Finding Faith ... in a family treasure hunt
- Devlyn Brooks
- Feb 1, 2021
- 5 min read
This weekend, my brother and I and our two sons completed a 1,300-mile round-trip road trip to bring home a priceless family heirloom. Just the four of us packed into our Honda Pilot and on a mission. ... Destination: Billings, Mont.
Billings lies about 600 miles due west/southwest of Moorhead, Minn., our hometown, and it's one long shot on the same interstate ... the entire way. And let's just be honest here, there's a good couple hundred mile stretch across North Dakota where you see a lot of flat land ... and, well, that's about it. So it is a great road trip for self entertainment.
The trip had one mission: Bring home what is known in our family as "The Horse Cabinet," a collection of various horse figurines that was started in 1946 by my father, then transferred to my father and eventually to my brother after my father had passed. The collection resided at my grandparents' home, which was conveniently located across the street from our house. And then in my later years growing up, my father had moved into that house after a divorce from our mother. But being he lived directly across the street, I still saw my fair share of "The Horse Cabinet."
I write the name in capitals because of the collection's its importance in our family, and it reality is a site to behold. The original cabinet is pretty much a custom-made, two-piece china hutch, with both the top and bottom pieces open-faced and covered in sliding in glass doors. The cabinet stands about 8 feet tall, and probably was about 6 feet wide. And it contains hundreds of horses when it is erected.
Trouble is that it hasn't been erected in years. ... My brother has been pretty mobile in the past decade, and lived in places where it wasn't really feasible to set up the entire collection. But all of that is going to change, as the four of us Brooks men piled into a SUV and went to retrieve it this past weekend.
My brother who moved back from Billings about five years ago just hasn't been in the position to go retrieve his stuff, but the starts aligned this weekend with our two sons being available to help. And so we all agreed to deadhead it to Billings last Friday, load up "The Horse Cabinet" and my brother's remaining belongings on Saturday, and deadhead it back home the same day. Now, it's not the best formula for a family trip, but when you set out for a mission, know that you're in this adventure for a purpose, and you're willing to accept bad food, cramped spaces and a hotel bed in exchange for two and half days with family, then the road trip is fantastic!
This was a bonus for me, as now that the boys are both grown -- Garrett, 22, and pursuing his nursing career four hours from us, and Carter, 18, getting ready to head off to college -- this was an opportunity for me to spend two full days uninterrupted with them. And the fact that we were able to bring along my brother to enjoy the fun was a double bonus.
Over the 18 hours in the car, there were dozens and dozens of stories told, some that a father has a hard time finally coughing up to his kids, and some that a father doesn't want to know from his kids! My brother and I got to share many a story about our childhoods and the boys ancestors. And my brother and I got to reminisce about what it was like to grow up the the youngest in a family of nine children. We talked about music, and women, and future road trips. We stopped in out-of-the-way little towns that sometimes hardly could be called towns. We ate gas station food and fueled ourselves on black coffee that could have raised the dead. We teased, and we laughed. We enjoyed somber moments, and quite moments of just watching the amazing Montana countryside go by.
This trip was a first for me. I'd never been into Montana before, and having spent all of my life in northern Minnesota, I don't know much about hills and mountains. So, for me, I not only got to be with family, but I got to see places and sites that I'd never seen before. And it gave me great time to ponder this vast country. One of the realizations that dawned on me is that I really don't know anything about rural isolation. ... I mean, I thought I had after spending a near half century in northern Minnesota. But I soon learned that you don't know anything about being rural until you get into vastness of Montana. I tell you, spending hours on that interstate, sometimes going a hundred miles between what could be considered a town was an awakening.
My favorite stop on the entire trip was a little dot on the map of about 1,800 people called Forsyth, Mont. We stopped there once on the way out for gas, and made a second such pitstop on the way back. On the way there, we had a chance to visit with one of the station's attendants, and on the way back we got to visit with a second. We also had the chance to visit with the local liquor store proprietor when Garrett and I stopped in in search of locally made whiskeys and wines. He and I enjoy the former, and Shelley, my wife, enjoys the latter.
Just as there wasn't much to the town of Forsyth, there wasn't much to B&B Liquor. It's just a small shop of a couple hundred square feet carved into the front of a two-story, turn-of-the-century brick mainstay on Main Street. The shelves are the simple, white metal shelves of the kind you'd see in old neighborhood groceries before the world went Big Retail. No pricing stickers, but just a simple sticker in front of the bottles on the shelves telling you how much each was. And much of the shelves were bare.
But, luckily for us, on this day we found a few regional whiskeys -- a bourbon, a honey moonshine and a moonshine -- bottled by Willie's Distillery in Ennis, Mont. And even better yet, the shop's proprietor was even more worth the stop. I've never met a kinder man, and a more grateful shopkeeper. In fact, he was so bowled over by our $300 purchase, that he rummaged around his shop for a few shot glasses shaped with moose head bases and a few other branded promotional items to give us because he was so grateful. ... I guess, he doesn't see many whiskey tourists through Forsythe!
Rounding out the visit to the liquor store was that it had a shop cat, a pure black kitten asleep in a wicker basket on the counter, and a pair of parakeets behind the counter as well. I guess when you're running a liquor store in a town of 1,800 in the middle of Montana, you'd better have some animal company to make it through the day!
Ahhh, Forsythe, it was a picturesque little burgh, and I can't wait to bring back Shelley with me for a visit, as the time we had there passed way to quickly!
But, while I enjoyed this simple trip, maybe most importantly, "The Horse Cabinet" and all its various horses -- big and small; metal, wood, glass and more -- are back home, safely nestled in my garage until the day soon when I can get the cabinet refinished and everything set back up again. It feels like a lost piece of family treasure has been regained, and I couldn't be happier that my two sons, my brother and I got to experience the treasure hunt together!
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