WHERE'S DADDY?


 “Dog’s meat will lie a long time above the ground and not smell.”- Dr. SS Seward

    I miss my father. It was unfair, the way I left him behind the locked door of the trailer bedroom in the narrative, ravaging my mother. He deserves better. Richard (Dick) Osterhout was a young sailor, just returned from war, who matured into a loving father and husband. We always had respect for each other, and as we both got older we developed a mutual love. Like the mother and son thing, relationships are just as precarious with a father. But the old man and I found a good balance. Common ground like hunting, and dry humor, kept us close. He taught me a lot about family, probably influencing my life and work way more than I give him credit for. Last night he came to me a dream. Like all these ancestors, he’s hard to shake once roused.    
    Another botanist in the family, George E. Osterhout, was spotting that precious little milkvetch that would be named for him, the Astragalus osterhoutii, in the Colorado desert, at the same time James VanDerZee was photographing his Osterhout family in Harlem. Dr. Winthrop Jon Van Leuvan Osterhout conducted experiments with noble laureates; and a week later gave away the bride, while the Thomas Edisons, the Henry Fords, and Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Firestone looked on. In the woods and rivers of British Columbia, Rev. Dr. Smith Stanley Osterhout, PhD., D.Div., was photographing and attempting to convert the Nisga’a Indians, while a continent away my great grandfather Andrew was mowing Crabtree’s hay fields. And if any father was just a little late for dinner, kid’s everywhere were asking “Where’s daddy?”
  
    On the morning of the 28th of Dec., seven days after his disappearance, the search finally began in earnest for Richard Jennings- dead or alive.

Isaac Smith sworn
By Mr. Price:

Q. Have you an intelligent little daughter that goes to school in Sugar Loaf?
A. I have a daughter 11 years old, that went to school at the time Jennings was murdered.
Q. Would she go passed the bars that led into the buckwheat field, when she went to school?
A. She would. The spot where the body was found was in plain sight of the road.

Jane Smith [Isaac Smith’s daughter] sworn
 By Jonathan Price:

Q. Did you go to school on the morning the day Mr. Jennings was murdered?
A. I began to go to school on that morning.
Q. Did you see Mr. Jennings that morning?
A. I met him going through the bars into the buckwheat.
Q. Who was in the company with him?
A. There was no one. He was alone. 
Q. How was he dressed?
A. He had on a grayish great coat, wrapped around him. It was a cold morning.
Q. Did you see any person near him?
A. I saw no person in going to school except Mr. Jennings.

Cross by the D.A.:

Q. When did you hear that Mr. Jennings was missing?
A.  I heard it on Christmas day at school.
Q. Did you tell any person that you had seen Mr. Jennings on Monday before, going into the buckwheat field?
A. Yes, I met Coe Jennings, Mr. Whitney, and Mr. Maroney at the turn of the road on Sat. They said they were hunting for Mr. Jennings and asked if I had seen him that week? I told them I had seen him go through the bars into the buckwheat. I also told Jesse Wood the same thing the day the body was found.
Q. When you was coming down the road, did you not see a black man in the fields with a gun?
A. I did not.

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