Take Me Home

In his younger days, Johnny Miller did not know all about diseases and famines, hurricanes and wildfires. All he knew about was that he lived, day by day, in a home where he was loved and taken care of, and as long as he did his fair share, he had no worries about what was going on "out there". The small town of Armadillo Creek was nestled in the mountains, a protected area, where tornadoes were uncommon, floods never too severe, as folks had enough sense to build their houses on high ground, and famine was just something you caught a glimpse of on the nightly news.

His parents didn't much encourage a lot of television watching, but he did have just a few favorites. There was, of course The Waltons. The show, it seemed to him, was set in a much simpler time and place. The Walton family did not even own a television set. And, if anything, the family was larger than Johnny's own. In a lot of ways, the Walton Family was like the Miller family. There was Walton's Mountain, so named because the family had been in the area for so long that they were a part of the country. Near Johnny Miller's family farm, there was, similarly, Miller Mountain. Miller Mountain was on land owned by the US Forest Service, and so not a part of the family property, but the fact remains that the Waltons and the Millers had been in their respective areas so long that even parts of the countryside was named after them. They really did have some things in common.

Johnny Miller's favorite television show of all time was The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. In this show, a man accused of a serious crime escaped to the mountains, where he learned that he had a natural affinity for animals. They somehow trusted him, without inhibition, and he would do his best to fix their problems, mend broken wings, or whatever was required. He befriended and adopted a baby bear cub, named Ben, and they lived together in a cabin deep in the forest.

Johnny always dreamed of being able to forage through a forest, untouched by the white man. He somehow felt that he had been born into the wrong world - and instead should have been living a couple of hundred years ago and able to explore the remote wilderness, with nothing but animals for companionship. There was something magical about this idea, and the show gave him a glimpse of what he had missed, by being born into this modern era, full of mankind, and his farms, and cities, and highways, and dams.

He memorized the lyrics of the theme song, and would sing along... It was his anthem:

Deep inside the forest there's a door into another land.
Here is our life and home.
We are staying here forever in the beauty of this place all alone.
We keep on hoping.
Maybe there's a world where we don't have to run.
Maybe there's a time we'll call our own, living free in harmony and majesty.
Take me home.
Take me home.

Back in those days, there were no fears of AIDS or other blood-born diseases. When Grizzly Adams, and his Indian friend Nakoma became blood brothers, Johnny and Tommy Miller and their cousins thought that they needed to become blood brothers, as well. And although, in reality, they did not slash their palms open with a hunting knife, and bind them together with leather straps, they did try.

And the bonds of friendship and brotherhood formed between the brothers and cousins would live within them for the rest of their days. And when things got bad, later on in life, they would always know that they had a place to call home. No matter where they would lay their heads, their family would always be there.