It is anywhere--your town, my town, any child’s town—where miles of rail fences border pasture from road, and families live tucked among the hills in out-of-the-way places, yet right next door. It’s in the mid-West, the East, and Northern states where families find themselves in a place unfamiliar and frightening; a place that only hope and charity dare travel at will. It was in a small Southern Idaho town where a father found himself unable to grant his children the simplest of gifts in the frozen winter of 1968. It was a time when everything was dead with the chill of December mornings and his children’s toes peeked through small holes in their worn tennis shoes. He had used the last bill in his wallet to buy rice, oatmeal and a half-gallon of gas to get him home. It was a night of despair when there’s nothing else you can do but give yourself up to providence and hope that the sun shines again in the morning. And as he drove down the long narrow road, he saw a slight shimmer as the headlight caught a sparkle on the fencepost. There were no tracks, no footprints, no marks in the snow, but on top of each post was a single boot. One, then another, tucked nicely on top, each post held a gift—there were eight in a row. An angel of some sort had answered the plea of a poor man’s wishes to provide for his family. And though his troubles did not end that night, he never forgot the rush of gratitude he felt as he pulled the car to a stop and sat looking at the pointed-toed boots through a stream of tears.
Now, nearly forty years later, as you drive into town, along the Northern border of a rich man’s farm, there is a mile-long stretch where boots of every sort are nailed to the top of a post—each a token of thanks for a time when the smallest gift was needed the most.
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