Book Of Likes Faces

When I was 5 we lived in northern Iowa, where my dad had grown up. Every Saturday night we went out to dinner with my grandma who lived in the next town. On the 20 minute drive home I would always pretend to fall asleep. My dad would scoop me up out of the car and carry me upstairs to bed. I loved the security of being in my father’s protective arms, with my face in the crook of his neck and the smell of Aqua velva on his shirt.

My dad grew up in a small town, rural community. In the 1940s, he was about 10 or 12 years old and was walking with his mother to his sister’s house for dinner. She was much older and was married and had her own home. To get to her house, they had to walk down a road lined with trees. There were no houses on that section of the road, and since it was late fall, it was already getting dark. My dad said that they suddenly heard the clip clop of a running horse, and it sounded like it was running towards them, but they saw nothing. It kept getting closer, until it seemed like it was right in front of them, and they turned and started to run. The sounds seemed to slow, as if it didn’t want to run them over, but they could smell the animal and feel it’s breath, but still saw nothing. They arrived back home, and the phantom horse was suddenly gone. My dad believed that the horse was the spirit of his own beloved horse that had died a few months before. He thought that it was possibly protecting them from some danger that would befall them if they had continued down that road.