Excerpt
…those comments, the meeting blew up. Joel could understand that
all Mr. Johansson was trying to do was help, but if there were two
things you wouldn’t want to be telling Edward Hooper, it would be
suggesting government help and calling his child underprivileged.
There was no doubt that the Hoopers could sure use some help to
finance Joel’s education, but the last thing that was going to happen
in the hills that night was for Edward to admit it to any fancy
dressed school teacher.
Later, the school year came to an end. Joel graduated from high
school, and Mr. Johansson, after once again encouraging Joel to
consider the possibility of going further with his education, left
town for wherever he went every summer. Joel spent the next few
weeks working for his father, riding the high ridges, checking the
cattle, counting cows and calves, and making sure that all was
well in the pasture.
Back then, on July 20, 1969, as seventeen-year-old Joel rode
along, he thought of the hurt that he had experienced at home,
especially during the last few weeks of high school, the brutal treatment
of his mother by his drunken father, and the hard way that his
dad treated him. Back then, the Circle H was not a healthy place for
this seventeen-year-old boy to be; and really, not a healthy place for
anyone, and certainly not a place with a future.
That hot summer day back in July of 1969, Joel found himself
a long way from home at the end of the afternoon. Feeling mighty
hungry and needing to water both himself and his horse, Joel
dropped down out of the hills to the Ladners’ place. Larry Ladner
and his wife Erica were a dirt-poor young couple trying to eek out
a living for themselves and their four children on a small patch of
rented land. Their dream was to one day be able to put a
down-payment on a place of their own, but the way things were
going it looked like it wouldn’t be long before the Ladners would
be forced off of the land. Larry had been coming in from a day of
fieldwork on the tractor when he welcomed Joel. He knew the
Hoopers were good neighbors. As Joel sat with the Ladners and
ate his evening meal, he heard some exciting news on the radio.
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