. Hundreds of workers in hardhats still searched for victims and remains. 

On my walk back to Penn Station I passed St. Vincent’s Hospital. The hospital had been used as a triage center for Trade Center casualties. The walls were covered with photos of missing persons. Crowds stared at the photos. I heard crying.

The 2,990 victims include approximately 2,600 at the Twin Towers, 125 at the Pentagon, and 265 on the four hijacked flights. The total includes 343 firefighters and 71 New York police officers. Thousands more were injured in New York. The total doesn’t include the 19 hijackers.

Last weekend in Greenville, S,C., at the city’s annual 9/11 commemoration, roughly 1,000 area firefighters and civilians walked six laps of the field-deck aisles of the city’s Fluor Field, the equivalent of the Twin Towers 110 stories.

I carried the card of Capt. Thomas C. Moody of Engine Company 310, Maspeth, Queens, who died in the North Tower. Eighteen others in his unit also died.

Moody, an 18-year veteran firefighter, lived in Stony Brook on Long Island. He was 45 years old, married to Maureen Moody, the couple had four children. His father, Charles, brothers Frank and Michael, and an uncle, William, all were New York City firefighters.

Moody earned a chemical engineering degree from the State University of New York and was a certified engineer in New York. He taught fire science and conducted training in handling hazardous materials at a local college. He responded to the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Since 2002 hundreds of others have walked in memory of Capt. Moody and his 342 comrades at 9/11 commemorations nationwide. Many have posted messages on the “Legacy” website.

On my visit to New York I stood for a few moments and watched the dust still rising from Ground Zero. Almost no one understood then that thousands of recovery workers and others at the site would develop cancer and other respiratory diseases.

In 2018 the World Trade Center Health Program at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital estimated that of the 10,000 first responders and others at Ground Zero who developed cancer attributed to 9/11, 2,000 had died. By 2022 some 250 New York City police officers and 300 firefighters had died of 9/11-related health conditions.

Some years ago, on our way home to Virginia from Pittsburgh, we detoured off the Turnpike to visit the Flight 93 memorial near Shanksville, Penn. The site was not yet completed, but 40 marble plaques, one for each victim, had been erected. The Flight 93 passengers are believed to have fought back and forced the hijackers to divert from their course to Washington and fly the aircraft into the ground.

The Greenville stadium walk, like dozens nationwide, has been held for years. At the start each participant rang a firehouse bell, which chimed solemnly across the ballpark. Each person carried or wore a card bearing the name of a firefighter lost that day.

By the third loop it was hot. A firefighter in full gear and, like many others carrying an oxygen tank, collapsed on the stairs. Medical personnel hurried to support her. The line held up as she recovered. Then we moved on along the course.

As we all know, the world changed that day and in following years. Capt. Moody’s children, young kids when he died, are now in their twenties. They and all of us are witnesses to change, and to remembrance. We will be back for this observance next year, and in years to come.  

September 9, 2024

We stopped at our daughter Marie’s office at the Neighborhood Cancer Connection.  I picked up a book in the NCC library. Another scolding “eat this, don’t eat that” tome, I guessed. But I took it home.

Two weeks later I browsed through it. The authors, nutritionists Maureen Keane and Daniella Chace wrote that “most of the protein in your diet should come from plant sources.” Plant sources. We had been through all that.

Ten or twelve years ago I read elite trail runner Scott Jurek’s memoir, Eat and Run. He tells his story of growing up on a Midwestern farm diet heavy on beef, pork, chicken. He moved to Seattle and, after sampling the vegetarian and vegan culture, got the no-meat religion.

Jurek went vegan and kept winning races, including the country’s premier ultra race, the Western States 100-miler seven times (1999-2005). In 2015 he set a new record (later broken) for running the entire 2,198-mile length of the Appalachian Trail in 46 days and about eight hours.

I caught the vegan bug, but didn’t win any races. To get protein I ate soy—soybeans, tofu, seitan, tempeh, along with edamame, black beans, then almonds, peanuts, walnuts, cashews. We ate spinach, asparagus, lettuce, arugula, kale, cauliflower, avocadoes, brown rice. I learned to eat Brussels sprouts. We spend hours planning meals to avoid meat and sauces and gravies flavored with meat.

I kept running trail events. Sandy would prepare Jurek’s vegan Minnesota Winter Chili for the post-race meals. The runners called her the “Chili Lady.” It stuck for years.

Yet I felt hungry most of the time.  

In 2018, the year of sickness, while driving across Texas, I noticed my face in the rear-view mirror. I looked like a prune, shriveled and lined. This is not working, I thought. I shifted from strict vegan to a vegetarian diet and ate eggs and drank milk. Finally I ate some chicken and said goodbye to the vegan and vegetarian life.

Inevitably, you learn about diet. The body requires 22 amino acids, substances that perform critical body functions. Your system can produce 12 of the 22. Animal protein provides all 10 of the others, although we can get them by eating a mix of non-meat protein-rich foods like nuts, beans, and soy. Non-meat protein sources don’t contain saturated fat, which can clog arteries and lead to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other health problems. You seldom see an overweight vegetarian.

By going back to meat I gained some weight. Getting sick taught new lessons about food. Cancer cells replicate faster than most healthy cells. So cancer patients find themselves racing with their disease to get nourishment, as it consumes their bodies’ protein. The malnourished, underweight look means cancer is winning.

I ate to stay ahead. A friend made me rich chicken soup, I sometimes ate three bowls for breakfast. I ate lasagna, burgers, chicken, beef stew, and other heavy foods. The vegan/vegetarian fling was ancient history.    

Keane, incredibly, went through cancer therapy but didn’t have cancer. Ater a miscarriage, her tests were interpreted wrongly to show cancer. She endured three rounds of chemotherapy followed by surgery. Years later she required intravenous drug therapy to keep her pulmonary arteries functioning.

She writes that over sixteen months of treatment no doctor, nurse, or other health-care worker mentioned nutrition. But then, Keane’s and Chace’s book, What to Eat if You Have Cancer, isn’t really about cancer. They write for anyone.

The chemo class I attended, required at the practice that treated me, issued a book of recipes by an oncologist and a nutritionist. I thumbed through it, then set it aside. It landed in a closet. Keane and Chace, in their book, back me up: “nutrition therapy alone will not cure cancer.”

They make the point that “in the unlikely event that you are dependent on a single food source for survival, it would have to be a ‘complete’ protein source,” that is, meat. That isn’t going to happen. Infants and young children need complete protein, for example, ovalbumin found in eggs, or casein, the protein in milk. But the rest of us don’t.

Keane and Chase argue once again that the mature human body can get most of its protein from plants. The next-best source should be fatty fish, like salmon, anchovies, and fresh (not canned) skipjack tuna. After that, grass-fed beef and other grass-fed meats.

“Animal protein comes packaged with lots of fat, few vitamins and minerals, and no fiber, whereas plant protein is accompanied by lots of vitamins, minerals, and fiber. … animal fat is a major source of arachidonic acid—a fatty acid that promotes inflammation.”

Keane and Chace wrote a graduate-school-level textbook. The chemistry gets densely technical. Arachidonic acid—what’s that? Keep reading: when consumed out of balance with omega-3 fatty acids, it interferes with the body’s natural defenses against disease.

We may have heard about omega-3, a good thing, omega-6, less good. But omega-6, we learn, contains gamma linoleic acid (GLA)—the good omega-6 fatty acid needed for cellular health. Sunflower, safflower, corn, and soybean oil are sources of omega-6, which the body converts to GLA.    

I didn’t read through to the end, which is a series of complicated meal plans for different levels of calorie consumption. But we thought we should make some changes. We visited the organic grocery store. Their eggs were $9.00 for a dozen, which seemed high. We still had a box of the mass-market eggs at home.

We hit the local farmer’s market and walked past the stacks of bright-red tomatoes, corn, okra, onions, green beans, asparagus, squash, zucchini. We inspected the greens, collard, lettuce, kale—all the glowing bounty of the land. Memories rushed back. I bought some garbanzo beans at $2.25 for a pound. They’re supposed to be good for you.

September 2, 2024

The Minnesota State Fair, held the last week of August through Labor Day, is the second-largest in the country after the one in Texas. If you’re in or near St. Paul, the Fair is the place to be. We were there, so we went.

The Minnesota fair was established in 1854 as a territorial exposition for agriculture, then became the state fair when Minnesota joined the Union in 1859. Today the Minnesota State Fair is a year-round business with 80 full-time employees. The Fair hires more than 1,700 temporary workers for the ten-day operating run.

We drove to an offsite parking lot, staged the car, then rode a bus to the main fair gate. Adult tickets were $16, less for kids. Daily attendance this year ranged from 80,000 to 200,000 daily, even with a couple of days of thunderstorms.

This was a new experience. I recall a Tennessee State Fair in Nashville, but never attended. We did get to a couple of county fairs in northern Virginia years ago. I saw some cows, cotton candy, a merry-go-round, and booths that challenge you to knock over a dummy to win a doll.

In Minnesota the fairgrounds sprawls over 322 acres of permanent and temporary buildings, tents, and the ride structures and machinery. As we arrived about 10 AM the crowd surged toward the baked goods tent. Inside we wandered past shelves lined with homemade pies and cakes, each with a slice removed to show the filling, some wearing blue, red, and white ribbons indicating prizes awarded.

The blue-ribbon stuff looked especially tasty. Beyond the displays you could get a giant milkshake for $9.00, presumably made with milk from prize-winning local cows. A team of bright-eyed farmgirls—I guessed they lived on farms—served with smiles. The milkshake was delicious, as a $9.00 milkshake should be.  

A guy with a chainsaw stood inside a refrigerated glass booth sculpting a bust of a young girl from a block of butter. His model sat nearby in a parka, shivering.

From the tent we headed next door to the livestock venue, a massive concrete building marked “Livestock.” Stepping through the entrance you faced cows, hundreds of them, large, extra-large, and medium-size, brown, black, black-and-white, all-white. Some of these huge animals sprawled in pens, chewing on straw or sleeping. Young kids in cowboy hats and blue jeans guided them through the crowd to the judging area outside.

Someone who knows about these things explained to us that when the cows finish their careers giving milk they head to the slaughterhouse to be turned into steaks, hamburger, and so on. That’s where beef comes from, after all. Somehow, though, it was unsettling to understand how the business works, and that most of these critters won’t be back to next year’s fair.

We headed to the exit after washing our hands and scraping the straw from our shoes, and gulping fresh air. Next door we found the pig and goat pens, the aroma pungent and powerful. Most of these animals dozed quietly, a few doe-eyed goats stared up at visitors. A female pig who had just given birth lay in one pen, her half-dozen piglets, petite and cute, lay next to her, waiting to nurse.

In a far corner sprawled a massive beast asleep under a sign, “World’s Largest Hog,” announced at 950 pounds. A crowd stood near the pen, staring and snapping photos. While I watched the animal roused himself from his straw bed, slowly turned full-length, then sank back into his nap. Folks drifted away, others filled their places.

Here the Minnesota Pork Association distributed a kids’ coloring book entitled “Producers, Pigs & Pork” that followed the lives of piglets from nursing to adulthood. The book reported that in five months they grow to 270 pounds. The cute drawings were followed by outlines of ham, bacon, porkchops, baloney, pork loin, and a sketch of folks happily dining on pork. Our young niece, a vegetarian, sobbed.

We paused at the SPAM booth, which offered Spam sandwiches and Spam curds, $10 each. I wondered what Spam curds are, but didn’t ask, and kept my $10.

It was early afternoon, it was hot, our feet hurt. The nieces and nephews moved on bravely, Sandy and I straggled towards the shaded bandshell near the gate. En route we browsed through souvenirs amidst the abundant “Harris-Walz” memorabilia, this being Minnesota. We noted the “I’m Voting for the Felon” tee-shirts picturing Trump, few and far between.

We sat for a while waiting for the band, no one showed. Suddenly drums rolled behind us, we turned and saw the Saturday Fair parade approaching on the main boulevard. I ran to watch Minnesota’s finest high-school marching bands and drill teams, from places I never heard of. The Fair Queen and her court rode by in a decorated wagon. Local celebrities, mayors, and aldermen waved from convertibles followed by a couple of fire engines and a wagon drawn by giant Clydesdales.

It was a heartening, happy scene that summoned memories of long-ago Fourth of July parades with smiling drum majorettes, baton twirlers, and flag-wavers. The marchers waved at the crowd, we all cheered. In those moments we forgot about the angry divisions racking the country.

The last band moved down the avenue, the music faded. We headed for our family rendezvous. At the gate the real world intervened, police officers closed the exit because of a political demonstration. We detoured to a distant gate past giant farm equipment, harvesters, plows, planters, mowers, impressive products of Midwest factories, surrounded by crowds of knowledgeable folks inspecting them.

The Fair was the real article. The fairgoers return to their lives happy with their visits to this shrine to agriculture and homebuilding. The eloquent replication of Big Midwest farm life, the livestock, the home-grown products, the tough farmers themselves, showed off an authentic, colorful side of America.

We felt somehow briefly at home with the Minnesota big-country heritage. Then we recalled our world: the mild winters, the gentle end of the Blue Ridge as it meets the Great Smokies; the gorgeous Chattooga River, which separates, with its leaping rapids, Georgia from South Carolina. Two rich worlds, of wide contrasts in climate, terrain, and politics. Enjoy both.             

August 26, 2024

Phil Brady knew America. He was born and grew up in Minnesota, a place with a couple of big cosmopolitan cities, but with a rugged pioneer edge to it. As a young man he headed west. He worked on the Empire Builder-Great Northern Railroad. Later, after college, he worked in mines in the big Western states. He knew this country by its roughest edges.

Although he came from St. Paul, he was not a big city guy. His life was formed by his experiences in tough places far from cities.

For a couple of years Phil taught high school history and coached football in Winnemucca, Nevada. He moved on to teach and coach in Caldwell and Marsing, Idaho, home of a community of Basque people, who work as sheepherders. He lived with a Basque family for a while. Decades later he and his wife, my sister Regina, attended the funeral of the wife of one of his former students. The entire community remembered him.

He studied metallurgy at the University of Arizona. He knew about copper mining, railroads, big machinery, tools, and fishing. In his forties, he came back to the Twin Cities and married Regina. He worked in industry and taught school. They stayed in St. Paul for a few years then relocated to the Seattle area. Seven years later they came back to Minnesota.

Phil passed last week after a long fight with cancer. He was close to home, a blessing for the family. St. Paul, really, was the right place for him.

Like many Minnesotans, Phil was an outdoors guy. He took Scout troops north to Isle Royale National Park, a large island in Lake Superior. They camped and hiked and fished. He knew the wild places north of Duluth, beyond Minnesota’s Iron Range, in the cold country. Phil also was a shrewd finance guy who liked picking stocks. He gladly passed on tips, although I never got around to following his advice.

While in Washington State he hiked the gorgeous Cascades. He and Regina visited Alaska and Mexico. They took some overseas trips, to England, Ireland, France, Italy, Thailand.

But I knew him mainly as a guy who loved the road. He drove many times across the country, over the lonely open spaces of Washington, Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota. He and Regina drove to California, Missouri, Louisiana, Florida. They saw everything, including the world’s largest nickel mine in Sudbury, Ontario. “He loved rocks,” she says.

Phil knew the highways. I recall him explaining, in scrupulous detail, points of interest (to some) that could be found along U.S. 2, the isolated road that crosses the country from Seattle to northern Michigan. Route 2 is way up there, shadowing the Canadian border through the far-north no man’s land of those big near-empty states.

He knew the little settlements, the rises and descents, the hazards, the long, long empty stretches. To him, roads like highway 2 were, well, America.

Yet Phil also could be a homebody. He had a gentle touch with nature, and could make flowers and vegetables bloom. He cultivated bountiful gardens in St. Paul and at Regina’s and his place in Redmond, Wash. Five years ago we visited them out there, around March. It was chilly and damp, but Phil already was preparing his plot, raking and pruning.

He loved taking his grandkids fishing and hiking. He showed them the Cascades and glorious Glacier National Park. He understood the decline of the salmon population in Northwestern rivers as a result of industrial and urban pollution, and explained it to me and to anyone else who showed interest. But he never stopped fishing, and occasionally hauled in a big one.

Phil and Regina returned to St. Paul from their first retirement home near Seattle for a mix of reasons. One was, I thought, the call of Minnesota, known for the Twin Cities, beautiful wilderness lakes, and brutal winters. St. Paul, the state capital, also can be called the capital of the Upper Midwest. It’s where Phil grew up, where they met 30 years ago.

They understood, after giving Seattle a chance, that it was never going to be the home they left.  Phil could take those rough Minnesota winters and maybe preferred them over the rainy Northwest. He didn’t mind attaching an engine-block heater to a car’s battery to keep it from freezing.  

Phil developed mesothelioma, one of those cancers that does not get better. Sandy’s dad, William Harper, after years working in heavy industry, also contracted mesotheliomia. It took him quickly 25 years ago. Victims measure out their time left.

Phil fought hard. He was treated at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., one of the country’s great hospitals. But we know one thing: cancer keeps showing up. He and Regina made one more trip last year, to Montreal and Quebec.

We all flew up to St. Paul to see Phil off, cramming ourselves in those cramped United seats.

But my first thought was to do what Phil might have done, take it on the road. We could have driven the long interstates through the country’s midsection, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Wisconsin. Phil might instead have taken the state highways and local roads that wind through small towns, past farmland, over rivers, hills, and mountains, getting another taste of the country.

Friends and family came to St. Jerome’s church. Son-in-law Robert Valaas spoke. He talked about hiking Logan Pass in Glacier with Phil. “I found that day … encapsulates the quintessence of this faithful, curious, humane, devoted, and caring man.

“Phil let the best beliefs of Christianity—justice, kindness, and humility—guide his life,” Robert said. “And never was Phil happier than when out in nature, appreciating the beauty and wonder of God’s creation. … So now there is a big, Phil Brady-shaped hole in our part of the universe.

“It’s up to us to pick up some of the slack. So get out and explore the world, on its back roads, its hiking paths … the mountains, forests, seas, and islands. Honor God … strike up conversations with people you don’t know … . Learn and remember the history of your family. … eat some good food, savor some good Irish whiskey.”

The priest rose for the blessing. “In fishing and hiking, being with nature, Phil connected with God,” he said. “He knew there is a time for everything. Today is a good time to give thanks.”

Phil’s and Regina’s seven grandchildren, Nora, Margaret, Eliza, Matteo, Juliana, Ben, and Jonathan came forward with the gifts. We rose in remembrance and gave thanks, and went on our way.