08 November 2020 The Peters Family

At age sixteen, I accompanied Dad on wheat harvest and met a lot of great folks in the Sandhills of the Nebraska Panhandle. Between making sandwiches, changing flat tires, and running to Chadron for repair parts, I spent a lot of time with the Dentons, Sagers, and Peters kids. Though Hallie Peters is a few years younger than I, we hit it off through our mutual attachment to horses. She was twelve at the time and already a budding horse trainer. One sunny afternoon, Hallie, Jerry (her dad), and I saddled up and went to fetch a bull from what seemed to me to be a million-acre pasture. As we passed through the gate, I saw a body of water that could have been a puddle from the previous night's shower or might have been a permanent water source. I asked Jerry about it.
Looking indignant, he gasped, "Puddle? Pond? Why! I'm not so sure that isn't the gall-durned Pacific Ocean!"
Thirty years later, my Honey and I dubbed the one-acre pond on our ranch The Gall-Durned Pacific Ocean.
A few minutes after Jerry's proclamation about his ocean, I asked Hallie to identify a pretty little purple flower blooming around us. She didn't know what it was. She asked her dad.
"Purple pasture flower."
I shot a questioning look at Hallie. She shrugged.
The next flower I inquired about had a yellow flower.
Jerry called it yellow prairie flower.
At that point, Hallie and I realized we'd been got.
Ten minutes later, breaking into our girlish giggles, Jerry began to recite a limerick he had just devised.
"Nishi Linn O'Dell
Went down to the well
To get her poor horse a drink
When she got to the pumper
Thought a man tried to jump her
So she whupped him
Quick as a wink

She hit him and beat him
And tried to unseat him
And whipped him with sadistic glee
He said, "Please excuse me!
But do not abuse me!
I thought the durned water was free!"

Years later, Hallie's mom Marty--who got me hooked on mystery authors Dick Francis, Tony Hillerman, and CJ Box-- became one of my best editors. Marty saved my first novel Brennan's Odyssey by suggesting that I rearrange it slightly. She very artfully told me, "If I didn't know you and didn't therefore know there was a great story in this book, I would've stopped reading by page 30. The beginning is boring. Start with the action and work in the background." It was a brilliant comment that led to the opening scene of Brennan being arrested for kidnapping, rape, and possibly murder. Marty could usually save an entire story with a single-sentence suggestion. When Hallie's sister Rachel called to tell me that Marty had passed away suddenly, she told me that the last thing her mom had been doing on her phone was reviewing my book not Quite Forgotten.