"Papo's Hill" A painting and tribute to Albert Burr by CD Burr

The year before my father-in-law, Albert, passed away, I drove him out to the farm where he grew up north of St. Francis, Kansas.  The ground upon which he lived into his teens is rolling, rocky, and not quite as promising as neighboring farms bursting with abundant wheat and corn fields. 

No stately barn rests on the Burr piece of land, which is now littered with several decaying wood frames and fence posts.  Albert pointed out where their horse was housed in a squatty, leaning, bare-bones barn.  He described fruit trees that once grew behind the boarded-up house.   As a boy, he gathered eggs in a now-roofless chicken house, and eighty years later, he could still shake his head when remembering the dreaded job of cleaning the separator in the tiny cream-separating house (about twice the size of the outhouse).  In the family album, there is an old black-and-white photo of Albert with his dog, Pete, in front of this small building.  

As we drove around the yard, Albert spoke fondly of his home and the great times he had as a boy: a swimming hole not much larger than a ditch, the sticker-laden ground near the hog pen where the Burr Boys played baseball, and a quarter-mile-long hill that sloped into the yard.   He said that the hill was perfect for sledding.  Kids would come from neighboring farms – twenty or more — and use grain scoops as sleds.  Because it was dark, their parents would line up along the snowy hill with lanterns so their children could see the path. The scene must have been magical.  

As Albert weakened and made several trips to the hospital, I decided to paint the sledding-by-lantern-light scene that Albert had described to me almost a year earlier.   I hoped he could see the painting of “Papo’s Hill” before it was too late.   

In June,  Albert was admitted for his final stay in the hospital, where he waited to be transferred to the retirement home.  When I showed him the painting, he lacked the strength to speak, but his face glowed, almost like the lanterns on the canvas. He smiled and nodded.

Our dear father and Papo died June 16, 2014

This tribute first appeared on 12/12/17 on the Elders Speaking group blog.

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