THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

 

September 3, 2026

 

Hi Johnny-

 

Since you and I are both cloud lovers I thought I’d send you this little idea that occurred to me. I hope you get a kick out of it.

 

Love & peace, of course,           

– Bill

 

You know the way some surfers get towed by a jet ski out to the biggest waves?  Well, some day when those huge, white cumulus clouds are at their height, when they’re even more spectacular than usual, maybe we could hire a helicopter to take us up a few thousand feet.  Then we could just step out onto one of the larger clouds and spend the afternoon playing in the sky….

We can roll around on the tops of the clouds like a big feather bed.  

Ride them like horses.  

We could jump from one cloud to another, like being at a trampoline park.  

We can play tag, or dive inside the clouds playing hide & go seek.  

We could strap a cloud on each foot and run around, pretending we’re giants.

If more friends come with us we can each take a cloud and hold races.  Or we could line up and make a parade!  Or we can all hold hands from our individual clouds and make a big train— “The Cumulus Express”!

Or if we’re feeling really adventurous we could go a little higher up and have a friendly snowball fight.

We might get a look at the daytime moon, or get to see an eagle at work.

Maybe we’d snuggle down into one of the warmer clouds and take a little nap.

When we get thirsty we can drink the dew; when we’re hungry we can snack on the cloud fluff (better than cotton candy—sugar free). 

When we’re played out and the Sun starts going down it would be time to hitch a ride on one of the heavier, darker clouds as it’s slowly sinking down to earth.  We’d gently step off as the fog settles near our homes, just in time for supper.  

And then we get to sleep in our own beds, putting our heads on our pillows, fluffy and white like the clouds, and float away into our next dreams….

 

—Bill Faricy

*

 

Fan of Fall

 

September. Finally! Finally I can write about Fall and why I love it so much. You might say, Oh, but you must learn to love where and when you are in the moment, in the present. Sorry, not sorry. August is my least favorite month. The only plus it has going for it is that it is a harbinger of Fall—of beautiful September, October, and November. They are the three most luxurious, stimulating, and captivating months of the year. We are out of the stultifying heat of summer and into the fresh, sharp, clear air of the fall months. All of my senses are fresher. More observant. More in the present: the vine maples turning scarlet. The daylight hours constricting. The moon and stars sharpening against the darkness. And the air! Cool mornings, fresh afternoons chilly evenings. My pumpkins swelling to the size of beach balls. Tomatoes, green beans, chrysanthemums, asters, all welcoming the fall sunshine.

 

And right now I’m off to can pears in the slanting sunlight. Happy in September!

 

—Jude Russell

*

 

Carl Alsup read me a poem by Dustin Smith. A short time later, Dustin mailed it to me. Here it is:

 

The Treasure of the Sierra Padre

 

Memories of my father run quietly

In the background of my mind

Like old black and white movies.

 

The silently shifting scenes hurt

Like celluloid cigarette burns

Through clenched teeth.

 

I feel the rattling reels vibrating

Through me; thrumming a dull, deep ache

In the darkened hush of recollection.

 

My father was reserved; stoic.

A Humphrey Bogart type. Solemn,

Solitary, with a certain quiet desperation.

 

He was a mountain of a man, 

Looming large in the horizon behind me.

Seemingly inevitable; eternal.

 

His hands keep leaping out at me

In vivid 3-D reveries,

Wrapped around tall bourbons,

 

Neat, like bottomless still-glass pools

Amongst old stones, reflecting the

Amber fires of setting suns.

 

His rings stand out most of all;

Clinking against cut-crystal highballs.

Brilliant flashes of color

 

Amidst the deepening gloom

Of time and space.

Rough, calloused hands; gnarled and twisted

 

From weathering storms.

I see the broken, craggy cliffs

Of knuckles towering over me,

 

Riddled with rich veins of gold

And gemstones; the luster of the ore

Softening the hardened earth.

 

Dangerous. Breath-taking.

Those cliffs had broken men

Upon their slopes.

 

But they were tender too.

I still feel their presence

Resting heavy on my shoulders

 

With the comforting heft of

The permanence of love;

A granitic weight

 

Sheltering me from the world

Like a valley nestled within the arms

Of a natural colossus.

 

My father was a mountain of a man;

Shaped by the molten heat

And violence of the world;

 

Softened in perspective and

Captured forever in memory.

A timeless classic that perseveres.

 

—Dustin Smith

7/29/26

*

 

I asked Kim to send a poem about his dad. He generously obliged.

 

Back Then, His Words 

Were Not Enough…

Now They Are Precious

 

We stopped on a road in Montana

the last summer of my father’s life,

but we didn’t know. I turned off the car 

and poured out my sorrows, my life 

falling apart, my marriage over, my brother 

dead, my old landmarks gone.

 

He was silent, my father, silent. We listened 

to the river. Two crows flew over, shouting. 

They could go anywhere. In hard light, 

the river flowed silver at the long bend, 

willows bowing green. My father 

put his hand on my sleeve:

“Be of good heart, my friend.”

 

—Kim Stafford

*

Prayer for My Father

 

In memory of my father William J. Hornyak M.D. (1909-1981)

who died when I was 28 but left an indelible impression on my life.

I miss him every day.

 

My father

Who art in heaven

Hallowed by thy name.

You gave to me daily

The bread of yourself

Forgave me my ingratitude

And led me not

Into your expectations

Of my future

But towards a vision

Of my own.

 

Your labors and love

Seeded tenderness and discipline

Courage and compassion

Upon my soul.

Your surgeon’s hands healed many

But your medicine was humor

Laughter and music.

You left so soon

But remind me still

To be of good cheer

And of service

To make things

With wood and words

To love and respect

My sisters

To give freely

The bread of myself to others

And deliver people upon occasion

From melancholy and boredom

With a joke or story.

For mine is a kingdom

Made from the soil

Of your sacrifice and love.

All glory and honor to you my father

Who art in heaven

Now and forever

Amen.

 

—Will Hornyak, from This Altar of Earth and Sky

*

 

These two poems by William Stafford seem to me to complement each other in some mysterious way.

 

An Archival Print

 

God snaps your picture—don’t look away—

this room right now, your face tilted

exactly as it is before you can think

or control it. Go ahead, let it betray

all the secret emergencies and still hold

that partial disguise you call your character.

 

Even your lip, they say, the way it curves

or doesn’t, or can’t decide, will deliver

bales of evidence. The camera, wide open,

stands ready; the exposure is thirty-five years

or so—after that you have become

whatever the veneer is, all the way through.

 

Now you want to explain. Your mother

was a certain—how to express it?—influence.

Yes. And your father, whatever he was,

you couldn’t change that. No. And your town

of course had its limits. Go on, keep talking—

Hold it. Don’t move. That’s you forever.

 

 

A Story That Could Be True

 

If you were exchanged in the cradle and

your real mother died

without ever telling the story

then no one knows your name,

and somewhere in the world

your father is lost and needs you

but you are far away.

 

He can never find

how true you are, how ready.

When the great wind comes

and the robberies of the rain

you stand on the corner shivering.

The people who go by—

you wonder at their calm.

 

They miss the whisper that runs

any day in your mind,

“Who are you really, wanderer?”—

and the answer you have to give

no matter how dark and cold

the world around you is:

“Maybe I’m a king.”

 

—William Stafford

Reprinted with permission of The Estate of William Stafford.

*

 

I wrote this the day my dad died.

 

Here are some of my thoughts about my father:

 

Mary and I thanked Dad for all he had given us over the years, especially for that most precious of all gifts—the gift of life. As I have gotten older I have gained a deeper appreciation for what a good father he was to me. Over the years he has given me lots of support and encouragement in all kinds of undertakings. He was a generous man. From early childhood on, he respected me as a person, and gave me a sense that I could accomplish anything I gave my best effort to. As a father, his natural impulses went against the kind of shaming and blaming that paralyzes a person and makes them feel worthless and guilty. He always encouraged in me the qualities of happiness, exuberance and generosity that come naturally to children. A great deal of the abundant happiness that has been my lot in life is due to the positive reinforcement and praise I received as a small boy from both my parents and from my older sister. Looking back, I’m impressed at how much time Dad had to teach me how to pass and catch a football, to field and hit a baseball, to make a lay-in with my left hand, to stand on my head and on my hands, to do front and back somersaults, to dive off a diving board. I have vivid memories of assuming the starting position for wrestling with Dad again and again on the living room floor. He was more eager to teach me arithmetic, geometry and algebra than I was to learn them. He patiently taught me how to use a hammer, a saw and an axe. He taught me how to build a house and how to paint one, how to mow the lawn, how to ride a bike and a unicycle, how to garden. He took me to baseball games, basketball games, football games, track meets, wrestling meets, gymnastic meets and hockey matches. He taught me a lot about the life of the body and of the mind. He recited poetry to us. Both our parents took us to plays, movies, concerts, museums, and cultural events of all kinds. I got to see Angus Bowmer play Shylock and Sir Toby Belch. We went to hear Louis Armstrong (twice), Harry Belafonte, The Dave Brubeck Quartet, The Oscar Peterson Trio, Al Hirt and Peter, Paul and Mary. By the time I was five I had been in a high school play, thanks I’m sure to Dad. Around our house the love of books, of reading, of ideas was contagious. We went camping and travelled around the country. We lived in Montana and Oregon and Hawaii. We had a cabin on Flathead Lake, on the Sandy River, and on the Oregon Coast. Our parents promised to pay for our college educations. As I look at the long list of things my mom and dad did for us kids it sounds like a life of wealth and privilege, but our parents made this happen as hard-working, frugal, middle-class people. As a schoolteacher, Dad got off work before Mom, so he usually did the grocery shopping and made dinner.

 

I ran into conflict with my dad in adolescence. Readers of Freud won’t be too surprised by this. I guess it’s more accurate to say that my lifelong conflicts with my father reached their peak intensity at that time. This conflict came to a head with my decision to not just be a “conscientious objector” (legal), but to be a “draft resister” (illegal) against the war in Vietnam. By that time all our family agreed that the war was wrong, but my liberal parents, who had both graduated from Law School, could not agree with my rejection of Capitalism, Industrialism and the Nation State as innately destructive. Our disagreements reached the exploding point, but out of the catharsis came a new understanding and respect for each others’ views, for each others’ basic humanity, and for each others’ efforts to make sense of our lives—to accept and love each other as fellow-suffering mortals. Since that time, despite disagreements, my father and I have known each other and loved each other man to man.

 

I said “good-bye” to Dad this morning. I’m sad. I miss him. My father’s love for my mother and her love for him were an inspiration to all who knew them. They loved us kids. It is a great blessing to grow up in a loving home. This morning, as Dad and I looked deep into each others’ eyes for the last time, I felt that saying “I love you” somehow implied that we were separate. So I said to him: “This is Love. This is who you are. This is who we are. Nothing will ever happen to this. This was not born and cannot die. Love. Yes. Love. Yes. Love. Yes. Love. Love. Love.”

 

—Johnny Stallings

11/27/96