Anticipation

Anticipation … or was it just waiting to leave?

Teddy Wheeler was ready for a new life, however his parents relied on him to help run the family ranch.  It wasn’t that he wanted to leave the family, it was that he wanted his independence away from the family name. Teddy wanted to be able to stand on his own and not just keep taking from his parents. Taking the simple life wasn’t what he wanted; he wanted to be out in the open ranch.

It didn’t take Teddy long to secure a job on a small town ranch in Utah.  He had been waiting for this opportunity  most of his teen years, now it was time for him to go off on his own. His family had other children to help with the family ranch.  In fact, his older brother would some day become the owner of the ranch as his parents aged.  So … why did his family give him an ultimatum? If you leave, you will never have rights to this ranch.

The ride into that small Utah town was filled with loneliness and some anticipation of what life might be like. Teddy would be with a dozen or so other men, working dawn to dusk, and eating meat and potato ladened meals. The life wasn’t easy, but then that is what the appeal was to Teddy.  There were cattle to be moved and the weather could be unpredictable, not to mention the solitude.

Many years later, Teddy soon found himself without his family, without relatives to call his own.  He had loved the open wilderness; the days of solitude, the bond of the other cattle men.  As he was shaving one day, with his grandfather’s straight razor, he longed to be back at his boyhood home.  Would he be welcomed back after so many years? Could he communicate with his family what they meant to him?  Going home would be risky, could Teddy take the risk of being welcomed or being turned away?