Calliopy Ranch

A panicky phone call from my mother-in-law had my wife and I packing and flying out to British Columbia, Canada the next day as her elderly father had fallen and sustained a critical injury. We flew into Spokane, Washington and were picked-up by a cousin who drove us to Bonners Ferry, Idaho and across the Canadian border to the little town of Creston which we reached just before midnight. I knew it hadn’t snowed up there yet but I still expected the temperature to be on the cool side. I didn’t expect it to be 15 degrees, which the locals said was on the warm side. When we stepped out of the car I got smacked in the face by a freezing cold that went straight through my parka and into my bones-much worse, it seemed, than the minus-eighteen degree weather that hit me when I got off the plane in Frankfurt, Germany in January several years before. We quickly unloaded the Jeep, said hasty goodbyes to our cousin and RAN into the house where a very warm fireplace and my equally warm-hearted mother-in-law greeted us.

We spent the next day at the hospital reassuring her father, and being reassured by the hospital staff, that although he had suffered a setback he was going to be fine, in time. The Creston hospital staff were quite personable and the doctor, a German import, more than capable. Feeling confident that dad was in good hands, we left the hospital to get some groceries for the week at Overweightea’s (named after the merchant who was known for adding a bit more tea to your order than you paid for) then went back to the house and cooked-up an everyday meal that seemed to taste just a little bit better up there (kinda like bacon and eggs do when cooked outside on a camp stove). We were indulging in a bit of mom’s favorite after dinner chocolate when she up and said, “I keep Bob Ingersol in the attack!” I have heard that chocolate does make some people giddy, but I didn’t expect anything quite that off-the-wall from my darling septuagenarian mother-in-law. I took the bait, anyway.

“Who the heck is Bob Ingersol?” I asked. It was then I learned that when you ask a Canadian a question, you don’t get an answer. You get a story, and a most likely interesting one at that.

Prior to being hitched to my father-in-law, mom had been married to a man who was the son of Alta Day. Alta Day was the granddaughter of John Day Jr. (founder of the fossil beds in Oregon and to whom John Day, Oregon was named). His father, John Day Sr., Lew Wallace and Robert Greene Ingersol were 19th century politicians who held various positions in government and were known to be great friends. It was Bob Ingersol, who was called, “The Great Agnostic,” that challenged Lew Wallace to write a book proving Jesus Christ was anything other than the Son of God. Wallace accepted the challenge and traveled to Jerusalem for his research, but instead of disproving Christ, he penned the classic novel, “Ben Hur,” and himself, converted to Christianity.

John Day Sr. was not only a politician but also an artist. He so admired Bob Ingersol that he carved a wooden statue depicting the controversial politician in one of the characteristically relaxed stances he favored while addressing congress. When John Day Sr. left Washington to settle in Idaho, the statue went along with him, occupying a prominent position on the buckboard of his covered wagon during the long and arduous trek west.

It was customary, when traveling by wagon train, for the front wagon to move to the rear of the assemblage at the beginning of a new day. The daily cycling of wagons would eventually give everyone a chance to travel in the front for a time without “eating someone’s dust.” That is unless you could afford to purchase a position up front, and since John Day Sr. was a wealthy politician, he was able to buy not only a lead spot but the best string of horses and the best wagon available.

The Indian tribes that tracked the wagon train from state to state noticed the cycling of wagons each day, and how they all seemed to be following the one prominent wagon in the lead position. They also noticed the statue of Bob Ingersol on the wagon’s buckboard and believed it to be a powerful God that protected the White Man during his journey. Just when the Day family reached Twin Falls and set-up camp the Nez Perce Indians raided them. Northwestern settlers shared an anxious relationship with the Indians in the late 1800’s as the Nez Perce, led by Chief Joseph, were about to go to war with the U.S. Army in an attempt to thwart the push to wipe the Indians off the land (Chief Joseph was later pursued into Montana where he gathered all the Nez Perce Chiefs together and delivered one of the most famous quotes of American history, “Hear me my Chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”). Expecting the worse, the Day family was puzzled when the only aggression the Indians inflicted upon their camp was the abduction of the Bob Ingersol statue. They took it, and left them alone.

Years later, when John Day Jr. was clearing the land on his own settlement his plow hit a rock. To his astonishment, when he reached down into the soil to remove the obstruction he pulled out the Bob Ingersol statue! By then the Nez Perce had accepted the settlers into the area and a certain Brave (name forgotten) who befriended John Day Jr. informed him that the Indians who followed his father’s wagon train believed the statue to be a God, and the worst denigration they could do to the effigy was to bury it-an action that would also remove its power to protect the White Man and leave him vulnerable to an attack. According to Alta Day, this was also the same Indian that showed John Day Jr. the location of the fossil beds in Oregon-a fact missing from the history books.

After I heard this story I just had to see that statue. With mom’s permission, I ran up to the attic and after shuffling around boxes of family pictures, old coats and trunks filled with ancient memorabilia, I spotted the whitewashed form of Bob Ingersol standing there proudly and looking right up at me as if to say, “Now that you’ve found me, Honorable Sir, you will have the courtesy to sit quietly and listen to exactly what I have to say!”

The statue stands almost two-feet tall and is covered with a thick white paint that has cracked over time and which was probably applied within the last 80 years or so ago, according to mom. She was told the statue originally sported a black suit, gray vest and a white shirt, and that it was a very good likeness since people that knew Bob Ingersol back then would say that it indeed looked just like the Senator.

“The irony of the story,” as mom put it, “is how that great agnostic, Bob Ingersol, was himself mistaken for a God.”

I love small towns and the folks that live in them. I once thought the people there aren’t that much different from us city dwellers and that it was only the country atmosphere that influenced our perception of them. Who was I kidding? These folks are not only vast storage banks of usable wisdom, but are exceedingly unpretentious and openly friendly to anyone who cares to say, “Hello,” or rather, “eh?”

I came away from our week stay in Canada feeling the old adage that says everyone has a book contained within them is quite wrong when applied to Canadians-they have volumes.