Viajero...blogging Ricks Journey: The Road That Waited: Willamette Falls, 1955

The Trip I Didn’t Take

He picked me up early, the Iowa morning still undecided about the day. The red Cadillac—top down, white interior bright as fresh cream—sat idling at the curb in Red Oak. Ray X Williams behind the wheel.

Just the letter... Not Xavier. Not Xander... Just X.

Even at twelve, I knew that made him special. A man confident enough to carry a single letter and let the rest of the world wonder.

Hat on. Cigar already lit. The smell of leather, gasoline, and tobacco mixed with the July air.

“Well,” he said, glancing over his sunglasses, “you ready for Tulsa?”

I nodded like a boy who didn’t yet understand how few times life asks a question like that.

As we rolled south, cornfields slipping by in long, patient rows, I thought of Mazie—the great-grandmother I knew. Not Mamie, who had passed a couple years before I was born, but Mazie, who carried herself with quiet authority and kept the house running like a well-tuned engine. I wondered, not for the first time, if Gramps had a theme when choosing wives—strong women with names that sounded like they belonged to another era and yet somehow fit perfectly.

Ray drove with one hand, the other holding his cigar out the window so the ash wouldn’t land on the seat Mazie had warned him about more than once. He smiled when I brought it up.

“She’s right, you know,” he said. “A man can love his car, but he’d better love his wife more.”

The road hummed beneath us. After a while he said, “You ever notice how people always ask what the X stands for?”

I shook my head.

“Good,” he said. “Means you’re not wasting time on the wrong questions.”

We stopped late morning for breakfast—though for Ray, any good day of travel started with something warm and familiar. He ordered coffee and talked about food the way farmers do, like it’s part of the calendar.

“August comes around,” he said, “and there’s only one thing that tastes right.”

I already knew the answer.

Oyster stew.

Every August... Every birthday... A ritual as steady as the seasons.

“I love it,” I said.

He grinned. “Good. Means you’ve got good sense.”

We talked about farming—how patience isn’t passive, how waiting is work. About being mayor in Griswold, how listening mattered more than speaking. About knowing when to act and when to let things unfold.

Somewhere near the Kansas line, he laughed quietly and said, “A cigar doesn’t make a man important. It just reminds him to slow down.”

By the time we crossed into Oklahoma, the land had opened wide. The sky felt bigger. Tulsa rose out of the horizon with a promise that smelled faintly of dust and oil and adventure.

The rodeo lights came on like a second sunset.

Horses burst from gates. Riders fought gravity and fear in equal measure. Dust hung in the air like memory. Ray leaned forward, elbows on his knees, eyes bright.

“That right there,” he said as a bronc twisted free, “is courage mixed with foolishness. World runs on that combination.”

We cheered. We winced. We laughed together. He explained the rules, the risks, the reasons men keep getting back on after they’ve been thrown.

Later, walking back to the Cadillac, he rested a hand on my shoulder—steady, sure.

“Remember this,” he said. “If you think you should do something—really think it—then you do it. Don’t second-guess yourself. Life doesn’t give rain checks.”

On the drive home, under a sky stitched with stars, he hummed an old tune. I didn’t ask its name. Some things are meant to remain just as they are—unexplained, but true.

The Truth

The story above is imagined.

The drive never happened. The rodeo... it happened, but... We never made it to the World Championship Rodeo. And the conversations... They live only in longing of faded memories.

In 1971, less than a year before his death, my great-grandfather Ray X Williams invited me—his great-grandson—to attend the World Championship Rodeo in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was twelve. I chose instead to stay in Red Oak, Iowa, to play with my cousins.

We had fun. I’m sure of it. But I have carried the regret of that decision ever since.

Ray X Williams—born December 10, 1890—was a farmer most of his life, later the mayor of Griswold, Iowa. He is buried in Oakland Cemetery in Oakland, Iowa. I remember the Red Cadillac, the White interior, the joy of a cigar, the ritual of oyster stew every August and on his birthday. I remember Mazie, my great-grandmother, and the quiet strength that filled their home.

Only months after that missed invitation, Ray X would suffer a stroke. Then, on June 22, 1972, my great-grandfather died. I never again had the chance to join him in such a grand adventure.

~ Four Generations -- Dec 10, 1970 ~

Forty-one years later—to the very day—I would hug Ronnie Williams one final time. I eased out of the driveway on my Yamaha and waved, just as I had decades earlier. Ronnie, like Gramps, was someone deeply precious to me. June 22nd is a date etched in time—one that refuses to fade.

Time indeed has a way of circling back on itself.

One of my favorite sayings comes from that regret, shaped by the trip I didn’t take:

“If you think you should do something, you have to do it.”

Don’t second-guess yourself... Don’t postpone what matters... Some invitations never come again.

This is my story... This is my regret. And this—finally—is my remembering.

Epigraph for the Willamette Falls Photograph

Some journeys are taken by road. Others are taken by memory. And a few—if we are paying attention—are taken across generations.

Willamette Falls
March 1955 – March 2025

Accompanying Reflection

Just a few days before June 22, 2013—the last day I would hug my Uncle Ronnie and say goodbye—we took one more drive together. Aunt Barb, Ronnie, and I headed to Harlan, Iowa, to visit cousins and to spend time with Aunt Irma, then in her early nineties. There were snacks and drinks, but mostly there were stories. Stories about my dad. Stories about cousins. Stories about two good-looking brothers—Richard and his kid brother, Ronnie.

We looked through hundreds of old photographs, nearly finished, when Aunt Irma reached for one last handful... “I’m sure I have your dad and great-grandfather in here somewhere.”

She did.

As the photos passed through my hands, a sudden recognition stopped me cold.
“I know this place.”

I had driven past it a thousand times.

Willamette Falls.

There they were—my great-grandfather Ray X Williams and my father—standing at the very spot, frozen in black and white. Like so many old photographs, the corner was stamped simply: March 1955. Spring break. My father’s sophomore year. A westward journey I’d never known about until that moment.

A few days later, on June 22, 2013, I said goodbye to Ronnie for the last time. He would pass that December—one hundred and three years and three days after the birth of Ray X. Time, once again, quietly closing a loop.

In March of 2025—exactly seventy years after their travels west—I drove thirty minutes from my home. I wore a blazer. A hat. Held a cigar. Simple props for a quiet reenactment. Standing where they once stood, I took the photograph you see now.

The images are blended... The years are bridged.

I never made it to the World Championship Rodeo with Ray X. That regret remains. But the memories I do carry of him—the farmer, the mayor, the man with the single-letter name, the red Cadillac, the August oyster stew—those are precious beyond measure.

Some journeys we miss.
Others, we find later—waiting patiently for us to notice.