Re: Ya ta-hey Clay the Knife Maker

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Posted by Bill Gann on 20:18:23 02/07/06

In Reply to: Re: Hello Bill! posted by E.C.Gann

Your father, Sonny, who I imagine you are still looking for, is a true Indian spirit and my favorite wild cousin,

He used to say things like, "Getting older is a privileged denied many."

He would have greeted you in what I think was Apache.

He would always say, "Ya ta-hey." I think it means hello, good-bye, or almost anything in Plans native speak.

The first time I met you, you were about 7, and you were with your sister. I met your father on some lake in Texas where he kept a yellow canoe.

Anyway, you were there, and I was traveling in my old Bus, called Yellow Wind.

Your father had been drifting about the southwest deserts, as he did much of his life. Seems he had been running with a biker crowd and had taken to wearing his hair in long braids.

Sometimes he was an Indian, sometimes a cowboy, but always your lost father was an outlaw.

Your grandfather was worried about him when I visited him on the same trip, I told him not to worry because Sonny's knife was razor sharp, he shot a bow with great skill, paddled a canoe silently, and swam almost as fast as me.

Your grandfather liked that report on your father, and seemed happy to hear such news.

Ten or eleven years back I saw him in Arizona, In fact, that's the last time I saw him. He gave me a hunting bow and many arrows he had made.

He said it was a gift "on the prairie" which means you give something a traveler might need, wandering.

If I could give you and him a gift on the prairie, I'd have us all meet in a place Sonny and I knew well.

They talk about this place here on this message board a lot. It s called Last Chance Canyon.

Imagine that gift, a father back to a son.


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