He didn’t give up.
He did one more thing that spring.
He took down the old photograph by the door. The one of George and me in 1968, holding shovels in the empty lot. He took it down, and he had it cleaned, and he had it put in a new frame. A good one. Solid oak.
Then he hung it back up. Not by the door anymore. In the middle of the back wall. Right where everybody could see it the minute they walked in.
And around it, he started hanging other pictures.
Earl Lindquist on his combine. Ruth Abernathy in front of her hair salon. Miguel Ruiz and his whole family in front of Casa Ruiz on the day it opened in 1981, and again in front of it last year, with Tommy in his apron. Marlene Voss’s grandson Kyle in the cornfield his great-grandfather almost lost. Shelly at her window with a coffee can full of roses.
