Rosa Smith

We were running later than I had hoped and suddenly found ourselves racing the Sun. We had roughly an hour to find it. Not to worry, Eric knew a shortcut. I got to tell you, I had my doubts about his shortcut but what choice did I have? Let’s do it then, I’ve got to get that picture.
Last week I was working in the Liberal, Guymon Oklahoma area. Tuesday and Friday my travels even sent me into Texas. It was kind of a little homecoming for me. I went to grade school in a little town called Keyes Oklahoma, it’s about 30 miles from Guymon and that‘s where my parents did a lot of their shopping. So, yeah it was a cool trip. If you’ve never been to that part of the state, you ought to do it sometime. You can drive for miles and not see a tree. But you will see thousands of yucca plants, sage brush, and the world famous, tumble weeds. My wife used to crack me up. When we lived in Greensburg, she used to cheer on the tumble weeds as they bounced their way across an open field and actually rolled over a fence instead of becoming trapped by it. Hey, you learn to entertain yourself when you live in a small town.
Sorry, I got off track there. Do you remember when I told you about living in Greensburg? I talked about a friend of mine named Eric, who worked at Dillon’s, remember that? I also talked about a road trip we used to take to Belvidere, and I told you that one day Eric and I were going to take that trip again. I stopped by his house on my way back from Liberal last Saturday and we took that trip. And what a trip it was.
Thanks to the “big blow,” as Eric’s wife, Roni, affectionately refers to the Greensburg tornado now live in Haviland. The three of us headed out, we had about 20 miles of country roads, some of them in good shape, some not. I had never been to Belvidere this way, and I though for sure we were lost most of the time. Eric and Roni both assured me this was a good shortcut. Then suddenly we were on the ranch and things started to look familiar. We came into Belvidere from the backside, instead of heading into town, we headed straight up the hill about a mile outside of town. It’s pretty much the highest point around. You can look around and all you can see for miles are the rolling hills and an occasional pond. We pulled over for a couple minutes but we had to keep going, it was going to be dark soon. We drove farther into the ranch. We passed the cattle guard my friend, Tim, crashed his truck into, remember that? Well, I hate it, but they moved that old truck years ago. We drove past the road that lead to Tim’s old house. We eventually went back for a look, but right now we had to keep going. It was about a mile from Tim’s driveway. Or so I thought. We were looking for a trail off the main road. Actually, it was just a couple of cattle trails we used to follow, but it worked.
There it is! You sure? No, but it sure looks like it. See that small hill over there? I’m pretty sure it’s right over there along the creek. You gotta remember, it’s been 18 years since I’ve been down here. We figured we had about 15 or 20 minutes of sunlight left. This had to be the right trail. We went for it. It started out okay, I guess. But after just a couple hundred yards the trail was completely gone. The grass was almost even with the hood of Eric’s truck. I thought for sure he was going to back out. But he kept going. We crested the hill and just he kind of stopped.
There it was. This is where a young girl named Rosa Smith is buried. According the her headstone, she was born in 1868 and died from burns fighting prairie fires in 1884. She was just 16-years old. I’ve always wondered who she was and I used to come here from time to time. I’m not sure why, I just did. I guess I wanted to know her story. I can only imagine how hard it was on her family to have to leave her behind like they did. But most of all, I feel sorry for Rosa for being here in this lonely place. And now after all these years, I was back.
Eric and Roni, thank you for the most memorable road trip I’ve had in years. Take care.
Kevin McGinty can be reached at: kevinmcginty@sbcglobal.net