Grampa's Travel Notebook

It’s a sunny July day and my sister, brother-in-law, brother Timothy, and Jim drive my 91-year-old father to the broken-down ranchhouse where he grew up. It’s outside of Highwood, Montana, east of Great Falls, abandoned in a golden field of wheat. Dad stays in the car, not wanting to disturb memories of his childhood home, but we walk down the pickup truck tracks over the prickly wheat stubble. Wearing capris and with bare ankles, I walk gingerly to avoid being stabbed by the sharp wheat stocks. My brother, Timothy, strides ahead of me in his boots and jeans, shaking his head at my foolish clothing choice. He spent summers here as a farm hand when he was in high school and loves the Big Sky Country. The old house was electrified years after it was built, but never had running water. The old outhouse (a two-holer) is tipped over in the back yard.

           In the distance, behind the old barn, some people are shooting targets with their guns. Walking around the house we discover the only way in, through an open window, and slowly climb in, avoiding the nails sticking up on the sill. The place is a mess, strewn with picked over magazines, random old feed company calendars, and animal droppings. Upstairs I discover three black student composition notebooks, the kind with the marbled cardboard cover and lined paper bound together with string. They were designed in the days before cheap metal spirals, though I still can buy them at Staples.
The first notebook is titled "State Routes Traveled" and the heading of page one is ‘Alabama’. Each subsequent page has a state name, all in alphabetical order. (There actually aren't any routes listed in Alabama.) My grampa drove all around the country with Gramma. Winter was the slow season on the wheat farm, which gave them the freedom to roam the highways.
I’m thrilled to find the notebook and flip through it with anticipation. What sort of travel journal did he leave? I find each page lists highway numbers and place names, nothing more. They are ledgers of every highway he’d traveled on. No motels, no historic sights or tourist stops, nothing but rows of highway route numbers and place names. Arizona: #69---Jct #79 to Phoenix. Maryland: #39---W Va line to Jct #219 US. Out of hundreds of entries four are dated: 1964.
           The second notebook is titled "Routes North & South Traveled" and the third "East & West Routes Traveled". I take the notebooks with me, thin reminders of my grampa and his travels.

I know from family stories that Grampa drove to each of the lower 48 and took a photo of the state capitol. In my childhood I saw some of those pictures. That gene has been passed down through the generations: I visited each of those 48 states with my kids in 1995. Our son, Matt, is halfway through running a marathon in all 50. He’ll run the Boston Marathon for Patriots’ Day on Monday, April 18th, in honor of David, as part of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. (If you want to know more, or donate to the cause, here’s the link: http://pages.teamintraining.org/ma/boston16/mjohnston.)

My oldest brother, Steve, tells me that Grampa Hazen drove much of Route 1. Here's a notebook entry:
#1 US                                                                                          Baltimore Md. to
              Columbia S.C.
               Daytona Beach Fla to Key West Fla

          He was a wheat farmer who worked hard from spring to harvest and then traveled in the winter when the work was done. He took a photo of every state capitol of the lower 48 and in retirement traveled to Alaska and Hawai’i to finish the job. There’s an “all of” project.